Oh how I love date nights. We don’t get them all that often so when we do they are that much more special. Grandma (thank you Mom!) babysat the babies so Jeff and I could celebrate our six year anniversary. We are old boring folks and like nothing more than to go to a movie and have some yummy dinner after. This was the first time we left the babies for both dinner and a movie. Normally we go to a movie and then get takeout, but now that the babies are easier and less work we thought we’d try both!! The babies did awesome and of course I (we) had a great time. We saw ‘I Love You, Man’ which was HILARIOUS. It is now in the second spot for my all time favorite movie (my favorite is ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ by the same producer Judd Apatow). I laughed so hard in the movie Jeff even looked at me like I was crazy. Popcorn, candy, and a great movie….what could be better!!! Yummy dinner of course!!! After dinner we headed to one of our favorite restaurants PF Changs. We ate a delicious dinner, so much so that I had food baby and wanted to unbutton my jeans. After dinner on the way back to our car I noticed the driver side door was open. What?!?!?! Either someone broke into our car or someone (I won’t name names) left their door open. It turns out someone (I won’t name names) left their car door open. Jeffs comment was he never wants to hear how much crime there is in Las Vegas if we can leave our car wide open and have nothing turn up missing. Granted, we were in the nice part of town…I can guarantee that if I left my door open in any other part of town this wouldn’t be the case!

To make our anniversary the best ever Jeff surprised me (of a sort) with the best present ever!!!! More on that later.

Dear Jeff,

I honestly don’t know how I got so lucky to find you. You are the love of my life, my soul mate, my best friend, my everything. You are my perfect match and I couldn’t imagine one day without you. Thank you for being such a wonderful husband, friend, and father. I appreciate all that you do for me and our family and love you more than life.

Happy Six Years!!

Love,
The best wife ever

Curly Sue Edition:

The longer her hair gets the more curly it gets so it doesn’t even look like it’s growing!

A case of SERIOUS Bedhead:

We met Auntie Ang and Cousin Marlee at the park this week. This is a park that I don’t normally take the babies to by myself because it is too big with too many hiding spots and dangerous stairs. Usually the babies are pretty good at staying close to me. Not this time. Heaten wanted nothing to do with me so I spent most of the morning looking around frantically making sure I could still see him while he wandered further and further away. Ang commented that she can’t wait for the time she can go to the park and just sit while Marlee plays. Right now she is right there with me, chasing toddlers about hoping they don’t hurt themselves.

I also look forward to the time we can go to the park and they will just run and play and I don’t have to be right there every second. The only problem with this is most of those mothers really annoy the living crap out of me. They take their kids to the park and just let them run wild without watching them at all. We go to the park a lot and every time we go I see kids whose parents are nowhere to be found. The kids are running around pushing the little kids down the slides and out of the way, stepping on their fingers as the little ones climb up the stairs, climbing over them or running past and bumping them to the ground. I know I’m a bit over protective, but come on! Most times the Mom’s are sitting on the bench chatting on their cells or texting with no worries to what their kids are doing. I really try to be nice and tell the older kids to take turns or be gentle and I’ve gotten more than one Mom give me the evil eye for daring to tell her kid anything.

We met a couple of kids last summer - Little J and Big J who are six and eight. The babies love J and J so when we saw them again recently Heaten clapped and ran over to little J. These little boys would be at the park from sun up until dinner time. Let me just say that is 115 in the summer here and they were there ALL DAY LONG. They are really good boys and love to help with the kids, but I always wondered where their Mother was. I found my answer. She sits in the car in the parking lot all day while the kids play. While I’m glad the boys get a chance to run around and play I find it strange that in the MANY MANY times I’ve seen them she has not once got out of the car to check on them.

I am fairly certain I will never become one of those Moms, I can’t be as certain that I won’t tell one of those Moms where to go when their bigger, bully kids hurt Shenzie or Heaten.

Last week when visiting The Pioneer Woman I got a virus. Some trojan/downloader/infostealer thingy. I know it was from her site because my sister got the exact same virus when she was on PW site. I have been scanning, rescanning, deleting, quarantining, and everything else imaginable my computer every single day multiple times. They just keeps coming back. Combine that with the blue screen of death, weird application errors, and slow internet and I’m about ready to chuck my computer out the window! I really, really like my computer but I’m afraid it is time to upgrade to a better and faster model. I really can’t edit photos with all of the nonsense going on so you’ll notice my posts are missing the photos. Thankfully I have my laptop to keep me connected to the world and if all else fails and I get really desperate I can always use my ‘hand me down - but new to me and I love it’ iphone.

If you hear a loud crash it was probably my computer falling from the sky. Watch out below!!!

This week marks two months since I got off my lazy butt and joined the gym. I think my goals last month were a little lofty.

**Month One Goals:
Four days a week at the gym.
One Spin, one pilates, and two days cardio/strength

At Home Workout
1-2 days of cardio on my elliptical at home
Ab Work**

The reality was more like 3 days a week with every other Friday. I gave up spin and pilates. Spin class just isn’t working with my schedule. The night classes are way too late and the weekends the classes are clashing with work.

I really like pilates, but it takes an hour and on weekdays when I take the babies to the playroom I only have an hour of workout time. It leaves no time for strength or cardio.

