Mom's Night Out Dancing

This was a fun night. I was planning on going then bailed since I was so tired (& almost everyone else bailed) and then made a last minute decision to go out with the two moms who were still planning to go and called up two other mom friends I thought would be game (& they were). So, here we are posing for some group shots. It was a fun night and I am glad I went out. Our next mom's night out with this group is to go tubing at Buckhill (just like we did last February). I can't wait.

Getting in Shape

I haven’t gotten on the scale recently. Seeing the numbers rarely change is more discouraging to me, but when my clothes start to get loose, then I am happy. But I know I am motivated to workout if I am able to be social.

A couple of things that I do is meet a friend once a week at the gym. We are lucky enough that a local gym (with childcare) offers a punchcard (in addition to a monthly rate), so I don’t have to feel pressured to go more often to make it worth it. And I pay for the childcare as we use it. And at the first of the year they decreased their punchcard rate by almost half. Awesome! It ends up coming down to $4.33 for me to workout with a friend and our kids to be in childcare. That’s actually cheaper than paying a babysitter. So, we allow ourselves to splurge on that for ourselves once a week so we can get in a long run w/o interruption.

And I do yoga with 3 other moms once a week. We switch between a couple houses that have enough room for us, but we all contribute our different yoga videos we have, so the routine gets mixed up all the time and we don't get bored. It’s nice. We do this while our kids are in preschool and the ltl ones are either napping or playing.

Usually I make myself workout once a week by myself, either a yoga video or get on the treadmill. I try to workout 4-5 times, but the other 2 times I try to make it fun with the family. So, my daughter & I try to get out sledding or ice skating (all free) or we go swimming as a family at the community center ($3/person and my son is free). Or I try to get out to do some other winter sport with a friend like cross country skiing (which I bought on ebay for hardly anything) or snowshoeing (go to the nature center when they have the rental free or discounted for members).

As soon as daylight savings starts & its warmer, my gym/running partner & I will go running outside in the evening after the husbands are home and can be with the kids. I think we will get a couple other moms to join us as well. We set a goal to run a 10K in April (ran our 1st 5ks this fall), so we’ll need to pick up our running more in March.

And I can’t wait for summer when we get a family membership to our city’s community outdoor pool, which is an affordable $75 for the summer. And we are at the pool ALL THE TIME! And we’ll start hiking at the nature center more once it warms up. And the my daughter really wants to go geo-caching. And since I have the smart phone now I can download a good android-based free app to do this. I'm hoping that this summer my daughter will be able to bike faster and we can do more bike riding around the town. And of course, we'll have some fun playtime in the yard and at parks that will help keep us in shape.

Profile Pic

I am pretty happy with this picture that Skye took of me at the Nature Center this fall and it has become my new profile picture & avatar, pretty much everywhere.

Homemade Gifts for the Adults

My mom made all of these gifts here. The top are necklaces for me. The top necklace is a crocheted washer necklace and the bottom necklace is a crocheted ribbon necklace.

Well, actually this can crusher was made by both my mom & dad and was for my husband. All the guys got one of these and it works quite nicely.

Homemade Gifts for the Kids

Grandma S crocheted all of the grandkids some slippers for Christmas, they are the pairs that my kids received.

Grandma M sewed my daughter this paint smock. She made her one a couple years ago, but now it's just too small and it was time for a new one. And she certainly needs this with all the crafts we do.

Grandma S crocheted my son this dinosaur puppet. It is quite the hit with him. When he sees it he gives it to one of us to put on our hands. He likes to try to grab the tongue while we try to eat his hand. One of his cousins loved playing with it in the same way at Christmas time.

Grandma S also crocheted this purse for Isabel and sewed a fleece liner in it. It's a very pretty purse and she will find lots of stuff to carry in it.

Next Challenge: Run a 10K This Spring

Ok, so I just joined the gym again (I'll have more about that in a later post) so that I can meet friends there to run on the treadmills. I enjoy running with other people, but I don't enjoy winter running. I don't like the cold & ice.

So, today I was back at the gym and haven't looked up a solid interval (run/walk) training plan, but came up with my own today by trying to push myself, but not kill myself.

Today I did (number is minutes and w=walk and r=run): 5w, 15r, 5w, 10r, 5w, 5r, 3w, 2r, 2w, 2r, 1w. I kicked it up an extra 1mph faster for the last 2 minute run.

My mileage today added up to 4.6. It's really only another mile and a half to get me to that 10K. So, I know I can do it.

My plan is to do interval training or run twice a week. Other times I will be doing yoga or some fun winter sport.