Ice Ice Kitty

Brrr it is cold outside, and sheets of ice were covering the ground last night and this morning! David and I braved the freezing rain and icy parking lot last night to walk across the street to a friends house. Bill and Holly had just bought the condo right below the condo they were renting, and finally had everything moved in. It looked very nice, some things were upgraded, some things not, but overall very nice. They have two kitties, one of which I can't disclose the name (racist), but is the cutest thing ever. Very petite fluffy kitty with splotches all over like someone chased it around and blotted it randomly with different colors of brown, white, and black paint. But the cutest thing EVER- MITTEN PAWS! I love polydactyl cats!

We needed some mittens like that for our walk back home!

Other kitty encounters this week included Tuloose, another awesome furry friend that "head bumps" you to say hello. Tuloose resides at our friends Priscilla & Avram's condo, which is one of the newer built condos around the corner- very nice! All you have to do is get your forehead near Tuloose and he'll head bump you back. I love it, I am currently trying to teach it to Cake, but I guess seeing a giant forehead moving towards his face scares him away :-(

What Cake does like is his daddy holding him like a baby and letting him hold his treat bag like a baby learning to hold it's own bottle. Cake is so excited to hold the bag and nibble the edge, just waiting for daddy to open it up and give him some. Lol it's the little things that make me happy...

Back on the healthy girl bandwagon, I have officially lost 2 lbs so far. Contributing to the weight loss has been the following exercises, and quite a few lunches supplemented with these:

Big ol' salad with beans mmmmm. I am lucky that the cafeteria in my work building has a pretty good salad bar (although slightly expensive). As I discover new exciting healthy recipes, I hope to start sharing those as well. I will reveal in my next post the recipe for a stew that I have been eating on all last week, along with high protein mashed potatoes http://ohsheglows.com/2010/09/08/high-protein-garlic-mashed-potatoes/ .

Workouts:

Thursday (finally getting back to the gym, and it wasn't as bad as I was dreading, scale said 133.4 lbs, yowza!):

Elliptical (Random hill mode, level 6) 40 mins

Friday:

Treadmill, 10 mins walking 4.0mph incline 5%/10 mins running 5.2mph incline 0%/10 mins walking 4.0mph incline 5-10% ~ totalled about 3 mi.

Saturday:

Free Body Pump class on base! 60 mins (got to see old familiar faces of the base energy zone regulars/trainers and also won a food container with a lid that double as an icepack! Note: Was so so sore after this class...)

Sunday:

Rest/ Walked to lake to feed ducks

Monday (scale said 131.4 lbs):

Treadmill, warm up + 4 mins running 5.2mph, 1 min running 6.5mph/ repeat for total of 30 mins + cool down ~ totalled about 3.5 mi.

Tuesday:

Rest

Wednesday (today):

Free Body Step class on base! 60 mins (maybe I'll win something else today!)

Besides feeling good about myself health-wise, I also got a nice surprise last week by being honored at work at the quarterly "PMA 299 All-Hands Meeting." These meetings are held by the Captain of the H-60 Seahawk Program which I support, and describe all the events that have been happening, upcoming issues to be aware of, introduction of new personnel, and passing out of team awards ("Top Hawk" awards). The meeting was held in the base theater in order to fit all of the 150 or so people that support the PMA. Well after all the team awards were passed out by each of the team leads, the Captain himself got on stage and announced he had "one other special award to give out for great work done on a high priority effort, so Kady Heck would you please stand up!" Aaaah and my heart was jumping around inside! I got all the different looks of appreciation, admiration, and jealously from my team members that I could secretly hope for :o) The Top Hawk Award now sits proudly displayed on my desk...

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone brought in the new year as fabulously classy as I did (minus a possible episode of tumbling down stairs and/or being soaked with champagne)! David and I spent the New Year at our good friends Kendall & Louie’s house, with a bunch of other great friends!

It was our second year celebrating with them. (Remember new years 2010?)

I’d like to think we really stepped it up for 2011.

More details to come, but first I wanted to document some upcoming ‘resolutions’ for 2011 (although I really hate making resolutions- I feel like I always have long term goals, not just on January 1^st). Here they are:

1)     Blog more! I really enjoy the aspect of not only sharing pics, but being able to share the details, emotions, throughts, etc about what is going on in my life. That was the whole goal of this blog, right? And ideally, there should be some big wedding plans in the making come this year!

