Pictures

We threw a party for my parents for their 40th anniversary. It was wonderful. We got family pictures taken and I have finally gotten them so I can show how cute our little family is! Tafton was NOT in a good mood so his face is sad most of the time. But geez he is still a cutie! Enjoy!

Couponing!

If you've been around me the last few months you know that I'm CRAZY for coupons! I've gotten totally addicted! Today my sister-in-law Sarina and I went couponing to Target and Rite-aid. After all my coupons I ended up spending $63 for $200 worth of items!!!! Below is a picture of some of the things that I got.

I'm not sure how well you can see but I got:

• a HUGE bag of wonka/nestle candy
• 6 Olay body washes
• 6 travel size secret deodorants
• 2 single serving Oreos
• 6 travel size Tide laundry detergents
• 2 Tide stain release (which I LOVE by the way. They got a stain out of one of Mikaela's onesies that was at least six months old and had been washed numerous times. I couldn't believe it!)
• 4 Puffs tissues
• 6 Pampers Kandoos flushable kids wipes
• 1 Dawn hand renewal dish detergent
• 2 Suave items
• 5 Soy Joy bars
• 6 Mentos gum
• 2 trident layers gum
• 1 stride gum (I should've gotten two; I completely spaced that they were Buy one get one FREE at Rite Aid-woops!)
• 1 Garnier hair dye
• 2 Kushyfoot pairs of socks
• 4 Reach floss
• 1 travel size Garnier conditioner
• 1 travel size Dove hairspray
• 1 Toy Story water bottle (yay! stocking stuffer for Tafton! It was only $2!)
• 1 package of Brownies
• 2 Glade candles
• 8 boxes of Kid's Essentials nutritional drink *not pictured*
• 2 boxes Nutrigrain Bars *not pictured*
• bag of grapes *not pictured*
• bunch of bananas *not pictured*
• lb. of chicken *not pictured*
• 2 boxes of frozen waffles *not pictured*
• 2 Reeses Puffs cereal***
• 2 Honey Nut Cheerios cereal***

The cereal also had codes inside for a FREE movie ticket when you buy two specially marked boxes. I love going to the movies and not having to pay to see a movie is even better!!

I'm very pleased with how our coupon shopping trip went and how little we paid!

Thanks Hip2Save for finding all these great deals!

Random Pictures and a movie of Kaela walking!

Look at her walking! Omigoodness! She seriously has only been walking for two days and she's already trying to run. She would be walking and would speed up for a couple of steps, stop, turn around and laugh like "look what I did!' It's so cute!

Tafton REALLY likes apples.

We gave Tafton an apple and he ate it and ate it and ate it. We kept asking him if he was done and he'd say, "not yet." That's everything but the stem! What a crazy kid!

Now, Mikaela likes donuts. This was my fault. I'm so bad at getting caught up in coupons or school stuff and not paying exact attention to them So Kaela got into the donuts!

More of a close-up

Back-to-School Cupcakes

I made the rubber duckie cupcakes again for Mikaela's birthday and they turned out SO MUCH BETTER than the first ones! They looked like the ones on the cover! But alas, I can't get the pictures to load. I'll keep working on it. My next cupcakes are going to look like roses for our 4 year anniversary on the 14th. I can't wait!

Mikaela's Birthday

So better late than never I guess. I've been wanting to put up pictures from Mikaela's birthday party for awhile but have been having trouble with our computer and getting our memory stick to work. So unfortunately the only pictures I have are of the set up of the party. It looked really good though!

The birthday invitation. It was a rubber duckie themed party

The entry way. Those are duck prints on orange construction paper and the walls have blue streamers attached like waves and there are little yellow duckies "swimming."

"Scrub-a-dub Duckies"

It's blue jello with whipped cream and then I taped a toothpick onto the back of the ducks and stuck it in. I think it turned out cute!

"Duck Feed" It was Chex Mix with Goldfish crackers mixed in.

Blue Koolaid with rubber duckies, of course!

Party Favors

These were for the adults...

...and these were for the kids. It's a Crayola cup with a water toy, shampoo, and bath towels.