As for working out at home. Let me just say - hahahahHAHAHahahah. What crack was I smoking?!? I am SO NOT working out at home.

My current schedule:

Monday night when Jeff gets home from work I go to the gym. Let me say what a nice break! Leaving the house, blasting music in my car because I am FREE, getting a break from the night routine and putting babies to bed. I don’t have to rush through my gym routine. The babies are still a little sketchy at the playroom and get antsy if I don’t come back after an hour. Monday nights I can get a really long workout in with zero worry. Also, small as it is I can’t listen to loud music when the babies are in the playroom. I leave one ear open to listen for my name called over the intercom “Lesley Barr, please come to the playroom”. It has only happened once, but you never know if it will happen again. Soooooooooo, anyway, when I go on my own I can blare music as loud as possible in my ears voiding out all the outside noise. I loaded up my ipod with tons of loud, angry, hardcore music that keeps me pumped. I run for 30-40 minutes and do strength - shoulders, back, arms, legs, and abs.

Wednesday morning and every other Friday morning the babies and I go to the gym. Shenzie is getting much better and hasn’t cried the last 3x I’ve left her. Heaten seems to enjoy his playroom time. The gym just pumped up a HUGE bounce castle so hopefully that will keep them happy. I run for 30 minutes and do a mini version of Monday’s strength routine.

Saturday I go to the gym when the babies go down for their nap. Once again I am free and it feels so good to work out really hard.

This months revised goals:
Gym 3-4 days a week. Cardio and strength - two normal workouts and two long workouts.

At home:
One day a week do abs, lunges, dips, and push ups.

Observations:

I thought I would lose weight. I have not lost a pound which surprises me. I did not start working out to lose weight specifically, more to tone up and get stronger, but I really thought I would lose a little something. I’m not bothered by this at all though because I am seeing results.

My trainer suggested using the Elliptical for my cardio. I hated cardio. It was SO boring, the minutes dragging by. The same thing when I work out on our Elliptical at home - BORING. One day I decided to try the treadmill. SO MUCH BETTER. I wasn’t watching the clock nearly as much. I ran track in high school and forgot how much I like running. Apparently I am clumsy and I almost fell off the treadmill so I decided to try the indoor track instead. SO MUCH BETTER! I can do sprints without having to change the machine and then change it back, blah blah. The scenery is much more interesting. The track goes around the entire top floor of the gym with floor to ceiling windows around half of it making it seem much less “gym-y”. The gym is HUGE so there is a lot to see while running. Much less boring than staring at the guy in front of me with a sweaty back. The first time I got on the treadmill I would be huffy puffy after 1 minute. It became 5, then 10. Now I can run for 20 minutes without stopping. And by running I mean jogging - sometimes slow, sometimes fast with occasional sprinting. My goal is to run the entire 40 minutes easily.

I upped my beginning weight on all of the machines by 10 pounds. I am noticing more muscle everywhere. Much less jiggly, more tone. Firmer arms, legs, and booty. I have a mini four pack, but my poor lower belly is just ick. The extra skin from getting so HUGE with the twins is so discouraging and I’m so self conscious about it. I think I am stuck with it minus having surgery which isn’t really an option.

No matter how rough a day I had or how much I don’t want to go some days I always feel SO good leaving. Knowing I did something positive for myself. Getting a break to refresh and recharge is essential to my sanity. As iffy as I was to join and leave the babies in the playroom (my first time leaving them with strangers, so kinda a big deal to me) I feel really positive about joining. I am enjoying working out and getting more fit and strong. Now if I could only stop eating all this chocolate!

A Photo Story - What We’ve Been Up To Edition:

We’ve been baking:

Jumping:

Digging:

Coloring:

Painting:

Riding:

Stamping:

Moonsanding:

Lounging:

Watching TV:

Sliding:

Hugging:

Kissing:

And laughing:

Life is really, really good. I love those little Crazies more than ever!

Lately I have been noticing new freckles popping up on the babies. When the babies were born they had little birth marks (not much bigger than a freckle). Heaten’s is on his left knee and Shenzie’s in in her unmentionable place. She got her second freckle on her back when she was about 1 1/2.

Her third freckle is on her right arm, her fourth on her side under her armpit.

I just noticed another tiny freckle on her left cheek for a total of 5. This month (March 2009) Heaten got his first freckle on his neck. And after freckle checkup I just noticed Heaten’s second freckle on his left temple. Where are they coming from?!?

The older I get the more freckles I get (or ouchies as Heaten calls them) and the more time I spend in the sun the darker they get (even wearing sunblock). I guess we’re all just doomed to have ouchies everywhere.

*On a completely different note - the girl on ANTM with all the freckles is adorable so I guess having freckles isn’t the end of the world.

Between the babies getting sick, trying to go to the gym at night since I can’t take them to the playroom with sickies, a newborn photo session, and the never ending battle of cleaning, laundry, dishes, cooking, and entertaining I feel like I could use a break!! What’s worse is we lost our babysitter awhile back and FINALLY found a new one. Yippee right? Too bad she just got “real” job and won’t be babysitting anymore. =(

How in the world is it April?!? Holy hell does the time ever fly by!!! I guess I should get busy on a new header….oops. Hopefully I’ll get caught up soon and can resume regular posting, photos, and complaining. =)