Another challenge bites the dust

February…we started a little rough, but in the end – I persevered. So my 31 day challenge this month (which technically, doesn’t end for me until Friday), was to take my vitamins daily. Sure, not a big deal for some – but I’m awful about doing this. And given that, ahem, we aren’t getting any younger – it’s a good thing to make this sort of behavior a habit.

Yes, I missed a couple of days…but that was it. Multi-vitamin – check! Fish oil – check! B-12 – check!

I do plan on continuing this on and with the same consistency I had during my challenge.

March will be an interesting month given that:

• Micah and I are going to Vancouver this weekend
• Micah and I will be in Mexico for 5 days later in the month (for our friend’s wedding) YAY!!!
• And when we return, I’ll immediately head off to Utah for work for 9 nights/10 days.

So in lieu of quantity of days, I’m choosing to focus on intensity of the challenge. Plus, I gotta get in beach shape!

So for my March “31” day challenge – which will start after our Vancouver trip and end when we leave for Mexico, and restart when we return – is a hybrid of some of my past challenges:

• No sweets
• No meat (but fish and seafood ok)
• Workout 5 or more days a week (this I’ll continue without any stoppage)

Yes, it may sound a little screwy with my start/stop/start/stop. But in total it will be 23 days. AND…as I always say, “this is my challenge, my rules!!”

Barely February

It’s just days into February and it’s already a big FAIL for my February challenges. I was intending to challenge myself to take my vitamins everyday. That is, my daily multivitamins (in gummy bear form), fish oil, and B12. I’m awful about remembering to take my fish oil and B12 – but oddly enough, always remember to take my gummy vitamins But I’ve already slipped two days now. Boooo. I’ll do my best to make it only those two days that I miss for the rest of the month. So far, not a great start.

And we’re back…sort of

Hi guys! It’s been awhile…a whole month to be exact. I didn’t post in January because well 1) I had NO time and 2) I opted that to be my 31 day challenge – I know, that’s kind of lame. But as I always say, it’s my 31 day challenge – feel free to do your own challenge with your own rules.

I’ll do my best to blog more…but it’s going to be tough – mainly because of my new job. With any new job, there’s a lot to navigate – the culture, the people, the vocabulary, the work, etc. etc. I’m really liking it, but it’s no piece of cake. And I am finding myself with little time and mental energy at the end of the day.

January was an action-packed, fun-filled month. Recaps to come. But to summarize – no less in limerick form:

We were in Hawaii for 9 wonderful days
we went to the beach and soaked up some rays.

We got to spend time with Brian, Tera and my nieces
It was so fun and I miss them to pieces!!!

We ate lots of good food, including shave ice
and nearly every meal we ate included two scoops of white rice.

For two nights, we stayed in a beautiful ocean-view suite
We didn’t have to pay a thing, what an awesome treat!

We saw Zoe and Russ get married in an amazing ceremony
And partied the night away with fun friends and family.

We came home to Seattle all covered in white snow
But not quite enough – off to work we had to go

But then more snow fell and we did not venture outside
We worked from home, snuggled, and stayed warm and dry.

Our friends hosted a murder mystery dinner, it was such a hit
We dressed in costumes, ate yummy food, and guessed whudunnit?

Micah’s birthday was filled with Japanese food and sake
We ate and drank and sang lots and lots and lots of karaoke!!!!

And the very next day, what does he want for his special birthday dinner?
Japanese food of course, that’s a no brainer.

The search continues for “our” house, but nothing so far
Oh, and last night…someone hit my car.

The month has flown by and I’m excited to see
What new things I can rhyme about for the month of February!

I’ll get around to posting pics, I promise!!

Go greyhound

It’s nearly midnight…but I didn’t forget about my blogging goal!
One of my go to cocktails is the somewhat old-school greyhound.
Vodka and grapefruit juice. Yum. I need to try it one of these days with fresh-squeezed juice.

Hello December!

Wow, what the hell happened to November?  I hardly had time to say a proper goodbye to the month that hosts my favorite holiday…Thanksgiving!

