Trip to the Uni

The trip to uni went really well. Geordie was excited not to have to go to school. He was an angel all day. Hes my special little one :)   There was a lot of people there at orientation week so it had a very different feel :)  Its changed a lot since I went there in 1997, but somethings never change. Here he is infront of the beautiful sandstone buildings which line the great court. 

It was nice to show him a massive library, which is only one of 24 libraries the university has. Here he is sitting in a lecture hall with fold out desks. 

 Geordie's favourite parts were eating pizza and walking over the bridge.

That pizza place was there when I went to uni and I know it was there long before that too. It is still incredibly fine pizza :) and only $11 :) Gotta love university prices :)










I wish they had a bridge when I was living near the uni. I used to pay a dollar each way to get across the ferry.

 After going to the uni we headed to Chermide shopping centre to get some pearl tea. We both love that stuff :) Its nice to know someone who enjoys it as much as me.

I decided to let him build a bear. Here he is holding down the pedal while the bear stuffs.

We chose a sound to go in his hand and a strawberry scent patch. He had a choice between putting in on his tummy or on his butt.





 Hes a seven year old boy...what do  you think he chose?


That's right! And he found it absolutely hilarious x

Here he is filling out  Elmo's birth certificate. And they even have a bear promise as well. It was such a nice experience. I want to take Jules on his special Mum day :)





After that Geordie had a chance to see Jules' Autism Queensland School. He has been wanting to see it for a long time so he found that special.

Pretty nice digs :)

Jules loves the freedom of the spring free trampolines! The school has 3 of these big, beautiful tramps :)

Tired, so tired

Ahhh yes, now I remember the real reason why I began walking daily. So that I would have more energy. I can't believe how lethargic I have been lately. Tommorow I am going to take Geordie out of school so that he can have a tour of The University of Queensland, or UQ. I will have a good chance to get a walk in then.

My instinct is that I am not going to get pregnant this round. I am going to obsess about it as little as possible, I really don't need a repeat of last months disaster!

I had a big chat about it with Jase, We are both scared of having another little one, its been so long since we had a baby and they do turn your life upside down. I had a big chat with Jason last night trying to determine where his head is at. He said that he wants a baby, but not as much as me, and he too worries about the same things.

Let the tests begin!

Fertility tests got done today. The doctor wanted it to be timed for ovulation, but I am fairly sure the 21 day test is to check that you have ovulated. I saw the doctor to make sure and then got the test done today which is ovulation day.

This is easily the best work up to ovulation we have ever had. We have sperm from the 5th, 3rd and day before ovulation so its looking good. What is extra impressive is that Jason has managed to get there each time we have gone for it, even last night when he felt a bit ill.

I am grateful as for the cauliflower veggie soup I cooked up a few days ago. It is so yummy and its great to have insta-great-food available when we are hungry. I found tossing in some spinach leaves is quick, palatable, healthy and bulks it out a bit.

When I was in the doctors office I saw my father in law there and I really couldn't avoid him so I said hi and started chatting. He asked why I was at the doctors and I lied and said its because my arm hurts. (It does hurt, but that wasn't why I was there). Then my mother in law rang to worry about my heart, and recommended weight loss and physiotherapy. Thank god I didn't tell them the real reason I was there. I don't want people to wonder even more about when/if/how I will get pregnant.

I have no money and a messy house so it is officially a no shopping week. Instead I got a good book from the library and had a 2 hour nap and then went about washing sheets and tidying my room up.

Jules is getting a belly from eating too much cheese and cake after school. So I pointed to his belly and said that he is getting fat and that he needed to eat more vegetables that vegetables were the answer to weight loss. He touched my belly and seemed to be understanding that that is what I mean by fat. The next day he asks for a carrot from the fridge, there was none. He asked if the cucumber was a vegetable and I said yes that would be good for him to eat if he was hungry. He then gave it to me, I took a bite and he literally expected me to transform like magic into a slim person! LOL bless, kids keep you surprised and laughing :)

The girls got away!

It has been a very busy weekend :) First we took the kids to circus :) Look at these two cuties :)

Then Jason dropped me off at at Karen J's house and Michelle came and picked us and Nikki up and off went to our mini holiday!

We laughed our heads off on the drive to the gold coast. We were telling the giggly private stories that close girls tell when no-one else is around:)



We arrived at our beautiful hotel room and then set up our afternoon tea (also my lunch :). I brought watermelon and grapes and banana bread. All the food was pretty much off the calorie scale :) So I ate a couple of bits of fruit between each treat.

An amazing afternoon tea which was so comfortable and yummy. With the wine we think it would have cost about $50 a head so we were very pleased with ourselves. And we had no time limit!

After the food we just flopped on the couch, to relax and digest lol. At this point I noticed my voice was starting to go! Too much talking! So I started to pace myself, and my voice lasted the night.

The other girls were feeling the same so I pulled out my beading box for the girls to share. Sue, Michelle and Nikki had never made jewellery before so it was a pleasure to show them how easy it is to make necklaces and earrings :) All that concentrating also gave our voices a chance to recover :)

Still full from our afternoon tea, and proud of our jewellery creations we were ready for a change of pace. We had time for a dip in the pool. Swimming at night is lovely :)

We had a shower, popped on some heels and called a cab to go to dinner.

