Weigh in Wednesdays: I'VE LOST 100 POUNDS!

September 26th 2012-161 lbs 

I have long looked forward to this day and here it is!!!! 161 pounds down from the high of 261! I feel so good about myself - the changes are countless in my health, the way I feel physically, and emotionally-granted most of my weight was pregnancy related so there were a lot of other things making me feel physically uncomfortable but I think many of them were related to my weight. My goal was to lose 100 lbs by my daughters 2nd birthday and I have done it! It has taken me just 10 days shy of 2 years to lose this much weight and I DO NOT  think it was hard or difficult in any way...it simply took effort.

October 6th 2010 - 9 months pregnant 261 lbs 

2-3 weeks later -me about 25 pounds lighter-237 lbs 

April 2nd 2011-230 lbs 

July 2011- 215 lbs 

October 9th 2011-199 lbs 

December 2011- 187 lbs 

Easter 2012-183 lbs 

June 15th 2012-179 lbs 

                                               

July 4th 2012-177 lbs 

July 2012-175 lbs 

August 4th-170 lbs 

HOW DID I LOSE 100 POUNDS??? A combination of the following but NEVER did I give up the things I love like pizza and chocolate!

1. Give birth
2. BREASTFEED!!!!
3. Walk
4. Reduce/eliminate carbohydrates after 5h
5. Juice
6. Get braces
7. Eating in moderation

WHERE TO BEGIN!!!??

 Since returning home from our trip to Philadelphia my life has been a whirlwind of fun, exciting, new ventures! Each of the following deserves its own post and I will get there along with many pictures to follow but this week IS TOTALLY INSANE FOR ME so I'm just going to provide a quick synopsis of my big changes! I'm super busy but it's with all my favorite things so none of it actually feels like 'work'! I am loving my place in life!

MY NEW BUSINESS- So this is one of the main reasons I am so busy this week, I have that wedding that I am doing the flowers for tomorrow 9.21.12. I am very excited, a little nervous but I cannot wait to share the pictures with you. There were a few moments where I was feeling overwhelmed- because it's ALL ON ME! But my husband is going to help me set up so that makes me feel much more calm about everything because that's a big help.

MY NEW JOB- Not only is this a life list item but the way it came about was also one of my dreams come true! So I am officially a French Translator...I guess I already was just not in practice- as I actually am a Certified French Translator, I just have never done it professionally. More on that later, translating legal jargon is labor intensive and I am working on a big project right now!

PHILADELPHIA- It's funny that just 2 weeks ago I was writing about my trip to Philadelphia and I said several times that I didn't think I'd ever have the opportunity again to visit Valley Forge or Sesame Street and as much as I wanted to see the Liberty Bell I thought it would be quite a while...well as it turns out I am returning in a few weeks! Which I am crazy excited about, my daughter LOVED that Sesame Place so much she watches the videos we took from the parade and looks at the pictures every day, she is going to be so thrilled to go again, and it will be during their Halloween Spooktacular so it will be a different experience. When my husband said he had to go back I said- we're coming with you! We're staying in the same hotel and I know those ladies who fell in love with my little one are just going to fall apart when she comes flying into the breakfast nook with her arms up in the air yelling "HOLA!" I thought some of them were going to cry when we left, they enjoyed her so dearly!

MY DAUGHTER'S 2ND BIRTHDAY- I'm an over the top person and such my daughter is going to an incredible over the top Sesame Street themed birthday party so I've been very busy planning, organizing, preparing and figuring out how to pay for it all! Of course I will post lots of pictures from this year and from her party last year.

REDOING THE BATHROOM- We are redoing one of our bathrooms-ironically it was the only room in the house I initially thought needed the least amount of work. I guess it still is and that's why we started with it as there are no MAJOR changes to make. There's a TON more to do, we've already done most of the big things like paint, put in a new toilette and vanity. It's kind of moving slowly at the moment, there are just too many other things to pay for right now.

BEING A HOMEOWNER- There is so much to share on this subject but to sum it up right now, I had a very difficult time adjusting to this house for LOTS of reason but now 3 months later I am finally feeling settled in, like this is my home. I look at my house and smile now-in June I would look at my house and cry. Initially I had some very serious discussions with my husband about selling this house but now I feel very happy here and I think we will live in this house a VERY long time...if not forever.

