2.5 years later, I got my Ironman pictures scanned in!

Here I am on the bike:

Crossing the finish line:

My bad side:

And the good (LOVE this picture!):

And right after-look at how happy I was!  Shaun was standing right there and I wanted him in the picture and he said “YOU did this honey, this is YOUR time.”  I get a little teary thinking about that.  I have a pretty great husband and he was the best Ironfan EVER!

See?  Proof. 😉 Just kidding-I know no one was questioning me :)  Sometimes it’s good for me to see though because it gives me that kick in the butt.  I went from this:

To this:

I can do it again.

I will do it again (maybe not do an Ironman-I would love to but I would love to see my daughter grow up and hang out with my hubby even more).  But, I WILL get in good shape again.  I will be proud of my body.  I WILL feel comfortable in my body again. I AM a strong woman and I CAN DO THIS.

By the way, I scanned all these in to add to my story.  Check it out 🙂

Thank you ALL for the support.  It means so much to me and got me out of bed this morning at 5:30 to go to the gym.  It was a good class!

Check it out.

I’ll be scanning the pictures of the Ironman tomorrow-stay tuned!

I think I’ve stated before that we are very neat people.  My house is always clean and I like it that way.  It’s very important to Shaun and I and we make it a priority.  Lucy is following in our footsteps and helps us pick up now!  Sometimes we find her snack cups in the laundry, but hey, it’s better than nothing.  Girl likes order in her life 😉

One area that is NOT clean is my desk at work.  I try and try and yet it looks like (are you ready for this?) this:

Here’s a close up of that mess:

And under my desk is a wasteland of boxes:

One of those boxes is a present for Lucy that will be going home today.  That big box on the right hand side?  It’s a wedding present.  When did I get married you ask? Four and half years ago.  In all fairness, the present was sent a year later, so that’s been there for 3.5 years.  It’s a chest for silver and since I don’t have any silver to put in said chest I’ve just kept it at work.  It’s actually really useful.  It’s the perfect height for a foot rest for me.  When the ergonomics lady came into visit she was stoked that I had such a great footrest at the right height.  So…that silver chest has been much more useful under my desk, than it ever would have been at home in a closet 🙂

My food shelves (yes plural), aren’t too bad:

I’m in the office today and tomorrow and my goal is to tackle my desk and get it CLEAN.

The really funny part is that my sister is also a very clean person but her office at work used to always be a disaster as well.  I guess our Mom has to manifest herself in some way ;)  My Mom (and Dad really) are wonderful at many things but a clean house is not one of them 😉

To leave you on a happy note-packaged pretzels!

Oh and my “eff it” attitude? It left the building this morning-YAY!

I was super productive today just doing this and that :).  I took Lu and went shopping.  We got everything for the week and for Christmas. I was in Whole Foods and everyone was being really nice.  I was thinking to myself, “I really like this store.” As I was walking down the aisle Lucy started coughing, before I could do anything this woman says “Cover your child’s cough!” all rudely.  I turned around and it was a Whole Foods employee! I considered complaining-she really was rude and there wasn’t much I could do (have you ever tried to cover a 1 year olds mouth?  It doesn’t work very well-she tries to kiss my hand). Oh well.

When I got home I made us some butternut squash ravioli and then put Lu down for her nap.

I was inspired by Sabrina to make some chocolate covered pretzel rods. I got my candy canes ready:

They turned out really cute!

I ran out of rods, so I did coconut covered twists:

I tried to do sprinkle covered as well, but the sprinkles seemed to melt?

With the broken pieces, I was inspired by caramel corn and decided to do pretzel bark.  I crushed the pieces up smaller and covered them in my extras:

I think that may be my favorite!

Here’s some more pretty pictures of my handy work:

It was fun!  But I’ve eaten WAY too much 🙁

After I did the pretzels I had some cuddle time with the kitty.  I noticed that she was shedding.  She chose December 20th to shed!  I got out the furminator and check it out-I fuminated almost an entire cat!

