Bath time every day, because these girls love mud, water, and sand.
I may have tied them together just to get a picture together. They actually loved it for a few minutes.
Dancing with big sister in her room.
The toy kitchen.
This curl! It kills me.
A trip to the Detroit Zoo over Memorial Day weekend. We had a blast. The kids are older and it was so much fun. No crankiness. The babies loved it and did really well considering traffic home was terrible. It definitely made us realize how awesome it is to have older kids.
Because they can't take a serious photo to save their lives and the girls have no interest. Ironically looking at the Apes. It made me laugh.
Four Leaf Clovers
Trips to the school to get Ari riding an actual bike instead of balance bike. You can see how it ends.
We will get there. He really just loves his balance bike which is now to small. Yes Ari really does dress this way every day. We predict Ari has a big truck one day and lives on a farm wearing cutoffs and boots everywhere!
The tradition of the carnival continues. Anthony's and mine conversations get more desperate every year to avoid it. We can laugh about this, but honestly it is so expensive. I just hate spending money that way. Then I come home and edit the pictures and decide it was worth it.
The weather was pretty perfect. There were no bugs. It made for a great night. I fully expected Eli to ride some of the bigger rides, but he didn't want to. We did the same thing we did last year which was had a budgeted amount and only a certain amount of tickets. They got to choose and when they were gone they were gone. It was a win win all around. Lilliana is now on a mission to save all year so she can have a bracelet next year and not have to pick and choose. She has been asking to do odd jobs for two weeks. It makes me laugh. Their cousin also joined them this year. It was perfect for Lilliana. She loved having another girl to ride rides with.
Of course we ended the night with the usual picture of all of them together with a special edition. I hope they let me do this every year. Ari was of course not thrilled. Oh well, we got it done.
I get asked a lot how I am able to do all the things I do and keep up with 5 kids plus all the hobbies I have. So slowly I am going to pick these topics apart and share what works for me. It may not work for you, and that is great. If you can grab one tip that is awesome. If not do not feel bad. We are all at different stages in life.
Today I am talking about something many of us dread, hate. I am the first person to say I HATE exercise. I should say I USE to hate it. Truly I would much rather be sitting or not moving. It takes work and guess what I may love working in other areas, but my body is NOT one of them. Unfortunately I will talk about this in another week, but my mentality did me NO favors. 3 years ago, I began exercising again. I started with random things. Truthfully I hated them. I would stick to a week and be bored or so uncoordinated I felt it was pointless. Then I began T-Tapp. I loved T-Tapp and it really gave my body some rehabilitation, healed hormones, and made me stronger. I get really bored easily hence why I can't stick to the same exercise for long. I also had stomach muscle separation after the girls. The last weeks I could literally feel my muscles tearing and skin stretching. It was a horrible feeling.
So that brings me to my where I am now with exercise. I happened to find a postnatal calendar and free exercises on Youtube for after having a baby. I was skeptical I could make it through the workouts, but I decided I needed to. Welcome to Lindsay Brin Moms into Fitness. I began with the 30 day postnatal slim down . It was wonderful and I had to modify, but I made it. It was hard juggling all the kids, but soon they all were doing it with me. I did that for many months. I wanted free and I was still feeling good and gaining strength. Then there was a challenge and I paid money for her monthly streaming to do a Core focused routine. Surprisingly I lost 14 inches. My stomach was smaller than it had been in years. I kept the subscription for 3 more months. I kept pushing play. How did I do that. Well, the babies took a morning nap. I knew at that point I could get in 30 minutes or less of exercise, a shower, and protein smoothy. If the babies woke up the older kids could entertain them. As they got mobile they soon were on top of me on floor exercises but that is ok. I was still moving and seeing results. Lilliana and Ari spent pretty much every day doing it with me. We would get our school done and put babies to bed and exercise. A schedule made it very doable.
January came and we were cracking down on spending so I canceled my subscription. I knew I could go back to T-Tapp plus felt confident in using some of my other DVDS as I was stronger. A week after this Lindsay was giving out a full year subscription to her workouts. I entered figuring I would never win. Guess what I did! So in the interest of not wasting it. I have pretty much been pushing play 4-5 days a week. I notice a difference and love it.
Why do I love Lindsay. There are many reasons, she is a mom and gets it. Everything is under 30 minutes. She also says hey you may have been up all night so you may need to take it easier today. That is ok. The fact you are doing it is what matters. Tomorrow you can push harder. She also is well educated in pregnancy exercise and postpartum especially for stomach healing. This has been crucial for me. I will say I don't always agree with her on food, but at this point her exercises have been worth it so I try to ignore. I may have questioned her use of Canola oil at one point and given her some information. She took it graciously and listened so that was nice. Truly though she is inspiring and very great.
The biggest tips I have for sticking with it....
-Find something you love
-Make it a priority and set expectations for everybody
-Make sure your littles are entertained
-It is ok to have to push pause during it to redirect kids
-Take it one day at a time! If you miss a day that is ok. Remember just start right back up the next day.
Lastly, the biggest thing I have found is when I exercise I eat better! I want to eat better and do better. If I am not exercising I do not eat as well. So, stick with it and find what you love. Our bodies need to move and stretch. It is so important for health
This week's skin care results. The pictures were taken today as yesterday I had 7 kids I was in charge of and so I did not have time.
I am copying and pasting from my last blog post so you can catch up! Scroll to the pictures if you don't need the catch up.
My routine at this point is using Dream Clean in the morning and before bed. I really love this cleanser. It does not have a very huge aroma, but still smells nice. It foams as you put it on your face. It doesn't dry my skin, but feels like it actually cleans.
Every other night I have used the Masque Of Zen. I have to say this might actually be my favorite! Seriously I LOVE it. It smells so good. It has cinnamon bark in it and I feel that really brings some oxygen to my face. If I didn't think it would dry out my skin I would use it every night because I love the way it feels. Moderation though. I think the best story I can say about this is it draws the junk out. I have had what I thought was a skin tag on the side of my nose. I gave up on it being a pimple literally 3 years ago. I used this the first day and my nose began hurting on the side. I went into the bathroom trying to figure it out. Well long story short no TMI that skin tag was a very deep pimple and it is gone. It is no longer there. That is one thing I have noticed this draws the junk out and I love it.
In the morning and evening I also use the Skin Therapist for a moisturizer. This has been great. It is not greasy. It does a great job. My big issue is I could get the acne cleaned up and then I would get dry skin. It was no good. This has fixed that. It is light, but does a great job.
I will start with this picture. I take the same picture every Tuesday as Anthony and I go to our group. This is what two weeks of using a skin care routine has done under make up. Your make up with just look better. I am actually wearing less make up too believe it or not. Just a little powder no concealer or foundation.
Here is a video as light always can be funny.
My screenshot so you can see these are from today and not last year.
How do I still feel about it? Well I am still loving it. Honestly I have not done as good of job this past weekend using it as I was. There were a couple days I crawled into bed without make up just tired. I am ok with that. Life happens and I can't always wash my face. I also admittedly have not been drinking as much water or eating like I would like to this week. The holiday weekend brought on the use of a lot of sunscreen and immediately I broke out in the trouble areas, but that is ok. They are healing quicker and it was not nearly as bad as it has been. My face is so soft though and I really do believe it is improving. The red blotchy acne scars are healing.
Here is Chelsea's information again if you need it.