TRIP TO DISNEY- I mentioned a bit ago that we were going to take a grand vacation to Disney in February 2014, I like to plan ahead and start saving so when I called Disney to make the arrangements they said they could only book the packages 8 months in advance so I said 'ok then we're going in 8 months!' It's not going to be the double vacation with the cruise but I am going to pack as many awesome things into this trip as possible so I've been spending loads of time doing research on the area. If you have any advice on 'must dos' in the Orlando area I'm all (Mickey Mouse) ears!

HULA CLASS- I will pick up the DVD from our Hula recital in a few weeks, I am excited to share the pics, video and experience with you. Today was the last day to sign up for the next Hula class that begins in October and I missed it but I'm going to try to schmooze her into letting us enroll late.

BRACES- I have only had the braces for 2 months now and I am so amazed with the results- the bottom is almost totally straight and the top is making quick progress, they don't really bug me any more sometimes I even forget-which I cannot believe-they were appallingly hard to get used to in the beginning and I don't feel so self conscience any longer either.

WEIGHT- It's been a while since I've weighed in but my most recent weight was 163!!!! Which is 98 pounds lost in nearly 2 years!!!! The day I gave birth I weighed 261...

MY BOOK- No news yet from the literary agent, they said it would be a while, it's been 5 months which doesn't really faze me, it took them 5 months just to get back to me the first time, so maybe after things settle down birthday I will contact them to see if they're read my proposal yet.

VOLUNTEERING- Back in February I enrolled in a program to mentor female inmates. I went through the whole process of a background check and everything but every time I thought about going, which would be a long day-close to 8 hours-(there's a lot of security you have to go through once you get to the prison and then to get out, and it's a long drive from my house)-I thought 'why should I leave my family to go visit someone I've never even met' I know that sound a little selfish but right now in this stage of my life it really isn't a good fit for me. I hate leaving my daughter and I do it as little as  possible and usually only for short periods of time. The old me would roll my eyes at someone saying they don't want to spend a few hours away from their kids but as pessimistic as it sounds, you really never know how much time you have and I just feel like my time is best spent with my baby. I know the day will come where she doesn't want to hang out with mommy anymore so I take advantage of my time with her now. I have something else in mind- I won't mention it until I actually follow through though!

Tomorrow's a big day-I'm delivering my flowers and (as usual) praying that nothing catastrophic happens to them tonight! I'm sure I'll be up a zillion times to check on them in the middle of the night if I can even sleep at all...the Bridesmaids bouquets are actually sleeping the bedroom tonight (totally necrotic). Cross your fingers for me that all goes well!  

Drive home from Philly

   I have always wanted to do a road trip with lots of points of interest along the way but I never do because I usually don't want to spend the time or the extra gas to go out of the way but this was perfect for us-the drive from Philadelphia to Michigan is a 10 hour drive...but not if you have a toddler. I designed the drive home with lots of stops so that our daughter would not go crazy being stuck in the car for that long, I also wanted to give her opportunities to run around and exhaust herself. So we'd drive for a few hours and stop for an hour or so, she'd take a nap and we could drive for another few hours. This did take us a bit out of the way but it turned 'a drive home' into bonus adventures.

Our first stop was only an hour and a half from our hotel to the Haines Shoe House-click on this link to hear all about our visit to this wacky architectural gem.

Our next stop was to Gettysburg. I really would have loved to soak up as much historical knowledge as possible but I knew that was not going to be an option with the little one, which was fine I mostly assumed that it was serve as a wide open space for our little one to spread her little wings. Which she surely did! What I didn't expect was that the town of Gettysburg was so charming, it was large but very quaint with dozens of antique stores and darling little hotels. So I've got something new to add to my life list-spend a long week end in Gettysburg and indulge in all the towns activities-including taking a tour on horse back of the Gettysburg battle grounds.

Beautiful walk to the visitors center

The next stop was an hour and forty five minutes from Gettysburg to a town called Old Bedford Village. It is a place that I have always wanted to stop at all the times I have driven past and seen it advertised on billboards. Unfortunately when we arrived it had just closed but it was still a place we could run around and take some pictures. It's a replica of an old town and the reason I was attracted to stop there was because bares a family name.

