Oh Happy Day...in most respects

Norah has now destroyed her second invisible dog fence collar (see picture below). We thought this one might be in good enough shape that Tim could solder it back together. Sadly, after our best efforts, it still does not work. So Norah has to always be chained up to the LP tank while the other three dogs can still roam the yard since she cannot control her desire to explore. She is quickly proving to be much more trouble than we had wanted… what to do next...

On a happier note, Tim and I have now been married two years! He said to me this morning, “weren’t these first two years supposed to be the hardest?” Well, if that is the case, these next years are going to be super amazing and a piece of cake!  God has blessed me with everything I have ever asked Him for in a husband when he gave me Tim. He’s a wonderful husband and a wonderful father, and I love him very much.

Birds!!

I've been so excited to experience Spring on a farm! I love watching all the plants come back to life, hearing the wonderful bird songs again, etc. However, this has been what we have been going through everyday outside our house instead.



Who knew that birds could be so loud and annoying!! Maybe the birds aren't one of my favorite things about Spring after all...

Never stops talking!

Kendall has starting talking (yelling really) non-stop. It's only quiet in our house when she's asleep--well, quieter...she still snores. :) But of course, I wouldn't want it any other way. I love my beautiful little girl! Look out Rhea, you have competition!

Trees!

We have been sprucing up our yard the last few weeks now that the weather has warmed up a bit. We burnt the ditches along the creek in our yard, put up the beautiful mailbox Nick and Beth gave us for Christmas, and planted some trees to start a wind block on the north side of our property. Dad and Mom Evenhouse drove up to join us on our trip to Clarence, IA to pick up our trees. We decided on willows for the outside row (the row that gets the wind first) because they grow 8 feet a year, so we should have a bit of a block by next winter already. The middle row is Norway spruce which grow pretty thick and do a great job of stopping wind. The closest row is Canaan Fir which are beautiful and also stop wind quite well! I can’t wait to watch these trees grow over the years and am excited to be warmer in the winter too!




Planting the trees! Thanks for helping Mom and Dad!


The willows just come in a bundle of cuttings. You have to put the sticks in water for 7 to 10 days to let them start to grow some roots and then we will plant them this weekend or next week.


Kendall and I help by straightening rows, cheering everyone along, and trying to stay warm :)

Fat and Ugly...

I would like to take a moment to vent if I can please…

For the last 7 weeks I have been eating well and exercising 30 minutes a day during my lunch break at work. These exercise classes are pretty hard core most days (kickboxing, step class, high impact aerobics) and I burn 350 to 550 calories in these classes every day. On weekends I try to take Kendall for a walk or at the very least, not be a bum and sit on my butt all day.

Not only that, but I have been tracking everything I eat on www.livestrong.com. This website is made by Lance Armstrong, and you can do a lot of things for free! I can put in my own recipes, and it will spit out the amount of calories in the meal. I can set up meals that I eat often so that I don’t have to put each part of the meal in individually and save myself a lot of time. You can type in what you ate and go to a list of all the options of that one particular food item, pick the brand you have, and it will give you those particular nutrition facts. They even have most restaurants’ menus on the website with each menu item’s nutrition facts! I set a goal of losing 2 pounds a week in the website, and for the average person my height and weight, I should be eating 1500 calories a day to reach that goal. I love this website… can you tell?!? So every day I keep track of every little thing I eat, the exercise I do, and I’ve been waiting to see the pounds drop off.

Here is a typical day in the life of Carrie:

At work I drink at least 64 oz of water—more on most days

Breakfast: cereal and coffee for the long ride to work

Morning snack: banana

Exercise

Lunch:
1 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt
¼ cup frozen mixed berries (in the yogurt)
1 pear
10 pretzels (and yes, I count them out)

Supper:
4 oz of plain chicken breast (or less)
¼ cup frozen mixed vegetables with No-salt Italian seasoning on them
½ cup brown rice(also plain)

Some days I have a bowl of ice cream or a piece of cake after supper

Needless to say, that’s not a whole lot of food. I have only gone over my 1500 calories 3 days in 7 weeks. The first 2 weeks I lost 7 pounds. The last 5 weeks, I have lost 0 pounds. That’s right. ZERO. Nothing in over a month. And if I were the average person, I should have lost 10 more pounds by now. But no, my scale has not moved at all.

I’m at a loss of what to do about it. I don’t have time to work out more than I do now. Already I have a hard enough time working full time, driving 2.5 hours to and from work a day, working out over my lunch break so that I have to eat lunch while trying to work, and trying to take care of a 6 month old, a husband, four dogs, and a house without being completely exhausted. So maybe I’ll have to go down to 1000 calories a day, though I don’t know where those extra calories are going to come out of. I don’t feel deprived of food right now, but I know that by cutting back more, I will feel deprived and like I’m on a crappy diet. Sigh…

I started doing this so that I wouldn’t feel so fat and ugly. Now, even with my best efforts, I’m still fat and ugly. What is wrong with my metabolism? Why can’t my body for once just act like the average person? I’m feeling pretty discouraged and have thought about quitting since it makes no difference anyway. But I’ll keep trying for now—maybe someday something will change. At least I’m not gaining weight… trying to look on the bright side here people… :)

Kendall's first food!

Kendall is going to be 6 months on Wednesday and so I decided this weekend would be a great time to start her on some real food! Somehow I don't have any plastic spoons (they have been ordered on Amazon now), so I just used my finger to feed her. I also didn't have rice cereal yet either, but thought I'd try some sweet potatoes instead. And she loved it!

She made a little bit of a mess, but she ate 2 tsp of sweet potatoes and even sucked off her bib at the end! I'm sure she would have eaten more, but we didn't want to overdue it the first day. We want no stinky explosions tomorrow please!! My little baby girl is growing up!

New Dogs

The first dog I can remember while growing up is Caramel. Though she was pretty ugly, we all liked her a lot until she ran away on Halloween. Sparky came next and she was sweet, cute, and loveable. We then got Brady when I was in high school, and he was MY dog. He slept with me, cuddled with me, and though he was very dumb, he was a wonderful dog. After such wonderful dog experiences, I decided that when I grew up and had a house of my own, I was going to have a ton of dogs (well, 3 or 4 dogs at least). Since Gus died, the dog situation at the Klinge household has seemed a little lacking. We miss him so much and though I love Maggie and Jack very much, I still wanted more furry friends! So I found two dogs on the Marshalltown ARL website that seemed perfect for us and our dogs!

We got a brother and sister pair last Saturday (February 26). They are 4 year old Rottweiler/lab mixes and are very loveable doggies. We quickly decided on the girl’s name—Norah—but had much more difficulty with the boy’s name. After hours of discussion, we decided on Charles, Chuck for short. It was only then that we realized what we had done. Chuck and Norah… sounds familiar… But it was too late to change it, and besides, what dog wouldn’t want to be named after Chuck Norris?!? J

Norah!

Chuck!

The four dogs get along wonderfully! Chuck and Norah don’t like to stay in the yard as well as we would like them too, but soon enough we will have their shock collars also and the whole crew can be left outside to roam freely. What a great crew!