• Micah and I had three Thanksgivings this year.  It was awesome.  Lots of yummy foods and leftovers!
• November 30/1 day challenge is OVER.  As a reminder, I was to read a minimum of 10 min a day (pleasure-reading…from a book.  Not blogs, not newspapers, or magazines).  It was tough.  It was a busy busy month.  I did miss 2 days 😦  But I did finish 3.5 books.
• Micah’s challenge was to eat oatmeal everyday of the month.  He successfully did it!
• As for my December challenge, I’m going to try and blog at least 5 days out of the week. That means a min of 20 posts.  Mind you, they may be random, short, or hold very little blog-value…but a post is a post!  It will be a good chance to do some fun posts about our wedding…that lil’ ol event that happened WAY back in February.
• P.S. I’m currently at 483 posts!

Random smatterings

I haven’t been so good about blogging lately.  Part of that is because I haven’t had much time.  I’ve been working and traveling…A TON.  And work is really boring to blog about.  In fact, I’m writing this post now as I’m up in the air on my flight back to Seattle.

With the holiday season approaching, I’m hoping that means lazy days.  HA!  At the least, I’m hoping for some time spent on the couch…catching up on the new season of Top Chef that I haven’t even watched one minute of.

And a quick update on my November 31 day challenge (reading at least 10 minutes a day).  I missed a day.  😦  I blame it on jet lag, sickness, exhaustion, time zone change…and just totally forgetting.  But it is what it is – so I move on!  I have been very good since.

I finished The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America.  It started boring…and ended boring.  A definite…do not read.  Perhaps, those considering admission to the CIA would find this more palatable (pun, intended!).

I’m on to Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story by Wally Lamb.  I’m nearly done – a very funny, light-hearted, easy read.

Since I’ve received only one suggestion of other books to consider reading (thank you Naomi), I may decide to tackle the MASSIVE Game of Thrones series.  Or I might just go and reread all the Harry Potter books again.  And yes, we of course purchased and watched (that same day) the last Harry Potter movie.  Tear.

My last update – because it’s something I can quickly type and I have no pictures to accompany it – is about flag football.  After a strong start of three consecutive wins, we apparently felt lop-sided – and went for three consecutive losses.  But…good enough to get us to the first round of playoffs – which, we tore that team up.  So, we now play in the second round – and if we win, the championship round.  All this hard-hitting flag-pulling action happens this Sunday.

 

 

31 day challenge update

Hi folks,

October is SOOO over.  Which means the end of my second 31 day challenge – no desserts for 31 days!  Even I was a bit skeptical about accomplishing this, but I did – and only used 1 of 2 cheat days.

Naturally, you might expect me to have been gorging out on sweets these past few days…but I haven’t.  My intent was to curb my crazy sweet tooth cravings – into something a bit more normal and controllable.  So far, so good.

So November brings a new 31 day challenge (actually started on October 31st since November only has 30 days).  I plan to read for pleasure…at least 10 minutes every day.  NO CHEAT DAYS.  That might seem ridiculously easy/lame for some of you voracious readers…but if you knew how crazy my life has been…then making time for this is truly a challenge.  In fact, in these first few days, I’ve read exactly 10 minutes each day (even getting up 10 minutes early to make sure I get it done for the day).

I have a number of flights coming up in the coming two weeks – Vegas, Orlando, Dallas, and LA – so reading then shouldn’t be an issue.  But navigating 10 minutes of reading into my 10+ hour work days…that’s not so easy.  A girl’s gotta sleep!

Any good book recommendations?  Let’s see how many I can get through.  Currently reading: The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America by Michael Ruhlman.  So far…pretty boring.  I figured I’d love getting a glimpse into the top culinary school in the country – but I guess I’d rather just watch Top Chef on TV. 🙂

No sweets, no sweat

It’s been a full 10 days of my second 31-day challenge – this one being, 31 days of no desserts/sweet treats.

Given my weakness for all things sugary, I figured this would be really hard to do.  And while the first few days I suffered from a constant dull headache (me thinks it was sugar withdrawals), I feel much better now.  And while the temptation is always there (exhibit A: a friend’s birthday party filled with brownies, cake, and ice cream), I somehow have managed to stay on track.  That’s not to say I don’t really crave some type of sweet treat at some point in the day!!

