My Weight Watchers Experience

So early last spring my clothes started to get a little snug. In the past 4 years I had been pregnant or breastfeeding and turned 30 during that time. I was either going to have to buy new clothes or do something about it. I had tried "dieting" on my own and exercising on my own, but could never lose weight. My Mom and Sister in law had done Weight Watchers and it worked for them. So I told Jim we were joining together and looked up on line where the nearest center was. We had 1 last week of eating anything and everything we wanted. I remember my first weigh in day eating all kinds of candy.



When I got on the scales, I was heavier than I expected. No wonder my clothes were tight. They gave me a book with point values for different foods. We stayed for the meeting and short a instructional period of how to eat healthy, portion size, and making better food choices. I read all the literature they gave me and started writing down what I was eating.

At first I was hungry and then I learned to make better choices, oatmeal will fill you up longer than a bowl of cereal. Portion size, it is amazing how much one thinks a serving size is until you measure it out. I stayed with in my point allowance and started losing weight. The program really worked.

I think I had this imaginary number in my head of what my weight should be, however I got to a point that I kept hovering around a different number. I think my body was trying to tell me something. It took a while for me to accept that having babies and getting older changed my body. I don't think I will ever get into those size 6 Gap jeans in my closet. I am ok with that now. I feel better about myself and even feel better physically.

At my best I lost 20 pounds. They reward you with stickers and I love that they don't take your stickers away if you gain some of the weight back!

I decided on my goal weight and was already there. I kept thinking I could lose 5 more, but I could maintain where I was and be happy and satisfied.

Some of the changes I have made:

• I eat oatmeal for breakfast
• I eat more fruits and vegatables
• If I crave something sweet, I have a piece of fruit first or a sugar free drink
• If I have the munchies, I munch on popcorn or carrot sticks
• I make my own salad dressing
• I have discovered WW snacks or 100 calorie packs
• I eat Frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, and I can find all the frozen yogurt places to eat at
  

I still have my weaknesses and try to limit myself. So if I buy M & Ms, it is the small bag for $0.70 rather than the medium size bag at Wal-mart for $2.99. I allow myself to spurlge after weighing in, this usually consists of some candy, cold cereal and milk. I have had to cut back on my milk consumption. I prefer 2%, so I only drink 1 glass a day.

The Birthday girls

I share a birthday with my Grandma Belva. So when we can we celebrate together. This year was no different. I spent the weekend with my family celebrating life and eating good food. I couldn't have asked for a better weekend.
My Mom got out the reigniting candles. Jim thought is was payback time for the year I did this to him. It was good for a laugh.

The day before I dressed like a babe, because I was the birthday girl and I get to do what I want. I actually miss getting dressed up. Sometimes I do it and Parker asks where I am going and I tell him I like wearing skirts or nice clothes. I just tend to get dirty so I don't wear them very often. We took some fun family pictures.

Prayer

Parker is attending preschool sponsered by a Presbyterian church in Tyrone. One of my fears of sending my child to another denomination's church would be the memorized prayers that sometimes those in other churches use. I can remember visiting one of my friends from church, when I was younger and her brother would say "grace."

So imagine my surprise when I ask Parker to say the blessing and he begins reciting

God is Good, God is Great.
Let us thank him for our food.
By his hands we are fed,
Let us thank him for our daily bread.

And to top it off, Preston now recites God is Good, God is Great right along with Parker.

The surprise has even been better when we visited my folks and my siblings look at me, and I say that is how the Presbyterian's bless the food.

So maybe I haven't done the best at setting the example for the order of prayer in our home. We try to bless our food, sometimes the boys close their eyes and other times they are munching away. One time while Parker was blessing the food, Preston was chowing down and Parker had to take a break in the middle of his short prayer for a drink. You gotta love kids.


We are taught that prayers should come from the heart and to stay away from a "memorized prayer." One that my parents used was

Dear Heavenly Father
Thank you for this day.
Bless this food for our good.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

To a kid this is kind of the same deal. The same words recited before eating, however in this case we are addressing Heavenly Father and closing in Jesus's name.

We have tried not to get real excited about the God is Good prayer. When Parker blesses the food, we offer 2 blessings on the food.

This picture is from the 2nd day of school, we were running late for a first day of school picture. On a side note, Parker loves school. He has a great teacher and it is a great group of kids there. I have made new friends with the mom's there.

Is there a Constable in the neighborhood?

What started out as a joke has become the real thing.

During the May election there was a spot for Constable on the ballot. I wrote Jim's name in and then went home to say "Hey honey, you better go up and vote and write yourself in for constable."

This led to a series of questions to those in authority, to getting signatures and then being appointed by the judge to be the temporary constable until January. Jim would need to win the election in Nov to keep his constable status.

Well Jim took classes and went shopping. He became trained and bought an official uniform even down to the boots. People thought girls were picky about their clothes, in an effort to save money I was quickly informed that a certain look was needed to be achieved, so he could not skimp any corners. He also bought weapons.

Come election day in Nov I stood outside the polls for 4 hours in the cold weather asking every passerby "My husband is running for Constable and would sure appreciate your vote." I then handed them a slip of paper that said "Write in James Rayburn for Constable." He won the majority with 49 votes. You might be wondering what the boys were doing while all this campaigning was going on, they were playing with their trucks on the other side of the parking lot.

So Jim went out to do his first assignment. He knocks or more like pounds on the door. The guy says whose there and Jim replies "Constable Rayburn" They guy replies back "cash or check." Obviously he had been visited before and knew the drill.

He has only had a handful of assignments and all the folks have been nice. He hasn't needed his gun thank goodness.

Halloween 2009

I have new things I want to blog about, but feel the need to go in chronological order. So here is Halloween. The Goodwill carries new costumes and when Parker saw the fireman outfit this is what he wanted. They did not have Preston's size. Preston and I went shopping another time and Preston kept talking about the fireman, so we utilized Parker's rain coat. We had the hat from a recent birthday party and they both have fireman boots for the barn and rainy days. So there you go.
This is Parker taking a picture of Preston and I. I started on this costume the year Parker dressed up as a lion, 2 years ago, but didn't get it finished. Last year I tried to get to done, but ran out of time. So 2 years later Dorothy was finished.
This was the group shot before we headed out to our first house. It was unseasonably warm so I was fine in my short sleeves. Preston was tired and I ended up carrying the firefighter most of the way. We walk to a few houses on our road and then a little road behind our house. We drive to some of our friends from the Fire Dept.

As Parker was going from house to house he said something like "this is my favorite holiday" "I love trick or treating."

Someone called me Goldilocks. That made me smile.

I have to include Parker's preschool party too.

We dropped the kids of at the upstairs and the moms went downstairs to decorate for the party. There were some fun decorations that we put up. Preston loved being part of this. I tried to get him to stand by the great pumpkin, but no luck.

Notice the mural on the wall? It was so cute. The black box had flashing lights inside and the kids had so much fun crawling through it.


I think the idea is to crop the extra stuff around the photo, so it looks like you are posing with the characters. I didn't have time to crop it.

The group had some good costumes:) lion, ghost, fireman, princess, bee, butterfly, mermaid and my favorite the giant m& ms.

The string on the donut game. Notice Parker was done first as he is exiting the picture.Preston on the other hand loved this game and cleaned up all the left overs.