Does marathon reading count?

Because I spent a good part of the weekend reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the new Bujold fantasy (Sharing Knife: Legacy), of the 2 the Bujold was by far the more satisfying. Rowlings just doesn't seem to make me care about her characters *shrug*.

Saturday morning was taken up with our first training session with the Huscarls, they were very welcoming and much fun was had, especially by the kids who ran around like mad things beating each other up with rubber swords. We joined up officially and plan on getting involved in all the stuff they do...so now we need authentic dark ages costumes, including shoes :P

I regained some (1.5kg) of the big loss from last week, but not all of it! So I'm ok with that. Let's see what I can do this week now that I'm no longer able to use being sick as an excuse ;-)

Time to get the middle child off to her tap and jazz lessons and then get the boys to do their homework and reading while I do some serious cooking. We're having homemade pizza tonight and I'm cooking up a big batch of vegetable and barley soup as well - healthy comfort food! mmmmmm :)

Time passes...

...and here we are several months later.

And here I am having gone pretty much nowhere in the weight loss stakes in the meantime *le sigh*. I've had a miserable few months, I worked out that during the 10 weeks of the last school term I was well for a grand total of one and a half weeks, I spent most of the school holidays still fighting off the last of the most recent cold and then topped that off by spending the weekend just gone with a gastric bug that had me pretty much bed-ridden for 2 days. If there are any microbes out there with which I haven't yet become acquainted, I will not only be very surprised but very pissed off as well. No more being sick - hear that world? I won't stand for it I tell you!

In more cheery news I am now the proud owner of a longbow, arrows and quiver, thus fulfilling a long time ambition (I was so Robin Hood for many years after seeing the movie at the tender age of 4). I also have a very nice replica Viking dagger and Adam is reveling in his oh so shiny drinking horn. Why and where did we acquire these peculiar things? Because we NEEDED them and at Abbey Medieval Tournament, of course, what a silly question. We went to Brisbane for the second Browncoat Brisvegas shindig and, having had much fun at Winterfest the previous weekend, took the opportunity to spend a day at the largest medieval fair in Australia. Apparently we had so much fun and got so much good stuff that all the Browncoats will be going along with us next year LOL.

There really should be pics here to show of the awesomeness of the aforementioned stuff but I'm not that organised at the moment so that'll have to wait till later.

Tonight Tom insisted that we were having a pyjama party. I have no idea why this was, but the decree was made and for some reason Adam and I caved and played along. Adam hid freddo frogs for a treasure hunt, I bought party food (mini pizzas, hot dogs, pies and sausage rolls) and a new DVD (Flushed Away) and we all sat in the loungeroom together and ate dinner in front of the movie. There was treasure hunting and hide-and-seek after dinner and all the kids went to bed well satisfied with their lot in life. It was really rather fun and Tom was making us majorly "ded of cute" with his instructions about how the evening was to proceed.

So there you have it, I'm still around, life goes on, and I'm so owning the 2.2kg loss I managed this week even though there was the whole being violently ill thing to consider :P

Back to tracking

It seems I've been doing this thing where every second week or so I decide "this is it. I'm back on track and I'm going to make some serious progress"... but nothing much happens, or I do the two steps forward one giant leap back thing. It's all getting very tedious and uninspiring. However, on Sunday I did something new, I did our menu plans for the next 2 weeks using the ones in the WW booklets. Whenever I've toyed with doing that before I've read through the main meals and been confronted with the vision of at least 5 major meal-time battles with the kids, not so this time and it's not the meals that have changed, my god, I must actually be getting somewhere in the teach the kids to eat new stuff struggle!

The week started easily enough with spag bol and salad and much to my astonishment there was actually salad eaten, Tom even had seconds! Tonight we're having chicken, pumpkin and noodle stir-fry which will be a little more challenging. I'm really looking forward to getting some variety into our eating and to getting the whole family eating a more balanced diet.

I've decided the Core Plan was not a good choice for us as a family - doesn't really suit our lifestyle - so I'm using the points menu plans and because they're based on 20 points per day while I'm on 26 there's plenty of wriggle room :) Not having to calculate the points for everything I cook is great too, makes tracking so much easier.

