New Year, New'ish Me!

We're 7 days into the new year and so far, it's feeling pretty great! Yes, my husband is still missing from my bed and will be for another 7 months, but beyond that life is full of sunshine (literally) and optimism! Moving to Arizona has turned out to be good for SugarCube and I. We're more then surviving this deployment; we're actually happy most days. Baby girl has so much love surrounding her every moment here, which makes me so happy for her. She definitely misses her daddy and lights up when she sees him over FaceTime but the majority of time she's just interested in who ever will give her attention, table scraps and hugs :) Ahhhh. To be a kid....

Being here has also given me the golden opportunity to start taking better care of myself which is the MAJOR source of my happiness outside of my daughter. I swear. Most days I feel like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, under going huge transformations. Thanks to my in-laws for pushing me to see the need and their very generous babysitting (which I think it's more for them and not so much for me, lol) I've been pretty active visiting my sister in Las Vegas (Oops. totally failed to write about that even though I did take pictures!) visiting the gym weekly, climbing when my sister in-law is down from Flag Staff, hiking, running, working on Shaun T's Insanity and taking brisk walks around the neighborhood with the babe. I get out often. Even if it's for a run to the market. I've also attended a few gal pal meet ups. I've been seeing a phenomenal chiropractor for over a month now, which has been great for my hip and lower back pain, ever since the baby. Less excitably, I've had some teeth sawed on (just finished my first root canal and hope it's my last) and I've also been seeing a fabulous spiritual counselor which has been great for my larger then life stress and anxiety. Over the 2 months R's been away, I feel I've made a huge change; I'm more the bubbly, adventurous, mischievous girl he married and I can't wait to show myself off once he gets home ♥ So hurry on home already babe!

 But onto the fitness portion of this post which is what I really intending to write about. My one goal over the holidays was to maintain my current weight and not gain anything back that I worked so hard to loose over the summer. Yesterday, I stepped on the scale for the first time since mid November. I was so nervous! I had no idea what that thing was going to say but no matter the number, I wasn't going to allow it to sap my motivation. I'm having too much fun to allow my goals to be squashed by a mere number. Am I right!?! Surprisingly and excitably though, I'm down 1 pound from where I last weighed! August 2012 was my last fitness weigh in where I showed you I went from 165.5 to 145 lbs in 2 months. I now weigh 136 lbs and have a lot more tone and muscle. Not that you can see it in these pics. AWFUL lighting and an even more terrible backdrop. But for the sake of making an appearance ;)

3 Weeks ago in Vegas. I haven't decided what was on the mirror. Baby slobber maybe? 

Terrible back drop

My goal is to reach 126 by the time R returns and have arms, a butt, legs and torso to be proud of! I say this with relativity. I know I will never have the body I'm used to, pre baby. My mid section might always be a bit "loose" and I definitely have some stretch marks to prove I carried a child. But that's just all apart of the new me that I'm learning to love this year... I believe what I see in my head is very achievable and I cannot wait to get there. So I'm going to be linking up with...

And the lovely, adventurous Kelly every Friday to help stay accountable to myself and to maybe inspire along the way! Yay for my first blogging theme! I've never really been good at keeping up with those but THIS I can do ;) I've been back on my clean eating for almost a week, minus the chocolate cake I indulged in tonight while watching Planet Earth, but I only ate half a slice instead of the entire piece. And I do need to get way WAY better at drinking my water again. You'd think living in Arizona with all this dry heat I would be craving the stuff, but most days it's a struggle. This is a must to loose weight as well as getting 8 solid hours of sleep a night. I've got my work cut out for me but at least I have a workout routine already seated in pretty solid determination. Now to take my own advise and get that 8 hours of sleep before my daughter's 6-7'ish wake up call ;)  I hope you'll come back this Friday to see how I did and maybe consider participating yourself! This should be fun.