2)     Which brings me to #2 (which is actually #1), plan a wedding for Spring 2012!!!

3)     Get back on track eating right, and exercising more regularly!  I just can’t seem to find my groove again in this department, but maybe I can use the blog to help me stay on the right path. I also have a Spring 2012 event ahead…

4)     Better the condo! I had intentions of painting and moving a bunch of my stuff from storage into the condo, and it really has not happened yet at all. Phase 1 of this will be purging a lot of our (David’s) old stuff.

Check back soon!

Good bye 2010… good bye Redskins football season… hello Ravens playoff season!

Summer Flew By!

So, after another long hiatus, I am back to blogging. Over the last 4 months I have had a wonderful summer and although I haven't found time to blog, I sure have done plenty of blog reading! The engaged life has been going wonderfully! Summer vacations included Ocean City, and our upcoming "Staycation." Let not get too excited at once now...

I graduated my Contracts Intern program July 31, 2010 and have become an official Navy employee, GS-12 equivalent. I still enjoy the work, and the increase in pay has been great! (Although somehow I still manage to spend it ALL).

I have been doing wedding planning, including thoughts about the ceremony being held overlooking the water at David's parents house, or also at a nearby park indoor/outdoor rustic pavillion on a beautiful peice of land.

Although it is basically an old barn, it is reasonably priced, and can be dressed up really beautifully. Other options we have thought about are doing a hotel wedding so that guests can stay the night in the place of the reception, or david's favorite- going to Vegas and gettin hitched in the lil chapel by none other than Elvis himself.

Still the same on the health front. I have been going to the gym, and started running again now that the weather is turning nice. We had a hot hot summer and I spent more time in the gym than I would have liked. I started a new class called Sweatshop, and it is KILLER. The instructor says she can see a difference in my legs already. Sample of class (after 45 minutes of non stop jumping and kicking and jumping jacks and squats and jumping squats and lunges), "whew I am getting pretty tired myself, God look at all this sweat on the floor around me! Ok *looks at clock* lets just do 200 more squats then we'll be done." Gaaahhhhh. These classes are what keeps me going back though, because David sure hasn't been my workout partner at all! At most, I get him to walk to the park with me to play frisbee some days, and I make it an extra workout by making him throw it to me while I'm sprinting for it.

While I have been doing good exercise wise, I just can't keep my fingers out of the cereal, and now ice cream, at night! I do so good tracking my portions throughout the day, but then am hungry at night! I am experimenting with saving a snack for after-dinner so that I can work in an appropriate dessert. Unfortunately that means either a smaller lunch, smaller dinner, or no afternoon snack... again, Gaaahhhhhh.

Either way, this means I have some exciting posts to catch up on, exciting recipes to share, and more things to come! Glad to be back!

Spring Balcony Gardens

I sooo got the spring itch... and then ran to Lowes garden section and bought the most beautiful shade-loving plants I could find! One of my favorite things abotu spring and summer is that david and I can now use the balcony. I started it's spring makeover by buying new cushions and pillows for our blue plastic chairs from Kohls. The cushions are striped with blue, orange, and other bright colors, and the pillows are the same color scheme but with fish pattern. My Mammy also bought me a cute little planter/dish of two pelicans snuggling that goes with the nautical theme! I also bought a little blue fish candle holder from Yankee Candle for a work fundraiser that has yet to arrive. With all the new decorations and flowers, the balcony is my fav place!

Oh and Cake likes it too...

Other springtime adventures have included taking a trip to WV, and picnics on Solomon's Island Rec area. David's parents took us to Lansing, WV to stay in a cabin and go zip-lining through a tree canopy tour and white-water rafting down the New River Gorge! It was a great trip. We stayed in a nice cabin with a jacuzzi and had a total blast!

