HAWAII FOR REAL!!

The Long Bridge Swim Finishers (beat by my daughter by 4 minutes!)

 The "Fasting Cleanse" i'm doing

New Gun My Hubby Bought Me for Running With















WELL HERE I AM......gulp.... getting soft. All summer long i seriously thought about ditching this blog but I just couldn't. Its maybe not exactly who I am, but more who I want to be and I just can't give up on it. Truth is, we've moved 15 miles outside of town and life is easier. Theres no mountain to have to hike up and down every day. There's no "making due" for groceries when we're out of something. There hasn't been any more higher altitude 7 mile runs. No backpacking trips either. I've settled for easy 2 mile jogs and for a long run well, maybe 4-6 miles. I've enjoyed the summer and watched my hips grow a few inches along the way. I hate to confess it, but its where I'm at, THE UGLY TRUTH. Oh i didn't totally give up or anything. My daughter and i trained for The 1.76 mile Long Bridge Swim, and completed it. She even beat me - that little stinker :-) I still cook with a lot of veggies and wild organic meat. My kids are all pretty buff and healthy, but somewhere along in "convenience" i kinda lost my edge.


    A bunch of my girlfriends and I decided to take the "The Love Language Challenge", pray and fast for our husbands. That has been good so far. For my part of the fasting I decided to do a "cleanse" regime with the above "Perfect Food" recommended to me by a naturopathic friend. Week One you skip a meal once a day and take a serving of this stuff. It was kind of hard choking it down, but it wasn't the end of the world. The first day I felt really good. After that it was just kind of "so so". Now I'm into the second week which involves doing 2 servings and one meal. Honestly, that hasn't gone so bad either. I was thinking it would be worse. Am feeling like the marriage thing is going pretty good too. All that makes me happy.

And on to the most exciting thing, and my big motivation to get back into "This Redneck Mama's Fitness Blog"...... HAWAII!!! That's right... I bought real bonafide tickets for Kauai. Now the pressure is really on. I've gotta whip myself back into step and go beyond if I wanna have fun running around secluded beaches with my husband wearing less than fat friendly attire ;-)

Bloomsday 2012!

 Our Gang - Elasta Woman, Kiana, Archer's Friend, Me, Archer, Sweet RoseMary

- Got Stopped by a cop on the way there for "driving the speed limit (too slow) on a Sunday through a school zone" as that seemed "suspicious"!
 - Broke Down 15 min from registration!!  Had to take a taxi with my band of friends and kids!!
 - Felt like puking my guts out as none of my friends would leave me and demanded to stay with me!!  Elasta Woman even ran BACK DOWN DOOMSDAY HILL to check on me!!
 - Consequently, I ran my fastest EVER!!  10 min miles x7!!
 - Hub rescued us as you can see :-)  It was a super fun day!!

Formidable February

Here are some fun pics from our trip to Post Falls for my son's CNA certification testing. He was in Euphoria at Cabelas, as was The Sock Fashion Expert at The Spokane Valley Mall ;-) Consequently, He Passed!!

Okay, I sure wish I could think of a more creative format for this blog. Every time I think about deleting it, i just can't, so I guess I will just push on with it........

Here are some encouraging accomplishments from the past month :

- daily sit ups - i mean EVERY DAY!! My "Abs Idol", or maybe the better word would be "Abs Mentor" Elasta Woman has this "200 assorted crunch routine" which she swears by and we are not talking about some kind of crispy dessert here. Apparently a mom of several kids has done it every day for years and she has a 6 pack that girls half her age would kill for. Anyhow, this "Super Mommy" of sorts, taught the special routine to our own Elasta Woman, who, in turn, taught it to me. The funny thing about working abs, which I have noticed a couple times now, is that when its working you get this bloated - pregnant look because your gut no longer hangs down aimlessly. This can cause one to become quite distraught and greatly disturbed, especially when one is doing all that work. NO WORRIES!! It actually starts looking better over time. The muscles just seem to "pick up" and carry along with them whatever is there. So, yes, I do have that odd look going, but it is only temporal and I am taking it as a good sign better things are to come ;-)

- forced myself to measure and weigh in, not a lot has changed.

- Also keeping an exercise log. It was helpful in determining why every time I run with the girls I feel like I have emptied myself into the trash compactor. Now mind you, these girls I run with are all teens and twenties and they are amazing athletes, but being significantly slower and in agony is not an excuse I should blame on age. Though I was doing some kind of work out every day, I was finding that my running was only weekly. I didn't really have a good base to be building off of. Since then, I'm trying to run several more times a week.

- increasing on the weights.

With the possibility of an upcoming move, it would be nice to lose some of this stubborn winter fat. I HATE dieting, but I suppose I should really focus harder on intake this upcoming month. YUCK!

Bloomsday AND THE BROWN OFFENDERS

http://liteonthemtn.blogspot.com/2012/01/bless-our-hom-and-other-stories-from-my.html

The second half of this story is my fitness post. I just thought it was funny, so I left it on my regular blog post. Hope you enjoy it!!

