Tag: regimen

Challenge Accepted Day 13

It has been a long day and I’m not going to lie, I haven’t been feeling very well; self inflicted unfortunately. Far too much wine last night, but an amazing conversation with one of my dearest friends until 3:30am! 

Hubby had a work thing followed by a barbecue and we all had to attend – well we didn’t have to but it’s complicated. Nonetheless, I woke up to the doorbell at 8am (kids aren’t allowed to answer it unless I’m there) & was feeling like death. Couldn’t really move, yet I knew all of my kids were up! Summed up some sort of super hangover power and managed to fall out of bed. I even made them all milos (pronounced /ˈmaɪloʊ/ – an Australian malted milk drink created by Thomas Mayne in Sydney in 1934) they did have to get their own cereal and I quickly lost my superpower and laid down on the couch where I could not move from for the next few hours. 

Hubby called to say he was on his way home and I was nowhere near being ready! Crap. I got into the shower as quickly as I could, which given the circumstances, was rather more at the pace of a tortoise not trying to win any race. I was slow-moving in both physical action and mental agility. I showered as quickly as I could and did my morning Rodan + Fields regimen of course (a little later than normal though) I asked hubby what the weather was doing and he told me it was quite a nice day – 15C and sunny. I dressed in 3/4 pants and a light shirt and very light cardigan. It wasn’t enough as I later found out when I stood shivering at the bbq! 

Hubby hasn’t yet gone into his job so he’s sort of living in limbo at work and feels a little like a third wheel. This is where it got a bit weird today, we wanted to talk and establish relationships with soldiers and their families but the person that hubby is replacing is still there and we felt like it should have been a little more about him than us and there’s 5 of us, it’s not like we don’t immediately have presence when we go anywhere – 3 kids who have two volumes; loud and asleep! So we went then sort of left quietly because they were doing speeches and presentations and it was time. We felt bad about leaving and bad about staying. But I will tell you one funny story, we got out of the car upon arring and started walking to where everyone was standing when I looked down and realised that I had the hairiest legs! That doesn’t help when you’re going to meet lots of new people! To say I was mortified was putting it lightly! From then on I just wanted to hide my legs and the goosebumps were not helping at all! 

We grabbed some items from the store (which is when our boy fell sound asleep – Who knew driving through the supermarket could be so exhausting) and came home where kids and I made chocolate brownies, salsa and a pavlova. Yum! Had to practice for hubby’s birthday on Tuesday, pavlova is his favourite. This is an Australian dessert (though there is some controversy from New Zealanders saying it originated there) that tastes like marshmallows stuffed inside of meringue shell. It’s heavenly. Here is the product from the oven, I’ll decorate it tomorrow.

  
Well, that’s all from me for today. It’s time to have a turmeric latte, do my evening regimen and fall into bed. By the way, today was the rest day for T25, thank goodness, & no, there wasn’t any running happening today! Sweet dreams! 

Challenge Accepted Day 10 – round 2

Ok, so I just wrote my entire blog, and it’s all gone! Gone! Hubby just proofread it and it was all good to go but for some reason, the pics weren’t uploading so I chose to delete media and that in turn deleted my entire blog! To say it has been that sort of day, I think sums it up. 

So, now it shall definitely be short and sweet! We’ve not had much news from my brother-in-law, awaiting for the time to hit a decent hour so we can call him and hope that all is well.

My workout this morning was the absolute worst, I was tired, due to no sleep once again and do not even think about buying this rubbish:

  
It doesn’t work in the slightest, well it didn’t for me, I should say. On top of being tired, I drank some bottled white wine last night that obviously went straight to my head and I ate chocolate, lots of chocolate! Naughty me! It was even the good kind of chocolate; dark with pumpkin seeds, but still my body betrayed me this morning during Speed 1.0! It was awful. I truly struggled. I did however force myself to slow jog a mile afterwards so we shall call that a little victory!

Another victory for us today as a family was for our daughter’s parent teacher conference, not only is she doing so well on a social level, in the words of her teacher, “She is the sweetest, most polite student, and a joy to have in my class.” She picks up on new math concepts and strategies , is on grade par with her writing, reading and comprehension and is just a well-rounded kid! Such a huge leap from where we were just a few years ago and especially given she has just gone through her first change of schools and to top it all off, it was a mid-year move! This kid has been through hospital stays, physical challenges, years of pain and crippling (at times) illness, yet here she is, almost at 100% good health and such a beautiful soul! We couldn’t be prouder! 

Hunter and I had a great brunch, he had the fruit, I had the chicken/avocado/spinach salad, we cleansed the house of much useless paperwork, the girls actually got to play out side for almost 2 hours!!! All in all, though my challenges felt at times overwhelming, the day was a success, now all we can do is hope that my brother-in-law had a similar night. May your day or night, be filled with only good challenges and may you stay safe and dry!

   
 On a side note: My skin is feeling amazing, I have just done my nightly regimen and am feeling like my skin is growing younger daily. Seriously! You will see 😊 Au revoir for now, tomorrow shall be a new day! 

