Sunday rambling and photos-I need help!

Today I finally took the time to sit down at my "photography" computer and went thru some pictures from the spring/summer/fall. Yeah it's been awhile. I finally had a deadline (company photo contest) coming up and with the crazy that the next two weeks will be, it was now or never.

What's coming up in the next two weeks? Well, girls' basketball practice starts tomorrow (still not sure how I feel about this), and then tomorrow night our boss will arrive from England for a visit. So, we will be busy weaning calves, getting cows moved around, sorting off open cows and shipping them, and weighing and tagging lots and lots of calves (around 700).

Justin and I are still doing Insanity in the mornings so my weekdays will look like this:
5:00-wake up and get ready to workout
5:20-ish-start workout
6:00/6:15-finish working out, I get breakfast ready and watch last night's news while Justin showers
7:00-Justin *should be* out the door, and I start to get ready
7:30 or so-get to the office, check email, check answering machine, do "work stuff"
3:00-leave work, get ready to head to basketball practice
3:15-leave the ranch to head to practice
3:55-get to town just before school gets out at 4 so I can get the gym ready
4:10-girls start to arrive at practice
6:00-practice wraps up
6:15-once everybody has left and I lock up, I head home
7:00-get home, hope that Justin has made something for supper
7:30-sit down and check facebook, emails, etc.
8:15-I'm ready for bed!

And so the fun that is the next 6 or so months begins...

Anyway-here's the photos I promised...

 

The top two were taken a few weeks ago-the orange skies are compliments of a smoky haze. The bottom is from calving, earlier this spring.

I need your help! I'm entering 1 of these in our company's photo contest (winners will go into a calender) and I can't decide which one!

Ripped in 30 Results

I finished Ripped in 30 Saturday... and I'm finally getting around to blogging about it (oops)!

I did 6 days on each week, with 1 rest day. I moved my rest day around from Sunday/Monday depending on what was going on in the week. I've been pretty frustrated with my scale as it's pretty much stayed put for the past month. But, even though the scale has stayed put, I've dropped inches!

Here's the before and after pictures-

Before----------------------After

The workout is definitely a step up from 30 Day Shred. My results probably aren't as dramatic because I'm getting closer to where I should be.

As far as inches lost:

Bust-1"

Chest-1.5"

Arms-.5" each arm

Waist-1.5"

Midway-1"

Hips-1"

Thighs-.5" each leg

For a total of 8"!

I guess I'm not overly excited about my results, because I was hoping for more, but looking at how far I've come since earlier this summer gives me a little more motivation to keep pushing!

July 2nd-----------------October 2nd

The Border Fire

The last 2 weeks have been a little on the crazy side... I had blog posts all planned out in my head but haven't had time to get things taken care of!

We've been busy with the usual fall ranch work-weaning, preg-testing, moving cows, feeding calves, and to top it all off, a fire broke out on the ranch yesterday. GREAT... not. My plan to spend Friday afternoon coding invoices and getting them submitted was replaced with baking cupcakes, Rice Krispie bars, muffins, and then at about 8:30 I decided to throw in a batch of Chex Mix as well, assuming that the guys would be out fighting fire most of the weekend. So much for that team sorting today.

Around 11:30 yesterday we got a call from a neighbor wondering if anybody had checked out where the smoke was coming from, since it looked pretty close. Kelby, our boss, headed out to investigate. While he was gone, we got a call from another neighbor saying the fire was just about to jump on to our land. Justin got instructions and hopped in the fire truck as soon as he shoveled a couple of brats down. The day just went downhill from there. The fire burned through three of our pastures, one that hadn't been grazed this year or last year, as we were saving it for our commercial herd to graze in another month. I haven't heard anything as far as how many acres were burnt, but with 30 MPH winds yesterday, that fire moved FAST. Luckily we didn't have any cattle in the path of the fire, although there may have been some in the pasture where the fire started, I still haven't heard. They were supposed to get moved down to that pasture Thursday or Friday.

The smoke cloud at about 12:30 yesterday-it was much worse a couple hours later

Surprisingly, Justin did get to come home and get a few hours of sleep. It was after 1 when he crawled in bed, and by 6 he was up making coffee already. I don't see too much smoke this morning, but they will probably be on "mop-up" duty into next week. Thankfully the forecast isn't calling for any windy days.

Needless to say, everybody around here is ready for a big dump of snow. Since wishing for rain hasn't done anything the last three months, I guess we will just have to start waiting for snow.

I am in love with Ripped in 30.

