Summer Bucket List: C, P, Y

Over the last few weeks we've been working to finish up the activities on our summer bucket list. We did 3 of our last 5 - Camp in a tent, Play date with a school friend, and Yard sale.

Jason set up a tent in our living room for Aria to sleep in. She thought it was so great!  I was skeptical that she would actually sleep in it all night, but she proved me wrong!  She was just so cute!  She would probably love going on a real camping trip. We may have to add that to our bucket list next summer!

Aria has been asking for a long time to have her school friends, Sophie and Zoey, over to play.  They were not able to come at the same time, so we had 2 different play dates.  I forgot to take pictures of the first one, but these sweet girls had so much fun!

We had a yard (garage) sale at mom and dad's house a few weeks ago.  Aria was quite the sales person.  In the first photo you can see her in the background talking someone in to buying one of her dresses.  She loved talking to all of the people who came and went.  I wish I would have gotten a picture, but Aria was walking around giving away pictures she colored.  I gave her 1/4 of a poster board to decorate and when she finished, she came up to me and asked for a piece of tape. The next thing I noticed she was taping it to a man's hand!  He was such a good sport and walked around with it on and even left still wearing it!

Just two activities left on our bucket list which we will definitely have completed within the week! I guess it's about time since it is officially fall!

Results from the Diet Bet Challenge

I just realized I never posted my results from the Diet Bet Challenge I did!  The challenge was to lose 4% of my body weight in 4 weeks.  To join the challenge you bet $30 and if you meet your goal you have the chance to take home more than you originally put in.  I am happy to say I met my goal with a few ounces to spare, dropping a total of 6.2lbs.  I took home a total of $47.99 - an increase of $17.99.

I learned 2 things from this challenge.

1. This Diet Bet thing is a lot of fun!  I like the fact that you are only competing against yourself.  You either meet your goal or you don't.

2.  I'm not really ready to tackle losing this baby weight just yet.  Since I'm still feeding Quentin it was a bit difficult to try to cut out calories.  I was able to set aside time to walk and spend a little time in the gym, but being exhausted from lack of sleep meant that I was pushing myself more than I probably should at this time.  I also saw a decrease in my milk supply which made me a bit nervous since I plan on feeding Q for 3 more months.

Since I ended the diet bet I have not been working out and I have not been eating overly healthy, so when I stepped on the scale today I fully expected to have gained some of my weight back.  I was shocked to see that I actually lost weight, weighing in at 139.4.

I made one change that I think has played a big part.  For years now, our eat out budget has been $50 for 2 weeks.  Ask me how many times we've stayed within that budget.  Yep, pretty much never.  We usually end up using our entertainment and miscellaneous money on it too.  I decided I was pretty tired of eating out and wasting money on eating out, so we are now strictly staying within that budget.

This has caused us to be very selective on when we eat out, where, and what we get when we are there.  We usually try to spend no more than $10-$15 per meal out so now we are sharing meals.  This means that we aren't over eating and are usually drinking water.  This has been working out really well for the past 4 weeks and I think has played a big part in helping me to keep the weight I lost for the challenge off.

Below are my before and after pictures.  Not too bad and they definitely make me excited to hit the ground running in just a few months!