Summer Slimdown

So this post will need to be short and sweet because I am way overwhelmed with grad work.


I (unfortunately) have gained weight ever since I started teaching. Yes I do walk around the classroom a lot and am on my feet, but I am a stress eater. Kids are frustrating me, grab some Hershey Kisses. Too much to do, too little time, here come the Cheez-its. Not enough time or energy to cook, hello Whataburger. On top of that, I rarely have time or energy to work out in the evening and I am NOT a morning person. I know these are a bunch of excuses but they are my excuses.

I also have migraines (I forget if I have mentioned this on my blog or not). Part of my migraine triggers is that I need to eat enough food and eat every few hours. If I go a long time without eating or don't eat enough, I get a migraine.

Some more background info. I am 5'2'' on a good day. This means I should weigh anywhere from 102-130 (according to some website). In high school, I weighed anywhere from 105-110 (thank you high school metabolism and dancing all the time). In college, I was anywhere from 110-120. Not bad I think. Then I started working :) My heaviest I think has been 135 (I am not sharing this info so people can be like, 135, that's nothing, I weigh such and such. I am doing it so I can document my (hopeful) weight loss. Also remember, I am 5'2''! 135 on me probably doesn't look the same on someone who is taller). The summer I got married, I was able to get down to 118 for my wedding. I am now back in the 130-135 range. The past 2 years have been VERY stressful (and not because of my marriage, because of my work). Last summer I tried working out but I was taking my first grad classes (excuses again, I know).

This summer, I am determined to lose weight! I am still taking 9 hours of grad school (more on that in a later post) but I feel like I have a better handle on then. Plus I'm tired of the excuses and it is now or never. A couple years of go, I downloaded an app called My Fitness Pal. It tracks your calories and then subtracts how much you work out. I have it set for me to lose 1 pound a week. I would like to lose more but I figure I'll start slow. I have been doing it for a whopping 3 days now. :) It has been interesting to track my calories and really think about the food I am putting into my body. My workout has consisted of Just Dance 2. :) I don't know exactly how many calories I burn but there someone who weighs about the same as me put on a calorie counter and burned 190 calories in 30 minutes! This game is a huge plus for me because I am not good a traditional workouts unless I have a trainer kicking my butt. When I am dancing, it is fun and I forget that I am working out. Just Dance 2 really gets your heart beating and is exhausting.

So speaking of, I am off to work out. This week will probably be the easiest because it is my only week this summer where I have nothing to do besides grad work. Hopefully I will start seeing results soon!

Disney World Part 4

So it's Saturday afternoon and I have a few choices, I could be cleaning, working out, or blogging. And you all know what I decided :)

So Monday, we went to Hollywood Studios (formally MGM). I remember this park having some fun rides but easily doable in a day. Of course, one of my favorite rides, Star Tours was closed at the time. :(

I was bummed :(

So of course the first thing we did was get our fastpass for Tower of Terror. Then we started visiting some of the less trafficked rides. The Great Movie Ride takes you through different scenes from famous movies with robots. It was ok, but definitely more fun for kids. Then we saw the film that was about the life of Walt Disney. While we were waiting for the film to start, we saw some relics and replicas of Walt Disney and had our first beaver sighting in this park.

After lunch, we went on Tower of Terror. I will admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this ride. I really enjoy the story and the detailed settings, but I'm not a huge fan of big drops. This ride however is different every time you ride it and I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. Speaking of detailed setting, check out this ceiling... just takes you into a whole other world.

We then rode Rockin Roller Coaster which was not there on my previous trips. I didn't know much about the ride except that it involved Aerosmith. After riding it, I can see what all the hype is about. It was AWESOME! You are pretty much completely in the dark with glow in the dark signs every now and then. LOVED IT!

The lines at the good lines were long and all the fastpasses were used up so we walked around for a bit.

Love Castle!

and of course I had to take this picture :)

We did stand in line for the Backlot Tour. Again, it was ok but hasn't changed much since the last time I saw it. The best part was the Villains display at the end. Fun with pictures :)

I was trying to look evil.

Enchanted!

While at DisneyWorld, I wanted pictures with some of the characters but I did not want to stand in the LONG lines of kids. So as we were walking around, we saw some of the army men from Toy Story and I saw my chance! Oh goodness, this is what happened...

Normal picture

Then he starts following me (Blake of course documents instead of coming to my rescue.)

Trying to nicely have him back off.

After he got his hug, he was happy to go on his way.

Since it was getting later and we had done most of the rides, we decided to go ahead and stand in line for Tower (it really only took 30 minutes) and then we were going to stand in line for Rockin Roller Coaster but it was temporary closed. That is never a good sign for a roller-coaster so we decided to go over to the Toy Story Midway Mania. We hadn't visited it earlier because I had read mixed reviews and the wait time was always about 70 minutes. I guess the wait time should have told me it was a good ride but we decided to wait in line in the hopes that by the time we got out, the Rockin Roller Coaster would be fixed. Good decision! It was so much fun. It was an arcade style game and unfortunately this time, Blake beat me. But we both won the same prize. Second beaver sighting!

When we went back to Rockin' Roller Coaster, it was fixed and we went into the single riders line so we could ride faster. There was an interesting story about some of the people we were in line with but I don't feel comfortable sharing that on the internet for their own privacy so I will tell you in person if you ask. One last random picture.