The cab arrived almost immediately :) The girls arranged for us to go to "Outback Jacks".





That's a restaurant that pretty much only sells meat lol. That's okay, I managed to order a salad with meat :)  I had a half glass of wine, and half a serve of chips. I would have preferred to go out to a Thai restaurant. That's my idea of decadence. 'Next time gadget" lol.






A super fast cab drove us back to the hotel and we settled in for a girls move...only to discover there was no dvd player! (Who does that?)


It was probably better that way as we had a great time chatting and eventually headed off to bed.

The morning started slowly and with so many Mums used to cleaning up after other people the hotel was left immaculate! This is my lovely mother-in-law Sue, and sister-in-law Margi, you know you are close when in-laws get invited to girls getaways!

Jason gave the boys a great "guys weekend"! They didn't miss out. Gawd I love that hubby of mine!

Asking for help

Wednesday I went and saw a doctor to get help with not falling pregnant. She was supportive and  ordered quite a few tests straight off the bat. She ordered an ultrasound of the pelvis, and some tests for poly cystic ovarian syndrome. At this point I don't think I have PCOS because my periods are really regular, and I don't have facial hair or acne.

The tests she ordered are: FBE, E/LFTs, TSH, FSH, LH Day 21 Progesterone, Testosterone, FAI.

That's a lot of stuff I don't know about, so I am going to take some opks and when I get the double lines go in and get the tests done. Ovulation is supposed to happen on Monday. So hopefully it does, because I don't think I can go in on Sunday lol

Part of me feels like I have an increased chance of getting pregnant now that I am starting to ask for help. However I also feel like it wont help that much, because ultimately I have to lose weight and that seems so impossible.

I have another reason to get control of my health. My blood pressure is getting too high. It was 120/92. That lower number has been high five out of seven measurements. She wanted to put a monitor on me and if it was high 30% of the time then she would put me on medication. I don't want this. I have to fix the problem not band aid it.

That said it is a problem that I need to take seriously. I have ordered a blood pressure monitor. I will be measuring daily. I have a lot of work to do on my body. I feel so lethargic lately. I would say that is largely because I haven't been doing any grand exercise. And it has been so yucky and hot.

Since I saw the doctor I have been eating really well. One of my favourite meals is my coconut veggie soup: Saute onions in stock, add in plenty of chopped cabbage and cauliflower and 1/4 cup of ground cashews. Add enough stock to cover. Add in garam masala, tumeric and a little pepper (the pepper allows your body to absorb the curcumin in the tumeric). Simmer untill veggies are done, then add in about 75 ml of light coconut milk. Blend the soup together to as smooth/chunky as you like it. Then add in some frozen corn and peas, and chopped coriander. Add a little coconut palm sugar and salt. Eat away, guilt free, Yum!

Today I had oats sweetened with sultanas, frozen mangos, frozen blueberries, chia seeds and a dash or whole soya bean milk. Lunch was about 3 cups of the soup, afternoon tea was lots of grapes, dinner was fish and veges, night snack was two cups of tea. So I am pretty happy with that. My weight is now 100.0 kilos, so I reversed most of the damage from before and I only need to lose 300 grams and I am in a new number :)

Speaking of damage... tomorrow I am going out for a girls weekend :) So I will take my boys to circus and then get dropped off at my friend Karen's, Michelle will then take us and Nikki in her car to the Gold Coast. When we arrive we will have a diy high tea, play around with make up and dressing up and then head out for dinner. After dinner we will probably have wine and a giggle and then go out for breakfast. Its going to be a naughty weekend as far as food goes, but we will survive :)

Then Margi will take me back to her house and Jason will be there aswell. We will then take the boys out to dreamworld. So its a huge weekend. Thank god I don't have too many big ones like that.

Check out Jules: "Keep talking, Im taking you very, very seriously..." lol :) --->

I have been religious with reading every day with Jules and the results are starting to pay off, its pure joy to hear him speaking more and more :)

Through the wringer

 Hi Everyone,

I have been gone because I have been through the "Am I, or am I not pregnant?" wringer. From about 9 days after ovulation (which is too early I know), I just want to know. It becomes fairly obsessive and time consuming. Its not fun because I spend about a week of my time there. I have learned to obsess silently. But it still does MY head in lol. So that's where I have been.

The reason it drives me so crazy is that there are only two ways to answer that question: either I get two lines on the pregnancy test which NEVER happens, or I get my period. And until one of those things happens I am in baby crazy land and it takes me a while to come down from the clouds and focus again.

This cycle was made worse by the fact that my period was two days late! So I had two more days to get hopes up and reach my full baby crazy potential.

My period came. Sigh.

I am going to see a GP this week and try and kick off some medical help.

See ya tomorrow.

Reflections

Hellooooo pre-period. Thanks for all the extra cravings!

There have been too many cheats, not enough salads and I know the scales are about to reflect that. Damn I am not so good at this losing weight thing.

However I am still proud of myself.

