Dutchy in the USA

So we  had a big Garage Sale this weekend and from the profits, I decided to buy a new Lawn Mower, after heavy research and reviews I decided to buy a Honda..

And I love it, set up was about 10 minutes, first cord pull started.

I bought this one for 399,- at my local home depot. So far the only negative aspect might be for taller people that you can’t adjust the push bar handles, the height is not adjustable, however you can adjust the variable speed handle in the middle and get it to a higher position.

Just a quick spring 2010 update as it has been long ago since I posted something on the bog. First some updates about the family.

Saige is growing and growing, she turns 3 in July and talking like crazy, a real girly girl. Started school in January at Primrose, same as Gavin for 3 days but I think she will start soon 4 days as well, when Grandma and Grandpa move up to Wyoming for the summer.

Gavin starts to be a big boy, his clothes and shoes are renewed every 4 months or so, a big Dutch boy probably. He starts full time Kindergarten in September at the Blackrock elementary in our neighborhood, which is right across the daycare they both go to right now. He will turn 5 in June. Also he is getting more interested in playing soccer lately, now the weather starts to get better we are practicing a lot in the backyard.

Christy is going great, she looks awesome as she has been training and training with her fitness courses and running outside. She is enjoying her work from home about 32 hours a week, and lately is travelling a bit more to clients. As a matter a fact we are leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow as I have to extend my Dutch passport and I can’t do this in Denver because lack of biometric scan equipment.

Myself, I am going steady, working out twice a week in a bootcamp, see posts below and also running quite a bit, which will increase now the weather is getting better. Still have a goal to run a half marathon this year or triathlon after the summer.

Work at Staples is going great as well, we are staying as it seems for a longer period in the broomfield building in Colorado. We just merged 280 people from another location into our building so everyone is under one roof. Lots of projects and work to do the coming years.

We are really looking forward to the Summer time. We hopefully had the last snow last week, but you never know in April, gras is starting to get green now. Pool will open on May 29th and the kids can’t wait for that.

We have no big plans around the house for the summer, keep landscaping low maintenance as we want to save for a big overhaul in one or two years when the kids are bit older. So enjoying the sun and grilling from our deck after a day in the pool is probably going to be a lot of weekends of entertainment.

In August or  September we plan to visit Jon in Seattle Washington for a family vacation trip which would be the first time all four of us in an airplane.

Will keep everyone posted more coming Summer or visit our photo blog at http://www.slabbekoorn.us

As i wanted to continue with the Tabata method at home, i found a couple apps with tabata timers:

  Tabata Timer

Time to Workout: Plain and Simple designed Ultra Timer to aid segmented exercises such as interval training and circuit training. But you can use it for any sort of timing function.

UltraTimer by Plain and Simple Software is an ideal tool if you want to use your iPhone or iPod touch to keep you on track.

Personally I like the customization options of UltraTimer better then the tabata timer as it can fade the music when you work out and the sounds at the different time intervals.

Yes, it is on for 2010. The community center started with a new course, Intensity boot camp fat burning class and I must say after week 1, this is going to be one that kicks butt… Tristan is our trainer, he moved to Vista Ridge with his family and has a lot of experience in the Fitness world.

http://www.intensitybootcamps.com/

Tristan Lewis, our excellent fitness coach/trainer.

The intensity and structure of this class is based on the Tabata method performed on the Japanese ice skating team.

“A popular regimen based on a 1996 study^[2] uses 20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise (at 170% of VO₂max) followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated continuously for 4 minutes (8 cycles). In the original study, athletes using this method trained 4 times per week, plus another day of steady-state training, and obtained gains similar to a group of athletes who did steady state (70% VO₂max) training 5 times per week. The steady state group had a higher VO₂max at the end (from 52 to 57 ml/kg/min), but the tabata group had started lower and gained more overall (from 48 to 55 ml/kg/min). Also, only the tabata group had gained anaerobic capacity benefits unlike the steady state group.”

Tristan also adapted this method and years of experience into a book and training method called M.I.T. You can find more information and purchase the book on this website.

http://www.maverickintensitytraining.com/

I will keep you posted on my progress and exercises..

Well lets see I made 9 goals last year for 2009… Which one did I achieve?