Yellow Ranger for the win!

Butterflies!

Quick post because it is a weeknight which means TONS to do. Thanks to growing caterpillars at school to show the kids the life cycle and the stories from my friend about ALL the butterflies in her yard, I have decided to try and get some to my yard!

Tonight I bought some butterfly weed to put in our backyard. I made sure to find one that had at least one egg on it so hopefully, we will have at least one caterpillar soon! I will have to take pictures later since I didn't think about it tonight.

I plan to start planning my vegetable and herb garden soon, but with TAKS and the end of my grad class coming up, I feel like I barely have time to breathe. Just a little over a week, and then it will *hopefully* be a lot easier, for at least a little while. :)

BTW, butterfly weed isn't super expensive and could be a fun project to do with your kids!

Disney World Part 3

So I am supposed to be grading papers, but I need a break! So I decided to finally get back to the blog and tell you about our 2nd day in Disney World! I know it has been awhile but we are in FULL TAKS prep mode at school and I just turned in my grad assignment last night. I have one more big assignment then I am done with this class. Then I start my 9 hours of classes for the summer at the end of May.

So we went to Epcot for our 2nd day. I have fond memories of Epcot from my previous trips with my family but this time around, it turned out to be my favorite park! It is the nerd in me that enjoyed all the educational aspects to it. Also, we were there for their Flower and Garden Festival!! Anyone who has been reading this blog know how I have been *trying* to improve our yard and I LOVED all the flowers. To save all of you who don't care about those type of things, I have decided to dedicate a separate blog too all things flowers and gardens and skip it when I talk about our adventures at the park themselves. You are welcome! :)

So we started the day at Spaceship Earth. This is the ride that actually takes you inside the ball at Epcot and goes through the history of Earth. Naturally, I loved it and wish I could take all my students on that ride. :)

This picture was taken later in our trip but it has the Epcot ball in it :)

Then we started wondering around the Innoventions displays. They had some great displays that my students would have LOVED and learned a lot from. Most of them were a little too childish for us but they did have one called the "Sum of all Thrills." Basically, you get to "design" your own roller coaster. I of course let my genius engineer husband Blake do the designing.

These are the "claws" you program your design into. It simulates the ride you designed. Obviously, this isn't us. :)

I think I also got some video of Blake designing but I need to download them into my computer. Once I do that, I will post them in a different post.

Then I drug Blake into the Expo center while we waited for our Fast Passes to become valid. It was sponsored by HGTV and there was some lady there that I think hosts a show. There was a line to take pictures with her and since I didn't know who she was, I just took a picture from far away.

Then we went to the Universe of Energy ride which was ok. It would have been great for my students to see though. It talked all about where we get our energy from. :) I took a picture of Blake in from of it but his eyes are closed and I won't embarrass him by posting it here. :)

Then it was finally time for Mission:Space! I was very excited about this ride especially it warns you 50 million times about getting sick so of course I wanted to prove it wrong. Unfortunately, I did go into it with a headache which did not help with the nausea they warn you about. Basically, you are put into a simulator that spins so it simulates zero gravity, similar to what astronauts train it. Again, lots of cool info that I wish my students could see. :( Do you see a theme with my thoughts about Epcot? :)

As we exited the ride, of course you have to walk through the souvenir shop. Disney is smart. :) We saw these "space helmets." Blake had me try one on for fun and of course, I thought about how I could use this in my classroom. I had just finished teaching my kids about space and I thought it would be funny to teach them about space while wearing the helmet. I look ridiculous in of course, but then it would catch their attention.

Of course, the only picture I have of me in it, my eyes are closed. But since I have no shame, I will still post it here. :) You are welcome.

We were in another souvenir shop and I saw a wall of candy. I was in love! I accidentally bought $13 worth of candy (some of it WAS Blake's, I would like to point out!).

Seriously! Look at all this candy!!!

After all that, we finally started on the World Showcase. The first country was Mexico. It was ok, but since we had already been to Mexico twice,  we didn't stay there very long. I did go back for dinner which made me miss my Houston TexMex :)

Can you find Blake?

Next up was Norway. They had a mini museum on Norway Vikings which was interesting (and guess who I wish could have seen it). And I enjoyed all the architecture. We rode the Maelstrom ride which again was ok, nothing spectacular. We bought a small viking hat for our nephew Austin and Blake made me take pictures with it.

This was taken by some Old Ags :) Ags were ALL OVER Disney World :)

Love it!

Blake in front of the Maelstrom mural.

Oil rigs! My dad has done business with Norway :)

Front of our boat

Grass on the roof?

I wasn't happy Blake was making me take this picture...

But I smiled anyway :)

Blake with the troll topiary. They had topiaries ALL over the park, but those will be in the other post.

Blake wanted to eat dinner in Germany so briefly looked at China and then went over there. I also forgot to post a picture from my dinner in Mexico. (Yes, I am a picky eater so we ate in 2 places)

Isn't he so handsome? :)

View across the lake with random people in it.

Cuckoo clock!

After all of that, we were wiped and knew we would be spending another day at Epcot later, so we left.

So that is "all" we did on our second day. Relieving the memories here makes me miss it and thankful for the time Blake and I were able to spend together. I should get back to grading now. :( Hopefully I will be able to post again sooner rather than later but will TAKS coming up, it might be awhile. Thanks for reading to the end!