October: Cedar Breaks, the Livestock Fesitval, and Halloween

December's craziness is already past for me. It started with all the normal stuff plus the Relief Society dinner, which I sang in a duet for, then our Stake's Creche fesitval, which our chior sang at, then the ward party, which I took rolls for and helped clean up, a friend's son wedding, for which I helped set up and clean up the reception, and the choir Christmas program in sacrament meeting, for which I am the choir pianist. It was all fun and I enjoyed it, but Woo Hoo! It's done! Now I get to just enjoy Christmas!


We have some catching up to do! At the beginning of October we drove up to Cedar Breaks. The leaves were changing colors and it was beautiful! We used a disposible camera and only some of the pictures turned out.

Then there's Halloween! Carving pumpkins:

We took these next ones in December :):

This is Daniel with his buddy, Tyson, after taking halloween pictures. It good to have friends who are "bad" like you and didn't take pictures yet, so we did it together:

Joey with Tyson's big sister, Kylie. They really could be twins:

The day before Halloween we went to the Livestock Fesitval, we managed to get the boys cowboy hats, 2 for $20, we bargained!

 And everything else:

He's a puppy dog! 

 Joey started giving Daniel rides on his bike.

We were given this couch and the boys love to jump on it. Thank goodness we were given a new couch and this one is history! The new couch is much prettier, and bigger.

For Thanksgiving we went to Roosevelt, and stayed with my grandparents. After coming home a lady in my ward sat next to me in Relief Society and after asking me where we went for Turkey day we figured out that she was one of my mom's high school buddies. It seems to be a small world when your from a small town, hehe :). 

The Type 3 flag

Background: we have this book, by Carol Tuttle, that tells you about the 4 different types of personalities (or energy types). Nate, Daniel, and I, and like half of my family are all Type 3.

In our office, we have hung some flags we have. Nate was sitting on the couch with Joey and telling him the name of each flag. He pointed to one and Joey told him that it was the New Mexican flag. Nate pointed to another and told Joey that it was the England flag. Then he pointed to another and said, "this is the Taiwan flag". Then Nate pointed to the Texas flag and said "what's this one?". Joey's response: "The Tai Three flag!"

Hehe :)

Daniel's first words

Daniel mostly babbles, but we can definitely tell that he knows what things are called and tries to say the word. Recently he has said, in order of appearance:

Doctor (because we were singing "put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up ... say 'doctor', is there something I can take, she said 'doctor!', to relieve this belly ache").
Bubble (more like "bub .... bull")
Look (while pointing)
Bite
Ball

He'll also tell me whole sentences of stuff without me understanding, but it's cute as heck!

We LOVE this boy!

HCG is complete

So, I hit a rough patch and stopped loosing. You're only supposed to do 40 days on the HCG but was told to go until the weight stopped coming off. Yesterday was my last day. I'm going to switch over to another program and be done before Thanksgiving. Here are my results:

47 days on HCG
31.2 pounds lost
From size 16 to size 11
28 inches lost over my whole body!
7 inches alone came off my lower abs
4 off my belly
4.5 off my upper abs
4 off my hips/bum
and 1-3 inches everywhere else.

I say that was a success! Woohoo! I am now starting to fit into a couple things that I was wearing when I got married. I'm loving it! Now I can't eat startch or sugar for 3 weeks but can eat anything else. This PH Miracle plan that I'm going to start starts with a two week liquid feast so at the end of next week I will start that. Since the liquid feast consists of no starch I can overlap it with this last HCG phase. It's gonna be awesome!

Injuries and ... blogging about weight(?)

First, Joey seems to have just gone through an injury phase. He's smashed his head, stubbed his toe, fallen, and run into things all over the place. There were two big injuries, though. On Friday night something possessed him to jump off the top bunk. He fractured his foot. Lucky we were able to show it to a retired chiroprator in our ward, he told us what was up and what to do. No cast was necessary. This was a huge relief: no ER visit, no bills. Then, on Tuesday we were getting out of the car and I got out this little stroller and told him to climb on while I got Daniel out of the car. Next thing I know, Joey's screaming. I guess the stroller wasn't all the way open. He had put his hand on the side and sat down, pinching his hand into a part of the stroller as it closed. The palm of his hand was firmly stuck in there with way more skin than the gap had room for. I tried to get him up and close it to let his hand loose, but he decided to yank it out, tearing the skin. It was not a pretty wound, and he was not a happy boy for a very long time. We wrapped his hand with gauze and taped it and it's doing better. The first day he couldn't really use his hand (the right one). But now he is walking, and running (with a promt "NO RUNNING" from us), and using his hand better. Daniel decided join the fun and climb the high chair and fall off, he had an immediate dent on his head, and now a bruise, but it's not too bad.


So ...