I'm hoping that I can get the pictures of Mikaela and the people that were there to post. It's so frustrating that it's not working! Anyway, It went really well. Mikaela had a good time and Tafton had an even better time! He loved opening her presents and basically thought it was his birthday.

After we blew out the candle so Mikaela could eat the cake, I gave the candle for Tafton to lick the frosting off. He ended chewing off a bite of the candle and his face was so funny! He did not enjoy it at all. Anyway, I hope I can get the pictures up so you can see his funny face and how cute Mikaela was!

It's so weird that she is a year old now and is walking. I'm so used to her being so little and needing me to get her around and now she's walking?! We love our little-big girl!

Cupcake Craze

I have gone into a cupcake craze spiral! It all started with going to For Your Kitchen by the mall to get supplies to bake 150 cupcakes for my parents 40th anniversary celebration. While there the owner told us about the classes they have and that they had a cupcake decorating class coming up. She showed us the cutest cupcakes including this one:

I thought this would be perfect for Mikaela's first birthday party. unfortunately we weren't able to make the class so I started looking online for videos on how to make these. That's when I stumbled across these books and their how-to videos posted online. I watched them for about an hour or so and then logged onto Amazon and bought both of their books!

So far we've only tried out two cupcakes; chrysanthemums and rubber duckies. Here are our results:

The flowers were very simple to make but took a LOT of preparation!

Definately not perfect but I think pretty good for a first try! The hardest part was getting the beaks to stay up. You can see on the blue eyed one below it's starting to droop! also the icing was kind of runny. I've since researched different ways to do this so hopefully for Mikaela's birthday it won't be that bad. One more thing - they were almost unbearably sweet! "What? Megan is saying that?!" Yeah I barely got through one. Again, I've researched that and next go around I'm going to add cream cheese to lessen the sweetness. Should be delicious!

Next week? Fur Balls and String Monsters!

Thoughts

Have you ever listened to that song, "You're Gonna Miss This." by Trace Adkins? I've been thinking about that song a lot lately. The song is about this girl's life and she is always talking about what she wants to do next and first her Mom, then her Dad, and finally a plumber tell her you're gonna miss this.

I have to admit that I am guilty of this mentality. I'm always thinking about what's going to happen next. How nice it will be when my kids are older and can take care of themselves more. How I can't wait until we are in a better financial position. Everything I'm going to do once we're in a better financial position.

I'm probably missing out on all the great things that are happening right now, or not taking full advantage of what is happening right now. Ben is always telling me to get out the video camera because we need to capture the cute things our kids are doing before they grow out of it and he's right! Tafton is so cute right now! He's talking so well and says the cutest things. He told me his first joke. He does belly flops into our baby pool. He woke up and walked into our room and woke us up for the first time this week(I almost started crying typing that; isn't that the most quintessential child thing to do?). Mikaela is climbing all over everything. She has her first tooth and her second is going to pop out any day. She gives us the cutest cheesers! She can clap, shake her head, give hugs and kisses all on command. She throws the most dramatic fits when she doesn't get her way. They are both growing up so fast and I don't want to look back and think why didn't I hold onto those moments rather than wishing for their naptime?

I want to do better on living in the moment and enjoying the moments! Even those crazy-shake-your-head-feel-like-you're-gonna cry moments!

I scream you scream, SHE screams for ice cream!

I wish this video was larger because it is so cute! We all went to the splash-pad and went to Artic Circle after for their HUGE ice cream cones! This was mikaela's first ice cream cone. She was hesitant at first but then couldn't get enough. So cute!!!!!

I love watching her bounce across the room for things she wants! She is so cute!! and was so sad when the ice cream was all gone!

....oh and Tafton was cute too!

Da Plane Da Plane

While Charissa and her kids were here we went to Hill Aerospace Museum. It was fun, I had never been there before. There are a bunch of exhibits of old planes and what's even better, a kid's area! We spent most of our time there. They had costumes to dress up with and flight simulators and different experiments older kids could do; resulting in CUTE pictures!

