Weight Loss

The other day I was sitting with a few friends from work when we started to talk about the UFC. For those of you not familiar with the UFC, it is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a competition that involves a mixture of all the martial arts. During our conversation, my boss stated that if he were to lose 30 lbs. and get to his prime weight that he would be able to beat the middleweight champion, George St. Pierre. The discussion became a little heated as he was really serious about his statement. Ultimately, we concluded that we all were overweight and needed to stop talking about getting in shape and actually do it, so we all committed to lose 10 percent of our body weight. Of course, this all happened while we were sitting at McDonalds finishing our Big Macs, Double Cheeseburgers, large fries, and supersized soft drinks.
Now, we couldn't just do this for the heck of it; we needed to post something. We all decided to put in $25 dollars with the idea that the first to lose the weight would take the money. But we didn't want the rest to feel like failures and gain back anything that the may have lost, so we also decided that if all participants reached the goal of 10%, all of us would go to Vegas (Ana still doesn't know about that part.)
Before we could start, we needed to verify our weight. Since WalMart was right next to McDonalds, we all walked over, grabbed a scale off the aisle, and stepped up to see the gory details. While I won't mention the weight of the others, I will admit to being on the verge of obesity, tipping the scales at a plump 200 lbs. even. That meant that I would need to lose 20 lbs. in order to go to Vegas and do it faster than the others in order to win the money.
All of this happened 2 1/2 weeks ago and, needless to say, no one has achieved the goal yet but all of us have progressed. The first week, I dropped 5 lbs. to 195. A few days later I had lost another two pounds and was at 193. Since that last weigh in I stopped weighing myself--until today. Today I stepped on the scale and read 184.6. Thats an incredible weight loss of 15.4 lbs in 2 1/2 weeks and only 4.6 lbs. from my goal of 180.
Many of you might think that most of this is water loss or I am putting myself at risk; however, the great thing about being obese is that you carry horrible habits, such as: 200- 300 ounces of Coke a day (and that was probably cutting in half what I used to drink), extreme portions, and late night eating. I just needed to change my ways. Having overcome those habits, losing the weight has pretty much been downhill from there. Not to mention that I am now running about 15 - 20 miles a week. Who would have thought that a meaningless arguement could have lead to such an important change in my life.

My Worst Nightmare

Well, it finally happened--I now have a teenager. Vanessa turned 13 on July 17th and I all ready feel the pressures and problems that accompany teenage-dom. You see, I had been thinking all week what present to give her. After downloading some songs to her i-pod, I listened to them on her crappy stock headphones and I decided to run over to Circuit City and get some Skull Candy headphones for her. So on her birthday she opened her present, was happy, and fell asleep that night listening to music. I thought that was it. I mean, isn't that how birthdays roll--buy present, open present, momentary joy, and sleep? Well, not for a teenager. Evidently, a teenager's birthday just keeps going and going and going. It's kind of teenage Hanukkah--the gifts just keep coming.
With the headphones not being enough, we went out Saturday to see a movie and have lunch. Of course, I should have know better than to take Ana to the Cinemark at the mall. As soon as the movie ended, we were in Dillards looking at clothes. One hour later, we walked out with 4 pairs of jeans and who knows how many blouses for our teenage debutant.
Now, any normal kid would be happy and Vanessa was no exception. She was smiling ear to ear. Since we spent so much money on clothes, I canceled our lunch reservation and we headed over to Costco for hotdogs, pizza, and smoothies. I love Costco--giant TVs, video games, cameras, computers, go-carts--Costco has everything. Whatever we buy at Costco is fine with me because somehow, someway, the product relates to me. But what was coming next was unexpected.
We went through the normal pattern keeping in stride with all the other robotic shoppers who make Costco the weekly routine. We hit the TVs, the camcorders, and then the computers. We were on our way to the video game section when we passed the cell-phone counter. All of a sudden, Ana and Vanessa stopped. I was thrown off. This was not the normal routine and I became confused. Well, that confusion must have taken control of me because before I knew it, Ana and Vanessa were walking out of the store with new cell phones and I was still trying to return to normalcy and make me way over to the free food samples.
So four days later, Vanessa now sits in her new clothes listening to hip-hop music on some killer headphones while dialing friends on her cell phone. Her 5 day birthday/Hanukkah is officially over, but for me the teenage nightmare just began.