I am in love with Ripped in 30. Oh Jillian...

This morning while I was getting ready in the bathroom, I thought hmmm my waist looks a little smaller. Wondering if I was just imagining things, I decided to pull out the tape measure. From Tuesday afternoon to Friday morning, I've already lost a whole inch on my waist. 3 workouts. 1" gone. CRAZY. Is it comparable to 30 Day Shred? I think it builds on it. There's no way I would be able to go as hard as I do now without having done 30 Day Shred first. Ripped seems to move a little faster, and I think the month's workouts will go faster too. I've already finished 4 of the 6 days of level one, and I'm just starting to get the whole workout memorized. 30 day shred did get a little old after about day 7 so this will be a whole different story!

I made Justin pick up some heavier weights for me yesterday while he was in town for his doctor's appointment. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all out. Will I see a size 7? Not sure. I don't know if it's even physically possible for me. But I do know I'm not ready to get complacent any time soon.

Check another one off the list...

Shaun T's Rockin Body-done!

Overall, it was a pretty fun workout, and definitely a change from what I was doing. By the last few days I wasn't looking forward to it quite so much, but kept going along. I wasn't really excited about the longer workouts (some days are over an hour) but once I just budgeted it into my day it really wasn't a challenge.

The DVD claims to have 7 different workouts but really there's only 6-one is only 15 min. long and your "intro" to the basic dance moves. I can't really say there was one I didn't like! As far as results, I slimmed down a little more-hello size 9! And I've lost another 7 or so pounds-slowed down a little this month but when I'm only 8 pounds away from my goal I kind of expected it. The biggest change I noticed was my legs-whoa! They've definitely gotten much skinnier with this workout, since you are continuously moving. There's a lot of plyos (jumping stuff) so we'll see if I can impress my basketball kids with my jumping abilities next Thursday when we start open gym!

From July 2nd, to July 31st after a month of 30 day shred, to August 30th after a month of Shaun T's Rockin Body.

Up next-more Jillian! Gotta love to hate her. I'm giving myself the weekend off-ish. We're headed to the Black Hills for an extended family vacation to celebrate my Grandma and Grandpa's 80th birthdays!

Calm Before the Storm

It's about to get a little crazy around here...

As I enjoyed my hour and fifteen minute workout today, I started to wonder how working out is going to fit into my schedule in the upcoming future.

Friday I have First Aid/CPR training in Sheridan-it's something I have to keep up for my coaching license. That license I still have to complete four different classes for...

Next week will probably be pure craziness. It's shipping week for our yearling cattle. So far, I think the plan is to gather heifers one day, load the next, then gather steers, and load them out. I'm still not sure exactly how this is going to go, but it should be better than last year when we weighed and loaded four trucks from three different groups in one day. But, I still haven't gotten the run-down on exactly what's going on...

After that crazy week, we'll be headed to the Black Hills Labor Day weekend for an extended family vacation. Then it's September aka the month all h3!! breaks lose. Ten million different things going on at the ranch, calves getting weaned and weighed, cows preg-tested, more pairs moved around... then before you know it October 1st rolls around and there's hunters showing up, and then bang it's October 15th and I'm starting 5 months of basketball.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it. For now, I'll just enjoy the peace and quiet while I can, until the end of next June rolls around.

I survived.

I survived 4:38 a.m.

I guess.

Yesterday I woke up to Justin poking his head around the corner, 22 minutes before my alarm was set to go off, informing me that I needed to get up and get ready, because everybody was running around and getting trailers hooked up. I realized that I hadn't gotten my work stuff ready to go, still had to put mail in the mail box (we only get mail service 3 days a week-and this is before USPS budget cuts), and I had better just get up anyway in case I decided to ignore my alarm clock. Plus I have this problem where all of my clothes are too big and I didn't know what I was going to wear.

It's kind of difficult going from being able to wear every pair of jeans I've acquired since freshman year of college (which was like well over 30) to only having 4 pairs that actually fit. Just sayin'.

But anyways... back to Monday morning. I got out of the house before 5. Like I told Kelby, my boss, there's no makeup or perfume at 4:38 in the morning... I tried to sleep on the hour long drive to the corral, but Justin had to ooo and ahh over every nice buck he saw. Unfortunately we missed seeing the 4 elk though!

One of the things I love about my job is getting to work with my husband from time to time. Not so much that we get sick of each other, but instead we get to have fun with each other, and some quality conversation too.

And, I even managed to make myself workout later on in the evening.