Interesting Stuff, hmmmm

I'm getting back on the diet and exercise band wagon. Ryan wants to try to get me back in a bikini by the end of the summer!!! (ha, ha! not sure that will ever happen with the "birth marks" my girls gave me). Anyway, I was trying to figure out how many calories I need to have in a day to start dropping some pounds. Though personally, I'm more worried about appearance than weight, but I guess they go together. Well, searching around on the internet I found a couple of formulas to figure out a number. I just thought I would share my findings since it seems everyone is watching their weight these days.
These calculations are based on activity level. So if you don't like to exercise (but honestly you need to exercise to have a healthy heart at least!) you can figure out your daily calorie requirements even if you are 'sedentary'. Anyway, here are the formulas:

Sedentary: 13 x current weight = Average calories needed per day to maintain current weight.
(sedentary being no exercise)
Moderate: 16 x current weight = Average cal. needed per day to maintain current weight.
(moderate meaning you exercise 3-4 times per week)
Active: 19 x current weight = Average cal. needed per day to maintain current weight.
(active meaning strenuous exercise 5-7 times per week)

So, you find your maintenance number and subtract a number you are comfortable with...let's say 300 to 500 calories, and that's your daily calories needed to lose some weight.
Example....you weigh 180 lbs and you exercise 3-4 times per week.
16 x 180 = 2880 (your maintenance calories needed)
2880 - 500 = 2380 (calories needed per day to lose weight)

I guess the same formulas could work if you are trying to gain weight as well...just add 300 to 500 calories to your maintenance number. Not that I'll ever need to do that!

Well, today is my first day back on the wagon, so I'll post my results eventually to see if these formulas really work. I really think they should, you just have to be willing to tweak the calorie intake as needed to see results and also be willing to keep track of what you're eating throughout the day. I track mine on a spreadsheet...if anyone wants me to email that to them I will!

Some final pictures

Our wonderful vacation is over. I think most of us are ready to go back already! Here are a few more pictures.

The girls just really loved the ocean this year:

Gramma and her girls:

Me and my buddy:

Me and my other buddy:

Daddy's girl:

The giant bird cage outside Booth's Bowery:

The kids' portion of nachos at Booth's. (I'd hate to see what an adult portion looks like!):

Alexis...really enjoying her watermelon:

We saw the most beautiful sky our last evening in Florida. Our God is such an artist!:

Another video and some pictures

We're still having a blast!

We can have lots of good fun that is funny

We are having an awesome time! The weather has been awesome so far...only one rainy afternoon and one stormy afternoon with no rain. We are SO happy that we stay for two weeks, because if not, we'd already be on our way home. A week is just way too short for a get away. Anyway, here are some more pictures:



You can see what a great big sister Alexis is....protecting Kaylee from the big waves:

I built a little pool for Kaylee to sit in on the beach yesterday morning. Can you see how blonde her hair is getting?:

We went to the girls' favorite restaurant, Flip Flop's. They like it because they love the flowers that come with the entrees and they remember Daddy being really silly at the restaurant last year (the food is awesome too):

The only negative things happening on vacation...Ryan's covered in bug bites from the golf course, Kaylee's got prickly heat, and I've got sun rash on my chest, upper thighs, and the fronts of my shoulders. Neither Kaylee or I are itchy though, so that's good. We might need to take just a little break from the sun the next couple of days, like only stay out for two hours at a time instead of 4 hours at a time. We are having a blast though...so much so that Kaylee fell asleep on Gramma's lap at 8 last night. The girls are definitely sleeping well! Well, I have a ton of pictures and I'm planning on taking a lot more, so check back!

Some Pictures and maybe video

There's no sound with the video...my camera doesn't have a microphone. She's doing great for someone who wouldn't stick her head under the water a week and a half ago.

Safe and Sound

We made it to the beach. In record time...we actually had to waste a few hours in Daytona before we could check in to our condo. Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures to post yet...I just remembered to grab my camera out of the car last night. So hopefully I can remember to take it to the beach and pool and get some really cute pictures.

I think maybe I mentioned Kaylee finally putting her head under the water a couple of weekends ago...well, that girl has turned into a little fish. I knew all she needed to do was get over her fears. She can't touch the bottom of the shallow end down hear but she refuses to wear those floaties! She does cannon-balls off the side and swims to the steps. She can swim probably ten feet under the water without coming up for air! So she's really enjoying the pool.