Well, I've never blogged about my weight, but here I go. My new year's goal this year was to finally get it taken care of, forever. I tried many things and nothing worked, dang it! Anyway, then Nate figured out that I had algea in my body. We got rid of it and 6 lbs fell off. By this time, it was the end of August, and I was very grateful for that 6 pounds, but things had to go faster! Then, my visiting teacher told me about something she had just finished and had lost 40 lbs in 40 days. Crazy I know. I asked my kinesioligist about it and she knew of it, said it was safe and worked very well. I did tons of research, including reading the doctors manuscript and started on Sep 6th. You take HCG and gorge for two days, with as much of the fatiest foods possible. This opens your fat cells and gets them active. Then on day three you cut down to 500 calories, and keep taking HCG. Your body feeds off of the open fat cells. This actually consumes the artificial fat reserves and restores the natural fat reserves. Oddly, natural fat reserves are depleted in the overweight specimen :). The food options are slim, but after a few days all cravings are gone and my desire for food died out. The first week was easy and I felt great, then week two got bad. I had some very rough days, some where I made mistakes and gained, but more where I was emotional. But, I've come out of it and I am very excited now! I plan to reach my goal by Oct 31, which will give me time to do the 3 week 2nd phase and be eating normal by Thanksgiving. I have lost 16.5 lbs since the 8th (22 days). I have 46 pounds left and I am aiming high! I feel really good, have normal energy, and just have to remind myself that none of that delicious is going to disappear off the face of the planet! I will be able to eat it again. I'm amazed that close to a month is past and, starting tomorrow, I will have only one month left! So all my many faithful fans and cheerleaders ...


... sit back and watch me shrink.

Update: as of Oct 7th, I've lost 23 pounds! woo hoo! I have 41 to go.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great weekend! I wish I had a camera! Some families in our ward, the Sorensons and the Wayments,  invited us to go camping with them. Their kids are all 5-13 and they love to play with Joey and Daniel. They lent us a tent and sleeping bags, and fed us. It was awesome and we are so grateful! We went up Beaver canyon. On Saturday we went fourwheeling to the summit of the mountain we were on, at 12,000 feet. It was an awesome view. We had so much fun fourwheeling. Joey loved it, especially when things got rocky, he would laugh really hard. Once his helmet fell off and he talks about that and the bumps all the time. We were surprised that he was even willing to get on! We came home Saturday, while they all stayed through labor day.

On Labor day we went to the Iron County Fair. We went to the petting zoo, which the boys loved. I literally had to drag Daniel away from the pigs: he clenched onto the fence and gritted his teeth and wouldn't let go. We looked at the displays, and I thought my mom was WAAAAAYYYY better than all but one the the award winning paintings. The sewing wasn't very good, the drawings were a little bit decent, and the photography was so-so. Nate and I determined that we could win a few prizes next year if we wanted to. We also went to a car and tractor show and watched a horse race! Then we went to eat at this little burger shop in Parowan, where the fair was. Joey had a pizza stick and dipped it in the fry sauce, took a bite, and made a face. Nate said "that looks like it was kind of gross" and Joey said "No, it wasn't kind of gross ... it was GROSS." hehe. Then we went grocery shopping and came home and watched Speed Racer. 

Nate's back at school today, I'm doing some major madness, and we are going to start potty training Joey tomorrow!

Joey's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe Joey is already 3. I wish I could just stop time and love my boys how they are right now, forever! He seems so grown up. He's talking amazingly now. He likes to use the word "just" (I'm just playing with my toys") and "I'd better" (Mama, I'd better call Grandma, or The cars in your room Mama I'd better go get it). He loves to play with Daniel, but is starting to get possesive of stuff. He sings all the time and has an amazing memory. He especially likes "I like it, I love it", a country song, and everyday asks if he can listen to "Teddy Bear" because the song say teddy bear in it. He also loves these veggie tales cds we got, he calls the veggie tale "m&ms". He often asks to cuddle, could play with cars all day everyday, and likes to go places in the car. Happy Birthday Joey! I'm so glad to have you! I'm so grateful to have Joey in my life ... I don't think I ever knew true joy until I had children and he is so much fun!

His birthday was a little more fun this year since Joey understood better what was going on. Actually, he was a grumpy ol' poop most of the day. He kept asking me if he could open his presents, and would get mad when I'd have him open his cards. He did get really excited about the money, though. When he opened the card from his Uncle Julian and Auntie Ashley, I don't know how he knew but he opened it and started to tell me about the picture Morgan drew him. I hadn't told him who it was from yet, but he knew Morgan's drawing. We got a semi truck, a car, and his favorite was a train set from Grandma and Papa! We couldn't get him to stop to eat: he'd say "no mama, I'm playing with my trains." He got to go play with his friend Jace in the morning and then for dinner we had the missionaries. Nate headed out on splits after that so we opened presents throughout the day. We don't love cake so we just had brownies and ice cream. The next day, Saturday, we had people over to swim at our pool and had rootbeer floats. We had a ton of fun. Most of the kids there were older (9-13) and we loved hanging out with them. Nate got a nice sunburn.