Consistent exercise

Somehow homeschooling 4 kids, shopping for food, cleaning house, running errands & various other activities keep me from being consistent on my exercise. I know I need to do it--I even WANT to do it. But it is HARD to be consistent about it.

Looking back over 2009 showed me that I have made some improvements in my health & met some goals.

Bought a treadmill--no excuses anymore & don't want to waste the $ we spent
--I do walk more than I did a year ago just not 3X a week yet

Eating more balanced meals--I plan out a month at a time and for each week I make sure we eat a balance of chicken, beef, pork, fish & vegie meals. We also have a "bean" meal & a "salad" meal 1X a week too. There are fewer casseroles in our life and more lean meat.

Tracking my meals--on a site called www.myfitnesspal.com and that has been a huge blessing so I know when I am going over my calories or eating too much fat. I also have a group of friends there that interact & encourage each other. I think that has been spuring me on more than anything lately.

So THIS past week I didn't make the consistent goal but I did make the 3 workouts. Monday, Wednesday & Saturday. Actually Thursday might count too because I walked a lot on a college tour but had no way to keep track of my distance/heartrate or anything.

I am also trying to watch the salt intake & drink a TON of water. I didn't drink much on Thursday and I could really tell on Friday morning. I drank a couple of glasses over the morning & that made a big difference.

So goals this week? Walk on Mon, Wed, Fri or any other day that it is possible. It would be great to fit in some pilates on one day to help tone up these poor old muscles. We shall see . . . .

#2

Doing something different—hopefully to share more about our family & then I can let relatives who are out of town check out this blog & actually have something interesting to read.

On Tuesday’s I am going to focus on on of my kids to tell about what they are doing & how they are growing. Since I have four kids & usually there are 4 Tuesdays(sometimes more!) then that works well.

Things never start when they should so I will start today on the second Tuesday of the 2010 with #2 child.

Oh to be 13 again—NOT. This girl has grown and changed more in the last year than in all of the years before combined. She actually isn’t a child any more— she’s definitely showing signs of becoming a young lady. Well when she doesn’t look like this. Or this!
Elizabeth loves to read. She will often read a book faster than I think anyone should be able to do. That is a great thing and a frustrating thing. She loves the library & thinks a trip there twice a week would be grand! Some of her favorite books are the Dragonquest series, Redwall series, Little Women, Lord of the Rings, Alexander Lloyd’s books, & many, many, many others.

An accomplishment for her lately is memorizing 2nd Corinthians for Bible Quizzing. Last April, she made it to the National Competition in St. Louis & she really enjoyed her first time at Nationals. Lots of new friends & going to bed REALLY late! So her goal right now is to qualify for Nationals April 2010. There are fewer kids going since it is farther away--Pitsburgh, PA--so the competition is tough. So far she has 16 chapters tucked away in her head.

Some things Liz doesn't like. Well she doesn't like being called Liz, although lots of people do it. Me included--in fact she claims I started it. Oh well--hard habit to break. She doesn't like bread, math or cleaning out litter pans. On the other hand I don't blame her on a couple of those items.

Steve & Elizabeth share a love for music(not that I don't love it but they REALLY love it). We often hear Reliant K, Britt Nicole, Toby Mac, Skillet, Downhere & Jars of Clay playing. She plays the piano well & helps her dad with leading music at church once a month. Last month(Dec) she played her first church service totally on her own. Often she and big brother both play but she mastered several Christmas songs & was able to play the whole service. Yeah! Elizabeth is also learning to play the guitar.

I just know that God has great plans for her & it has been such a joy to watch her grow and come along side her to cheer her on as she become a wonderful you lady.

Menu Monday

Menus for the Week

Trying to slim down as I am sure everyone in the country is doing. It is crazy when it is cold and all we want to do is hibernate & be warm then we try to loose weight. Well I am tracking my calories and watching my serving sizes. Goal this week is to walk on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. I will post later how it goes. :)

B'fasts

B'fast burritos, Yogurt, Eggs & muffins, Oatmeal, Bacon & pancakes, Cereal

Lunches

Broc Cheese Soup, Chimi's, Italian Hotdish, Mexican Bean Salad, Quesidillas

Suppers

Crock pot smokies, Stir fry(steak), Tropical Fish, Potato Soup, & Vegie Pasta Salad

As always this is subject to change as our schedule allows. One thing that has helped with our time in the mornings is to have a child in charge of lunch. E does Monday & Tuesday, MN gets Wednesday & MA does Thurday & Friday. That means no lunch duty until Saturday for Mom! Yeah!!!!