Alexis is loving the ocean. The first day we were here she went out to play in the waves and even got knocked completely under the water. She just hopped right back up and kept right on playing. Of course, she's been a fish in the pool for a year or two so she is enjoying that part of vacation as well.

It seems that every year we are down here there is an abundance of some form of wildlife on the beach...last year was jelly fish (dead ones mostly), and this year is it crabs. The girls have both already been pinched by some. But neither one of them have cried. On our post dinner walk last night the crabs were close to the shore and of course Ryan would try to catch them. These crabs are aggressive...they came right at him...claws blazing. It reminded me of the crabs from Finding Nemo...you know, the ones that said, "Hey.....hey!"

So we're having fun.

It's been a week!

Boy do I love having my girls here all the time! The first couple days of summer vacation were a little bit of an adjustment. The girls had to get used to playing with each other all the time again. There were only a couple of arguments and they ended very quickly as soon as I got involved. I would say that by Wednesday the arguments had ended and now we're all "so happy together". We decided to go visit Val and Maggie last Monday. It had seemed like ages since we had seen them even though it had only been a couple of weeks. That little girl changes so much in such a short time. She's such a sweetie.

We hardly spent any time at the pool last week. I think we're still getting used to the weather being nice enough for us to be outside. However, when we went to Terre Haute the girls got to skinny dip in Gramma's pool. There were a lot of trip planning things that I got done last week, like printing off our maps and finding hotels, IHOPs, and Chick-fil-a's for our drive to and from the beach...finding a chocolate factory in Daytona that gives free tours and samples...awesome! But it was a productive week for me.

We went to Jenna's second birthday party on Saturday. Just the night before, we had finally convinced Kaylee to stick her head under the water...well, we bribed her. Anyway at the party all she did was swim around with her head under the water. She's going to be quite the fish by the end of the summer I presume! We had a great time seeing Jenna turn two. She's such a special little girl!

Sunday was a Morning Song Sunday and we invited the whole crew out to our house for a BBQ. Talk about great fellowship with church family! They really are the best!
Well that about raps it up. I imagine I won't get to blog again until we are on the beach, but who knows.

Ahh summer!

I finally have the girls all to myself! I'm just so happy about that. I miss them both so much when I send them away to school.

Friday, Ryan and Alexis had appointments with the eye doctor. Last year, Alexis was a bit near sighted, but she has grown out of that almost all the way. He also said that she has slight astigmatism in one of her eyes, but it's not bad enough that she needs glasses right away. We're just supposed to see if she needs a cheap pair once school starts and she can use them just at school and when she's reading. We'll see. The doc also said that we need to put come warm compresses on the lump on her eyelid for about ten days and if it still doesn't go away, we need to get her on an antibiotic...and if that doesn't make it go away, we need to see an opthamologist to get it lanced. His guess was it was just a sty, which was my theory as well...but it's been there for months! Maybe just because it's not on her eye lash line, but way up in her eyelid. So, I have yet to start the compresses, but hopefully I can get that started this week. I don't want her on antibiotic while we're in Florida since that makes you a lot more sensitive to the sun. I don't want her miserable like Val was that one year!

Anyway, we got home from the appointment around 1 and headed straight to the pool. It was an awesome day to go because our neighborhood was having a two day garage sale so almost no one was at the pool. We stayed there until Ryan got home from work and then he came over and joined us. So I'd say we were at the pool for 4+ hours. Saturday was no different. It was supposed to rain beginning at 1pm, but it didn't. We spent the morning at the pool, came back home for some lunch, then spent the afternoon back at the pool. Yesterday we were at the pool for 3 hours. Needless to say, the girls were pooped after the weekend and Ryan and I have begun a good base tan for vacation.

We've been trying to wear the dogs out too. Across the bridge over the pond is an open field with tall weeds and a fence row. The past two evenings, we've taken the dogs over there to run. It's very rare to see Abby run that fast! We just let them off the leash and they think they're hunting. Murphy pointed an old bird's nest on the ground. Murphy is just so funny to watch because it's like she dives into the weeds and then all you can see is her head popping up as she hops through the weeds so she can see. It's pretty hilarious. Abby's not so into hopping, just tearing through the weeds, but she did hop a little bit yesterday. It's interesting that on the way across the bridge to the field, the dogs are just tugging like crazy on their leashes, but then on the way back...no tugging; the leashes are slack. We were a little worried that Murphy-being 10 years old- would be sore, but she must still be in really good shape because she has not slowed down in the least!

Well, now I've got to finish my trip planning and I have got to start getting the house ready for us to be gone. I'm ready to go on vacation!