Be Back Soon!

Hello there old and new friends! THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your sweet and encouraging comments on yesterday's post! I received the SWEETEST e-mail yesterday too that brought me such joy and encouragement! You guys are THE BEST! Welcome to those who are now following my little blog. I TRULY appreciate all of my readers and feel so blessed that there are people out there who actually read what I write :) 
We are going out of town this weekend and will be away for a whole week! I will be MIA here for a while until I get back but you can ALWAYS find me on instagram (username:cinsarah). I am sort of addicted to Instagram! Anywho, THANKS AGAIN for following me and taking the time to leave a comment! I may not reply to all because I've got two sick kiddos at the moment who thankfully are doing better plus I'm still not done packing (I probably should be doing that right now) but I do read them ALL! 
Have a wonderful 4th of July week!!! 

Words Hurt

    In case you missed it: Levi + Sarah's Shared Nursery/Room was featured on YOUNG HOUSE LOVE yesterday! I was SUPER EXCITED, THRILLED & HONORED for the feature on John & Sherry's amazing blog! Their blog is one of my favorites! 
Then, I began reading the comments and I got a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach as I began to read some of these comments that weren't very nice over color changes in this room. All of a sudden my excitement turned to sadness.  I feel sad. I feel judged. I feel hurt. I don't take mean comments very well. I am a worrier and I think things over in my head so much it makes me sick. I shared this a little more about that in this post. Don't get me wrong I read ALL of the sweet comments as well and I want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to those who left a sweet comment letting me know you liked the room! 
To those who decided to judge and leave a mean comment over me removing the pink:
I feel I don't NEED to explain but I will because people like to jump into conclusions without even knowing and then in return leave a mean and judging comment about it.
Here is a design board I had created that had both pink and blue in it. I have no problem with colors. The reason I removed the pink was more because I found the sheep mobile and girraffe and fell in LOVE with both and wanted the room to look clean and put together to include both of these. I showed the design board to my daughter and she LOVED it! She is not sad that I removed the pink. She loves her room and her polka dotted sheets. She loves the girraffe which is currently sporting a pink hula skirt by the way. 
There's a saying "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I can already hear a reply "This is America and I can say anything I want"

I understand that but if people would just think before they talk/comment there would be a lot less hate in this world. Words can hurt way more than you think. Someone could be having a bad day or a bad week and hearing/reading mean words/comments would only make things worse. 

That's all I want to say.

On getting married young...

    Those of you who know me know I got married young. I mean REALLY young. I was 17 about to be 18. I'm sure you're thinking "What?! Was she pregnant?" That's what many people thought. Just to be clear... I was not. We didn't have our first baby (Joshua) until I was 19. So you might be asking yourself now "Well why did you do it?!" Why does anyone get married? Because you love the person! You can't imagine the rest of your life without them! For those reasons I got married. You might say "Well what does a 17 year old know about love?"

 I'm not saying marrying young is for everyone but I DON'T regret it. Sure I was young and maybe still a little immature but I know Omar and I were brought together by God. Our marriage hasn't been easy. We've had some rough patches like any marriage, mostly because of me. I've had to do some growing up while being married. I don't think the same way I did when I was 17 which is good. I am not perfect and neither is our marriage but despite those rough patches we are still together and I know it's only because of God. I am VERY thankful for my husband and for our three kids. Many times I think "I don't deserve them, any of them." It's there when I see God's beautiful grace.

 I remember all of those judgemental comments from people when they found out we were getting married. Sadly some of those were from family. Marrying young is not for everyone but it was right for us. I am now 25 turning 26 this year, Today is our EIGTH anniversary and we have a total of 3 kiddos :)

 I feel like God is working with me each and everyday. I still have LOTS of maturing to do. God never stops working in us. We live.. we learn. We go through tough times in order to really appreciate God's blessings. I wish I could go back and change a couple things here and there but NEVER do I regret marrying my husband. I have hurt him and I have not always been the wife he deserves but he is a WONDERFUL man and I see that now more than ever. I don't ever want to loose him and I don't ever want to forget that he is the one I would pray for. He is the blessing God gave me and I need to take care of that blessing along with the three other little blessings we share :) I LOVE YOU OMAR! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Rough Patch

   Hello Friends! I thought I would update you all here on what's up with me lately. I went to the hospital Sunday morning (Father's Day!) with some stomach pains that started on Saturday afternoon. I called my doctor and was told it could be my appendix and to go to the emergency room as soon as possible. So we spent the entire Sunday morning in the hospital trying to figure out what was wrong. Turns out I have a kidney infection! I still feel a bit weak but thankfully the pain is almost gone today! I am just SO THANKFUL it wasn't my appendix! I was so worried about having surgery. If you all remember I shared about my umbilical hernia a while back and how I will need surgery. I postoned surgery because I didn't want to stop breastfeeding Levi and not be able to carry him so worrying wether I was gonna need my appendix removed or not was stressful!