Challenge Accepted Day 5

I am smoked! Today’s workout has been a killer. Not one but two! Legs and cardio! Seriously! I’m not sure which one should be done first, today I did lower focus followed by cardio but when good old Shawn T asked me to do some outrageous squats in the cardio routine, my legs started screaming in pain! So next Friday, I shall switch it around and let you know how that goes. I even managed to do a mile run afterwards, there wasn’t much of a warm-up or cool-down for the run, but I was already pretty warm so I didn’t feel too badly. 😜

As for the regimen, well my neck is feeling great but I think I’ve pushed it too soon by using the Amp MP daily so quickly, I should have heeded the Doctor’s advice (Dr Katie Rodan & Dr Kathy Fields) and started out a little slower, so tonight I’m going to give the roller a miss and go back to it tomorrow night. I’m still not seeing any radical changes but I’ll do a photo on Monday side by side with my first photo and we can have a looksy, I really want to share this journey with you, so let’s see if we can find any difference already & if not, then that’s ok too, I’m not expecting anything radical just yet.

I did realize that I should have had my eyebrows done before I took my first ‘before’ photo but I’ve had such a hard time finding somewhere that does threading (something I fell in love with in the Middle East and have managed to find in Italy, Texas, Hawaii and Colorado Springs, but not here in South Korea (apparently there was a spa at the first hotel that we stayed in upon arrival in Seoul that did it, but I was jet-lagged, concerned about my animals, absolutely freezing – the temperature ranged from -28 to -32C when we first arrived here, that’s -18.4F to -25.6F! Aka: hell freezing over! So I didn’t do a whole lot). Anyway, I gave up yesterday after searching and ended up having my brows waxed at a little salon outside of Osan AFB. It was ok, my brows looked wonderful, but then again any grooming they had would have been marvelous and my mono brow – after 2 months of no grooming, was definitely asking to see a professional! My apologies for the shock brow photo, they will look a tad better upon Monday’s photo release, I promise.

I also have to tell you about another area I dilly dally in, and that is being a Bzz Agent. What is a Bzz Agent I hear you ask? Well, it’s this fantastic job where you get to test products for free or almost free and share your opinions online and in person. So I just got my first product, Covergirl Lashblast Volume mascara in very black. My first impression when opening the packaging was a little disappointing because they use a plastic bottle cap that is to be disposed of as soon as you open it, the environmentalist in me, doesn’t like such waste when the brush has worked just fine thus far for so many previous products. I do like the thickness of the mascara though as it goes on smoothly without clumping. And the color is a nice black, black, sounds weird I know, but it’s not a blue-black, or a brown-black, it’s exactly what it says it is. The brush is possibly not quite pointy enough for my liking, I have sort of squinty eyes and found when nearing the end of my eyes where they meet my nose, I ended up with a little dollop of mascara on my nose, so I had to be more careful on the other side. I really like the texture of the mascara though and all in all would have to say that it goes on nicely, doesn’t clump and makes my lashes look a little more voluminous.

Ok, funny thing for the day and once again it is my son who just cracked me up; his favourite movie is Pixels and the character Ludlow gets the girl, Lady Lisa, in the end. Hunter has just finished watching it for the umpteenth time and came over to me very seriously and said, “She’s a lovely girl, I want to be Ludlow so I get the girl!” Three and a half years old! There’s probably going to be a lot of Hunterisms throughout this blog as he cracks me up daily! You have to watch the movie to understand why that’s hilarious! 

So my afternoon has been interesting, my new neighbor came over and asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her through the rice paddies (everyone has told me that it’s a great walk with the kids and dog) unfortunately, given my double work out earlier this morning, the last thing I could think about was doing more walking! As I was heading to the bus stop a couple of hours later though, I decided to call in there and see if she wanted to come over for a glass of wine and yay, she did. It was really nice to have some female conversation, she seems like my sort of person too, sadly, she’s leaving in May, but that’s ok, I’ll enjoy her company whilst I can and she has a lot of knowledge about local things so we’re going shopping next week to a local market where I can finally get some nice fresh fruit and vegetables, I was starting to wonder where the good, fresh produce was hiding, as it certainly isn’t at the commissary, or even Costco, or Emart. Anyway, to say I’m excited is a little bit of an understatement, we’re going to get lunch at a local Korean restaurant she knows and just enjoy getting out of the house. I don’t get to do that very often now given the one car situation, so it will be really nice! 

Alright, well it’s  Friday night here, the family have all started watching The Good Dinosaur – let me just digress a little about that movie; not what I was expecting at all! Hubby bought it when he went back to the States a couple of weeks ago thinking it was going to be this great feel good movie for us all (& there might be a spoiler alert here if you haven’t seen it) but wow! Not what I was expecting at all! I like the different take on the human, just wasn’t quite ready for it, but I wasn’t expecting so much sadness, nor the tripping out on whatever those berries were! Anyway, can’t wait to see Finding Dory, that one will definitely be worth it’s wait! 

