Just stopping in to say hello. Hubby and I enjoyed the weekend in Washington with our grandson. He's such a delight. He's about 2 1/2 and starting to talk quite a bit. He knows a lot of letters, colors, numbers and animals. He's learning about body parts (grandma's nose, eyes, mouth, cheeks) and just beginning to show an interest in potty training. He LOVES grandma's spaghetti. LOL I made it for dinner Friday night and that's all he wanted for breakfast Saturday morning. Despite my hopes, the weather was awful on Saturday. When my son and daughter-in-law got home we all went to a holiday bazaar and then to a tree farm for a Christmas tree. The weather was cold and rainy and my grandson was asleep in the car, so we just found a couple trees real quick, cut them down, tossed them in the vehicles and that was the end of the tree farm escapade.

I still have not bought much of anything for Christmas gifts OR done any decorating in the house. Maybe tomorrow? We did get the Christmas lights hung outside on Sunday, but we keep popping a circuit breaker so apparently have too much of a load going on. We don't really even have that many lights, but it's an old house. We've turned off a few things and it stays on for awhile, then it goes out again. Frustrating!

Aliza - our weather forecast is for rain and wind every single day this week. Today we got nearly 3 inches of rain and more than that for tomorrow. There's been some local areas of flooding, as well. It just rains a lot here and we're used to it. This is just the beginning. In Oregon the rainy weather can last for 6 months, but it is also the reason everything here is so green even in high summer. How exciting you are going to India! That's on my dream vacation list! Also want to go to Egypt and see the Great Pyramids, but might not be a great idea right now with all the unrest in that region. I don't know. That reminds me I need to check on my frequent flyer miles. I'm sure I have a lot built up and really should plan a trip somewhere.

I'm kind of in the same boat re: weight. I've been exercising and eating under my calorie goal daily, but the scale hasn't budged since the week before Thanksgiving. Might be that glass or two of wine every evening - even though it's within my calorie goal somehow the alcohol seems to make that much of a difference. I had a Christmas luncheon to go to today so dressed up a little with a sequin sweater and a pair of red slacks. The pants were actually too big for me, so that was a nice surprise! I wore them anyway, because they are red (for Christmas) LOL and the sweater was longer and covered up the baggy butt. I am going to get rid of them. I feel like I'm between sizes right now. Most of my clothes are either too big or too small. Mostly I'm wearing yoga pants and track jackets these days. Closets jam packed full of clothes and nothing to wear. Story of my life!!

Hope you all have a wonderful week! Stay healthy!

Rae

All of your Christmas preparations and activities sound like so much fun!

My husband went on a rampage today (all in good spirits) about how we set our goal NOT to eat the yummy potato pancakes and doughnuts that everyone eats here for Hanukah. He was determined that we eat some of each this time around. We had friends over who are leaving for a trip to Cuba tomorrow and I made potato pancakes. Had two of them and they were well worth whatever calories they actually had (MFP says some ridiculously small amount of calories but that can't be true). He also brought up jelly filled doughnuts and caramel filled doughnuts (my personal fav) and I indulged his fancy and ate a half a caramel doughnut. Still came in under my calories. We'll see how weight in goes on Friday a.m.

Spent several hours today going through all the stuff in my two closets. Packed up 2 and 1/2 big garbage bags full of purses, belts and lots and lots of clothes and took them to the 2nd hand place in our community where people can buy any item for 50 cents. Not only is there room in both closets now but I actually know what I have...and know that I don't need to be out shopping. Pretty funny since my husband got me a gift certificate to one of my favorite clothing stores and another one to a fun make-up store (like Mac or Sephora) for Hanukah. I'm sure I'll manage to use both.

Didn't have enough passion for the task of trying on all the pants, though. I'll save that for another day. Wide pants legs? When were those in fashion? I sure have a lot of them. And they look awful. Will I think my skinny leg pants look awful a couple of years from now? Maybe tomorrow I'll try on pants.

Promised myself I'd get to bed early tonight but looks like that's not going to happen.

I think next month will be the month we ALL jump off our weight plateaus to the next plateau - 5 pounds lighter. All in?