4th of July

We had a great time on the 4th this year. Kari gave us a call and invited us boating in the morning. The day was perfect for it and the kids made the most of it. Vanessa and Ana both got up on the knee board and Kenny held on to the tube for dear life as Frisco nearly flopped out numerous times--smiling throughout it all. Abbi liked to sit on the swim deck and kick her feet in the water. She did get in the tube once, but didn't last very long. She is definitely more into looks than action.
We had planned to go to Dusty's afterwards but we stayed too long. In fact, we were an hour late getting over to Josh and Renyna's for dinner. Once we got there, however, we were not dissappointed. Josh and Reyna make a delicious carne asada! Throw in the rice, salads, and fruit and we had quite the meal. The kids love to go over there so they can play with Jaxon. I think Kenny likes it because he can be the bigger cousin for once. Abbi just walks around with Pixie, Reyna's little chiuaua (how do you spell chiuaua, anyways?), hugging and kissing it as she chokes it to death. Anything else would probably attack her, but that dog just sees her coming and its as if that puppy were struck with the fear of God. She starts to shake and I swear her lip starts to shiver and she just knows what is coming.
Because we missed Dusty's on the 4th, we headed over there on Saturday. Dust brought me into the house and showed me the Holy Grail of video games--Rockband. We played that thing for 5 hours straight (Dusty had to get to Metallica!) Luckily, Dusty is a legit "Guitar Hero" and Hay tore up the drums, while Tara, Ana, and I took turns singing and playing bass. Things got a little intense during Ballroom Blitz and some of the others. By the end of the night, it felt like we had thrown a huge rock concert--I was beat! Of course, we didn't get our fix and had to return the next day to finish up. We took some pictures and I'll have to post them later.
All in all, it was a fun holiday.

Baseball Update 06/25/08

2008 Nationals

(Kenny is in the bottom row, middle)

First off--way to go FSU! But as exciting as that game was, it couldn't hold a candle to Kenny's quarterfinal game today. The teams went back and forth for 5 innings, until Kenny's Nats finally pulled it out in the bottom of the 5th, scoring 2 runs to win 13-11. The game started off a little slow as the Nats pulled out to a slim 1-0 lead after the first and were losing 3-1 after the 2nd. That was when the ball got rolling. We thought we had the game in hand after we scored 5 runs in the 3rd and were up 6-3, but the opposition stepped up to the plate and blasted 4 runs in the top of the 4th to go up 7-6. Kenny helped his team go up 11-7 in the bottom of the fourth as he got a single, but they couldn't keep the lead and went into the bottom of the 5th and final inning tied 11-11. However, the team didn't choke. The first two batters of the inning got on base with singles setting up the league's most dominant hitter--first baseman Dylan. He crushed a double into centerfield, knocking in the winning run, and sending the Nats to the semifinals. The game will be played Saturday and I will keep you all updated. Kenny played shortstop most of the game, had one assist, one error (we won't focus on that one too much as it was a wicked bounce), and two hits--a double and a single.

Ana in New York

I have to admit--I'm not the best when it comes to giving gifts. As many of you know, if I draw your name for Christmas, you usually don't see a present until Easter! But this year I decided to go out of the way for Ana and, for Mother's Day, I bought her a ticket to New York. With her Mom now living there along with her best friends and cousins, I thought she would have a great time. Well she's been there a week and apparently I finally got it right. While she has missed me and the kids, I believe she has had a great time visiting with everyone. She has gone to all the major stores including those on 5th Ave., the giant toy store where they filmed the movie Big, Macys (which she says is two full-city blocks), and Victoria Secrets (no complaints here.) Since some of her friends live in New Jersey, she also went there. She comes home on Thursday and hopefully will bring some pictures back with her that I can post on here.

Celtic Storm

Vanessa made Celtic Storm! Most of you are not familiar with the Storm, so let me give you a little background. Celtic is the top-ranked female soccer club in the state of Utah and one of the most highly respected clubs in the nation. During the last 4 years, the Storm has sent an average of 20 players a year on to Div. 1 college programs and have one former player, Katie Larkin, who currently starts for the U.S. National U-23 Women's Team. Vanessa was extremely excited when she heard the news. This was the first time she had tried out for the team and she was nervous, so when she received the phone call from Coach Blake she immediately called me at work and hasn't stopped talking about it. Good job, Ness!

End of School

Allright, so a lot of time has passed since my last entry and a lot of things have happened during that time. Probably the one thing that makes the kids the happiest is the end of another school year. But I have to say that I was very proud of the kids' academic achievements this past year--starting with Frisco. Throughout the entire year he had all A's with three A-'s. He was also awarded the "Greatest Kid" award for his class. Not too far behind was Kenny. Their school does not start to give letter grades until the third grade so I can't really say what his grades were, but he was awarded the Top Academic Achiever for his class--and he didn't get suspended even once all year! Vanessa also did a great job--especially with her busy schedule. She maintained a 3.5 GPA for the year, played soccer, ran track, and served as the Beehive president. She was also voted the "shortest girl in 7th grade."
Now I probably took this to an extreme and am bragging a little bit, but I want my kids to know how much I love them and how proud I am of them. Love you guys!