Keep Calm and Love Brooke

Sooo I was way to excited for Thanksgiving!! Do you wanna know why?? I wasn't excited for a cheat meal...although I think I cheated more with the pies than the actual meal. The night before Thanksgiving our Elders' Quorum President had "Pie Night" at his house and so you go to his house and you can bring a pie to share OR not...and just pig out on pie. I think my youngest child, Sam had the most pie.. I think he ate 4 slices of pie..most of it pumpkin pie. Leslie had 3 and Kylie, Ken and myself had 1 and a half. I was sooo full I thought that Ken would have to roll me out the door! ;-) Anyways..if you remember from my FB posts I was all excited because this was my first year actually COOKING and hosting!! I didn't mind cooking it however I really didn't want to host it...but our family just like any other family has well....issues...and so long story short...I DIDN'T want my sister to come over...its sad really...but I just can't put up with her and

Last night as I was finishing getting dinner in the oven....I received a text from a sender I didn't know...so my first reaction is...who is this and what the heck do they want. Upon further questioning I find out that its one of Kylie's friend who happens to be a boy!!! Kay so....I don't know if you know, but Kylie is our oldest and she is 11-and-a-half years old!!! GULP!!! I remember being 11 years old...and I know I didn't get ANY phone calls or texts from boys. Now when I was 15.. Yes I did date before I was 16 once! Okay it was 1 date...and after that 1 date I kinda shied away from it. Not that I didn't have fun...I was just so nervous that I thought I was gonna throw up the WHOLE time  that is a story for another time.. So this dude...we will call him....Don...was texting..me thinking that I was Kylie and when I asked him if he wanted to speak to Kylie he was all...." I'm sorry....I thought this was Kylie's phone". What are you thinking t

Kay...so I started my fitness journey...about well it will be 2 years in March. I just got so tired of being so unhappy with how I looked, whenever I would look at myself in the mirror. Also I really didn't enjoy being told by my OB/GYN that I really needed to do something so that I would live a longer fuller life.  So soon after my journey began and I started to see results...Ken, my hubby of 13.50 years ( we have been together for 15.50 years...but hey who's counting!) must have caught the bug! I am not talking about the stomach bug...this is a bug to which there is no medical cure...YEP you guessed it he caught my fitness bug!! To be completely honest I wasn't all that concerned with Ken, don't misunderstand me...I wanted him to love working out as much as I do, and I did worry about his health..I just didn't want to be one of those wives and mothers that tend to roll their eyes whenever Mom is on a health kick. I didn't want to force anyone in my family to

Ahhh!! Halloween!! I love it...although I'm not sure why I do. I mean...for anyone who is trying to get healthy and not get lead into temptation with all the chocolate, sugary goodness, its really hard to stay on track.   But I love it anyways....I think it has to do with remembering when I was in elementary school and we used to dress up for it...and my dad would always encourage us to be something gruesome. He didn't want us to be a princess or a ballerina, he always wanted us to be something really gross like with blood and guts hanging out..the whole nine yards... I finally caved in when I turned 18 and let him put makeup on me and i had my neck slashed and everything...I hate to admit it, but that was the best Halloween for me... Any-who the point is I LoVeD it!!! So about 3 weeks before Halloween Ken and I were paying bills when we realized that we had extra money this month. Ka-Ching!! So I told him" Halloween is coming up....maybe we should buy the kids costume

Or so I thought! So on Tuesdays and Thursdays are my strictly cardio days..and for me I feel its kind of a pain, because I like to take my time getting ready in the morning.which I usually do on most mornings,however; this fall when Sam started Pre-School, I wanted to put that time to good use. And I just wanted to get my workouts out of the way so I could essentially do what ever I wanted for those 2 and a half hours.      Okay so we are going to rewind the clock and go back to September 19,2013. Its Thursday morning and I had also just gotten home from taking Ken to the bus stop. For those of you who don't know my hubby, Ken is an IT guy out at the INL. And for the record NO HE WILL NOT FIX YOUR COMPUTER!!! j/k he might if you ask him. So he catches the bus to go out to MFC around 5:40. I came home and the thought hits me that I need to go running...I wasn't in the mood to work out to a DVD today. I wanted my runners' high! I needed my endorphin/drug to take effect on my

