Trip to the Temple and Matt's Birthday

Yesterday was Matt's Birthday and it was a very busy day!  Matt turned 29 yesterday, one year left until he hits the big 3-0.  The morning was business as usual.  Wake up, feed the family breakfast, and then exercise.  I did the Push 2 workout today.  The push phase is pretty tough since we are lifting weights heavy enough to make your muscles fatigue by 6-8 reps.  For several of the exercises I don't have weights heavy enough, for example all the lower body exercises.  So I have to make due with what I have and try to "make the weights seem 50 pounds heavier than what they really are" as Chalean says.  I only have weights up to 15 pounds.  I still have plenty of room to grow on my upper body though.  My upper body has always been weak.  I did a little Zumba for cardio after my weight lifting to try and burn some calories to offset what I knew I would be eating this afternoon and evening.  I only burned off 400 calories since lifting weights doesn't in and of itself burn too many calories while you are doing it. 

Around 11:00 we packed the kids up, and headed out to Matt's parent's house to drop the kids off so we could go out to eat and then to the Temple.  Matt chose a Chinese place that his family is partial to called JPs over by where his parents live.  Since today was Matt's birthday I wasn't exactly worried about what I was eating.  I ordered the Moo Goo Gai Pan, which is a little better than getting something fried (but it still came with an egg roll and a crab cheese wonton which I ate so I am sure there were plenty of calories in those to make up for it). 

After lunch Matt and I went to the Temple

I thought I put together a pretty decent outfit for my general lack of fashion sense.  I pulled out my brown shoes I bought eons ago in Germany, and I traded the black sweater I was wearing for a brown one to match my shoes.  My cell phone is in my pocket, that is why it looks funny.  I don't have any black high heels (a problem I plan to remedy this summer).  I love the temple it is such a beautiful place!  And the new flowers have been planted and some of the perennials are starting to come up!  I am glad we get to go again in a few weeks for Emily's endowments.  We don't usually make it to the Temple very often but by chance we are going three times this month!  (once yesterday, once for Emily's endowments, and then again for Emily's wedding).

After the temple we went back to Matt's parent's house and played with the girls in the pool.  I wasn't sure about letting them in the pool since they are both sick with colds, but the water was warm and they both wanted to go so badly.  I just hope they don't get any sicker because of it.  I need to get a new swim suit since the only one I own is from my pregnancy and it is literally falling off.  It was falling off while I was walking around in the pool with Chloe!

After pool time is when I really did the most damage to my diet.  I knew it was coming but I still feel I could have eaten better.  We had mashed potatoes, with BBQ beef and some asparagus for dinner and I ate way too much beef and potatoes.  I should have put more asparagus on my plate and eaten half the potatoes and beef I did.  But the real damage didn't come until dessert!  Thunder Thigh cake, so called because it gives you thunder thighs if you eat it! (I am sure I can blame at least 10 pounds of my weight on this cake).  It's a German Chocolate cake baked and then you poke holes in it with the back of a spatula, pour a can of sweetened condensed milk on top and then half to 3/4 a bottle Hershey's chocolate syrup on it.  Then put Cool Whip on the top and sprinkle crushed Heath bars on top of that.  Matt's family calls it "the other woman"

I surprised Matt by bringing the gifts I bought for him to his parents house.  He was very surprised and excited to be opening them :)  Here is a picture of his main gift we got him:
It's a shadow box that says Dad on it and I got the plaque engraved to say "Love, Lily and Chloe 2014"

You can see the cake in the right hand corner!

So today I am planning on eating light.  I have been weighing in at 148.8 all week and I would like to stay that for the weigh in tomorrow.  I am going to start a new challenge for myself and see how many days I can go without eating sugar (translation: desserts and candy).  Hopefully I can make it through today and today will be day 1.

Lily's 3rd Birthday Party

This morning I weighed in at 153.7, making last week officially a .6 pound weight loss.  I was pretty disappointed because my lowest weigh in last week was 152.8, pretty much a whole pound under my weigh in for today.  But that is okay, all is not lost.  I still have just over two weeks to get down to 150 before the new year and now that Lily's birthday is over I am going to be working harder than ever to hit my goal!  I am so close, it would be terrible to work so hard and then fall short.  But today was a free day and I really made the most of this free day by going waaaaaaaaay overboard.  It was so much fun though and I am utterly exhausted.

This morning Lily and I made the cookies for her birthday party this afternoon.  Lily had so much fun making to cookies.  She stayed interested in making them the whole time, and she even scooped the dough out and onto the baking sheet!  She just loved it.  I am really glad that I decided to make cookies this year.  I should have taken a picture of them but they are the same cookies that I have been making at my Pampered Chef Shows.  Lily loved the blue cookies and we put three candles (one candle per cookie) in three of the blue cookies.  We topped the blue cookies with white chocolate and when the chocolate hardened the candles were stuck into the cookie.

After the cookies were made we went to church where we had our Christmas program, which was awesome.  I have been practicing my flute again and I am very happy with my performance.  This week I was only accompanying the choir, next week I have a flute solo that my sister Chase is accompanying me on the piano.  It is a beautiful piece and I am very excited to play it because I have been working hard on it.  Chase has also stepped up to a huge challenge because even though she has played piano for a long time now, this is a very challenging piano piece (hence why no one else in the ward was willing to do it).

When we came home from church I was busy preparing for the party.  I put together a salad (which if I had been following my plan today that is the only thing I would have eaten).  Then I decorated the cookies and cooked the pizza (Papa Murphys) when the pizza's arrived (Grandparents of Lily were bringing pizza).  As you can probably guess I ate a ton of pizza and even more cookies!  Now I am feeling sick and it will probably take me all week to work off this day, but it was totally worth it!  We had so much fun and Lily was very pleasant and she was soooooo excited for her birthday presents, and was really into everything that she was given, and even played with several of the toys in between opening presents.  Here are some quick shots I was able to get.

So now the goal is to work out maybe four times next week so that I can work off all the food I ate today and book it down to 150 so I can hit my goal!