EWWWWW! (Shaun put his phone in the picture so you would have a sense of scale).  She was a much happier kitty after the furmination:

Ick-I cleaned up all the hair, changed my clothes and washed my hands really well.

When Lu got up we went to a local nature preserve.  Shaun mountain biked and I ran.  I ran up a hill for 1.5 miles and then back down.  Running down with the hill with a jogging stroller was much harder than running up!  But I did it :)  I think I’m going to do this every time Shaun goes mountain biking.  My goal is to be able to run the entire thing without stopping.  I think it’s a good goal :)  Lu got a little fussy on the way down so I started singing her songs.  Imagine a lady with a running stroller, running, and singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”.  I’m sure it was quite the sight!  It worked though!

After the run, I got home and made some meatloaf for dinner.  I used my new handy dandy Pampered Chef food chopper to chop the onions and make the bread crumbs.

It worked incredibly well:

Shaun raved over dinner which helped me get over the disappointment of yesterdays failed dinner (Trader Joe’s Green Curry Simmer Sauce was a HUGE fail).  Lu loved it too!  She got yogurt for dessert-I just mix 2 ounces of pureed fruit (from when I made her baby food) with whole milk yogurt and she LOVES it:

I also started some pork loin in the crock pot for my Christmas Eve tamales.  The idea was to do them tonight but I think I’m going to wait.  Sitting on the couch and watching the Survivor finale sounds like more fun right now.

~~~~~

I have been having a hard time with my weight.  I’m working SO hard and the scale is not budging.  I’m starting to get an “eff it” attitude.  It’s bad.  I really don’t want to be that person-I want to be the fit Mommy, not the fat, out of shape, Mommy.  When I see so many people doing so well and I feel like I’m working just as hard, if not harder at losing the baby weight and nothing is happening it makes me really sad and discouraged. I’m really happy for them but sad for myself.  I’ve been serious about losing this weight now for almost 3 months and I’ve lost 4 pounds.  I guess that’s better than nothing but I wish it was more.  I will say that my clothes are fitting better but I still look in the mirror and I’m not happy with what I see. I just thought I’d be so much further along by now.  I binged yesterday and for that I am not proud.  It can only get better, right?

…you order 100 holiday cards and it’s not enough! Holy moly!

The day started out with my own Pumpkin Pie yogurt:

I can’t find Stoneyfield’s version ANYWHERE-I even asked the yogurt lady at Whole Paycheck.  I just mixed a little of my pumpkin butter in with some Greek yogurt.  It’s pretty good but I bet it’s not as good as the real deal.

This morning Richard and Elaina left for the East Coast and they had to drop Brea off with me.  Her doggy daycare (where she has private suite with 101 Dalmations  on tv) didn’t open until later.  I volunteered to take her down.  She hung out in the kitchen, looking sad.

Poor thing 🙁

Lu also got a bath this morning!

She loves her bath!

After I dropped Brea off, I had to go to WalMart to pick up my holiday cards.  I don’t go to WalMart ever.  I hate how busy it is, I find the set-up unintuitive, and I don’t find the prices that much better than Target-AND they don’t have awesome clothes like Target.  Unfortunately, they were the only place that printed out matte cards from Snapfish and so I made the decision to brave it, the Saturday before Christmas.  I was hoping that since a lot of the people in that neighborhood don’t celebrate Christmas that it would be too bad.  Shaun said I was crazy.  Guess what? I was right!  It wasn’t that bad at all!

I finished up my holiday shopping (all I needed was stocking stuffers) and I picked up our cards.  I came home and stuffed 100 envelopes.  I had filled most of the labels out last night (my hand is about to fall off-why did our printer have to break?!?!). They turned out really nice.  I got translucent envelopes and I really like the look:

All 100 went in the mail today!  Maybe they’ll get there by Christmas, if not, oh well-they do say Happy Holidays!

We’re about to have dinner.  I threw some stew meat, potatoes, and butternut squash in the crock pot earlier today with this stuff:

I hope it tastes good!

Do you do Christmas cards? Who makes the list and who doesn’t?

