Life is good

Summer is moving right along.  I can hardly believe it's all ready my little sister, Sarah's birthday!  August 13th!  Back when I was in school that meant only a couple more weeks until we started and that summer was practically over! 

Life is good.  Everyone gets to have a break from my overabundance of photos of Brie.  We were busy this past week.  I've had a crazy heat rash/eczema situation and after consulting my long distance health care consultants, I decided that I needed to actually get seen and prescribed something.  The at home remedies were not working and my right top and bottom eyelid continued to swell larger and larger each morning.  (Although, thanks to Spencer I learned about Benadryl topical ointment gel, which is awesome to stop my compulsive itching on my arms and torso!)

My doctor here was fantastic and allowed me to come in the same day I called and prescribed some prednisone and ranitidine because my system was getting overloaded with allergens.  It seemed to help immediately.  Phew!

I took a break from my jogging last week to see if it would help the rash go away (the sweat factor) and I'm excited to be back on the jogging ritual.  It makes me feel good about myself that I can do it and I LOVE seeing my miles go up on mapmyride.com where I've started to log my workouts.  :-)  Why didn't I start that earlier?

Anyway, I don't have any photos of Brie that are new to share.  But she's growing and is a happy little girl.  She's started saying "A-mie".  I don't know where she's picked it up and I try to tell her I'm "Mama".  We'll see how long the Amie phase lasts. 

One of these days, I'll get Mat to upload some of his photos and videos from his phone.  He's got some fun ones!

A beach morning

A stick, but no dog to throw it in the water for.

running - her favorite speed

Mom, this is so cool - I am in the water!

Somehow I brought the work phone home with me last night, so this morning Brie and I took it back to it's base and then we took a nice walk along the beach.  It was a beautiful thing to do.  Brie and I walked out into the water, which was nice and warm and just had a lovely time.  :-)

A lovely anniversary evening

Brie and I clapping our hands after throwing rocks in the water.

Here's some pics from our lovely evening at Wehle State Park on our wedding anniversary. It was a beautiful evening and Mat took some really cool pictures of the water crashing over the rocks. 

Good morning!

Gabriella woke up this morning fully rested and ready to go.  When I came into the room to get her out of bed, this is what she was doing and going through everyone's names.  Mama, Dada, Naynay, Ronron, daddy (maddy).  It was so cute, but when I got the camera, she just did her bouncing in crib no talking.  I apologize for my weird laughing/breathing noises in the background!

Reality Check

This weekend, Mat and I decided we'd go for a bit of a bike ride together since Brie enjoys riding in the cushy seat in back.  Well since we were going for a longer than usual one, I decided to wear some biking shorts.  Obviously, I haven't been bike riding in quite awhile and so when I pulled out my biking shorts to put on I had quite the reality check.

I couldn't zip the shorts all the way up and snap the top. 

What?

I didn't realize I'd gotten that chubby. 

I knew that I had lost muscle tone even though I walk a ton and since February have been jogging/running.  I guess that's the problem of weary baggy clothes.  I'm still wearing clothes that I wore 10 years ago...apparently, they are not fitted so when I get chubby I don't notice.

Because I have been exercising and doing stuff, I decided I have to change something else in my life. 

So, I am now a calorie counter.  Or at least being more aware of the amount of calories I'm taking in.  As I've always been a grazing type of eater, I now am looking at serving sizes on the bags of pretzels and yogurt and measuring out and keeping track, so that I don't go over my alloted amount.  No longer am I a growing kid or a nursing mama, so I need to be more "present" when I go to snack or eat my meals.  I've found that serving sizes are surprisingly a lot smaller than you'd think and the calories quickly add up. 

It's been four days...only the rest of my life to go!

A glimpse of Brie

Here are a couple of videos from our trip out to Utah. Gabriella loved Grammy's swing set/slide and trampoline. Plus she loved playing with all of her fun cousins!

A month of fun!

Gabriella and I had an awesome time out in Utah.  We were able to spend loads of time with my mom, saw some friends, then got some fun family reunion action before we headed back to NY.  Brie loved all of her fun cousins that she saw and played with!  You can see more pictures from that trip here, if you haven't all ready.

Then when we got back, I started my summer job.  It's been fun and Brie has loved going to daycare and playing with the other kiddos, which is a relief.  It would be much harder if Brie didn't enjoy going to daycare.  She only goes for a few hours 3 days of the week and the rest of the time the schedule work for Mat to get to spend some one-on-one time with her. 

Mat's parents came to visit the week of the 4th of July and it was a fun visit.  They were able to spend lots of quality time with Brie.  You can see Ron and Naomi's pictures here.   The video below is taken after we went down to The Trolley for some ice cream.

I haven't had much time for updating the blog, but we've been having a great summer and hope you are too!