1. Loose some pounds….(probably yearly a goal but food is to good in America )

I started with 238 pounds on Jan 5th and I just weighted myself the other day, 213 pounds, but i have to say my lowest was 192 end of April in 2009. So look at my 2010 goals

2. Make a trip to the Netherlands in the summer (as I need to spend my vacation time under the new Staples rules this might be an obvious opportunity in August)
Again did not make it this time, however the reason for this was that both my parents and brother visited for around 5 weeks in total so I took most of that time off in 2009.

3. A bigger LCD tv (nice wish, probably ain’t gonna happen till maybe sales by end of the year )
Yes although we bought a new tv stand, did not buy one yet but expect on the short term a 47” showing up

4. A nice office (well the room is ready, just need to save up a bit for the furniture)
Almost, we have turned the room into an office, but the furniture we bought did not fit into the room so we returned it and placed another smaller desk for my wife into it.

5. Make some trips in the US to maybe Main and California to our friends.
Didn’t make this one..

6. Have fun at work with the remaining five folks in our BI team..
I think this was a good transfer year we kept the happy hours going and try to keep the spirit up. 2010 will bring some moving changes inside the office and hopefully we can attend some more conferences.

7. Have my parents and brother flying in to the US for a visit..
This happened as planned.

8. Learning Golf this spring/summer (with the new neighborhood golf course, this is definitely on my wish list).
That did not happen, with family visiting and busy schedule with kids. Golf is probably still a while away. Maybe just an intro course for 2010

9. Write a bit more on my blog (just too busy with kids to take some time to write
That did not really happen.

So end score: 1,4,6,7 achieved, 2 partially. 3,5,8,9 not achieved, so 50% score….

New goals for 2010

1. Weight loss, definitely again a goal, started an intensity bootcamp training this week in our community center. Goal: 180 pounds by the summer.

2. Family vacation trip in the US/Mexico.

3. A bigger LCD tv (hopefully this time?)

4. Bike purchase and biking in the spring

5. Do some small improvements in the Garage and Basement

6. Learning Golf intro course

7. Write more on the blog….

So my wife complained about lack of wifi range in our bedroom/office upstairs as our router netgear is in the basement. After some research I found a 25 cent solution using alumium foil.
Click on below website for template and instructions. After install her bars increased from 2to4 also noticed my iPod touch has maximum bars in the whole house now!

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

During my weight loss I was looking for some App on the Appstore and found this one. Lose It.

This app can track all calories of your food intake but the nice thing of it is that you can set a goal based on your length and current weight and timeframe and it will calculate how much you need to loose per week.

So with one week left I almost reached my goals, since I started with this app I lost over 17 pounds.

Also nice is you can add exercise which counts negative towards your calories.

I am sometimes amazed on how much calories there is in certain foods i was taking. I basically cut out eating bread a lot and cheese (which is for this dutch guy very hard) and of course reduced my liquor intake by probably 90% With eating less I think we reduced our grocery bill by half on a month by month basis. Sometimes it is hard to keep track of everything especially in the weekends so I decided I can skip a day if I don’t feel like tracking everything. Most important is that I still loose weight.

With all that running going on and after Christy bought new running shoes last week I decided to buy some new ones myself today. So down to Boulder where they have a nice store. Boulder Running Company.

They look at your feet and tape you on the thread mill to figure out the best shoes. After testing about three different ones to replace my 5 years + old Asics I ended up buying Asics again. Now I need to put them to the test

Well its a while ago but i decided to start blogging again. We really are enjoying our Erie neighborhood and the more the weather starts to become nicer the more we are doing outdoor activities. One of the activities I started up in January is fitness mostly running and weights and trying to loose some calories. It’s going well, lost almost 35 pounds (15kg) so far.

With the nicer weather I was in need of something to hold my Ipod touch, because I can’t run very long without music so I came across this case you can wrap around your arm.

Its from Griffin technology they always have really good stuff for the ipod and not too expensive.

Also some new earbuds, tunebuds from their website as it was 2 for 1.

So my dad pointed out the developments in the town I grew up when I was a kid. This picture shows the area where I played a lot as kid, like soccer on the park North West on the picture and fishing in the  pond, on the south east side. Now they are building and making the old –harbor from like 1500 back in place. One house remains and was not destroyed. And in this house my Grand father grew up as a kid. You can see this house just a little south east of the green park where I learned to play soccer. Click on the image to enlarge.