I got my first Christmas gift from Lucy:

A close up:

(Insert teary eyed Chelsea HERE). I LOVE IT!!!!

I also got into work today to a package sitting on my chair from my Mom:

How cute is that?  Santa will definitely be getting some cookies and the reindeer will get some celery and carrots on that plate.  Much better than last year’s plate!

But Santa and his reindeer DID NOT complain last year:

So the blog world has been frenzied over kabocha squash.  I got some last year in my CSA box and tried it but didn’t like it much.  I also have a foodie friend (he goes to The French Laundry a few times a year-he’s serious about his food) who has RAVED about them to me. I got one at Whole Paycheck this weekend and after seeing Lynn at The Actors Diet cook it whole I had to try it.

I cooked this puppy for about an hour in a 350* oven:

Broken open:

It was DELICIOUS!  Turns out I eat these all the time.  Almost all of the Japanese restaurants (remember the 34 within walking distance of me?), use this in their assortment of Tempura and it’s always my favorite.  I steal it from Shaun every time!  I must’ve gotten a bad one last year.

Lastly today, I’m wearing a RIDICULOUS scarf and I LOVE it.  Here’s a bad iPhone self photo of it:

Elaina commented, “You should wear it all day, and randomly say, "Off with her/his head!" when people annoy you. That would please me immensely.”

And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I did not get enough sleep last night, but I did have some crazy cool dreams about bike racing.  I miss triathlons.  Maybe my crazy cool dreams were a result of eating this:

It’s Taiyaki from a local shop called Sweet Breams. It’s pancake or waffle batter with cream filling.  My Japanese friends were so excited when they opened and then I read about the shop in Sunset.  On my way to knitting last night I was walking by and decided to pick up 2 schools of them to share.  I got vanilla custard, chocolate custard, nutella filled, and gingerbread batter with vanilla custard.  I had one of each and my tummy is not happy.  They were good though and the ladies at knitting LOVED them.

This is how they were packaged:

And as I waited for them to make my taiyaki (and after I got yelled at for taking pictures in the shop), I watched as they manually cut out the tops of the boxes.  This is a very manual process!

Before I got yelled at for taking pictures (and ummm…they had the movie Up! playing on a tv-I’m pretty sure that’s worse than me taking pictures in their shop-just sayin’) I did get a few pictures of the fun stuff for sale there.

Cute!

I love where I live.  In my downtown there are 34-yes 34 different Japanese restaurants-all within walking distance. What that means is that we have a favorite place for contemporary sushi, traditional sushi, Bento Boxes, Japanese snack food and then Japanese country cooking.  We also have a Japanese market and beautiful Japanese garden that was in Memoirs of a Geisha.  We also have 4 Indian restaurants, 4-5 Italian, 4 or so California Cuisine, 3-4 Steak Houses, countless taquerias, Salvadorian (mmmm pupusas), a Brazillian Steak House, the list goes on and on.  The one thing we’re lacking? Good places for breakfast.  We have one taqueeria that does breakfast, one traditional breakfast place, and one super fancy brunch place.  I wish we had one cafe-but we don’t.  I guess I can’t really complain though 😉

Alright, it’s a busy day.  Later!

I broke it with my BARE hand!  A couple of weeks ago at work someone sent out an article that a woman was attacked on a jogging trail not far from here.  She fought the assailant off but it, understandably, shook us all.  My work, being cool, brought people in to give us a self defense course.

It was AWESOME.

In the course I found out some staggering and sad statistics:

-The changes that a woman will be a victim of a sexual assault in her lifetime is 1 in 3

-The average rape lasts 2-4 hours

-Only 15% of rapes are ever reported.

–77% of the time, the attacker and victim know each other

–50% of women comply with a rapist’s demands even when NO physical force is used

–87% of the victims are female, while 98%  of the attackers are male.

–90%  of the time, the victim and the attacker are the same race

–1.3 rapes happen every minute

–The average age of a rape victim is 14 years old