In January I managed to give the kids a fabulous holiday as well, with trips to the beach, Dreamworld, fireworks, swims, rest and visits with friends. How many holidays do we have without a weight gain? Its been a great month :)

I also went from not knowing how to jog at all to jogging 4.5 mins straight. I ate a lot better and fed the family much healthier meals. People are starting to come to me for advice on healthy juicing recipes and I am getting a bit of a reputation for someone who eats well. I snuck into the double digits (99 kilos)

Yes it was only three kilos not five, but hey, a loss is a loss and I know from the past that after that red witch shows up I tend to be past the starving crazy lady in a bakery stage and back into control. So sanity is just a few days away :)

I am also going through the grieving process of it being another month, where everything looked set for a pregnancy but still no pregnancy. I know it is too early to test (10 days past ovulation), but after 16 months of trying, I seem to be skipping the hopeful stage and just going through the grieving early. Its a little easier than the complete devastation of the 14 dpo negative test followed swiftly by the finality of the red witch.

Looking ahead I have my birthday coming up and I intend to get sand in between our toes and salt on our skin with an awesome beach experience. It will be a vulnerable time as I will be away from my kitchen. I will have to make sure I pack heaps of fruit to snack on to do some damage control.

Three weekends away is our "Girls Getaway" which is going to be awesome and potentially fattening lol.

This month I hope to get from 99 to 95 kilos. I aim to complete week 3 of the c25k program, maintain the awesome effort I am putting into educating the kids and get some projects knocked off around the house.

Sunday Runday

I spent the morning feeling tired despite having 8 1/2 hours sleep. The energy in the house was low today. Jason was sitting on the computer (where he loves to be in his spare moments) and I asked him to choose the motherboard and cpu for my new computer. Its the one part of the new computer that I can't choose for myself. It really sucks in our relationship when something that has to be done and it can only be done by Jason as he is the king of procrastination and indecisiveness!  I asked him a few times and MrLazyPassiveAggressive sneaks off to sleep again even though he had a decent sleep in already.

So in a Isn'tOurFamilyHealthyRightNow kinda way. I decided to let it go and he can sleep a lot longer than he initially expected to as I am not waking him up. He has been sleeping for 4 hours and  I am perfectly happy to let him sleep his weekend away. At least its peaceful lol.

I baked a vegan cake today. It turned out ok. Its a teff vegan cake so its never going to be amazing. But its fun to try new things. And Jules ended up eating some, so thats pretty cool. Usually any vegan baking gets totally snubbed by the kids lol.

Next time I want to try it with a cup of almonds, and only a tablespoon of coconut oil, and half teff/ half wheat. One day I will be able to make
a decent plant based cake lol.




I have been checking out a new blog today. Its called Fab Chick Gets Fit. I am enjoying her sass and that above image is from her blog.

I just went out for my jog. Its been a week since my last confession jog. So I am still on week 2. Bonus it that I didn't lose fitness and I managed to do the week 2 workout, my 4 mins 30 seconds straight jogging, and an extra 4 mins of jogging after all that was done.

I am thinking of not doing swimming lessons this term. Instead I will alternate jogging and teaching the kids to swim with Thursdays and busy weekends off. I am going to have to pump up the kids bikes as Jules is starting to struggle with keeping up with me. Geordie is my main concern. Hes not good on a bike and he doesn't go on half the runs with me. Maybe I will have to start doubling back so that I can still jog with him.

It was another friends birthday and she wanted to go bowling. I even managed to win a game. I had warned Jules about going out weeks before and he was perfect with no acting up, just some relief when I came home.

Still trying

Jules loves mountains and has been spending time on google earth looking at some nearby ones. So to reward him we took a drive up one:)

We were spontaneous with it. To have some food to munch we swung into the shops and got a spinach, cheese and garlic "pull-apart" bread loaf, and a huge bunch of grapes. Yum!

Here is Jason and Jules at the lookout point of Clear Mountain. 

While we were out and about, we swung by "Bullocky's Rest" which is near where we live. Jason is thinking of taking Jules there for a bike ride tomorrow. 

I knew that driving around wouldn't be Geordie's thing so we dropped him off to get spoiled by Grandma for a couple of hours. It worked out really well as everyone had a peaceful time with lots of attention spent on the kids.

When we got home we rested for a while and then I gave the kids another swimming lesson in the pool. What we do is race, with me coming up close behind them, it makes them compete and try their best, and they are so proud of themselves for winning ;)

I went out for dinner to celebrate my friend Kate's birthday. I reminded myself that I didn't have to a great dinner, it just had to be healthy. I got a salad which I quite enjoyed. It was great because I drank iced water and the whole night cost $16. There was a lot of people there and it looked like Kate had a good time. I sat next to an interesting fellow so I was happy. As nice as it is to go out, its so cosy to come home to my snuggly little family. 

After making some healthy choices today and rejecting the tempting birthday cake, I feel that I am back on the wagon. Full mojo doesn't return untill day 3 of being good, but I am definitely on the recovery from last weeks shocks. I am looking forward to lots of healthy choices, because when I "ate normally" for a few days I felt soooo sick. My body was NOT HAPPY!