Has it been a month already?!

I cringe as I realize it has been almost a month since I wrote last. Life here in our house hold has not been easy this last month let me tell you. I have thought about writing time and time again but that is as far as I got, never actually was able to sit down to do it. So now you get a good catch up post!

I believe I last left you right before our weekend away to Dallas for our company training and HUGE super bowl party. We had a good weekend away and enjoyed seeing all of our fellow team mates and Nutrie family. It was a great chance to meet some new team members as well (even though they aren't actually "new" I just hadn't really met them yet). 

There were a few celebrity athletes there so of course we got some photo ops:

Not a celebrity necessarily - but it's Rylee and Riley!

Marlon Moraes dueling it out with Rylee

Gunter, a.k.a. Mr. Universe and Rylee (the one on the left is from Chicago, the right is from Dallas.)

Celebrity trainer Kim Lyons

Lorenzo Neal, former football star

And my mom who is a star in my books!

One of my things that I have liked for a while now is called PB2. It is basically powdered peanut butter for your protein shakes. I thought to myself, I wonder what happens if I add a bit of water and mix it up. Will it taste like peanut butter? So I gave it a try, and it was REALLY good! Tasted very close to peanut butter although a much lower calorie version! I enjoyed it on my morning oats.

       

When the husbands were on nights, my friend and I did a valentines photoshoot of our daughters. There are some pictures below but let me tell you this is when things started going down hill for us. Rylee cut her first tooth right before Dallas. She was doing pretty well - I'm not sure if that is because of the teething necklace or what, since I really don't have anything to compare it too. So I start thinking, oh this teething thing isn't so bad! Then I see Rylee's second little tooth so close to the surface. She starts becoming increasingly miserable. This lasted for about a week. She got the teething cold and there was so much snot and congestion, my poor little girl could barely breath. Her cold seems to be much less now, thankfully, because I don't know how much longer I could have gone on like that. 

She has changed SO much just in the past few weeks, I don't even think I can list all of the things she has done. It has definitely been a challenge, BUT, her cuteness keeps me going. She has also started taking a few steps on her own here and there so we have been practicing. She's doing pretty well! I know she could go further but she is still unsure so I am not pushing her...well too much anyways. 
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As any home owner knows owning a house comes with necessary improvements that need to be made. Some of them are necessary, others are options. One of the two things that we need to have done out of necessity is our bedroom windows and our front door. They let in so much cold air/let out so much heat. The front door is particularly bad (don't worry we've looked into and it's on the horizon for house projects). However, our friends have this plastic cling wrap stuff that seals off your windows (genius). So we bought some and did our bedroom windows and we noticed a HUGE difference instantly. We are quite happy with these results for now...at least until we can afford to fully replace the windows.
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I have a lot to say still about things that have happened over the last month, but in an effort to keep this post from being a mile long I will save them for later posts (already made notes of them so I don't forget). I will share with you this one last thing. Sean and I decided that we weren't going to go on any vacations this year. Our first goal is to pay off our consumer debt completely (and we have actually even knocked a few months off our expected debt free date so we are right on track!).

Anyways my sister mentioned that she wanted to go to BC (if you know her, you would know that this SHOCKED me) to visit our Nanny and other family that is out there while she has the chance. Since my father in law passed away it has really been front of my mind that we never know how long we have with anyone, especially as they get older. So I decided to use my travel points so that Rylee and I can go out there with Tara to see my Nanny and the rest of my family. 

I have gone out there for the last 7 years so I had come to terms with the fact (sadly) that I just wasn't going to get to go this year. But let's be honest, when the opportunity presented itself AND I had enough miles to cover my ticket I jumped on it! I'm really excited to see everyone again and get to show my sister (who has never been there) around the island and all my favourite places!

Keep posted for some exciting posts to follow over the next few days as I catch you up on the last month of our lives haha!

I'll leave you with this photo of my new FAVOURITE meal: 

Chicken stirfry!!!

Mental visualization

What a whirlwind few weeks it has been with some highs and some lows. I got home on Sunday night and have been dragging myself around since then barely able to function. My nerves were still shot and I was having a hard time bouncing back.

Since yesterday I have been trying to figure out how to snap out of this short lived funk and get back into my momentum that I had going so well. This morning as I was snuggled up with Rylee going over some things I had learned over the weekend in Chicago, I remembered something that Kim Lyons said. She talked to us about mental visualization. Taking a step back and sitting there with your eyes closed visualizing your goals. How do you feel at your goal weight, was does that look like, what do you need to do to get there ect. Look at a picture of either yourself at that weight, or if you don't have one a picture similar to what you would like to be (not an unrealistic one).

So this morning I laid there and remembered how I felt when I was at my goal weight, how my clothes fit, what they felt like touching my skin, putting on make up because I cared more about my appearance, being able to shop in regular size clothing, what my workouts felt like. Then I looked at my picture of me at goal and visualized how it would feel to be back there again and what I would have to do to get there. 

The past few days I have been pretty negative because it seemed like one thing after another was going wrong and it was wearing me down and burning me out. For the past few months I have had very good, positive, headspace and I have been wanting to do a gratitude post. I have been feeling extremely blessed and grateful lately so I am going to start putting that together for you in the next few days.

I was going to do a post about Chicago since I learned SO much there, but I think I will integrate it into posts like I have today instead of doing one big post about it. That way I can leave the negatives out of it and behind me and move forward with the awesomeness that I got from the training.

I'll leave you with the picture of myself that I used for my visualization this morning: