25 Pounds before the 25th of December

Back in August, I set a goal for myself of losing 25lbs by the 25th of December. I was (am) determined to lose this extra weight that I have been carrying around for too many years. I looked back through my blog posts and found this one about losing 25 pounds. That was four months shy of two years ago and well I can say one thing for sure, those 25 pounds stayed put for a solid twenty months.  But, I am proud to say no more. I joined weight watchers once again and this time have stayed with it. I weighed in yesterday for week 13 and I have lost 20.8 pounds thus far! 4.2 more to go before I reach my goal of 25 before the 25th! I can do it. I know I can. The first 15 pounds were a breeze to lose. The last 5 have been hard and I have a feeling the next 5 will be even harder.  Once, I reach my goal, I would like to set another goal of 10 more for a nice total of 35 pounds.  Then I will work really hard to keep it off - forever!

It has been wonderful hearing all of the wonderful comments from friends and co-workers. They are noticing the pounds go away! I can see it too which is awesome. Most of my clothes are too big for me. The best thing was I had purchased some new dress pants for myself back in September and had not taken the tags off of them and I was able to take them back for 2 sizes smaller. Yeah me.  :-) I had to even exchange the shirts that I bought from a large to a medium. Because, I have been such a yo yo dieter, I still had several pairs of pants from a few years ago when I was smaller that I was able to pull out of the closet and begin wearing. I will continue to wear those until I lose all of the weight that I want to lose then I am going to treat myself to a new wardrobe. Look out Tanger Outlets here I come!!

I must tell you that it feels great. I feel so much better and know I am much healthier.  I plan to keep it off and plan to continue to focus on what I eat, how much I eat and will continue to exercise. I want to be a healthy "older" mommy.

Until next time......

Halloween Fun

Mason has so much fun this Halloween. It is really the first one that he understands what is going on. We talked with him the week leading up to Halloween explaining to him that he would get to "dress up" and go say Trick or Treat for candy. He doesn't get to eat much candy but does know what it is especially M&M's and Skittles. He was dressing up like a cowboy and once we got his costume he understood a little more.  He seemed excited to tell people he was dressing up like a cowboy. He'd say, my gonna be a cowboy! We went to a Trunk or Treat over the weekend so he was able to see other children dressed up and continued to get the whole idea.

His preschool did trick or treating with the residents of the retirement home campus that the preschool is located on and everyone seemed to enjoy that very much. In the afternoon, his class had a little party which was simple but fun. One of Mason's teacher's dressed up and well I'll let the picture speak for itself. This man is awesome and is a fabulous teacher that Mason loves dearly.

We went trick or treating with our neighbors and it was so much fun. Mason was a trooper and after several houses, he was saying trick or treat and thank you to everyone. He was super cute and so many people commented on his cowboy costume.  Enough with the writing, I'll show you just how cute he was as a cowboy.  Enjoy....

Below is a picture of Mason with our neighbors children. We are very fortunate to live next door to and across the street from wonderful neighbors.

Since Mason was the youngest of all of the trick or treaters, we took the wagon along in case he needed to ride instead of walk. Great idea, neighbor Dawn. It was very helpful for everyone.  Before we completed the one mile loop around our neighborhood, Trent and Quinn took turns riding with Mason. At one point, they were all three in there. 

Mason enjoyed looking at all of the Halloween decorations and was fascinated by the people as well.

He was too cute. We had a great night with him and have enjoyed watching him enjoy his candy a couple pieces each night. At this rate, the candy will last him until Christmas. Yes, we are those moms that limit the amount of sugar and candy our little guy eats!! No harm done. He is eating candy just in small increments!!

Hope all of you had a wonderful Halloween as well.

Until next time......

Wordless Wednesday

It's Been Awhile

One of the things that I just have not had time to do lately is posting on this blog. I don't have many followers so there aren't many to disappoint with my lack of attention to blogging but it still disappoints me since this is supposed to be my "journal" of life as a mommy to Mason. I will make every effort to do better!

So what has been going on with us lately. Let's see...Mason has adjusted really well to his new preschool. It was a rather rocky start as he screamed and cried every morning for almost 7 weeks. It got progressively shorter and shorter each week and his teachers tell me it only lasted for 5 - 10 minutes but it was still HARD! I absolutely hated leaving him crying every day. The first couple of days, I even left crying. I know I am such a whimp. Thank goodness, he has not cried and has been much better at drop off for the past four weeks. He has adjusted well to his new teachers. He loves them both but talks about "Mr. Greg" all the time. We were on our way to school on Friday and out of the blue he said, "I wub Mr. Greg". He has learned so many new songs and sings them every day. He has brought home tons of art work and seems to really enjoy doing art. He is very proud of his art wall that we created for him. He walks by it and says, "my did that at school" and proudly points to all of the pictures. Below is a picture of his "art wall". Enjoy!!