Tafton and Emma in the flight simulator. Tafton LOVES Emma. He follows her around everywhere!

Chase and Trey in the flight simulator

Tafton in his flight suit

Emma in her flight suit

Chaser in front of the moonscape.

In front of the moonscape. Emma kept blocking the astronaut I thought it was funny.

....and Mikaela had fun climbing on top of everything!

We had a lot of fun with our cousins and can't wait to see them again!

Rubber Duckie

I've been super slacker on updating this so here are a bunch of pictures of Mikaela we took for her one year birthday invite! Enjoy!

I love her snaggle-tooth!

This was when we first put her in. She wasn't so sure about it.

But it didn't take long for her to warm up!

Old Pic, New Post

So I was going through my email inbox cleaning things out and I came across an email from my sister, Becca from Christmas! There were some photos attached of my cute family that I had completely forgotten about.

Four Wheeler Ride?

Tafton LOVES to ride the four wheeler. He is always asking to go on a four wheeler ride. If someone says not right now he'll just go to someone else to ask and so on and so on until someone agrees to take him.

I've been asking Tafton when he wakes up from his naps what he dreamed about. I've been doing this for about 2-3 weeks. Most of the time he says "Daddy." When I ask him what they were doing he ALWAYS says "four wheeler ride."

This kid loves the four wheeler!

Similarities

Tafton and Mikaela look a lot alike, obviously right? brother and sister? Anyway, I was taking pictures of them today and I got a shot of Mikaela that super reminded me of a picture of Tafton. When I finally located the pic. of Tafton they didn't look exactly alike but pretty close!

ROAR!!!

Tafton likes to pretend to be different animals. Sometimes he'll crawl around barking and panting. Other times he'll come running at me and when I lift him up in the air he'll flap his arms and say, "tweet tweet, Tafton-bird." Today he's roaring at the cat. I asked him what's he being and he said, "Tafton-dinosaur."

Good Manners

We've tried really hard to get Tafton to be polite. He now says thank you for everything and if he forgets to say please we ask him to "say it nicely" and he'll say, "pleeeeeeease" in only the way kids can! The latest thing we've been teaching him is to say "excuse me" when he wants someone to move or when he burps or farts. He's super good at saying excuse me when he wants someone to get out of his way but when he burps or farts I have to prompt him, but he'll say it.

Two days ago we were driving home and I had been drinking my fave cherry coke and I burped. Tafton replied, "excuse me mommy."

What good manners!

Oh...Tafton

Tafton and Mikaela were both sitting in their high chairs eating lunch. Mikaela was looking all around so Tafton started saying, "Kayla, Kayla" until she looked at him. When Mikaela looked at him she put her fist up towards him. Tafton said, "knuckles" and pounded her fist. It was so funny and so cute! I love my two kids!

Mikaela after eating an Oreo

Tafton

New Blog!

I've started a new blog that will follow our progress as we work on losing weight and being healthy. It's called The Fit Mamas at fit-mamas.blogspot.com. But it's not just for Moms! It's for all women! I hope it will be a place where you can find inspiration to make healthy goals, support to implement those goals in your life, motivation to keep going, and also a place where we can talk about our frustrations and triumphs. 

I'll be tracking our progress with our weight loss and also posting about different health topics fairly regularly. So please check it out and tell your friends!

fit-mamas.blogspot.com

Three days in....

It has been three days since I started my healthy lifestyle change. I'm not going to lie, it is super hard to stick to it. Especially when the people around me aren't changing their health habits. I keep thinking about delicious-but-bad-for-me food and I can't stop thinking about it! I've given in and had some chocolate but for the most part I know I'm eating better than I was a couple weeks ago, like when I ate a whole box of mini powdered donuts for breakfast! Embarrassing to read but I'm committed to doing better and being healthier.

Monday went great! I was so excited because I met all of my nutrition goals (stayed within my calorie limits; carb, fat, and protein levels were good as well) and I got both strength training and cardio in. I even had time to take a test! I felt like I was on a roll!

