One day down....

One day down......four more to go! Today was the first day of my busy week. Rob can't get home soon enough. Here is our low down of our first day. Rob left the house around 4:00 am to catch his 6:00 am flight. At 5:00 am our crazy dog started barking and running around our bed and woke me up. She jumped off the bed and darted for Leah's room. Leah sleeps with her door shut and Sushi frantically started scratching (LOUDLY) at her door - why....I have no idea. Two minutes later - baby is up crying and won't go back to bed. I go get Leah and bring her into my bed so I can jump in the shower. But before I do, I run downstairs to quickly let Sushi outside. It is raining and she hates going out when it is wet. I let her run around for a bit, not watching her to see if she takes care of business. I let her back in the house and go back upstairs to take a shower. While I am in the shower, Leah comes busting through the door and greets me as I am washing the shampoo out of my hair. I tell her to go back to bed and she takes off running out of our room laughing. I quickly finish up, throw on a towel and go chase after her. As I look to find her, I smell something. I gaze around our loft area and then I spot it. Two large turds and a circle of pee are waiting for me right in the middle of the room. Darn dog! I just let her outside. Ugh!!!

I grab Leah, run back downstairs and got some carpet cleaner and proceed to pick up Sushi's mess. By now, it is 5:30 am. I place Leah back in our bed, cover her up and turn on the Disney channel. She seems content. I put on my makeup and all is good. Just as I start to blow dry my hair, I glanced over at Leah just in time to see her rolling off of our bed. Sure enough, she hits her head on the nightstand on her way down. Waiting for her to start screaming, she surprisingly bounces right up and tells me "Momma, I okay. I okay Momma." I scoop her up, give her a kiss and put her back into our bed. Luckily I was able to finish getting ready with no further incident. I get Leah and bring her to her room so I can get her dressed for the day. Leah is on this new kick where EVERYTHING is scary. Taking a bath is scary, going to bed is scary - you get the picture. (I don't know if it is a phase, but my coworker Ashley said she is going through the same thing with her daughter). Anyways, I took off her pajamas and tried to put her shirt over her head. Leah kept stopping me and was saying, "No - mommy. I scared. It scary mommy." Oh man - I don't have time for this! Finally, I was able to convince her that is not scary and we were able to get her clothes on.  We headed downstairs for breakfast. Leah ate her pancakes and we were on our way.

I dropped Leah off at daycare at 7:00 am. Traffic was horrendous and I did not arrive to work until almost 8:20 am. By this time, I had already put in 3 hours before my "real" day at work even began. With the morning I had, I could already tell how this day was going to play out. It was filled with back to back meetings and I had so much to do. It was non-stop and was definitely a busy day! My last meeting ran a little over and I got a late start to go get Leah. Luckily, traffic on the way home was much more managable and I was still able to pick Leah up on time. We came home and it was a race to get dinner ready. (By the time I get home, I have a hungry little girl on my hands). I whipped up some mac and cheese and life was good...according to Leah. I was able to catch a quick video of her while she ate. I tried to upload it from my phone and I was unsuccessful. I posted it to FB though. I thought it was pretty cute.

After dinner, we played and spent some time together. Around 7:00 pm it was Leah's bath time. Of course as I was trying to put her into the tub, she gave me the whole "I am scared" routine. I plopped her in and pulled out her toys and somehow the scariness disappeared. We spent some time splashing around and Leah enjoyed herself. She really likes taking a bath, so I know for a fact she is not scared. Hopefully this passes.....soon. We got her jammies on and spent some quiet time relaxing on the couch reading books. I looked at the clock and it was 8:15 pm - time for bed at last. Leah was ready and didn't fight me going down!

Ahh - finally, some mommy time! Can't wait to do it all over again tomorrow! Four more days!!

Lazy day for a busy weekend

It was a really hectic, crazy week at work and I was ready for the weekend! I had talked to my Dad during the day on Friday and asked if he wanted to go out to dinner. We wanted to spend time with him and get him out of the house. So when we got home from work, we quickly packed ourselves up so we could head right back out the door. Before meeting for dinner, we stopped over at my friend Danielle's house so we could meet sweet baby Avery that was born  2 1/2 weeks ago. I missed girls dinner this week so I didn't get a chance to see her when she made her debut at her first girls night out. She is adorable and tiny. I think I forgot how little they are when they are first born. It was also nice to see her two other boys. After visiting for just a bit, we left to head over to Bar Louie to meet my Dad. On our way there, my Dad called and told us he just wasn't up for it and just felt like staying home. We were bummed, but understood. We went and had dinner and then came back home and got Leah ready for bed.

Saturday morning we were up early and we were out the door by 8:00 am. Our first stop was into my office because we were conducting our annual Wellness Screenings and Rob needed to get his done. (I did mine earlier in the week). Next stop, Oak Brook Mall. I had a haircut appointment at Mario Tricoci at 9:30 am. While I was getting my hair done, Rob and Leah walked around the mall. We were on a mission to find new outfits for the next day since we were supposed to have our family pictures taken. After I was wrapped up with my hair, I met up with them and we spent about another hour and a half at the mall. Of course I didn't find anything. Rob, on the other hand found a few things for himself. We left the mall and stopped at Old Navy, which luckily I was able to find something for myself and for Leah. We grabbed a quick lunch and then were on our way home. It was almost 3:00 pm and Leah had gone the whole day with no nap. She wasn't being crabby, but I knew she was more than ready to go down. We all took a little snooze but then had to get up to start getting ready for the evening.