Unfortunately there is always something else to do . . . .

Bursting at the Seams!!

I feel a little like the farmer's wife after the harvest is in and the food is stored away. I was at 4 different grocery stores today and I think it all went extremely well. I started at Walgreens--I am not counting that as a grocery store since I didn't buy any food(candy but no food!).

Then on to Schnuck's! I was working on my list last night & thanks to my good friend Lisa I found I had some clipped coupons & was able to get a few more printed--then this morning the coupons.com site reset & I printed again!



Yeah! All total I spent 21.25 for these items--not pictured 4 tortillas & all the vegies--whoops they were still in the cooler!





Best deals were the free Green Giant Vegies(4 boxes, 4 bags), & Chex mix(5). Then I got chocolate chips for .50 a bag(6) -- time to bake! I was really excited about their $1 sale--got wheat tortillas, bagged spinach, Dawn soap, & Puffs tissues. All things we will be needing!



After picking up my girls, we went to Kroger & there it got fun! After she totaled my order it was $65 then after the store & manufacture coupons the order was $30.01!!!




Best deals here were the Organic Annie's Mac & Cheese(2) for free & the eggs were B1G1. I had received some coupons from Kroger in the mail that were only good at their store so I used a couple of those but I also had received a "Spend $50 & get $10 off." I combined that with a $3 off frozen items and a free pizza coupon and it turned out to be less than half of the original price. YIPEE! The check out girl was asking me where did you get those coupons? I love it!

I like to really make sure I am not buying things just because I have the coupon. That to me is the system changing the way I buy groceries. I don't want that to happen. I want to buy what we need & use coupons to make it cost less. I think I can say everything I bought today was a "normal" item we would buy--I wasn't conned in to trying something for the coupon. :)

The last part of our day was spent at Aldi's. In my last post I was talking about how I used to do a big monthly purchase & not run to the store as much. I had gotten away from than and I can honestly say why now. There isn't much that I am not able to get with a coupon. So my purchasing at Aldi's has gone down. Now I did go & get some staples that we have been consistently out of and I feel really good about having those on hand now. Spent $80 there but now we have our oats, cheese, juice, applesauce, salsa, dry milk & sugars on hand. I also got quite a few regular priced produce items. Didn't get a picture because it was too much & I had lots of little hands helping put away--which was wonderful.

This girl was really confused about me taking pictures of the groceries. Forgive the funny picture--she was saying "What are you doing?" Tickled me so I snapped her picture.

So I am done shopping and stocking up . . . well until tomorrow when the ads come out.

Menu Plan

Well this month I am trying something different that I read on a Flylady post. November's new habit is to get your menu's planning going. I used to do a plan once a month and that worked pretty well. I would make this HUGE list and go to Aldi's & Walmart to stock up. That cut our grocery bill by a lot in avoiding the little trips to the store.

Then I started to use coupons more & that means I am at the store multiple times a week sometimes--but only for coupon stuff. So I back slid in to not planning and shopping ahead as much. So I am trying to find a balance.

I do have a lot on hand but find that I am often missing one ingredient for something and that is SO frustrating to me. So having the plan and getting the staples in one big trip sounds good & then I can zip in quick and get the great deals when I am in town on errands on Tues/Thurs.

So here is my plan for suppers for this month & the next two weeks. The plan for lunches is different.

Mondays - Chicken
Tuesdays - Beef
Wednesdays - Fish or Pork
Thursdays - Meatless
Fridays - Big crowd or easy
Saturdays -Chicken
Sundays - leftovers or easy

Monday - Garlic Lime chicken Mexi-Chicken
Tuesday - Crockpot Pirates Stew Crockpot Swiss Steak
Wednesday - BLT's and Potato Salad Tropical Fish
Thursday - Crockpot Stuffed Peppers 3 Bean Soup
Friday - Pizza Pizza
Saturday - Crockpot Brown Jug Soup Creamy Chicken, Vegies & Noodles
Sunday - Cheese & crackers Sloppy Joes

I am going to work on the last two weeks tomorrow so that I can plan my "big" shopping trip for Tuesday. I think that will take a lot of stress off me in the next 4 weeks as the holidays draw near. More time for baking & making gifts instead of stressing about what to feed everyone! I am also going to do a chicken freezer day since we are running low on frozen meals in that meat if I can catch frozen chicken breasts on sale! Or maybe I will just go buy another frozen turkey! Gotta do the math first!