The next morning I was going to wake up early to exercise. When my alarm went off I stumbled to my phone. I thought my stumbling was from working out the previous day. You know when you haven't worked out in a long time and when you do your muscles get so tight? I thought it was that. Well it wasn't. I had a case of vertigo. Every time I sat up straight or stood up the room would start spinning and I felt like I was going to fall over or puke! Needless to say I didn't go to work or school yesterday. It finally went away around three in the afternoon. I don't know what caused it but I thought maybe my body wasn't ready for such a dramatic change yet.

So.......

I ate!

Not a lot, I was still under 2000 calories but I ate more than I did on Monday. Once I felt better, I decided I could work out as well so I did a Biggest Loser video. I feel so good after I exercise. It's really (really!) hard to get the motivation to actually do it, but once I start I know that it was worth it.

Today I was going to get up early and work out but Mikaela didn't have the best sleep last night.

Guess who else didn't have the best sleep last night?

That's right.......

.......Me!

So instead I slept in a bit and did a mini workout (thanks for the Women's Health DVD Sarah!). I wanted to get another one in tonight but unfortunately I haven't been able to. I did get another test done though!

With my crazy life, one of the ways I've been fitting in exercise is through mini-workouts. You can get a DVD like the one I used, that has mini workouts. These are highly effective, only ten minutes long and I was sweating like a pig! If you don't want to spend any money you can also look up exercises on the Internet that you can do at home or the office. Such as;

http://exercise.about.com/cs/exerciseworkouts/l/blofficeworkout.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M38HDCGmhm4

Other things like parking further away, taking the stairs, having good posture (works out your core!), running in place during commercial breaks; are all ways to work in extra calorie-burning activity into your day. Check out http://www.smallstep.gov/index.html for more strategies for integrating healthy habits into your everyday life!

FYI - I'm thinking about making a new blog that is just for this weight loss and healthy lifestyle challenge. I'll let you know when I do! For now let me hear how your first week is going! and don't forget to take your 'before' pictures! I think it would be a wonderful showcase to post all of our before and after pictures!

Let me know how your first week is going!

Do you need a Spark?

My awesome sister-in-law, Sarina, told me about this website

http://www.sparkpeople.com/

it's a FREE website where you can read articles about wellness, nutrition, exercise, and so much more! They have FREE exercise logs and food diaries. It has a variety of health related goals you can choose from. Once you choose a goal it will create an individualized plan for you to help meet your goals!

One great feature of Sparkpeople is their nutrition logger. It's basically a food diary. It has a huge database you can search from and you can add food items that aren't included. It tallies your total calories and calculates whether you meet your targets for calorie consumption, fat totals, carbohydrate totals, and protein totals. It gives you tips to stay on track or improve. An extra special feature is their easy to read graphs that show calories by food (for example, the majority of my calories so far today came from the cheddar cheese in my salad 31%), calories by meal (my lunch is weighing in at 62.9%), and a carb fat protein breakdown.

The last graph is important because you need to be aware of where your calories are coming from. You want the majority of your calories to come from Carbohydrates and protein and fat to be less.

The recommendations are:

• 45% to 65% of calories from Carbohydrates
• 20% to 35% of calories from Fat
• 10% to 35% of calories from Protein

Following these recommendations will ensure you're getting a sufficient intake of essential vitamins and minerals. The way to calculate these totals is easy once you know how! All you need is a calculator and food labels.

For Carbohydrates there are 4 calories per gram. Look at your food label and see how many grams of carbohydrates there are. Now times this by 4. The total is how many calories come from carbohydrates.

For protein there is also 4 calories per gram. However, fat totals 9 calories per gram! That's more than double the calories compared to carbs and protein! It's no wonder when you eat fatty foods you gain weight! But we can use food labels to see how the calories are broken up between carbs, fats, and proteins and make smart food choices following those recommendations.

Long story short-there is so much good information available on the internet. Check out http://www.sparkpeople.com and see if it will work out for you! or Google "food diary" and find something that fits your lifestyle. Keeping a food diary can bring awareness to what you're eating and why. By doing this we can develop strategies to overcome bad eating habits!

Happy Dieting!