Hugs

Just popping in to say hello. Christmas season busy-ness is already taking over, but I'm determined to enjoy it along the way. We JUST got our tree up Thursday and I put lights on it yesterday. That's as far as we've gotten. SO LATE for us. We normally dive in right after Thanksgiving . . . . except for that one time . . . . .

Funny little story that I'll share (hopefully quickly). Our son was living in LA and decided to come home for Christmas but he kept waiting to buy his ticket. We kept waiting to hear when he would be coming, but he was procrastinating. He had asked us to wait to put up the tree until he got home. It was our family tradition to go out to the tree farm and cut one down together. So we waited. He finally got here late the night of December 23rd, so there we were on Christmas Eve trying to find a tree farm open. No dice. (and we live in Christmas Tree capital of the world). Farms are everywhere, but nothing was open. We couldn't even find a tree lot that was still open! So, we came home, took a potted fir tree that we had in the backyard, hubby and sons vacuumed it really well with the shop vac (to get rid of any spiders), and we brought it indoors. Lights and decorations turned it into a cute little tree. We only had it inside for about 3-4 days, but that was a fun and funny Christmas tree that year!

Hope everyone's Christmas and Hanukkah holidays are going well!

Seems to me that some holiday treats (within limits, I suppose) are in order.
My husband has drilled it into my head that being proud of getting through an entire holiday without enjoying a single special food related to the holiday is a sign that things have gone way too far. He's my anchor, that man! Even after 40 years.
Yet another thing to be grateful for in this season full of gratitude.
Hang in there, buds.

AEPHubinc2015 wrote: »

PS I'm no longer vegan but often take a glance into vegan cookbooks because there are some yummy, interesting recipes.
Came across a great little new book called 10 Minute Vegan Recipes by Sally Primrose last night. Downloaded it for 99 cents and looked through the entire thing. Quick, easy recipes. Ingredients look familiar for the most part. Some interesting combinations. I plan on trying a bunch of them.
Just saying...

I'll have to check that one out! I'm not vegan either, but I eat a lot of vegetarian dishes just because I like them. I'm not a big meat eater anyway, so I tend to make a lot of veggie based meals without giving it much thought. My daughter-in-law is allergic to eggs and dairy. I don't eat gluten or soy, so going with vegan recipes usually meets everyone's dietary restrictions. (Sometimes is IS a challenge, LOL)

I do love spicy food. Sometimes it doesn't like me back, which always annoys me!

I've never heard of breamer curry! I tried to look it up and all I could find were recipes in another language (German?). I've only had eggplant a couple times in my life. My mother is allergic to it, so we never had it growing up.

Christmas is coming way too quickly. I need to get busy with wrapping. I get stuck in baking mode and just keep going until I run out of steam. I need to stop already.

Plus, my father-in-law is back in the hospital so we've been running back and forth for several days now again.

Hope everyone is well. I haven't seen Lin online here in a couple weeks now. I hope she is OK!

Merry Christmas Everybody!

I think the thing about going off track isn't the going off track itself. Why not? Every now and then for special occasions. The thing is that it can be so hard to get back ON track. If you do that, what the heck! After all that baking and cooking for everyone else - I can't even imagine not tasting from all the goodies!! I hope you super enjoyed whatever you ate and drank!!

Good to see you back posting. Hopefully others will straggle back in as they recuperate from the holidays.

AEPHubinc2015 wrote: »

Back in my size 10 jeans...barely...yay!

That's awesome!! I'm hopeful to get back into size 10's!! My size 12 jeans were getting a bit loose (before Christmas) but not enough (in my mind) to warrant looking for new jeans in the smaller size. I've also noticed that most of my yoga pants (size L) are feeling a bit loose and I keep having to pull them up.

Made it to the pool again for aquasize this morning. I'll be glad when this week is over. They've combined the two classes into one for the holiday weeks and it is mega crowded. I bet today there were 25 people. We kept running into each other. Then everyone trying to shower and get dressed at once. I usually go to the later class and there's rarely more than 10 and often only 4-5. Just my size!