My bosses had planned a dinner for our HR Team and our spouses. Dinner was at 7:00 pm at Gibsons in Rosemont. My Dad came over around 5:45 pm to watch Leah and we were out the door. There were 11 of us at dinner and it was fun. The food was awesome! I had Filet Mignon and Rob had King Crab Legs. Everything was delicious. We ordered 3 desserts to share and they were ginormous! It was nice to get out with my team!  We didn't get home until almost 11:00 pm. My Dad said that him and Leah had a great time and she was a good little girl. She adores him and loves her "Papa."

Sunday we all slept in and when we woke up it was raining outside. Bummer - we were supposed to have our family pictures at the Naperville River Walk. We ended up rescheduling for next weekend. I hope we have better weather next Saturday. So, since it was raining - it cleared all of our plans for the day. It was a perfect day to do nothing and be lazy! We all layed around in pj's for most of the morning and it felt so good! I got Leah dressed and put on her "Juicy" outfit that my Aunt Debbie bought for her last year. It finally fits her and it is so cute!

While Leah went down for a nap, I pulled out my crock pot. I decided to make Chicken Taco Soup. Luckily, I happened to have all of the ingrediants on hand. Chicken Taco Soup is absolutely one of my favorite meals! You just throw everything in the crockpot, let it simmer for a few hours and then wa-la. It is so easy and delicious!  Today was the perfect day for it since it was chilly and rainy outside. If anyone is interested, I'll post the recipe at the end of this blog.

When Leah got up from her nap, she and I ran to Carters. Leah needed fall clothes and we usually have pretty good luck at Carters. They always have great deals. We found her quite a bit (and most of it was 70% off), so hopefully this will tie her over for a while. We then ran to the grocery store and we happened to run into Jaime. It was great seeing her and catching up for a few minutes. After we got home and unloaded all of the groceries, it was time to just relax and that is what we have been doing ever since! Ahh - it feels so good! I've actually had time to try and catch up on my blog. I feel like I haven't posted very much lately. This coming week is going to be a long one for me. Rob is flying out to Colorado tomorrow morning and will be gone for the whole week. It is back to being a single working mom for the next few days. The days seem much longer and more hectic. We'll manage, but we will sure miss him!

Anyways - hope everyone had a great weekend and here is my recipe for Chicken Taco Soup.

Chicken Taco Soup

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped

1 (16 ounce) can chili beans

1 (15 ounce) can black beans

1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained

1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce

1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle beer (I used 12 oz of chicken broth instead)

2 (10 ounce) cans diced tomatoes with green chilies, undrained

1 (1.25 ounce) package taco seasoning

2 cups of elbow noodles

3 whole skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Shredded Cheddar cheese

Sour Cream

Crushed tortilla chips or fritos

Directions

1. Place the onion, chili beans, black beans, corn, tomato sauce, beer (or chicken broth), and diced tomatoes in a slow cooker. Add taco seasoning, and stir to blend. Lay chicken breasts on top of the mixture, pressing down slightly until just covered by the other ingredients. Set slow cooker for low heat, cover, and cook for 5 hours.

2. Cook elbow noodles until tender. Set aside.

2. Remove chicken breasts from the soup, and allow to cool long enough to be handled. Stir the shredded chicken back into the soup, and continue cooking for 2 hours. Serve with elbow noodles, topped with shredded Cheddar cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and crushed tortilla chips, if desired.

**We usually have leftovers, so I will drain the liquid and use the contents to make enchiladas. It is delish!

Moving onto the next thing…

Why do I always have such a hard time “sticking” to a program when it comes to trying to lose weight?! I was on such a kick a few months ago and I was so motivated. We were eating healthy, going to the gym, taking walks and I was following Weight Watchers. I even dropped 14 pounds. I was feeling great and thought I had adapted into my new way of life.

Fast forward 5 months and some of these healthy habits have gone to the way-side. We’ve slowly started going out to eat more and going to the gym less. I still go, but not nearly as much as I was before. I am not cooking as much at home as I was before - I was on a roll trying new healthy recipes and sticking to portion sizes. I had bought my Hungry Girl Cook Book and was making new recipes left and right. I have completely abandoned tracking my points through Weight Watchers and a few of those pounds have creeped back on! Agh! How does this happen? I hate being over-weight so why do I give up? Clearly, I have no one to blame but myself. It’s a vicious cycle. I think part of my motivation came from the fact we were going on vacation. It always helps when you have something to look forward to and now....I got nothing.

As most of you know, I am in Human Resources. One of my responsibilities is to manage all of our Wellness Initiatives. I research, recommend and implement different wellness programs and events for our company. (I know – I am not exactly the face of fitness). Anyways, over the past couple of months we have been looking at different programs and just launched our newest wellness initiative last week. I am really excited about it and hope it will help me get back on track. It is called Sonic Boom. It’s really high-tech and really encourages you to change your daily behaviors.

One part of the program uses a “SonicPed.” It is a little pedometer that you clip to your shoe. It tracks all of your activity (including the duration, number of steps taken, distance covered and calories burned). The cool part about it is that it automatically loads all of your data off of the ped directly to your online profile (so there is no cheating).  We just walk past a receiver and it transfers everything.

We get points for everything we do. When we accumulate enough points, we can exchange them for prizes in an online store. Also through the website, it has all of these online trackers to use. There is a hydration tracker, food tracker, activity tracker and fruits & veggies tracker that you can use to record everything you eat and do all day. You can set goals for yourself and monitor your progress over time. It is similar to Weight Watchers Online but cooler. (So I will be canceling my Weight Watchers membership that I pay for and don’t use)!

There is also a ton of other things you can do through the program – there are daily challenges that you can earn points for as well as a “Weight Loss Warriors” portal that you can create an interactive “battle plan.” There is also a social media component to it, where you can add friends (co-workers), comments, pictures, etc. I am excited about it and a ton of our employees are too.  So…..it’s on to the next for me. Wish me luck. Hopefully, I am not blogging in another 4 months at how I failed at this program too!