Catching up... Part 2

On the 2nd... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! I turned 24! One more year and I'll be a quarter of a century! Eww... The night before we had a little party with Preston's parents. It was mostly cake... mmmm, carrot cake.... But between Christmas and my birthday they gave me about half the money I needed to get a new camera. (More about the camera later) The day of we just kinda hung out and relaxed. It was oddly nice. Sometime in the mid afternoon we went over to my Aunt Therese's house for a game day she was having. We played Quelf. If you haven't played this game before you have to! And when you do don't be a bum and whimp out on following the instructions given. Just do it! I have never had so much fun playing a board game before! By the end of it my hair was a wreck and my muscles were sore from laughing so hard. Needless to say it's now my FAVORITE game! I need my own now!

     A few days later Preston's friend Matt came to town for a wedding. We had talked to him and worked out that we were going to buy his old SLR camera from him. My current plan is to go into photography. I've been practicing a lot with my little Kodak but it can only do so much. This thing is AWESOME! I've been working with Photoshop a lot too (mostly teaching myself how to use it). I can't wait to get started! Let me know if you want me to practice on you and you'll probably come out of it with some free pictures. I hoping that by the end of the year I'll feel confident enough with my work to start a business. The camera is a digital SLR Rebel XT. I LOVE it!
     This year we finally got a later time for church. It was at 8AM when we moved in when I was pregnant, and they kept the 8AM over through the next year. In December they announced that we were moving to 1PM church. I would have preferred like 10 or 11 but hey sleeping in is good too! Yay! On our second Sunday the whole stake had a great big meeting in the evening. Dun-da-dun! They tell us that they are rearranging all of the ward boundaries and adding a new ward to the stake! So we went and ... THEY CHOPPED OUR WARD IN HALF!!! They added a little of another ward to ours and gave us a new name. We were the Lindsay Ward in the Hermosa Vista Stake before and now we are the Lehi Crossing Ward. I like it. It feels right, ya know? It was sad to know I won't be seeing so many of the people I had finally gotten to know every Sunday, but now I get to meet a bunch of new ones! The 3rd Sunday of the year we attended our new ward for the first time and finally got to really see who we knew and didn't know. Guess what time it started? Nope, 8:30! We moved a whole half an hour later.... woo.... woo.... Here's the strange and magical part: Preston only needed an extra half an hour to sleep and then get ready for church so we were actually on time! Amazing! (Let the rolling of the eyes commence.)
     And my final topic in my whole catch up series... Drumroll please.... I'm on a new diet! *cricket, cricket*......... Yeah, yeah I know. Hear me out, k? I started this thing on the 12th. Today is 27th. That's 15 days. I have lost 18 pounds!!! Oh. Yeah. Don't freak out, it's safe, I checked. It's called the hCG Diet. The original protocol was developed in the 50's by a Dr. Simeons. He wrote a pamphlet/small book called Pounds and Inches (click for the original protocol) that explains in detail what it is and how it works. The terminology and science are outdated but the method is sound and works very well. It has sort of evolved since then too making it a lot easier for an average person to use it. HCG is the hormone that at home pregnancy tests read. I've been taking drops of the hormone and have adjusted my diet to fake out my body to think I am pregnant. In a pregnant woman hCG makes her stored fat available as nutrients for the baby. This is why a baby can survive the first three months of pregnancy when many women can barely keep anything in their stomachs. I have been eating a very strict and semi-complicated diet of 500 calories a day. I feel great! The hormone acts as a appetite suppressant so I haven't felt as hungry as I thought I might. I've been living off my own stored fat instead. One of the big differences between this and other diets is on a regular diet your structural fat generally goes first and people tend to look drawn and haggard. With hCG your structural fat is untouched. One of the really cool parts of it is that it's self restricting. You cannot lose more than what your DNA predetermined you should weigh. Everyone keeps asking about it so I've added a link for the original protocol. If you want more let me know and I can send you an e-mail with everything.