My Daughter and Ski Buddy
Me with Miss Moonbeamer

So its official. I'm going to try and do 365 Days of Sit Ups AGAIN! As I said before, I failed miserably last year and petered out some time in May or June, BUT I ended up having the best abd muscles I've ever had for those short months. Any how, I guess I could try doing it again :-) I'm not going to document every day because frankly, nobody cares :-) I'm just going to do some little updates and try to mix things up with hopefully a weekly post. Here's some things I did THIS YEAR:
- 4 mile ski trek with my daughter (2 miles up a mountain and 2 down) today. The pic of me is shortly before my crash and burn on the way down - lol!! Thankfully Miss Moonbeam didn't flip or tumble.
- A short run
- Another Ski trek by myself
- sit ups every day so far :-)
- started doing some weight lifting with the boys. That is a BIG NEW STEP for me.
- Measured and weighed in.

Is it the end of the year ALREADY?!?!

My friend, Mist, with Thanksgiving Pheasants.....

My way of teasing my oldest son with Christmas Decor....

Our girls hot tub and cross country ski party yesterday!!

Taking our pup skiing today - check out her frosty mug ;-)

Lost Motivation is probably the biggest reason i haven't posted for so long. That, and the fact that every day I spend hours scouring the Internet for real estate. Its been rather taxing and exhausting, but I know that once I find the right place, I'll be glad for the work I put in :-) As for the lost motivation part, well that can be worked on. Really - it hasn't been THAT bad. I'm still probably 10lbs less last than last winter at this time. Don't know how I'm pulling that off, but still 10 lbs more than I want to be too.

Seriously thinking of doing a REVISITED 365 Days of Situps. Even though I failed it miserably by only doing maybe 6 months, I had the best abs I've ever had. My big failure was the biggest success ab wise I've ever had. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try again, now that I'm not doing any, I am missing that muscle look and my new cross belly ring just doesn't look as cute with the mid winter pudge ;-) Okay, well if anybody has any good suggestions, I am WIDE OPEN!!

Harvest For Your Health

My daugher "Saphara" processed a pumpkin ($2) at the local grocery. She made amazing things with it including these muffins. The little girls "helped"

I know what you're probably thinking "sure she hasn't posted on this blog in eons, she must have fallen off the wagon... hard" or maybe "she must have struck it rich as the next "whose who of unknown blog authors"". Uh...no. Really, its been an upside down crazy fun summer followed by a busy Autumn. Children's home school correcting and assigning is always at the forefront of my thoughts when school begins. Not to mention that, but my house has been filled with company. My new foster daughter requires uh "special attention" ;-) And whats more its harvest. Ahhh harvest.... which brings us to this forthcoming post!

Back in the days when I was 50 lbs heavier, I couldn't figure out how to incorporate eating healthy on a budget. Even if I wanted to, when I was at the grocery store, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to go home and munch on a nice salad. No, the delicious pictures on the boxes of frozen pizza called my name from the moment I stepped into the diabolical grocery mart. Yes, time and time again, I was just plain sucked into the vortex of fat. After all, who wants to wash vegetables after an exhausting trip to town anyway? I want something EASY CHEESY....mmmmm. Problem is, "easy and cheesy" do not make my thighs happy. On the contrary, it suffocates them, and alas, healthful eating is of necessity.

When I really became desperate enough to do anything, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to afford living on grocery store produce. The kicker is that nobody has to. It IS impossible for normal people to afford a lot of that stuff. As I began seeking out alternatives, I found healthier ones were literally right there :-) Here's one of them :

My good girlfriend from church, the one who saved Super Catman's life (another story for another day), told me about this orchard years ago. It was so cool, because the day I showed up (about 3 years ago), I asked the lady how much the apples were and she told me "FREE"!! It had frosted and she couldn't "guarantee" them, so she was allowing people just to help them selves. HOWDY!! That day, the kids, I and some visiting relatives picked between 600-800 pounds of them!! It was a tremendous blessing and as it turns out, they were the best apples I'd ever had!!

This year, that good ol' girlfriend of mine told me about them again and invited me along. Boy howdy was I all about that. They did charge this year, but only at 30 cents a pound! Now if you were to buy Gala and Honey Crisp apples (with no guarantee of freshness) at the store you know it would be maybe 3 to 5 times that price per pound. Mine will last in the basement till Christmas and maybe beyond, besides the ones I process will be around a lot longer than that. You can do the same thing. There are lots of orchards all over. Its not hard if you make a few calls, with a little determination, you too, can do this ;-)

Just don't forget to pay attention to how you're storing them. It was wet the day we picked, and I was glad I went through them today. The plastic tote I had some in had pooled water on the bottom. A cardboard box with some other ones had 2 earwigs crawling around at the bottom. In another box one of the kids had inadvertantly thrown a rotten one. Any of that stuff would have caused rot and waste had I not discovered and fixed those problems.

It was a crazy adventure (as they always are). It was raining out that day, so we picked fast. Thankfully the rain had let up so we didn't get too wet. It was a blast picking with my friends and their kids. Crazy as it was, I had planned to take home 100-200 lbs. We ended up weighing in at 319 lbs!! Ha ha ha. I laughed as I stuffed the boxes all over the place around the car and trunk trying to jam the children and apples in. It was a precarious ride home, but my husband didn 't say much about it. He said "you can buy as much as you can fit". Little did he realize, or did I. I had just sent all the kids off with boxes and in an hour or two we had a plethora!!

At any rate, it was outrageous fun and something I'm proud enough of to post on my fitness blog with the hopes that I will inspire somebody else to do the same........