Our Married Life

I haven’t written in awhile. Mainly because I’ve been trying to keep myself from pulling my hair out from all the other daily stress. You know, work, parents, blah blah.

It’s not bad at all, but I do prefer to come home and zone out in front of the tv or cooking for my husband or reading.

I’m currently reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Life as a chef is quite dysfunctional. I’m glad I don’t aspire to be one.

I have been trying to stick to my diet, but I’ll have a failure every now and then. I certainly can’t make good choices when we go out. So I need to bring my lunch in more often and cook at home more.

My birthday is in 2 weeks. I thought about doing a dinner with some friends, but I don’t think I’m going to keep it low key. The stress of trying to plan anything (although shouldn’t Brian be doing that?) is unnecessary.

Anyway, we just paid off our trip and now I get to go shopping for it. The weather will be nice a cool. Hopefully it won’t be too cold. We need another carryon bag and Brian and I vehemently disagree on what to buy. He wants the five star quality and I could care less. Bah. Maybe we should stop at one of the outlet stores and see what they have to offer.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

Yesterday was a good day. I am simply exhausted this morning. I just want another hour or two to sleep.

I went to an everlast shadowboxing class after work. I noticed my shoulder isn’t hurting has bad anymore. I hurt it while tripping and falling against a wall several weeks ago and was in incredible pain. Now it just feels sore. I need to do some shoulder workouts this week to strengthen it.

Anyway after shadowboxing I did 15 minutes of abs and then decided to stay for the dance class for 30 minutes.

So basically I burnt 800 calories yesterday, and ate 1400 calories.

Even though my family is here, I don’t think I will be breaking my diet since they all eat relatively healthy. But we’ll see about that…

My next goal is to get better about taking my vitamins.

I figured if I posted regularly about my workout, I would update more.

Yesterday was a failure. Not only was it weigh in day, which I did not lose but gained, but I also didn’t work out. My excuse was I had to go pick up my car from the dealershp, and by the time I was near the gym it was already 6:30. I was close, but Brian talked me out of it because he was hungry. So instead we had pizza because I was too lazy to cook. Of course I woke up this morning with a bad tummy ache. I tried to do some video at home, but it was already 9:30 and I wasn’t feeling it. It’s hard to be motivated when it’s hot.

So today, I am back on track and will make up for it. I’m thinking of doing two classes today, Shadowboxing and some dance class. I might skip the dance class and do some weights.

Wow, sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been slow, so I had nothing to post about. My entire family is visiting us over the next two weeks so that should be interesting. I haven’t seen my brother’s family since our wedding day. We really ought to make a trip up to the northwest one of these days. It’s so beautiful up there. My sister and her family is also visiting. From the pictures I’ve seen, her girls have grown so much. Melody, the oldest is already 15, yikes!

Brian and I have been trying to get healthier. I know we talk about it all the time, but this time we’re pretty serious. He and I bought lost 12 lbs each. I’m doing the biggest loser competition at work and so far I’ve managed to get 3rd place. My coworker friend and I have been working out like crazy over the past 4 weeks. I can definitely tell my endurance is getting better since my heart rate isn’t as high when I’m doing plain cardio. I need to start mixing in more weights so that I can increase my metobolism. We’re also trying to eat cleaner and have the appropriate serving. The only challenge with eating is finding the time to cook the proper food since I don’t get home from the gym until after 7 and sometimes 8. I think once our weekends slow down, I can probably try to plan it better. I have been consuming lots of fruit since it’s in abundance. I told Brian that if I reach my ideal goal, I should get a new car. :-)

Speaking of car, my check engine light is on again. Grrr. Hopefully whatever they find tomorrow isn’t a big deal.

Leah and Reesey are doing well. Reesey spent 2 weeks with her grandparents. We went and picked her up over the weekend after visiting with Brian’s new nephew. Baby A is tiny by the way. Congrats to the new parents.
Speaking of kids, we still haven’t made plans yet, but we keep going back and forth with baby names. It seems our first choice has gotten too popular. My mom keeps pressuring me to start but we both still feel so young. Everyone should check back in a couple years to see where we are with that thought.

Work is still the same. Nothing new for either of us. I’m still very grateful that we’re both in a good position both financially and with our jobs.

In other news, we finally booked our big trip to Europe. 11 days in Rome and Paris in Sept. This is our anniversary gift to each other I suppose even though it’s a few weeks after. I’m super excited, but I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet since it’s still far out. Of course this is the first of many trips.

My next goal is either Japan or China. But I think we may have to make a trip to Cambodia and Thailand since that’s where I’m from and all.

I’ll be sure to blog our excursion while we in Europe.

Other than that, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll try to post more, and hopefully I’ll have interesting things to talk about.

I leave you with pictures of us at a Central Market cooking class enjoying a souffle we help make. I totally recommend their courses. Very entertaining and the hands on aspect is well worth it.

I’ve committed to doing 30 days of nonstop workouts using the 30 Day Shred video. The video is pretty tough and consists of 20 minutes of nonstop circuit workouts including weights and cardio. The hardest part is that there is no room for resting. Hopefully after a few days of doing this my endurance will go up. I definitely feel the impact compared to my usual cardio routine of treadmill or elliptical.

As for my other resolutions, I haven’t done a great job of those. I guess it’s more of a wish list than a resolution list ;-).

I am cooking more at home and eating in more often at work. It’s progress…

I’ve also start reading the new Malcolm Gladwell book – Outliers: The Story of Success. The first chapter was pretty interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to dive into the book since by the time I’m ready to read, I’m passed out asleep. Maybe I should commit an hour or two a week to do some quiet reading. I need some intellectual stimulation.

