Wednesday, October 31, 2018

FREE Scary Face Pancake for Kids Today @ IHOP!!!

Happy Halloween!  IHOP is celebrating with a frightfully good offer ‑ a FREE Scary Face Pancake for kids 12 and under who arrive in costume. Drop by today from 7 am ‑ 10 pm to take advantage of this offer.

ihop halloween

Trick or Treat!

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Exercise Fun!

This year, I joined Beach Body on Demand.  It allows me to stream the workouts of my choice in my own home at my own convenience for one annual fee.  The cool thing about it is that I can mix and match or change my program of choice at any time, as I wish.

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I started out doing 21-Day Fix, and that was my reason for getting the subscription in the first place.  My husband agreed to do the nutrition portion with me, and I did both the nutrition and the exercise…the complete program.  I did really well and got toned up in no time!  I bought a cheap set of portion control containers at Walmart to use with the program…they are color coded and include duplicates of each size so you have plenty of them to work with when doing your meal planning.  I got to my goal weight, losing about 5-7 pounds.  But more importantly, I lost about 11 total inches on my whole body!  My clothes fit, and I could even get into the swim shorts I bought and planned to return because I couldn’t even get them on when I started! 

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I kept going with the exercise program but dropped the nutrition portion once I got to my goal weight.  I did put weight back on (about 9 pounds), but I was satisfied that I was at a great level of fitness, and I felt energetic and strong.  At some point in your life, you have to accept that being fit and toned is more important than a particular number on the scale.

I completed the exercise plan about 5 times through, upping my weights to heavier ones for the last 2 rounds.  However, I developed bursitis in my left shoulder, and the doctor told me some modified exercise was in order while I tried to get it to heal up without steroids.  She had me take Aleve every day for 2 weeks to help the inflammation and manage the pain.  I went back down with my weights again, but my shoulder kept getting worse.  By the end of the two weeks of Aleve, it was actually more painful than when I started.  That’s when I decided to take advantage of my Beach Body on Demand membership to switch up my exercise program to something different that didn’t involve any weight-bearing exercises at all.  There are a few programs on there that use dance as exercise rather than weights, so I decided to try out one of those. 

I don’t really like country music, but when I previewed the program called Country Heat, I decided that it looked like the right level of cardio exercise for my fitness level, so I went with that one.  I’ve been doing it for about 2 weeks now!  I have to admit that I really love it.  I get super sweaty, get my heart rate up pretty well, and I burn even more calories than I did on 21-Day Fix, largely because it involves constant movement rather than interval training.  It’s so much fun that the time just flies by!  I’m using the deluxe workout calendar, so some days double up and are closer to an hour than just the usual 30 minutes, but I don’t mind it at all.  Those double days include a regular 30-minute dance routine followed by a 25 minutes conditioning routine that combines dance and traditional fitness exercises.  I feel great, and I’ve actually lost 3 pounds in the last 6 days!  And I’m still doing my own thing for nutrition.

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On 21-Day Fix, I found the meal prep to be a necessity to remain consistent with the program, but the meal prep was taking up a lot of time I didn’t have, which meant staying up really late and getting less sleep.  I had to cook at night for the next morning so my hubby could take his meals to work for the day, and it was wearing me out since the plan uses 3 meals and 3 snacks every day. 

So when I reached my goal and dropped the nutrition portion of the program, I subscribed to the eMeals meal planning service.  I have to say that we all love it!  My whole family loves the variety of recipes, and we’re trying lots of new things that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise tried.  It’s been great!  There are lots of recipes to choose from, and we can mix and match from a variety of meal plans to create a customized plan just for us.  I love how it makes a shopping list for me based on my selections, and I can have it send that list to the Walmart Grocery website where I can finalize my selections and check out for the  free grocery pickup service.  I plan once a week, place my order, and usually pick up my order on Monday morning when I drop my daughter off at school.  Then I’m set for the whole week!

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Between Beach Body on Demand and eMeals, I can work out and meal plan in the most convenient way possible, and it saves me time from needing to go to the gym or shop in the grocery store with the endless checkout lines.  I’m loving it all!

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Our Grammar Success!

Image result for junior analytical grammarSo this week, Holden finally finished up the Junior Analytical Grammar program.  I originally reviewed it with Haylee when she was just starting 5th grade.  We were already using something else for grammar at the time, so we never completed it beyond the review period, but I held onto it for future use.  I got to thinking that it might be a really good fit for Holden for his 5th grade year, and I was right! 

Holden loved it!  And most importantly, he caught on to the concepts really fast.  I’m so pleased with how well he’s learned the material.  I think he really understands the parts of speech and their roles within a sentence so much more thoroughly than my other kids did. 

Back when Hayden was young, we used Saxon Grammar and Writing 5-8 when it first came out.  He learned the material pretty well, but it was WAY too much practice, and he didn’t like doing it. 

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Haylee just used some old public school textbooks called Silver Burdett English.  They were pretty good for practice exercises, but I think they key to our success with Jr. Analytical Grammar is that it has great, engaging instructional videos, and it has just a small amount of practice so students can really focus on parsing a few sentences really well.  The focus is on quality, not quantity. 

I’m really pleased!  We’ll be moving onto Junior Analytical Grammar: Mechanics next, and we’ll start right after our fall break.  And to continue practicing parsing sentences, we’ll do some occasional refresher practice with Grammar Planet for reinforcement of what he learned in JAG (it was created by the same people). 

It’s amazing how far Holden has come with his understanding of grammar in just these first 14 weeks of school.  I wish I’d had it to use right from the beginning with all of the kids!  I think all of them would have enjoyed it more and would have gotten more out of it than what they each used at the time.

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When we finish with JAG: Mechanics, I want us to move on to writing using WriteShop Junior F.  I think that will be a great starting place for Holden, and with a good, solid grammar and mechanics foundation under his belt, I think he’ll be in a good position to start writing creatively and do it well.  We got to review that recently for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, and it appears to be a great fit for him.  So that’s my plan!  It’s so nice when you stumble upon programs that just really work for your kids.