Friday, August 31, 2012

Visiting Denver

This is super late but this was our surprise visit to Denver
Really enjoyed spending time with family after being away from everyone in DC

He kept say, "Taylo take a picture of me with yo Gul'friend"
I'm still trying to get officially accepted into family haha

Nope I've been good no chocolate here...


The Polar Bear was our favourite - I felt like a mean person promoting him stuck in his tiny swimming pool though





Penguins and Birds that look in love if you ask me



Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Hormones and Over Training

All right sorry I have been slacking on my fitness posts lately. Life got a little intense for a bit so here we go. Today I wanted to share just a little bit of information about how hormones effect our bodies while training. I found this interesting!

Testosterone plays a fundamental role in the growth and repair of tissue. Since men produce 10x more then women they have an advantage over us when lifting weights since their tissues can repair faster then ours. 
Estrogen has many functions but it also increases our fat deposition around the hips, buttocks, and thighs. 
{I found this science really unfair - but then again our curves make us sexy right!?}

Cortisol has the opposite effect as testosterone. It breaks down tissue, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. It can help breakdown fat, carbs, and protein in very small doses. But when our body has too much Cortisol it will start to break down our muscle tissue, this is due to over training, stress, poor sleep and inadequate nutrition. If we are overtraining we are actually not doing our bodies any good because as you're trying to build muscle your hormones could be breaking them down. Also if you are eating junk, and not sleeping well you could be contradicting your work in the gym. It all makes a difference and the science backs that up, no way around it!

Now I am not saying don't push yourself at the gym, not at all. But I think we can all listen to our bodies and know when we are over training. Remember when you go to the gym that it is about health not just the weight loss. I myself and most women have a hard time keeping this in sight, and the scale often is an easy way to reflect our healthy eating and efforts at the gym but going too far is not good for our bodies. We also need to keep in mind all the other factors that play into our overall health such as sleep, stress, and nutrition.


This information was taken from the
NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training Fourth Edition
Editors: Micheal A. Clark, Scott C. Lucett and Brian G. Sutton

Sunday, August 26, 2012

So Long Virginia

My parents came to visit us during our last week in Virginia. My mom and I celebrated our new pant sizes with a little shipping and we went to our favorite museum one last time. Packed up our apartment and headed town, it was nice to have the help and all the summer fun!















Friday, August 24, 2012

The Big Two 'O'

No I am not turning 20 today... but I did hit a big goal!
This means I get to go jean shopping :)

I have now lost 20 pounds

I can't believe I had all that on me!? When I pick up a 20lb weight in the gym and felt how heavy it is... it's a lot of weight. It took me four months but I feel so invigorated for finally getting to this point. My next goal is to lose another 5lbs and then I think I will be right where I want to be.

Since losing the weight I have lost inches, slimmed down a lot, I am the same size of pants when I was 17, but the greatest part is I feel better, healthier and my constant neck pain and headaches I used to have are gone! My husband compliments me a lot more, and it so proud of me for being so dedicated to being healthy. I am on my way to being a healthy mother which is my ultimate goal.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Reina's Visit

My Sister Ashley, Oliver and Mike all came to visit me and I got to spend two days alone with Oliver. Which was amazing! We all had so much fun together, it was nice to spend quality time with them.

We went into Georgetown


Date night so we wore our heels


We visited the temple



We went to the petting zoo. Oliver loved it, and kept pointing at all the animals. It was so fun to see how much he really enjoyed it.



There is this cute little spray park at the mall and Oliver had so much fun. Ahhh I still just can't get over how precious he is.


Monday, August 20, 2012

Symptoms and the Truth

I still have really bad heartburn, and stabbing pains in my uterus. {These were my first symptoms of pregnancy} That just doesn't seam fair to me! I have many days were I still "feel pregnant" now many of you may think stabbing isn't how pregnancy feels. But in my experience that is what my pregnancy felt like, which probably was a sign from the start something was wrong.

I just can't help but let my mind go to this place that thinks, "Okay so you feel pregnant, Doctors are wrong sometimes. Maybe you still are. Maybe you are again!" Then I have the flash back to the day when my doctor called me with definitive results and his first words were, "I'm very sorry..." and then went into technical terms and hormone count levels which I didn't comprehend because I was too busy trying to breath while my heart was breaking inside my chest.

If anything I just want my body to be back to normal. Because I don't need any help being reminded that...

I am no longer pregnant

Uh seeing those words on the page is hard, they make my heart ache but I have to write them because I need to face the truth. But today is hard, this is hard. It is so impossible for me to comprehend that we planned the next year of our life around the single fact that there was a growing child with a heart beat inside of me, and that I was a mother. And within hours that whole future with that child vanished...

These thoughts and feelings seam to burn inside me and the only way I can let them out - let some of the pain go is to write them down. No judgments, no questions, no agenda. Just the truth about how I feel.





We took these cute photos along the way and I was sad I never got to post them so why shouldn't I!?
I bought chocolate covered cookies along with pregnancy tests because I knew if they were negative I would want some comfort food, if they were positive then we could have celebratory cookies!

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Echo Lake

This is Elijah, I believe he is currently the youngest of the crew. Hard to keep track of all the babies in our family! He was the one who helped me through my hard time while visiting my family. He was always smiling at me and cuddling with me. Seriously made my day, how can I resist having babies when they bring so much joy into our lives. Also trails but hey I've got those and no kids there is no skipping out on those no matter what path in life you choose.


I really mastered the surf board in only two days this summer. I already knew how but it felt good to finally get up and do great after a year.

This is our caveman child Oliver eating ribs - most 1 year olds eat like that right?!?



Elijah taking a nap on me, and about to lick me while sleeping haha Ahhh I just love all these kids so much!

The Lake

Doing nails on a cloudy afternoon with the girls!

Echo Lake is such an amazing place, I love being there. The water, the boat, the warm air that never gets tooo hot. My family! Loving and supporting me - it was wonderful to have all my family around me while I was going through such a hard trial. At one point in the weekend they all just huddled around me and held me until I stopped crying. My Nephew and Niece who are the oldest prayed for me and told me they loved me. I have an amazing family!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Four moves in four months... I think this is our craziest record yet. 
Moving to Reston this weekend. Into an apartment instead of a basement, it will be short but nice to have a kitchen and no 30min one-way drive to work ever morning and night.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

5K - The 'K' stands for Killer Hard

I was planning on running a 5K here in DC but ended up running it in Denver instead. You know the Mile High City... Oh Boy... Altitude anyone!? I thought my lungs were going to rip right out and fall on the pavement. Not to mention I think their must have been a total of 8 steep hills or something close to that. 

I was just proud to finish and I beat my goal time and did it in 39:02 minutes. Not bad for someone who picked up running just 6 weeks ago after years of being couch junky!



The Phillips Crew - Super fun family activity




I was just jumping for joy because I survived