Ok, I’m going to say sayonara. Have a great day or night depending on where you are and don’t forget to share your thoughts with me on my blog. I’ll give you details next week on my website if you’re looking to take the Rodan + Fields challenge with me, there is a 60 day money back guarantee, so spend your weekend giving it some serious thought, oh and my Aussie friends, I know a few of you loved Proactiv and these products were created by those same two doctors who created those amazing products, they just decided to move to an age group reflecting their own ages, ie, anyone over the age of 20! 😉 nonetheless, they are launching the Rodan and Fields line in Australia, so if you’re interested, it will soon be there.

 Happy travels

Challenge Accepted Day 4

Well here we are, day 4 already and I’m yet to see any results! Too soon you think? I know, I know, it won’t happen overnight, but bloody hell, I’d really like it to! I’m a bit over Shawn T. “In and out,” “Feel it in your core, are you good?” No I’m not bloody good, my core is telling me to stop torturing it! And you and your fit sidekicks can all piss off! Ok, that only happens for about 24 minutes, the rest of the time I love it! 😜

I did notice this morning a big scratch on my neck that stung when I was doing my morning R+F Redefine routine, but it wasn’t from the products, obviously either my kids, or my dog, or myself during sleep, someone/something scratched me and man did it sting when I was cleaning my face. Anyway, I did put a little bit of the Soothe Sensitive Skin Treatment on the scrape so in the interests of keeping you guys informed, I just wanted you to know of any products I use. I’ll let you know how it feels tonight when I do my nightly Redefine routine, but I was once burned quite badly by a woman in Colorado Springs when I bought a Groupon for laser hair removal and unfortunately in this instance, cheaper isn’t always better, I honestly thought I was going to be scarred for life, my Dad told me to sue her, it was all crazy, anyway, my friend Sue suggested I use the Soothe Sensitive Skin Treatment for the burns so I did and that combined with vitamin E, completely got rid of my burn marks. 

  

  
 
These marks were immediately visible when I got home from having the laser hair removal, I wasn’t happy and it hurt like hell, but thank god, my skin healed after about 3 weeks. Here is a more recent photo of my yucky, white, hairy legs (please forgive my candidness) I wish they were tanned and lovely but I feel like my winter has been never ending with living in Colorado where it snowed up until June (with some nice days in between) then we went to Australia in July/August and had just a tad more winter, followed by Autumn (Fall) upon returning to Colorado, with Winter starting all over again in October (yay! – Oh how I wish sarcasm could come through in writing without having to point it out!) at least we had some nice days where light jackets were ok. To top it all off, we saved to go on a cruise before moving to South Korea and Texas decided to go from 80 odd degrees Fahrenheit the day before we got there to 40! Houston had the coldest, windiest, most overcast miserable day it had had, the day we boarded our ‘warm’ cruise! (Ok, maybe a little exaggerated) but you can see how rugged up we were! 

  
 
So back to today, my son & I went on our first adventure together here in South Korea, it was only over to the Airforce base at Osan to get our visas for our extended stay here, but we did park the car at the gate and wander through the market that is at the front of the AFB. We had some wonderful Thai food from an authentic Thai restaurant there and I got to practice my very little Thai with the lovely hostess/waitress named Juree. On top of that, I got to eat one of my most favorite meals in the entire world, Tom Kha Gai – the scrumptious Thai soup with lemongrass, coconut milk and chicken and it was made to perfection! I’ve attempted it many times and it just never tastes as good. 
We wandered around, ate Baskin Robbins ice cream (oops) and had a lovely time together. Then it was time to get back to our little village to get Madison from the bus. We’re also only allowed one car here unless we can prove we need another one (we can’t just yet ), so I had to be back for child pickup, hubby pickup, dinner prep, you name it! Unfortunately that didn’t end my day; we all (the kids and I) need to follow up on our Japanese Encephalitis Vaccination (JEV) so we went to the immunization clinic on post, thinking it couldn’t be too difficult (but knowing in my heart of hearts that nothing’s ever too easy either) only to be told that they don’t see dependents there! What? Why would you have dependents here and not vaccinate them? “Ok, so where do we go to get vaccinations?” “I think Osan takes dependents…” You think? Seriously, you’re not sure? Oh my. Oh well, luckily I haven’t dragged my three children to the immunization clinic, waited for 20 minutes only to be told after telling them the entire way there and parking the car etcetera, etcetera, that they were going to get another shot! Luckily, winter has ended and it’s a balmy 3C  (37.4F) outside, so the kiddos frolicked in the warm gusts blowing in the carpark….not! But, such is life.

I know, I know, this is an exercise/makeup regimen 60 day challenge, but my life is literally ‘always an adventure’ and as I’ve already said, there hasn’t been any changes yet so I’m not going to inundate you with pictures of my face or body, instead, I’m going to take you on my adventurous journey on a daily basis and throw in the challenges that I face daily! Hopefully you’ll stick with me as I’m thoroughly enjoying this side of it (the writing that is, not necessarily the exercise) & I can’t wait to see not only where the exercise and Rodan + Fields regimen take me, but where each day takes us! Sweet dreams! 

PS I didn’t run today! But I did say 5 days/week! 

PPS My abs are killing me!