The Miles Rausch Family Website

Big news this week in the Miles Rausch Family.

1. We’re moving. We’ll still be in Sioux Falls, though our zip code is changing. We’ll be tons closer to Miles’s work and many other places we frequent. Though we love the east side of Sioux Falls, we find ourselves traveling to the other side for food, shopping, entertainment, etc quite often. We weren’t looking to leave this side of town, just the right place happened upon us at the right time and it happens to be more centralized in town. We’ll be renting this house. It’s bigger in square footage, not TONS, but much more storage space which will make the living areas much more liveable. For instance, instead of a storage room with a bed in it (like our guest bedroom pretty much is now) we will have a guest bedroom. And the crap will go elsewhere. It’s two bedrooms, one bath, a sitting/living/dining room, (all wood floor, or maybe laminate, I’ve only seen it once and I didn’t pay attention to that), kitchen, and pantry on the first floor. And a large finished family room with fireplace and unfinished laundry/storage in the basement. We’ll have a garage and a yard. We’ll have a backyard for the first time in our lives. Well, besides when we lived with our parents. All the appliances will stay, including laundry and dishwasher. It’s a very nice home (with LOTS of windows) and we’re renting from someone we know and trust. We’ll send out our new address before we move to those who would want it, but we won’t be moving until the end of June or beginning of July. Pictures of inside to come eventually.
2. My job with the City was supposed to end May 29. My supervisor talked to me on Monday and said there’s room in the budget to extend it for another month! While it may feel like it’s just delaying the inevitable, I’m thankful for more time to work at a place I enjoy, within my field, and of course, for the extra paychecks. This will prove to be helpful with any moving costs we’ll have in June and the little things we might need to purchase. (Like drapes for all the windows!)
3. I also have good news on the job front for part-time during the next month and beyond that I don’t want to talk about too much publicly, as details haven’t quite been worked out yet. But it’s exciting and what I consider to be a big opportunity for both parties involved. Stay tuned, loyal MRF readers.
4. Miles moved from his cubicle into a vacant office at work and we need to do some thinking on how to decorate it. This week, he also had good news at work that will make life a little easier, and all of this seems to have come with perfect timing.

God is good.

Honestly, it feels like Miles adjusts the scale every week so that when I step on it, I see the numbers I want to see.

But then he’d also have to be adding fabric to my clothes to make them bigger and going to the stores where I buy new clothes and switching the tags. He’s clever. But he’s just not that clever. And I’ve never seen him use a needle and thread.

So, it must be that I’m still steadily losing weight. My weigh-in this morning shows that I’ve lost 40.6 pounds! Because the loss has been so gradual, it’s only been recently that people who see me fairly often have noticed. Several coworkers have even taken notice and asking for advice.

You  might remember that I posted my weight-loss goals. I have since adjusted the last one, since it appears I underestimated my possible success.  The original final goal was to lose 50 pounds by Christmas. I changed it to be June 19, which some of you might remember was our due date. I think it’s a goal I can meet, but still need to work hard for because I’ve got 6 weeks to meet that and I’m not sure how easily this last 10 might come off. I’d need to lose about 1.6 pounds every week. But I will be working hard towards that goal!

After that, I’d like to keep going if it feels right. I will re-evaluate at that time. Thanks for all of your support. I will keep you updated on my progress!

The first photo was taken in May 2008 and the second in April 2009. I was about 5 months away from my heaviest in the May 2008 photo!

The final Dear Future Kids episode for our first pregnancy. We understand not everyone wants to hear about what has happened over the last four months, but we know some do and all are welcome to tune in.

A couple weekends ago we spent a few hours at Color Me Mine with friends and got creative! We had a good time, but I didn’t go in with a plan, and so I panicked. I think this dish came out better than my last.

• Dinosaur – Miles, January 2008
• “Dream” plate – Holli, January 2008
• Stein – Miles, March 2009
• Square bowl – Holli, March 2009

See the rest of the (unglazed, unfired) creations that Miles took pictures of or read Miles’s short post about the adventure.

Remember when I wrote about starting to lose weight? And how I hate exercise? Well, just writing that I hated exercise was enough motivation for me to start exercising the very next day. I’m now doing some sort of exercising 5-7 days a week. Typically, 6 or 7. Even if it’s only 15 minutes.  I’m using workout videos at home and sometimes going to our dinky gym in our apartment complex. I don’t love it, but it’s not as much of a chore and really become a part of my routine. Someday soon, my schedule will change, as my temporary employment comes to a close. But until then, I’m moving forward with what’s working. I’ll figure it out later.

And so far? I’ve lost 29.2 pounds.

I’ve never been able to stick with it enough to see any more than a 5 pound loss. I think it’s impatience. But I’ve been able to push past that. The weeks are going by much faster. If you look at the graph, you can see my progress in a visual way (of course, I’m not going to let you see my weight even now!). You can see my losses, plateaus, and gains. The times that were most demotivating were the weeks where I’d only lose like .2 pounds. They were worse than gaining or plateauing for some reason.

I started to change my habits in September. I weighed myself and I was about 17 pounds more than I’d ever weighed in my life. And I didn’t want that for my future, because it was likely going to get worse. I had lost 8.4 pounds and then we found out we were pregnant. So cutting calories was no longer an option, but I did make an effort to make healthier choices. I gained a little under two pounds from October to December. After we found out about the miscarriage, I decided I needed to get back in the mind frame of losing weight. Being pregnant and as heavy as I was only caused anxiety for me that I would have complications later on. Next time around, I didn’t want to have so much fear about my weight causing problems in pregnancy. It’s really been a big motivation. I’ve also been drinking 6-10 glasses of water a day. (But typically not that much on the weekends.) I’ve found it to be pretty easy to do at work as long as I remember my water bottle. And I haven’t had a pimple in weeks.

I set up goals for myself. One big one and a few small ones.

• Lose 10% of my weight in 12 weeks: I made it exactly, to the day.
• Lose 25 pounds by my birthday (April 15): I made it, more than a month before that goal date.
• Lose 30 pounds by Memorial Day: I’m well on my way for this one.
• Lose 50 pounds by Christmas 09: Over halfway there.

I feel good. I haven’t bought clothes since September 08, so I don’t know how many sizes I’ve gone down. If I had to guess by the way my current clothes fit, maybe two sizes. My pants especially are pretty baggy. I’ve gotten creative with my ways of holding them up, since most of my dress pants don’t have belt loops. My shirts I could wear for a while before I look frumpy. The shirt I’m wearing today is a button-up. It used to pull really tight when I’d button one in the middle over a tank top. Today, I have two buttons buttoned and it looks pretty baggy. I could button them all, if I chose to wear the shirt like that, and it still wouldn’t pull. There are buttons on the sleeves and I’ve never been able to wear buttoned until today. A few weeks ago I was able to wear a sweater that had been too tight on me for months. It’s a good feeling.