Some random pics

Organic

It's a long slow process, but we are finally getting a decent selection of organic product to choose from!

New baby!

My newest niece Solena. 

Excercising with Anne Marie

Going to try to upload some videos that I have from the past several months.

New Helmet

Cayle needed a new helmet after a good crash with his buddy Mack. I told him I would take him to the bike shop, but he had to do all the work. He did great! He said what he was looking for, went over all the different color combinations, tried them on and picked the one he liked best and gave Robbie the credit card. He's growing up too fast!

New House

Kind of took some folks by surprise with this one...we bought a new house the day before Thanksgiving :)  It all happened pretty quickly. 

We had been calling on lots of other possible rentals in the past year.  We knew we were paying more in rent than we should be and we wanted to get a better deal, so we had been thinking outside the box and calling on houses for sale to see about rental potentials.  One such call led us to a realtor who told us about a "zero down" loan.  Seemed too good to be true.  Long story short, we qualified and ended up pay about $180 to get in our house.  We are saving about $300 a month when you compare rent and insurance to mortgage, insurance, and taxes.  We like the new house, it's more updated than our other house, and it's closer for Cayle and I to get to school. 

We moved in the day after Thanksgiving and jumped right in to decorating for Christmas the following Monday.  We've worked hard at balancing getting unpacked and keeping ourselves and the kids sane :)  Today is the first day that we are officially able to pull the car in to the garage (just in the nick of time - 0.1-0.2" of ice is due tonight!).  We still have some work to do with painting, getting things on the walls, unpacking the garage, and just in general making the house ours, but we are settled and enjoying our new digs.

"Long"-awaited pics...

just noticed i cut the peak off...

guest/kids' bathroom

walking out the back door to the garage.  garage isn't attached but it's covered from the back door to access the garage.

most of the backyard

cayle's room.  the puppies sleep in his room :)

cayle's room

the girls' room

girls' room.  the dressers are from IKEA.  lindy has decorated them with stickers.  thankfully, the stickers are removable :)

view of the dining room and toy room from the kitchen.  we've purchased a new light for above the dining room table, just waiting to get it installed.

view of dining room from the front door.  that is cayle's tall magnet "museum" he built today. 

my handyman husband installed the pan shelf and hangers.

washer and dryer in a small room just behind the kitchen on the way out the back door.

taken from the kitchen, cayle's door has santa on it, girls' door is left of his door, bathroom is on the left just past the counter top

fridge and pantry, taken from same spot as last picture

more kitchen

kitchen, that door leads to the laundry room and then outside

other wall in dining room and toy room

looking to get a different shelf to replace that wire rack.  anyone going to IKEA soon???

living room.

that orange couch folds out to a queen bed!

from living room looking toward tv and toy room

the french doors lead to our bedroom

ignore the clothes on our bed!

master closet

leading out to living room, door on right is to our bathroom

from our bedroom

master bath

Come visit us soon :)

 

My Christmas presents

Came in!!! I love them!!!

Green Juice Cleanse

I decided to ring in 2015 with a 3 day juice cleanse. The one I chose was the green juice cleanse by The Food Babe. http://foodbabe.com/2011/10/21/why-juice-fast/ All of the juices come from Organic green veggies and fruit. It's important to use Organic whenever possible to avoid putting extra chemicals into your system that you are trying to get rid of.

My goal was to cleanse my system, and kick start weight loss to get ready for bike racing season. 

After 3 days, I can confidently say that this was one of the more challenging things I've done. Simply because I love food and love to eat! I ended up losing 8 pounds!!! The juice is an excellent way to get all the nutrients you need. Low calories, high nutrients. It's important to juice instead of smoothies because the juice removes the fiber. No fiber gives the digestive system a rest. I was taking in 5-700 calories a day, although you could easily do more. I never really felt hungry, but had some major intense cravings for specific foods. Mostly salty type foods and pasta. (Natalie and the kids had pasta delivered one night...) 

I could only drink juice, herbal tea, water, or cranberry juice in water (helps with energy, and to dispel cravings) 

Breakfast was always Ravishing Red juice.  

Lunch was usually Kickin Kale.

Dinner was Rainbow Bite or Cabbage Patch Kid

I usually didn't mind the Kale or Ravishing Red. The Cabbage Patch Kid was fairly tasty. I wasn't a fan of the Rainbow Bite, but to be fair, I did add too much garlic.

I also added one juice from this website. There are many more options on this site, however not all of them are green. One day I just needed an extra snack, so I had one of the sweeter juices. It really helped, as the greens seem extra bitter after time. 

You also have to be careful coming off the cleanse. If you pig out after, you will put weight right back on, as well as probably upset your stomach. You have to remember you have only had juice for 3 days. Your stomach has shrunk and if you put too much food into it, it could lead to major stomach ache. It's recommended that you only juice and eat fresh veggies the few days after. However, I could not really follow that. I did have juice for breakfast with a few almonds. The big salad below with fresh veggies for lunch, then Natalie and I had only Kyler with us so we went out for dinner at TGI Fridays. I had a pretty decent size salad with chicken and some pretzels for an app, with a beer, but only finished about half my salad because I felt so full. 

Lessons learned? 
- It's incredibly tough being around good real food and not eating it. 
- ORGANIC veggies used at the quantity I was using them is very expensive! 
- I would like to juice every day because the amount of nutrients you get from low calories is  amazing!
- It's a good way to kick start weight loss.  
- I learned I can get by on much fewer calories than I would have ever thought I could.
- It proved to me that as a society we eat way too much crap food!!!
- I'm happy I did it for the experience, but would have a tough time doing it again in the future, unless Natalie or someone else would do it with me. Having someone to juice fast with would make it much easier. 

Done!

That was much tougher than I expected, but I'm done. 3 days of green juice. I'm ready to chew some food!

Juice Cleanse

My intake for the next 3 days...

Extended Brummer Christmas

Dr. Cayle working on his patient patient. Thanks to Godmother Tina for the new doctor kit, Lindy gets ALL her ailments taken care of right away!

Brummer Christmas today. Some people missing, but still lots of cousins. Here Little miss Lindy gets to eat by grandma great!

6 out of 7 of the great grand kids born in 2014. Makes for 132 great grand kids!!! (I think that's correct.)

1st date

Of the new year. Unfortunately cut short by Lindy Leighn waking up and freaking out that mommy and daddy were gone... Oh the joys that children bring. When we rushed home to console her, she was happy as can be... We got a good 90 minutes at The Firefly though. Good for a couple of beers and an app. 

Happy New Year!

Must do a better job blogging in 2015! We've had many ups and a few downs this year. Looking forward to a great year! Thanks for reading!