The class was just an overview-I learned how to hit and kick effectively. But it really made me want to look into self defense some more.  It also convinced me that when Lucy is old enough, I want to put her into some sort of martial arts/self defense classes.  I think that will be really beneficial for her.

The other thing I got from the class that I think would be great for every woman to have is this:

It’s a mini baton called a kubotan that you can use as a weapon or if you hold onto it you can swing your keys as a weapon.  I think it’s going to be GREAT for running. Here’s a link to a pink one! They’re only $5, completely legal, but you cannot take them on a plane.

In not so depressing news, I got a package from a friend today and it it were these:

I have looked all over the Bay Area for the last 4 years and haven’t been able to find these flavors.  I’m about to go have some Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride RIGHT NOW!

In other exciting news-I got ALL the pictures.  I’ll get the CD soon and get to share with you but for now, believe me when I say that they are beautiful and awesome.

Coming to my blog and seeing this:

Wouldn’t you think-“yummy?”  And look at this:

Mmmm….yeah, not so much:

They’re outside of my building and probably quite poisonous.  They are pretty close up but not so much from far away. I have to call our management company today to get them removed. Too bad they’re deadly because I really could have used mushrooms in my gravy last night.

Speaking of last night, did anyone watch So You Think You Can Dance?  Why did they make it only 1 hour?  It was a fabulous hour but also a rushed hour.  I cried 3 or 4 times.  Really Chelsea? Really?  Russell and Ashley, Jakob and Katherine, and then Ashley and Ryan (I don’t even like Ashley and Ryan) made me cry.  And then when Nigel was talking about how amazing Russell is, that made me cry.  I’m such a sap.  Russell and Katherine’s crump was pretty freakin’ amazing too!  It sounds like they’re going to do the summer season again and I hope they do.  I didn’t really like it in the Fall.  Baseball and now Christmas are messing it up.  Six people really shouldn’t be in the finale.

Oh I also watched the Fall finale of Glee and the end made me cry.  Hormonal much?  I actually don’t really like Glee that much but I want to like it so I keep watching it.  The finale was the best episode but it was still just so silly.  I doubt we’ll watch it come Spring.

If you missed it, I posted 3 recipes last night.  They are all related.  Plus they’re easy, yummy, kid (and Shaun) tested, and Mommy approved!

I just came into the office to this:

I opened it up and saw this:

Ummm…yes please!

Lastly, there’s a bunch of giveaways going on right now:

-The girls over at The Actor’s Diet are giving away Kay’s Naturals and ProBars here.

-Tasha, aka The Clean Eating Mama is giving away a $10 Starbucks card here.

-If you become a fan of Larabar on Facebook, they are randomly throughout the day giving away Larabars. It’s not even a drawing.  If you leave a comment on their blog in the hour time block that they specify, you get free Larabars.

-And finally Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake is giving away something everyday!

I KNOW I’m missing tons of giveaways, but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

My friend Amanda made us these after Lu was born.  She made us tons of meals and was a godsend while we adjusted to life with an infant.  Shaun fell in love and they’ve become a staple in our household.

Ingredients:

-1/2 recipe of Ma’s Stuffing, unbaked or 1 box of traditional boxed stuffing (use Ma’s!)
-1 pound ground turkey breast
-Chicken broth

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350*. Non-stick spray a muffin tin.

Mix stuffing and turkey with hands and add broth until pretty wet (I’d say I used about 2 cups of broth? NOT in addition to the broth from the stuffing recipe, the broth should be one and the same for this recipe). You want them to stick together but you don’t want them soaking wet.  I make mine pretty wet since we like our stuffing more moist.

Place the mixture in the muffin tin.

Bake for 30 minutes or until turkey is done and the tops are browned.

Serve with veggies and maybe some gravy made from your additional chicken broth.

These freeze REALLY well. Both before they are cooked and after.

Shaun gives this 4 stars and Lu LOVES them.  She’s too busy eating to smile:

Both last night and tonight she ate 1.5 muffins of these.  Super easy and yummy!