IT WAS GORGE-OUS! LOL

White-water rafting was such an awesome adventure, I think I am addicted!  The water was pretty cold this time of year, and the water was high from all the snow melt off the mountains. We needed wetsuits and jackets for the trip. But all this didn't stop me from jumping out of the raft into the 50 degree water as soon as our river guide mentioned "once in a lifetime experience."  After body surfing down some rapids, the coldness of the water kicked in and I scrambled to swim back to the raft. Meanwhile, David, not be outdone by me had jumped into the water as well and had floated away about 100 ft from the raft! Poor guy had to float- freezing his butt- off until we were able to paddle over to him and pull him in. My arms were so cold and shocked from the water that I could hardly help paddle the raft to him, so I can't imagine how he was feeling having to float there waiting for us!

Well I am going bowling today at work for 'employee appreciation day'- gotta love it!

TIKI BAR OPENING is next weekend so I am sure I'll have pics!

I got ENGAGED!

Wow, I can't believe it's been since Christmas since I last updated... between work and school and homelife I kind of ran out of time. But spring is here and I don't have school and I am enjoying life... being engaged! Yep! David popped the questions on our 1 year anniversary on St. Patricks Day. It was a dream come true, I can still replay it all in my head. I think the pictures speak for themselves...

I cried my eyes out with joy that night, and I still get all giddy and excited inside when I think about him and dream about our life together. But before we got engaged... we had a furry baby!

Welcome to Cake our bad nice annoying adorable kitten!

Ok so start expecting more pictures and updates and healthy recipes and workouts and stuff to come!

xoxoxoxoxoxo

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

Lookin like it's going to be a white blizzard Christmas!

Oh the weather outside is frightful....

But our condo is so delightful!

So let it snow!

Well I have been in the Christmas spirit since Thanksgiving and have been itching to post pictures of my little decorations. It's David and I's first Christmas together, and although I originally wanted to get my first real tree since I was a kid, but decided to keep it realtively small. David has been working like crazy, and I have been a little Chrismas baker and decorater!

Even my plants got decorated! The candle on the left is the centerpeice I made for the coffee table (thank you BHG inspirations). Just a bunch of silver beads and balls in a bowl we already had (was filled with stones a seashells before). I also really love lights and since we live in a condo with a balcony that no one would see, I decided to put them up inside! They really put off a nice light...

So David is off working despite the 10 inches of SNOW we got last night through today! He got picked up and may still be stuck there doing his elfly duties from 9AM to 8PM tonight! I have been snowed in alone! So I made some more cookies and snuck in some naps... just a good old lazy but lonely day.

For Christmas day, my parents are coming down to have dinner with us and David's parents at their house in Calvert County. We are going to have a nice family dinner and then also spend the night there. I was really excited that this was all David's idea to invite my parents down in the first place. It is hard for us to spend the amount of time we each want to spend both with eachother and with our families when David is working so much. The more we think about it though, the more we look at eachother and ask, "what have we done? What were we thinking?" But then we laught because we know it will be fun! Lets just hope it doesn't turn out with anyone saying this:

Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

Merry Chrismas

gobble gobble gobble!

Well turkey day came and went! It was really nice, David and I went to Baltimore to have thanksgiving dinner at my parents house. My brother, Chelsea, my sister Terry, and my neices Kristen and Jessica were there. It was really good to see them, and to have everyone together.

Mom was cookin, and us girls were hangin! (Of course we all chipped in too.)

Dinner was delicioso as usual! Yay mom! But let me back up. The real party started the night before when David and I first got in town. I helped mom bake an amazing carrot cake, and pumpkin pies, and chunky monkey cookies, all while finishing off a giant bottle of wine (Yea, we're skilled like that). So after the baking, we went over to see Tara's new house since she was having a little get together. That was a lot of fun, it was good to see everyone and Tara's family as usual. I think David had fun, just because he got to see Tara's mom, ha! Tara's house was truly perfect, she is so lucky! She had done a lot of work getting it painted and decorated already, and she had just moved in a few weeks prior! After the crew feeding us shots, we had to get my parents to come pick us up before it got too late :) Once we got home, we continued partying with the brother and the parents, as you can see...

BTW, the lighter David is holding up is Travis', which says "This is MY F*CKING Lighter!" Him and David have a running joke about stealing lighters. Guess who brought it home to Southern Maryland with us ;)

I'll sign off with lil old sparkly dog! He can be cute...