Oh Dance Factory…you kick my butt every time I play you!  Since I’ve only had the game for two days now, I guess I don’t have much to complain about but still…  I ordered it from Walmart.com and had it rush shipped to my house (something I normally don’t pay extra for, but I was losing my will to workout with Dance Dance Revolution anymore, and I have worked out five times a week for the last two weeks, and was desperate to keep up the momentum).  Let me just say that so far, Dance Factory hasn’t disappointed.  The graphics and backgrounds are quite a bit lower-scale than those on DDR, but when I’m stomping as fast as I can to hit the arrows in time, I never see the backgrounds anyways.  The new arrows were harder to get used to since they are spaced much further apart, but it didn’t take me long.  Loading my own CDs so that I can work out to music that I like makes it all worthwhile.  With DDR I was stuck with a list of about 50ish songs, some of which I knew, and some of which were clearly Japanese techno (not my fave).  Whenever I would “earn” a new song, it would ALWAYS be Japanese techno so it wasn’t ever anything to look forward to.  Also, DDR has four levels – beginner, basic, difficult, and expert.  I mastered the beginner level in no time, but have been floundering around in the basic level for the last year or so.  Every time I would attempt a difficult song I would lose within a few minutes (sometimes even a few seconds) because the difficulty level would increase too much.  Also with DDR I was only dancing to snippets of songs, maybe 1 to 1.5 minutes each.  With Dance Factory, I am dancing (and I use that term very loosely here) for the entire length of the song (about 4 mins average).  Using my awesome bodybugg, I figured out that I’m burning the same amount of calories in about 2/3 of the time playing Dance Factory.  Enough to win me over right there!

Speaking of my bodybugg, I now have undeniable proof that it is more work to be a stay at home mom than it is to go out to work every day.   On President’s Day I had to stay home since Chloe’s pre-school was closed for Teacher Inservice.  I worked out for 10 minutes and then went about my normal stay-at-home routine of cleaning, cooking, laundry, cleaning, cleaning, cooking, and relaxing after Aaron got home (I was a SAH mom for 3 years until I took a part time job last May) and at the end of the day I had burned something like 3200 calories.  Every other day where I’ve gone to work and then came home, cleaned, worked out for 45 minutes to an hour (and sometimes even longer), cooked dinner, and relaxed after Aaron got home, I have only averaged around a 2700 calorie per day burn.  What gives?  ♥

We lost the buyer on our house, so we’re back to having to show it again.  This is really frustrating because I hate having to leave at a moment’s notice, but it’s good at the same time because now we will have a little longer to get our money saved to actually move since we had to use all of our previous savings (and then some) to pay the rest of our taxes for 2009.

I finally got to watch episode of the last season of Lost tonight.  Aaron fell asleep and I couldn’t bring myself to stop it and wait for tomorrow, so he’ll have to watch it on his own.  What a good wife I am, lol. I’ve gotten so hooked on that show that watching the last episode will probably make me feel like a family member just died.  🙂

I am so cold!  Aaron and I took the kids sledding this afternoon on really short notice, and we only had about 45 minutes of daylight left to sled in, but it was so much fun.  I forgot how much fun that sledding can be, and the kids absolutely raved about it.  They are looking forward to next weekend when we are supposed to get more now.

I started tracking the number of steps I take every day (I started this on Monday, the 15th of February) and converting them into miles and then tracking them on Gmaps to see how many days it will take me to “walk” to Coeur d’Alene Idaho.  So far I’ve made it all the way to I-70 and Havana.  It’s kind of fun, and it gives me an incentive to walk around more.   Tonight’s dinner will be a Cheesy Rice and Broccoli soup which is fairly low-cal (209 calories per cup) and if it tastes any good, I’ll post a recipe.

I had my six month review at work today which went really well.  The only two things that I was asked to change were things that are just a matter of personal preference (email questions to my boss rather than ask them when he gets into work, and don’t tell them when they have a voicemail because apparently they also get email notifications about them).  They said that in the next few months they are hoping to move me to full time and that they would also like to discuss a new pay rate at my one year review.  They also gave me 30 hours of paid time off to use whenever I want which is awesome.  That’s six paid days off, and this job is part time and I haven’t been there for a whole year yet.  This job totally rocks!

Day one of working out and counting calories is going smoothly (as most day ones usually do for me).  I bought a pair of hand weights that are 2 lbs each for my Crunch Boot Camp work out that I am doing in the mornings, and a pair of ankle weights that I just wear around all the time that weigh 2.5 lbs each.  They kind of irritate me because they feel constricting but maybe I’ll get used to them.  If not, I’ll just wear them during my workouts.  Tonight for dinner is lasagna.  I’m going to be trying to figure out ways to make our regular dinners lower calorie without compromising any of the taste.  My main thing tonight is going to be using only half the mozzarella that I usually use, and using part-skim ricotta cheese.  I hope it tastes great and that it sets up right.  Lasagna can be really fickle.

Oh how it irritates me to have an entire post written and then have my computer highlight everything and delete it for me!  Grr…I had a lovely post all written up about my V-Day with my awesome hubby and everything!  Oh well.

I moved from Blogger to WordPress because the tracking and notifications in WordPress are much better than what is offered with Blogger.  So if you are interested in reading any of the old stuff, check out www.miaisneat.blogger.com while the account is still active.

I’m getting back on the bodybugg tomorrow, and going to set a morning appointment with myself to get up and exercise.  I have no major expectations that this time will work any better than the other million times I’ve said the same thing, but then again, maybe I always fail because I expect myself to?

…another reason I like WordPress more than Blogger?  It just allowed me to import all my old posts.  Hooray!

I am farming again, lol.  I can’t help this obsession.  I kinda let myself go this week, but will be regulating my time next week, and I think I’m going to set a goal to work out 30 minutes a day before I’m allowed to get onto Farmville.  Hopefully that will urge my body out of bed at 6 a.m. so I can get it right out of the way. 

There has been quite a lot going on and I’m starting to feel overwhelmed again.  I need to take a deep breath and just write it all out.  Things seem more manageable if I don’t keep them bottled up inside.

1.  We had to take Asher to the Denver Dumb Friends League last weekend.  He won’t quit peeing all over our house (and all over Jacob’s bed).  They are going to put him to sleep if they haven’t already.  I’m trying not to think about it so much because it makes me want to sob.
2.  I got our taxes done.  We owe 1300 dollars.  We had 800 in savings.  You do the math.
3.  Aaron may or may not be getting bonuses starting this month.  If he does, then that’s actually a good thing.  What I’m stressing about is the fact that he might not.  What if he doesn’t?  His boss SAID he would, but still…what if he doesn’t?  We need them now.  We need to get $4000 in savings before we can move out.  We need to start paying off these credit cards.  I’m so tired of being broke.

Life is slowing down.  I can’t believe how much easier it is to breathe.  I now only have one job.  I’ve had three to four jobs at a time constantly for the last three years and I cannot begin to tell you how stressful that is.