Yesterday we said farewell to our Weight Watchers leader Lynnette, I'm really sorry to see her go as she has been just wonderful, there is hope she may return sometime in the future so *fingers crossed*!

I cleaned out my car today, it was ick! Now I just need to get the repairs done :P

Long time no blog

I was on my own doing the weighing at WW this week, we had 37 people come through so my leader was helping out, busy time! I lost 1.5kg, not sure how though, it's not like I was actually doing the right thing at all. Anyway, it's a nice place to be at to get back into things, hopefully there'll be good news again next week.

Monday mundanities

Took the kids shoe shopping today, $250 later and we're all set for school. Tom won't take his school shoes off LOL Which is good 'cause they should be nicely broken in before school starts and won't give him blisters - he's a barefoot boy most of the time so real shoes is going to be a bit of a shock to his feet.

I've sent off the dance school enrolment form, Caitlin will be doing Ballet, Jazz and Tap this year and Tom is signed up for Jazz. I'm breathing a sigh of relief that none of the classes clash with the swimming lessons which we had to book at the end of last year before I knew the dance timetable.

This evening I'll be doing some house cleaning, pre-school enrolments admin, uniform pool accounting and, most importantly, getting started on packing for BDAM. "What the heck is BDAM?", I hear you ask. It's the Big Damn Adelaide Meet of course, 4 days at Aldinga Holiday Park with Browncoats from all over Australia, after which we will be spending 4 days in the Barossa Valley and a couple more days in Adelaide before coming back to the joys of the first week back at school. I have Uniform Pool duties on the pupil-free Monday and I'm on Canteen duty on the Wednesday :P

Time to get the kids off to bed....

About bloody time!

This week I am pleased to report my first loss since October! Oh dear....

Anyway, 1.3kg gone in the last week - WOOT! Which brings me to a grand total of 7.4kg lost in total :P At least I'm better off than I was this time last year and I'm still wearing clothes 2 sizes smaller so I think I must have swapped a bit of flab for muscle (at any rate it makes me feel better to think that LOL).

When Adam came back from the US in early December he brought with him a Roomba and a Scooba. Best. Investment. Ever. The floors are clutter-free and clean and, because the roomba is scheduled to run every 2nd day, they stay that way! It's like a FlyLady shiny sink for the whole house :D

I'm being summoned to put new Bionicle bed-clothes on my son's bed - a mother's work is never done :P

Happy New Year!

Last night was spent at Ariane and Crash's place eating vast quantities of seafood and drinking bubbly. The kids were supposed to go to bed but that didn't quite work out so we set them up with DVDs and told them to leave us alone...and it worked! They were really good, Tom took himself off to bed about 11:00pm, David fell asleep on the lounge at 10 to 12:00 but Caitlin saw the new year in with us before falling asleep. At about 1:45am we dragged the kids out to the car and made it home at 2:30am. I was pleasantly surprised that the kids all slept in till 9:45am, so with them watching tv Adam and I slept for a further hour and a half. The rest of the day has been fairly quiet, the only useful things we've done being cooking of food and putting together a new computer desk that's been sitting in its boxes for several weeks.

Christmas day went well, we cooked a leg of lamb and a leg of pork in the webber - so good! - and no dramas with the kids, it's getting easier every year, they must be growing up ;-) Santa brought the kids a PS2 so it was of course necessary to buy all the singstar games at the sales :D, now all I need is someone to play them with me :P

Adam goes back to work tomorrow so I have to take all the kids to WW with me in the morning - fun, fun, fun! Stepping on the scales is likely to be a bit of a downer, I have been living it up just a bit the last couple of weeks but I'm looking forward to making some good progress from now on. Adam is keen to join in and has been asking what he can do to help me stay on track too so it's going to be a team effort.

My only New Years resolution is to keep on doing what I already am - FlyLady and Weight Watchers - I can see heaps of progress already and I'm really excited about seeing where they'll lead me, good things are on the horizon :D

Here's wishing everyone a fun-filled, wonderful 2007!