15 Pounds in 15 Weeks

I like many of you, want to lose some weight. As much as I want to lose weight and go back to my pre-babies body, it's hard to find the energy and drive to do it. Many of us have responsibilities pulling us every which way and by the end of the day we just want to plop on the couch and eat some chocolate. The other option: waking up early to exercise; isn't appealing when some of us have brand new babies who keep us up all night. The last week I've set my alarm clock earlier so I can wake up and exercise and every morning I hit snooze once....

Twice....

SIX TIMES!

Running out of time to exercise!

I feel that I am finally in the right state of mind to stay committed to working out and eating right. I'm currently going to Weber State pursuing my degree in Health Promotion and every class period I feel guilty for drinking soda http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c and eating at fast food places. I rationalize my unhealthy behavior. I have to drink soda for the caffeine and I can't drink coffee, I don't have time to eat healthy between school and work, I'd rather sleep an extra ten minutes than eat breakfast, etc. I want to be a health educator and no-one wants to take health advice from a fat inactive person. You wouldn't go to an accountant who's broke, would you?!

That leads us to now. I'm ready to start working hard and losing weight!

Who Wants to Join Me?

I'm starting this coming Monday, February 22. I'm going to weigh myself every Saturday night and measure my progress. I'm going to start a food diary which will include what I eat, when I eat, and what my mood is. I believe this will help to identify the underlying motivation for why I'm eating. I'm going to work out every morning before I start my day; this will ensure that I fit exercise into my day by making it the first thing I do. I am still going to drink soda, but I'm switching to diet. I would like to completely quit but I really do feel that I need the caffeine to get through my LONG days. I'm going to do this for 15 weeks.

By June 5, I plan to have lost 15 Lbs!

I'm going to start by doing the Special K Challenge. http://www.specialk.com/challenge/ It's similar to the slim fast program where you subsitute two of your meals with some of their products. I tried it today and felt good about it. It's a 2 week program, if I follow it and exercise I should be able to lose 6 pounds in 2 weeks! That should give me motivation to keep working hard and lose the remaining 9 pounds.

I want to learn to eat healthy on the go, incorporate exercise into my everyday routine, and to look and feel better in my skin!

Leave me a comment letting me know if you want to work towards a healthier you - with me!

Big Catchup

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Things have been crazy with us! So let's go back in time to the end of November

On November 24 we closed on the selling of our house. It was crazy right up to the point we signed on the line. The appraisal didn't come in where we thought it was going to and that threw us for a loop and then there was a crack in the foundation that turned out to be nothing but it again threw us. it felt like every day we weren't sure if the sale was going to go through or not. Ben was a trooper through all of it. The people that bought it put in an offer on November 10 and we were out November 28. Ben basically moved us out of the house. We're leaving up in Morgan now with Ben's parents while we pay off debt and save up some money.

Thanksgiving was fun. It was our last Thanksgiving with Johnny before he left on his mission. We had all the favorites and enjoyed some pie. My Mom bought a Marie Callendar pie(which was weird, I can't remember my Mom ever buying a pie) and it is now one of my favorites. Gotta love Key-lime!

We blessed Mikaela on the 29th of November in my parents ward. We did it there because Johnny was gaving his mission farewell talk that Sunday and this way the whole big family would only have to come to one event rather than two. Mikaela looked so cute! Becca bought her this poofy dress, it's white, short puffy sleeves, with brown and gold swirls all over. She had a white headband with a brown bow in her hair, and white tights with matching brown dress shoes. she was adorable! and unfortunately we didn't take a single picture of her in her dress! We need to put her back in it to get a cute picture!

Johnny left on his mission on December 2nd. He's in the Washington DC South Mission. We had a breakfast the morning he left with all the family. Matt sent him off with a good supply of Mt. Dew and change for the vending machines in the MTC. It was surreal sending him off. They don't allow the family to go into the MTC anymore because of swine flu so we all said goodbye at home. I don't think anyone shed a single tear. The Sunday after JOhnny left we went over to Mom & Dad's for Sunday dinner. Tafton kept leading people down to Johnny's room and he'd look around looking for Johnny but he wasn't there. It was really sad! I think Tafton was really confused that he wasn't there. I've been showing Tafton pictures of Johnny so he doesn't forget him and we have some videos. I had my Dad make a video of Johnny right before he left for the same reason. Johnny left for the field on Dec. 23 and we got to talk to him on Christmas. It was really nice to hear his voice! He seems like he's having a good time.

