2013 in Review

The past year has been a busy one for our family so I thought I'd do a little summary just for fun!

At the beginning of the year I started a home business and ended up closing it at the end of the year. We traveled to Arizona for a vacation in March which was bittersweet because we found out my dad has heart problems while we were there. We celebrated our youngest sweet girl's 1st birthday in January and our oldest beauty's 5th birthday in July. We started our juicing/ cleani eating journey in May and have kept it up well and lost about 75lbs between Matt and I. Our family took a camping trip in August and survived tent camping even with a one year old! We watched our oldest daughter start kindergarten in September which made mommy cry and daddy proud. I traveled to see my sister in Victoria, B.C. in October which was a wonderful getaway for me. My dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer, had surgery and is now cancer free (yipee!)...I believe it brought our family closer together. We rang in the New Year as a family and had a super cool kid- friendly party. And last but most definitely not least- Matt and I encountered many up's and down's in our relationship as most everyone has and came through it even stronger than before.

All in all we had a wonderful year. There are many more positives than negatives and here are some pictures of all of these awesome adventures. I look forward to a terrific 2014 filled with more amazing moments!

Happy New Year everyone!

Hoping for Health!

Things seem to be looking up around here. My dad has his surgery to remove the cancer from his bladder last Tuesday and is doing well now. I spent the day at the hospital with him and my mom last week when he had his surgery. His heart rate was up and down, but that was normal since he has A-fib and they haven't quite figured out the dosage of meds he needs yet. He said he's feeling good now and now we just wait for the results from the lab to make sure they got it all. He's frustrated that he can't get back to doing his regular activities already!

After all of this craziness with my dad's health, I decided I needed to find a good doctor. My old doctor couldn't care less about me, I'm pretty sure he just wanted to write prescriptions and get people out of there. I found a new doctor close to our house and he immediately wrote up a sheet of blood work for me to get done. He's testing me for arthritis, diabetes and everything else under the sun. After that he will be doing a physical. I haven't had one of those in about 10 years since my old doctor charged extra for them! When I mentioned my knee pain and my mom's arthritis, he seemed a bit concerned. I'm hoping it's just bursitis though!

My weight loss had slowed down for a while, but it looks like it's getting started up again now. I have been walking 5 km a day to take Ceili to school, so that works out to 25 km a week more than I was walking before. That's probably what's helping! I'm feeling pretty good and still eating clean, although I do have a treat now and then and I'm not going to feel guilty about it. No matter how much weight I lose, I find myself criticizing my body and I know I need to stop. Before, I would look at myself and think "man, I need to lose weight". Now I look at myself and say "look at the saggy belly" but then I remember that I once had 40 lbs of fat in that belly and I feel confident. I need to be sure I don't put myself down like that because I have two impressionable little girls watching me very closely! I've now lost 2 shirt sizes and 4 pants sizes so I definitely think that's an accomplishment. I'm going to try out Curves gym again starting tomorrow because I bought a 30 day trial so I hope that will help me build more muscle.

This was just a big blabber-fest about everyone's health, but I think I'm done now. Back to the ever- growing laundry pile!

Too Much!

Our clean eating is still going well. Got off track a little during camping, but got back on when we got home last week. Still have a couple of pounds to lose again since camping though.

Since we got home, we started seriously looking at buying a new house. We are hoping to buy an acreage. Looking is fun, but trying to get ready to sell is not. We have to pack up alot of our stuff and find a storage place to keep it for the time being. We're also no sure if we should even sell this late in the year because most people want to move in June or July, not September or October! We found a couple of acreages that interest us, but want to look at them again.

Looking for a house/selling has been stressful enough, then I got a call from my dad Thursday that changed everything. He went for a scan of his bladder because he was having some problems and they found cancer. On Thursday I was thinking "oh, no big deal, they'll do surgery and it will be gone." But yesterday it sank in...my dad has CANCER. He had it before I was born, but he has been cancer free for years, I never really thought about it returning. Since yesterday I have been like a zombie, my head feels all foggy and I know I've been grouchy with Matt and the kids. He is scheduled for surgery next month so I am really hoping that they can get rid of the cancer, but my mom said there's a lot of it. I'm feeling absolutely numb and want to run away, but I know that won't help anything. At least I have a very supportive hubby who has been through cancer with his mom so he totally understands.

I'm going to run and hang out with Ceili in the yard for a bit and try not to think about anything!