I am not feeling 100% myself yet. I am on antibiotics for 10 days. I have been pumping and dumping because I can't breastfeed Levi. Thankfully he took a formula bottle really well. I am not having the best week ever but I know it will all be over soon! I won't be able to finish my REVOLT fitness plan so that's on PAUSE for now. I want to complain so bad about EVERYTHING but I was reminded today that no matter how hard of a week I'm having someone out there has it WAY WORSE so I choose to be THANKFUL! Turn my negatives into positives...

-THANKFUL it wasn't something worse.

-THANKFUL I am ok.

-THANKFUL Levi is drinking formula just fine.

-THANKFUL for my wonderful family who helped with the kids when I was in the hospital.

Revolt - Week Two

You can find WEEK ONE of my REVOLT here.
MEALS The meals this week were good at first but I quickly got tired of them. I guess it has to do with re-heated food more than the actual food. I can't stand leftover or re-heated food. I like my food fresh so this week was tough since I prepared everything Sunday for this week. I LOVED the sweet potato hash! That I didn't care if it was re-heated or not! I will be honest, on tuesday night we ate tostadas because we have small groups (church gatherings) during the week and I felt bad saying no when they served me so I ate! Also yesterday was my hubby's birthday and we went to eat BBQ and I ate a little more than I should have. I followed the meal plan fully on Monday and then every other day I ate something I shouldn't have. So on Monday for breakfast I had sweet potato hash with scrambled egg. For lunch it was a turkey patty, potatoes rustica and avocado slices. For dinner it was hot mama chicken with salad and broccoli. To be honest with you I enjoyed "detox" week a little more! 

WORK OUTS

I worked out twice this week. I worked my lower body. I wanted to do tabatas but didn't get a chance to this week. I will try to do that today. I was SUPER SORE from the lower body work out this week but it felt good! 

STATS

                                WEEK ONE                               WEEK TWO                            CHANGE

WEIGHT                    148 lbs                                       145 lbs                                    -3 lbs

NECK                        13.5 in.                                       13.5 in                                     0

CHEST                        34 in.                                           34 in.                                     0

WAIST                         30 in.                                           29 in.                                   -1 in.                                    

HIPS                            40 in.                                           39.5 in.                                 -.5 in.

THIGH                         24.5 in.                                          23.5 in.                               -1in    

CALVES                      14 in.                                           14 in.                                     0

OVERALL I reached my goal of 145 from last week! That's awesome but I am terrified of gaining those 3lbs I lost this weekend. It's Father's day and our Anniversary is next Wednesday so we will be doing some eating to celebrate! I do notice a BIG difference in how my clothes fit. I feel lighter! I still would like to loose 10 more pounds but I'm gonna take it slow and try to do work outs from now until the end of the uprising this month and just watch my diet but not follow it 100% because I am breastfeeding and I don't want to lower my supply. I mainly just want to tone up now and if I loose 5-10 more lbs that would be AWESOME! We will be going out of town the first week of July so I just want to finish this Uprising and then just do work outs from then on as well to maintain my weight.
If you have been wanting to loose weight but just can't seem to you should totally try REVOLT! I've already shared it with people who have commented that I look thinner. It REALLY does work if you follow it through. You just need to get off your butt and try it! If you're not ready to pay why don't you try the FREE KICKSTART and see if you like it! If you do you can sign up HERE. Then we can loose weight together!

Keeping Kids Busy During Summer

   Summer is here! That means vacations, beach trips, pool time & lots more but what about the days you are home and your kids say "I'm bored!"? I knew things would get crazy up in here when my son Joshua got out of school and if we didn't have some sort of schedule the kids would end up fighting or complaining that they were bored! So I created a schedule for them that includes reading time, work time and even tv & play time....

Thursday's are "FIELD TRIP THURSDAYS" were we get to go to either the library, the water fountains, the park or pump it up (inflatables place). They have to earn "Field Trip Thursday" so I use this awesome little app I found called BEEP &  BOOP to help keep track of their behavior...

 I love this app! You can upload a picture of your child and if they behave you click the "BEEP" button and a list will come up of reasons why they got a "BEEP", you can even add your own! Same thing if they misbehave you can push the "BOOP" and a list will come up. There's a funny little noise for each of the buttons and the kids love it! You can make a GOAL so that motivates them to behave. Our goal is "FIELD TRIP THURSDAY". Both the Schedule & this App are TOTALLY WORKING! We just started this week and it's going AWESOME! Just last week the kids were CRAZY! There was no schedule so they kept saying they were bored or that they wanted to watch a movie and kept asking for snacks. I hung our schedule in the dinning room where they can see it so they can check the time and know what is next. Here are the kids during "WORK/ACTIVITY" time and you can see the schedule on the wall under the mirror...

(sorry about the grainy pic, I took this with my phone)

If you don't have a schedule for your kids I totally recommend it! I created a black schedule for ya'll in case you don't have one already...