For my birthday, Ben was actually sick but he sucked it up and took me out to dinner and then we bought a DVD pack of all the "Ocean's" movies including the original. For Ben's birthday I took him to the shooting range and we shot some rounds and then we went for Mexican. I then got sick later that night. It was funny that Ben was sick on my birthday and then I got sick on his!

Christmas was fun! I was thinking that Tafton would really be into it this year but he wasn't ripping into presents the way I thought he would. I don't think he made the connection between unwrapping the presents will make a present appear. It was like yeah the paper is cool and oh here's a toy and then he'd want to play with it rather than keep unwrapping. It was still fun though. He would say Santa and Ho Ho. He was all over Christmas treats too! Poor Mikaela! We hardly got her anything. We wanted to but all the toys we looked at, we already had something just like it or similar. So...Mikaela got girly looking binkies, sorry second child! :-)

For New Years we hung out at Ben's parents. Nate and Kristen came up and Corey and Kaytie. We ate yummy food and played Wii, pool, ping pong. The boys all ran around and played. It was a good time and so nice to see Corey & Kaytie since we hadn't seen them since March!

School started up again on the 4th. Ben isn't going this semester but I am. I'm taking 17 credits or six classes! So far it hasn't been too bad but we're getting to test time and first project time and I hope I can keep up with it. I enjoy most of my classes, except statistics. First off, it's statistics. math. I don't enjoy math. The teacher isn't engaging at all. His style of teaching is to make a powerpoint and read off of it. we don't even do examples! I'm worried about doing well in this class because I don't speak math and if my teacher isn't going to do examples I just don't see how I will learn the material! All of my classes have to do with health promotion, obviously since that's my major. So basically everyday I feel guilty about drinking my soda or eating my treats because it's a bit hypocritical to be a health promoter while downing 40 oz. of soda a day!

Mikaela will be 5 months old on Monday! She is so cute! She doesn't have any hair yet so not sure if she'll be a super blonde like Tafton or if she'll keep the reddish tone. She's rolling over from her stomach to her back and can push up and look around. At her 4 month check up she weighed 15 lbs 10 oz, a little smaller than Tafton was. Tafton was a whopper! He weighed 18 lbs at 4 months! She's still sleeping through the night as well. She has been since a month old which is super great! She LOVES Tafton! If Tafton smiles at her she will laugh and laugh. She watches him all the time. I love watching her, watching him. I can't wait until she's a year and will be running around with him.

Tafton is doing good too. He's finally starting to say some words. He can say; Mommy, Daddy, grandma, grandpa, megan, basketball, treat, diaper, teeth, juice, star, car, moon; and probably more but those are the ones I can think of. ben taught him to do a somersault yesterday, it is so funny! he puts his head on the ground and tries to push up his legs over and so for the first five seconds or so he's just pushing his head along the ground. He can eat really well with a spoon and fork now too. The next thing is drinking out of a normal cup. I want to get rid of binkies too but if I get rid of them for Tafton I have to get rid of them for Mikaela because he'll just take it out of her mouth.

Things coming up? Valentines. I have to plan it because of a bet I lost; actually I have to plan the next two Valentine's and Anniversaries because of the bet I lost. Any ideas on cheap fun valentine's dates?

We're going out to Maryland in March to visit my sisters. I'm really excited! Sarah is coming out from Germany(hopefully) and Jessica will drive up(hopefully)! Any fun ideas on things to do in the Cumberland, MD area? Or advice on traveling with two little babies? What can you bring on planes now?

Okay, that should catch us up! Sorry about lack of pictures I will post some pictures soon and maybe some videos if Ben will teach me how!

Happy New Year!