My new favorite flattering pose for pictures...you'll be seeing a lot of this!

Thus a 10 hour drive ended up taking us 15 hours with 3 stops to points of interest and many other stops for gas and bathroom breaks. It really helped break up the long drive and I will try to design all my future road trips with my daughter like this. It was a 7 hour drive from the Old Bedford Village to our house, there were plenty of places to stop but it was too late, everything was closed and it was too dark but since it was getting late Z mostly slept the rest of the way home.

Gettysburg

Gettysburg

Old Bedford Village

Old Bedford Village 

The end.

To read more about my 2012 summer road trip to Philadelphia click on the links below...

LIFE LIST: VISIT THE HAINES SHOE HOUSE
LIFE LIST: SESAME PLACE
2nd day in Philadelphia
1st day in Philadelphia
Valley Forge
One night in Pittsburgh
Last minute road trip
I'm back...I went

LIFE LIST: THE SHOE HOUSE

LIFE LIST: VISIT THE HAINES SHOE HOUSE

I've finally seen the Shoe House!!!

When: August 3rd, 2012

Where: Hellam, Pennsylvania - Haines Shoe House

Shoe house basement where you can enjoy Hershey's Ice Cream

Cost: $4.50/adult and free for kids under 3

Located in the middle of a corn field 

Why this is on my list: I found this years ago whilst doing travel research online. Actually, when I initially put it on my list you could stay the night there, later when I heard that that was no longer an option I removed it from my list. I still wanted to see that silly shoe house so I put it back on!

Shoe House Dog House

Something I would recommend? Surely! If you're in the area or near it....I would not recommend making a special trip especially since the town was very small and there was not much there.

Not a real dog-cute touch

Would I do it again? Doubtful, I think this is a once is enough life list item.

It wasn't very big but it actually was 4 levels

What would I do differently? Nothing, I got all that I could out of this.

View from the other side

Was it life changing? It was very exciting for me to finally see it after so many years and so many times I planned on seeing it while driving through Pennsylvania but it was always out of the way enough that I always decided in the end that making better time on the drive to or fro was more important. It is such a good feeling to accomplish goals but ultimately no I can't definitively say that this changed my life.

Even the fence had little shoes on it

Overall impression: I wanted to have several points of interest planned for our drive home from Philadelphia so that our daughter would have an opportunity to stretch her legs and this was about and hour and a half from the hotel towards home so it was perfect! We arrived right when they opened-the owner, wife and granddaughter had just arrived themselves. They were nice...a little odd...I guess that shouldn't come as a shocker that the people who would buy and live in a house shaped like a shoe are a bit cooky. I described them this way because they were trying to be formal and professional-it was not a personalized tour-it was very scripted/lacked charisma-this is a place that calls for a little spunk. And they would not allow photos inside-don't know why-I even asked if I could just take a picture of the stained glass window in the front door and they said 'no photos inside', that kind of rubbed me the wrong way I have to admit. The other thing I didn't like was that the house, which the couple spends much of their days and nights in, is filled with probably 2,000 shoe figurines. The house itself is interesting enough-shoe figurines are not interesting at all, so it made it  beyond cheesy. With that being said the interior of the house was incredibly unique, the architecture of the shoe house was really something to see. The curvature of the walls, the bizarre depths of the closets and bathrooms-the tight stairways-I would have loved to show you pictures (I say annoyingly) Though the couple did win me over when they befriended my daughter...that always does the trick! And they were nice and offered to take pictures of the 3 of us and they knew just the right spot outside for good photo ops of the entire house.

Why a house that looks like a shoe? A very rich man named Mahlon Haines had the house built in 1948 as an advertising gimmick. He sold shoes and would invited people from all over to stay at the shoe house for free. When people would stay they were treated like royalty and even had their own butlers. Since then the shoe house has had several different owners. How much does one pay for a shoe house? I don't know...I asked they wouldn't tell me....but I'm dying to know so if you have any further information on the cost please let me know! My guess...$300,000. What do you think the Shoe House would sell for? Not how much you would pay but I'm interested to see what you think the current owners paid!