We had our first ever parent / teacher conference yesterday. They had all great things to say about him. They said he was very mature for a young 2 year old, that his language was really developed and that he was a very sweet little boy. The one area that he needed to work on was his table manners! I asked for examples from them to see what it is he needed to work on. The one thing they said was keeping his food on his plate instead of putting it on the table. I told them that was my fault since for many months we would just put his food on the tray of his high chair or when we would be out to eat directly on the table. Now while this may seem weird to you, it made total sense to me since that was much easier than picking up the plate and all the food off the floor. You see, Mason went through a plate slinging phase and me being the OCD mom that I am, my solution was to put his food directly on the tray. That was for solid foods of course. I am crazy but not that crazy! Below is a picture of his "progress report" from preschool!

Mason has has a huge language explosion over the past month. He is very good at articulating what he wants and needs and does so in complete sentences. We have had several people ask us if he was 3 or 4 years old since he speaks so well. With the good language also comes the bad. No, he isn't swearing yet but he has learned to use NO often and always in the right context. He has really become an independent little boy and wants to do everything on his own and in his own time. He doesn't mind telling you he doesn't want to do something and doesn't like something. I keep asking myself where he got his little attitude and well I cannot help but hear my mom saying, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree you know!!". True, so true. Well, these are a few things that have been going on with Mason. There is so much more but I will try to put those in seperate posts.

Until next time......

Weekend Field Trip to the NC Zoo

A few weekends ago, we took Mason to the North Carolina Zoo. He loves animals so we knew he would love it. We had been waiting until the weather cooled off a bit. Everyone that we know that has been told us that the animals are more active when the weather is cooler. They were right. We got to see pretty much all of the animals. Some of them were up close so we were able to get some great photos. Here are a few for you to enjoy!

Mason had a great time running all over the place and taking his picture with the cool statues of monkeys, bugs and rhinos.

It seems Mason has a bench fettish or maybe it was his way of telling us he was tired. Every time we came to a bench, he would say, "I want to sit down! He would climb up and sit for a minute or so and be on his way. I was able to capture some pretty cool pictures of his while he took a break!

Well, that was a little snapshot view of our trip to the zoo. Hope you enjoyed it. We sure did! We had so much fun that we decided to purchase a membership. If we go just one more time, our membership will pay for itself. I hope we will get to go again at the end of October, They are doing "Boo at the Zoo" to celebrate Halloween. Until next time......

Wordless Wednesday

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Weekend Field Trip - Museum of Life and Science

We have been keeping really busy on the weekends. Last weekend, we took Mason to the Museum of Life and Science. It was the first time we had gone together as a family.  I have been several times with children from the Y but this time I was entertaining my own child. It was very different than I remembered. Maybe that was because I was actually able to enjoy the museum this time. Mason was excited about all of the cool exhibits inside.  He was most fascinated with the "cloud" making machine.

After spending awhile inside, we ventured outside to see what was going on. Mason was quickly drawn to the huge musical instrument area so we spent a little time enjoying the "music" he and the other little ones were creating.

After enjoying some fabulous "music" we moved on to the butterfly exhibit. There were tons of beautiful butterflies in there. It was great watching Mason hold out his hand in hopes of the perfect butterfly landing on it. We were not fortunate enough to have them land on his hand but I am certain the butterfly was fortunate that it didn't.  Below is a picture of him trying so hard to get one to land on his little hand.

Then we were off to the dinosaur trail. It was a really cool trail with lots of huge dinosaurs. There was even a section where the you could dig for fossils and dinosaur bones. Mason really liked this area. Below are a few pictures that should tell the story of our time on this trail.

We enjoyed looking at all of the animals and riding on the train but unfortunately, we did not get many pictures of either of those things. We didn't get to finish going through the museum. Mason was getting sleepy and cranky so we called it a day and headed home. But before we left, we decided to purchase a family membership so we can enjoy the museum more often over the next year. Going just 2 more times will make the membership pay for itself so we thought it was a great idea. We are already planning another trip in the next couple of weeks and are planning to take the Santa train in December.

I abslolutely love spending time together as a family. It is awesome watching Mason as he is exploring new things. His mind is always working and he is such a little sponge.  I love him more than anything in the world and am looking forward to our next field trip!

Until next time......