(just click on the pic above and save to your desktop)

How do you make summers work for you and your kiddos? Do you have any fun plans this summer?

Goodbye Kindergarten!

My son's last day of Kindergarten was last week! He's moving on to FIRST GRADE! He's grown so much! I am just so thankful that God watched over him this school year. He's reading and writting and he LOVES to draw! I'm so thankful for the wonderful son God has given me!

So now that he's on vacation that means I have ALL THREE KIDS home with me! Things are a little busier now but I found a way to make it work and I'll be sharing that with you all tomorrow along with a free printable!

Revolt - Week One

Week one of REVOLT has been AWESOME! I am REALLY liking this program so far! 
MEALS This week we did the "DETOX" meal plan which included 5 meals in total. I have been doing 3 meals though because I didn't prepare my foods on Sunday for the whole week like I should've had and I have a million things to do plus my son got out of school this week so I have ALL THREE KIDS with me ALL OF THE TIME but I'm setting up a schedule for next week so I have time to do it all. I LOVE all of the meals though! I substituted the Sirloin for Salmon because I don't like meat that much. I am very much looking forward to Saturday which is the day off for the diet part! I want to drink some sweet tea & have dessert! I am nursing so I did notice a difference in my milk supply so I started eating bigger portions of each of the foods for each meal and It seems to be helping! Here are two instagram pictures of my meals this week...

WORK OUTS
I haven't done any of the work outs this week. I did however walk/jog 3 days this week which I think is perfect for me since I haven't done any type of exercize in a while! I plan on starting the work outs next week. I'm excited! I feel a little sore today (nothing too bad) from last nights walk/jog. I used 3lbs weights while walking and it really helped me work my arm muscles while working my legs.

STATS
I don't have a bodyfat caliper which is required so I can't do that but I will start with weight and measurements until I purchase one.

                                 BEFORE                                 WEEK ONE                             CHANGE

WEIGHT                    153 lbs                                       148 lbs                                    -5 lbs

NECK                        13.5 in.                                       13.5 in                                     0

CHEST                        35 in.                                           34 in.                                   -1 in.

WAIST                         31 in.                                           30 in.                                   -1 in.                                    
HIPS                            41 in.                                           40 in.                                   -1 in.

THIGH                         25 in.                                          24.5 in.                                 -.5in    

CALVES                      14 in.                                           14 in.                                    0

OVERALL I can't believe I lost 5lbs this week! I was 153 on Monday! I know breastfeeding helped as well since you loose calories nursing but it mainly has to do with what I ate & getting off my butt to at least walk! Last week was draining, I felt tired, I would just sit on the couch feeling sleepy after eating. This week has been awesome! I have a lot more energy and I feel good! I took some before pictures this week and let me tell you, they're not pretty! lol They really are motivating me so that my after pictures for the end of this month are better! I will be sharing those the last Friday of this month. I can't wait for tomorrow! Tomorrow is my day off from my diet. Even though it's a day off I want to watch what I eat! I have actually been craving a chick fil a salad with avocado lime ranch so that's not too bad! I also want some sweet tea & a cookie! :) I already printed out my diet for next week along with the recipes and I'm so excited! Everything looks delicious! I will be meal prepping Sunday. I will also begin the workouts next week so I'm excited about that as well! My goal is to weight 145lbs by the end of next week! 
If you have been wanting to loose weight but just can't seem to you should totally try REVOLT! We can do it together! If you're not ready to pay why don't you try the FREE KICKSTART and see if you like it! If you do you can sign up HERE. Then we can loose weight together!
************************ We have our Stubb's BBQ Winners!! CONGRATS STEPHANIE, DONNA & MEG (I will be e-mailing you!)

Let's Do This!

   As you all know I just had a baby! I pretty much lost all of the baby weight I had gained except for THREE little pounds that I keep gaining and loosing. I still have a total of 15lbs that I would like to loose. Not only that but I'd like to feel fit and not just skinny. I haven't been working out and so I feel drained and tired a lot. I was just talking about this with my husband the other day! I've been getting headaches and just feel lazy and tired all of the time. I think it mostly has to do with what I'm eating and my lack of exercise....

So, I was SUPER EXCITED when I got an e-mail last week from Tara offering me a chance to try out REVOLT and to blog about it. So of course I said YES! This is exactly what I need! 

What is REVOLT?

REVOLT is an online fitness program created by Nichole Huntsman. There are monthly Uprisings. Which include 4-weeks of diet, workouts, and workout videos. 

I will be sharing more details on what I ate and how my first week went tomorrow and every Friday with you all! I'll be sharing pictures here and/or on instagram. I just wanted to let you guys know before I share my first post tomorrow so you get a heads up to what I've been up to this week.

I am motivated and having my husband join me in doing this makes it even better! 

*******************

We have a WINNER for the Shabby Apple Giveaway!

CONGRATS APRIL!

(I have already e-mailed you)