So every year our ward has an annual chili cook-off... Where a bunch of people bring their homemade chili and cornbread and is judged accordingly. Either by peers or this year they did something new...they had a panel of judges. Which I thought was very clever! Two years ago Ken and I were assigned to be on this committee and I wish that we had thought of that... ANY WHO, back to the story. I made my chili that morning, just threw all the ingredients in the crock pot. Who doesn't love the crock pot!?? CRAZY not to. About 45 minutes before it started I made the cornbread like I always do. No big deal, right, I was just hoping that it would finish in time so we could be on time. Contrary to popular belief I HATE BEING LATE!!! Fast Forward about 1 hour later and Ken and I are stuffing our faces with this Chocolate and LAMB chili!! SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!! I know, weird combo but it totally worked!  When I went back to get seconds( don't judge me!) I saw a recipe that totally ca

Yes, I know I have many obsessions! I can't help it... it just happened...and sometimes its the only thing that I can think about.    Yeah...ya see it all started about 4 months ago....when I borrowed my oldest daughters I-pod shuffle that she got as a present about 4 years ago. She hardly uses it and I thought. "What's the harm?? She hardly uses it anyways, right". I wanted to try running...to see IF I liked it, then maybe I could add it to my workout routine. Kylie's is blue. Anyways, for starters I just ran up to 20th Street Park then back home. It was alright...I felt like I could keep up well enough. One draw back to using her I-Pod...she has a TON of teenie-bopper music on there. For example, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus( before she went bat sh** crazy), Taylor Swift, Carly Ray Jeppson, and some of the Disney channel stars....Not that this genre in music is bad...in fact I like at least 3 of them..the trouble was that most of these songs were TOO SLOW!!

 Request after request came in and so yes.....I will write a nutritional guide..if you wanna even call it that. So..............(<<<<those dots were pointed out to me in my last blog by the hubbs..so these dots are for you!) Did you know that no matter how HARD you train...no matter how long you spend with Shawn T, or any other trainer that you love....its only 20%.   yep, ya'll heard me ONLY 20%!!!!!!!!!! I know my jaw hit the floor too when I was told this number! Surely there must be some kind of mistake! Well after hours of banging my head against a wall(okay so I was down on the floor throwing a temper tantrum like a 3 year old, kicking and flailing my arms...) I came to accept that no matter how hard I worked out the reason I was not seeing ANY results during the first part of my fitness journey was because diet is 80%.  I know...it sucks....but it is totally true. Hmmm well how am I going to eat healthy?? Well to be quit honest I just remember introducing

How do you do it?? I just love this saying...it really hits the nail on the head. I am by far an expert...but I just do what works for me and I was tired of being un-happy with me. As of lately, I get asked this question A LOT!!! Must be cuz I'm smokin' HOT!! No...I think its because I train hard and I have gotten really good results! And yeah...it helps to have a really good work out program...something that you love to do. A program that when certain music comes on you can't help but bust out and do some of those moves from that routine.(Those of you who know me...also know I do this frequently and sometimes...ok most of the time I do it just to embarrass Kylie...because its fun!) For me that program is TurboFire. It takes 21 days of you doing something to make it a habit...so after that 1st time of trying this program, I thought, "Uh-oh...I'm hooked!" My "rest days" just kill me...I have a love/hate relationship with those days...its so good f

I really wasn't going to blog about this NEW workout...however after being asked about it like, a bazillion times...and YES bazillion is a number....I totally will.  So after I finished Turbo-fire for 3 rounds ( each round is about 4 months) I wanted something different..not that I don't love Chalene Johnson (creator of Turbo-fire) I just wanted a change. While looking on the Team Beachbody website...I saw a NEW workout program that caught my eye...and so I clicked on the little eye-con that said "play video" and I saw this. Okay, so I wanted to put this amazing video clip of Combat on here...but unfortunately the BB website wouldn't allow me to...so trust me when I say your going to have to watch it on Team Beachbody.com. Ken and I worked out to Combat for 2 rounds. In Combat its a LOT of cardio kind of like Turbo-fire, except that in Combat you learn MIXED MARTIAL ARTS!! Heck yeah!! Sign me up for some of that!!  Who wouldn't want to learn how to pun

This is my very first blog! To be quit honest the thought hadn't really even crossed my mind....until recently. And by recently I mean....today.  Here's how the conversation went with Ken(the hubbs): "You should totally start a blog!"...."ummmm...what?!" "ya know...I think it would be awesome for you!" "What the heck would I even blog about?"  Kylie(11yr-old daughter) chimed in: "Yeah, Mom....you could talk about your weight loss...and how you keep at it!"   Yeah...don't worry she'll get punished later by picking up dog bombs! And so like all things I do...I procrastinate and think it over until finally I just can't get that thought out of my head.  So here I am blogging. And I know that some of you out there....want to know how I did it and what I did. Not to worry my friends I will get to that all in good time, but first a little background info is key...This is a journey that is far from over. It's on