This is the picture hanging on my fridge giving me inspiration to not eat what I can't have. I'm like 13-14 in this picture. I'm aiming to have that waistline again!
     Wow I didn't mean for that to turn into some kind of sales pitch, it's just that when you tell someone hey I'm taking a hormone, eating only 500 calories, and losing weight ridiculously fast they tend to worry about your mental health. Soon there will be a before and after picture on here to show you my progress. Not right away because while I'm doing good, I still have a lot to go! But 18 pounds!?!? It's just falling off of me! Everyone can already see a difference and I am loving it! My plan is to do two 6 week rounds of the diet with the required 6 week maintenance phase in between and then... we will try for our second baby! This time I won't be a fat blob who through the first 6 months people wonder "Is she pregnant or fat?" Nope, I'm gonna be one of those cute ones with a baby bump! Oh yeah!
     Oh my goodness!!! Preston just called me (seriously just NOW) with the most fantastic news!!! It makes the 2 pounds I lost this morning sound like having chocolate ice cram compared to taking a vacation in Hawaii. I'm not allowed to announce it yet as it needs a lid on it for now in case certain people read my blog. But it's sooooo exciting!!! Don't worry I will tell you as soon as I'm allowed! How's that for a little suspense?

Catching up... Part 1

     I know it's nearly February but I haven't gotten the chance to tell you all about Christmas! It was a unique Christmas compared to all the others Preston and I have had since we got married.
     The weekend before Christmas itself, Preston, Chloe, the puppies and I all went to Heber to visit. It was one of the off years when not everyone can make it there to visit so we thought it would be fun to go by ourselves. It was nice to just take the dogs too instead of leaving them here with Preston's parents. For once I knew they wouldn't bug anyone (cept my dad and their evil cat Satan Savannah) and I knew they wouldn't get eaten by Moose (my brother Louis's monster sized dog aka: a mastiff). I got some long tie downs for the dogs to play outside without me having to worry about them. Course I did anyways cause it was so stinkin' cold up there. We really enjoyed ourselves relaxing and enjoying dad's cooking..... Mmmm.... Homemade Pizza!
     On our way back home from Heber we stopped in Payson for the Pitterle Family Christmas Party. There was lots of yummy mexican food (as is our usual tradition) and we played that white elephant gift exchange game everyone always plays (another tradition).

     (My uncle Brian and his son Mason-->)
We ended up with 2 games: Disney Scene It, and Banana Gram??? I guess it's like Scrabble, whatever. This time I knew to avoid the rum cake. (One year I had it thinking it was just my Grandma Mum's wonderful (edible) fruit cake, but was told afterwards that it was also soaked in rum, oops! Guess who had a low tolerance and got tipsy?)  
     Christmas started Christmas Eve for us (kinda on accident?). We decided to hang out with Preston's family that night because we were going to start our day at my mom's house two streets over. My mom called us and told us to come open presents because Selena and Josh couldn't wait any longer (spoiled brats goofballs). So we headed on over and opened presents till about 3AM. Chloe was STILL AWAKE! She loved all the toys Grandma Gaye got for her!

     The next morning afternoon we had our own little Christmas under our own tree. We dilly dallied around for a bit then got dressed, and went over to Preston's family. Once again, Chloe was showered in presents! A few hours later we went back to my mom's house for the Cheney Family Christmas Party. That was a lot of fun too. We played 20 questions with my cousins and ate yummy mashed potatoes and gravy! There was other food too but the highlight for me is always the spuds, so everything else is forgotten!

     The next day, we went to my sister Lori's house to have yet another Christmas party (The Pitterle/Hinchey Christmas Party)! There were more potatoes and gravy and Patty burned the green beans. No one was sad to see them go but she scraped off the burnt part and saved them. We exchanged presents and I got a cute new purse! It was so nice to see all my siblings again (I see them about once a year).
     Ok, this is getting long so I'm gonna stop here and start on another post. Hope you don't mind but we've had a lot going on!