In other news the talk of the economy is everywhere these days. Every magazine we get has a headline of “Recession” this or that. And it seems like every day you hear an announcement about companies laying off thousands of jobs.

I have to say that we have a blessed life and we should never take our jobs for granted. I’m definitely thankful for that.

Even with our jobs being secure at this moment, we need to watch what we do and how we spend. It’s definitely not something that Brian and I have planned for. Now I’m not saying we should live like hermits, but I guess we’re going to have to rule out any big trips this year and take smaller ones, hold off on my furniture, and doing any major renovations. I think we can live without another sofa set in the house ;-)…except maybe the fence. It looks like the west side of the fence is about to fall. We’ll see what happens this spring when we get any wild storms.

Recap of 2008. There were several ups and downs but overall it was a good year.

1. Brian got a new car.
2. Dad got sick and was hospitalized for 2 weeks.
3. We got puppy Leah.
4. I traveled to Richmond for work.
5. Both my parents health has been stabilized.
6. We went to San Diego for vacation.
7. My maternal grandmother passed away. Click here to see neat a mausoleom my mom’s family built in Cambodia.
8. We bought a dining set (my half of the deal since Brian got the new Macbook). Only one more room to fill – formal dining room.
9. We threw a holiday party.
10. Took a much needed vacation where I did absolutely nothing.

So here’s my personal resolution for 2009. I know it’s silly to make resolutions especially when they’re broken in about 2 months, but hopefully, just maybe I keep these resolutions.

1. Workout 4-5 times a week
2. Learn how to meditate
3. Read at least 1 book a quarter
4. Eat more veggies
5. Eat out no more than once a week at work
6. Cook more
7. Blog more
8. Wake up earlier and begin a morning routine (ie. do chores, walk the dogs, eat breakfast, chill, then get ready)
9. Organize our closet
10. Do more gardening
11. Read the news more
12. Organize the stuff in our cabinets
13. Fix the hole in the ceiling of our dining room
14. GO TO EUROPE

I think all of these are attainable, with the exception of the last one. We’re hoping to plan a big trip for the fall, but I haven’t even begun to do my research. I was hoping I was going to get some that research done during my holiday vacation, and I suppose I still have a couple days left, but the task seems to be overly daunting. Maybe I should just call the travel agent that a friend recommended.

Happy New Year everyone!

I feel old. Or maybe because I treated my body pretty badly this weekend because my body feels really lousy today. On Friday, I went to a work happy hour. After mentioning that I needed a drink, a coworker organized a happy hour. I got a bit tipsy, but it was definitely needed after the long week. Those drinks at BJs are strong! I then proceeded to go eat BAD fried catfish at a local dive in Allen. Brian and I ended up here by accident because the place we were looking for was closed. So we decided to stop here since it looked quite busy. The people there looked a little rough around the edges, and there was karaoke. So weird. I can’t remember the name of the place, but whatever it was called, it’s in downtown Allen. Stay away people.

Then on Saturday, we spent a couple hours at my parents place before heading out to the ballpark in Arlington to watch the Astros and Rangers. The Rangers won. We haven’t been to a ballgame in a two years, but it was fun and we’ll have to do it again. The only reason why we went this year was because I got the tickets from work. Too bad the hotdogs and nachos we had sucked, but Brian did enjoy his cotton candy which he reluctantly shared it with me. And…shame on me for having processed meat! I suck at trying to be vegetarian.

Anyway, we left the game after the 8th inning and went to a friend’s house for some drinks. After getting tipsy some more and eating more junk food we finally headed home at 3am and crashed until lunchtime the next day. By the way, these people’s house makes me want to redecorate. It had a lofty feel to it, which is the total opposite of our decor.

On Sunday, I had to finish up my cupcakes for the cake decorating class. Before the class, we went to Chili’s for lunch and I for some reason craved their fried stuff, possibly because I was eating lousy all weekend long. My body definitely paid for it last night and this morning because I didn’t sleep well at all and woke up with a stomach ache.

So this week, I need to get back on the healthy routine. I had a veggie sandwich for lunch, and need to plan what to have for dinner since we have nothing to cook with at home.

I also need to do a better job of meal planning. I haven’t been cooking as much which isn’t a good thing. On top of that, I need to start going back to the gym and doing some of those free classes. I enjoy those much more than the boring cardio workout. I think I’ll go to yoga tomorrow morning at Sunstone. That is if I can wake up at 5:30 am….

The other to-do is finish planning our trip. We’re undecided between a fancy hotel or the standard economy hotels. I know we won’t be spending too much time in the room, but it is a vacation afterall. I looked at the rates for the Solamar Hotel that Terri recommended, but I think it’s too much of a splurge. I did see some good rates at Temecula Creek Inn, but it seems out of the way. The Hyatt Regency in La Jolla had some good rates. If I had it my way, I’d go with the Hyatt, but Brian had some sticker shock only because he doesn’t do any of the planning and didn’t realize how expensive stuff was. I guess we’ll figure it all out tonight.

So Brian and I went to our second session at Sunstone Yoga today. This time we were a bit more tired and a little less motivated. Only because it was already 6pm and we’re usually at home by then. Perhaps we should stick to doing yoga on the weekends. About halfway through, Brian mouthed that he was tired and ready to go. That pretty much broke my concentration and I too was ready to go. But we stuck it through the entire 90 minutes. My clothes were drenching with sweat, but this time I was able to tolerate the heat much better than the last time and also my breathing was more calm. Maybe it’s because I put less effort in the poses. But it’s so hard trying to grab on to your toes or legs when your hands and legs are all slick with sweat. So our 10 day trial period is over. I think we’ll buy a pass and use it as a supplement to working out. I’m going to try to get Brian to go to the yoga classes at 24 hour fitness to see if he likes that as much before we commit to anything….