Hopefully by the end of 31 days, I’ll have reset my internal body sugar thermostat!

But I still have two full cheat days to use…which I haven’t decided yet how I’ll use them.

Prost! Prost! Beer! Camping!

We had such a fun weekend camping over in Leavenworth and attending the Oktoberfest festivities.  Since lodging for this popular event is hard to come by (and we definitely wanted to be in the free shuttle area), we opted to go camping at a nearby site.  P.S. “Prost” is German for “cheers!”

Our new German friends, Marc and Holger (both on short-term assignment at my work), joined us – and they definitely got to experience camping, American-style.  They were soooo amazed at how luxurious our camping is (and really, it’s nothing that spectacular or out of the ordinary).  Apparently, in Germany when you go camping, you can’t build a fire in your campsite and eating ravioli straight from the can is not all that uncommon.  Plus, they had no idea what SMORES were!

Marc and Holger are the two guys on the left.  They were quite excited about the chorizo egg breakfast burritos that Gabe and Charissa had prepared Saturday morning.

I’ll just give you some of the highlights of our very fun weekend:

• Friday was the last day of September and also the last day of my no meat challenge.  How ironic that our neighbors (camping in that sweet RV you see in the background of the pic) generously gave us two massive T-bone steaks…that I did not eat.  I resisted.  But the boys did not. 

• Five of the eight of us dressed up, in “true” Bavarian style!  Vann (far left) was mistaken all day as either a 1) hobbit 2) leprechaun 3) elf or 4) simply called “little feller.”  Naomi (next to Vann), she MADE her outfit out of green felt…it was seriously bad ass.

• The boys – Oktoberfesting and loving it!

• The girls – hokey pokey-ing and loving it!

• There were lots of fun bands playing in the different tents. 

• How could we resist this pic opportunity?

• Smores!  Marc and Holger loved these!
• Saturday was the first day of October, and thus, the start of my new 31 day no sweets challenge.  Thus, I could no longer enjoy any of this Smores deliciousness.

 

We all had a really fabulous time!!  And although we were a bit slow and dehydrated come Sunday morning – it was well worth it!  Plus, we lucked out and didn’t get rained on.

Auf wiedersehen!!

So NOT sweet. Here comes, my next 31 day challenge.

Can you figure it out?  Can you guess what my next 31 day challenge is going to be?  The month of September (plus one day in August) was all about eating meat-free. 

The month of October is all about…NO SWEETS! 

That might not sound like much of a challenge for some of you folks (like Micah).  But for me…well, this will be a true challenge.  You are talking to a major dessert-fiend here. 

Just to clarify, when I say no sweets, I am referring to the typical cookies, candy, cakes, brownies, doughnuts, pies, and chocolate.  So anything with chocolate is off-limits.  This includes my daily chocolate NuGo protein bars (or should I say NoGo bars) or my occasional chocolate-flavored  Muscle Milk Light protein drinks (which I love).  Although these are more about protein and vitamins, I opted to put them in the category of sweets since they are chocolate.

And since I’m no glutton for punishment (well, not too much anyway), I have given myself two cheat days to use as and when I want.

And to clarify even more, I’m not going sugar-free.  So fruits and carbs are not on the barred list.  Yes, I can drink juice.  Yes, I can drink mixed drinks.

However, I have been putting some careful thought into what I am going to eat.  Literally, I eat something(s) sweet EVERYDAY!  I imagine the first week is going to be tough, since my body will probably be going through major withdrawals.  But hopefully at the end of 31 days…I’ll have reset my body a bit and won’t crave sugar so much. 

Some of the alternative foods/snacks I’ve stocked up on: apple slices with natural almond or peanut butter, raw almonds, string cheese, plain fat-free Greek yogurt, veggies (of course – but those will get boring real quick), plain oatmeal, hummus, and cottage cheese.  I plan to figure out more along the way.

I intentionally chose this challenge for October since it’s a month filled with candy temptation.  It’s kicks off the beginning of the Sugar Season.

So there you go.  One more meat-free day to go and then starting Saturday…it’s no more sweets for me!  You think I’ll make it?