Extra Life Fundraising by Jax at PAX

Here's your chance to make me do ANYTHING you want while I'm at PAX East April 10 - 13, 2014.

As most of my friends and family know, I am an avid (ok obsessive) supporter of Extra Life, a 24-hour video game marathon that takes place each year to raise money for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals all over the United States.

In an effort to get my fund raising kicked off for 2014 I'm offering to do things...crazy things...to earn your donations.

Drink a beer at 10 in the morning? Sure, it will be a sacrifice, but I'll do it for the kids. #FTK

Post a picture of me sitting on one of the "thrones" (rumor has it there will be toilets) at the Big Fish Games booth? Selfie from an actual toilet? Yes

You could even be kind and suggest I do something like sleep in until noon :)

You name it, I'll do it. As long as it isn't illegal or harmful to my already mostly tarnished reputation...it's fair game.

All you have to do is make a donation to my Extra Life fund raising page. Everything you donate will go to Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. When you donate, you can leave a message with your request, or if it's something personal just shoot me a message via email Jaxboxchick@gmail.com or hit me up on Facebook.

Here's the link to donate: http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=89026

You can donate $24 to sponsor me as I game for 24 hours in October, or whatever you can spare. It all goes to help sick kids. There's also a neat feature where you can set up a monthly donation. Say you want to donate $50 but can't do it at once. Set it up as $10 for the next five months, you won't even miss that $10...and it's tax-deductible.

Have fun, be kind to me...and let's help sick kids.

(Please note: shenanigans from PAX East will be hash tagged as well #JaxEast14 wi-fi signal willing)

Episode 47: JoCo Crazy

Our podcast is still fairly new, with less than 50 episodes under our belt. We try to find fun people in the industry to interview, that are parents, or are involved in something that we feel parents could relate to. It's not always video game related (ex...episode 48 featured a half an hour of Vampire Diaries chat) We have had lots of amazingly entertaining guest hosts. One of my favorites so far was our interview with Jonathan Coulton, who is a Daddy and a gamer...and a musician...and a lot of other things.



You can leave comments on the episode at The Mommy Gamers website if you'd like. We'd really enjoy knowing that you...enjoyed it. http://themommygamers.com/2013/08/episode-47-joco-crazy/

The Mommy Gamers 38: Kickstart my Cardboard Forest

 In this week's episode of my amazing podcast, Desirai  and I are joined by Daddy gamer Jeff Hanna, a veteran in the gaming industry.  Jeff's prior works at EA, Sony and most recently Deep Silver Volition still fail to impress me as much as the fun "weapon" he created for Saint's Row: The Third. 

This weapon is also part of the reason for the explicit tag on this episode. Our strange trio of gamers discuss some great indie games such as Monaco and Kerbal Space Program, Plants vs Zombies 2 (Finally), and if WOW seems lonelier after losing nearly two million subscribers.

 Because this is a podcast by parents, for parents, we also discuss micromanaging your children's lives and what video game ratings mean for different parents. There is more, so very much more, but you will have to listen for the rest.

Monday Motivation...Ugh.

I created this mental stigma I use to convince myself if I do not start on my goals for fitness, diet, cleaning the house, being better organized...whatever...all of it...on Monday, I can put everything off until next Monday.  I have discussed this elusive "next Monday" thing a few times for anyone who has followed my pointless ramblings on here, on Facebook, on MyFitnessPal, etc.

So here I am in that fish bowl on the right, swimming along with the other little unmotivated Monday fishies that are playing on Facebook or doing something equally unproductive. Will I make the jump today?  Where can I find the inspiration?

And in asking myself these questions I realize that I already have the inspiration, I am just in denial, and maybe if I write it all out I can go back and read this blog post to get back on track.  Because honestly, this is all the same stuff that pops up again and again for me and the cycle has to stop.  So, how about I write out some of these excuses?

*I don't have time to work out

Lie
I could be at the free gym up the road right now.  The kids are at school and all I have to do is slap on my workout clothes and go.  And really...Hailey is old enough now to go play on the playground with her big sister while I workout in the building next to it. I could take the kids on a walk to the park after school, or take our fat arthritic lazy dog on a walk.  I could fire up Dance Central like I told Kelly from TheMarriedGamers I would and do some challenges with her.

*I will eat better tomorrow

But...why not eat better today?

*There's no healthy food in the house, I'll go shopping tomorrow.

There are healthy things, I'd just rather eat the non-healthy ones. I always say I'm going to plan out a healthy menu for the week, go shopping and have all the things in the house to stay on track.  But then I convince myself that maybe I won't want the thing I planned for dinner, so it's just easier to grab whatever I want each night from the store, but of course it gets later in the day and it's so much easier to go to Panera and not have to cook or clean...

*I have too many other things to do.

This one...this one right here is the main killer of all motivation.

I am always going to have too many things to do, but do I feel good about myself when I sit here and do nothing?  Absolutely not!  But it's easy for me to sit here and get bogged down by my to do list. Right now I am not happy with myself for getting off track on my goals.  The yard needs mowed, my garden is a wreck, the house needs cleaned, laundry needs done, there are a million things I could be doing for my website The Mommy Gamers to make it better, I could be trying to earn money with my Thirty-One business that I have kind of left stagnant, and I think if I continue to make this list I  might have a panic attack.

Even my website logo is annoying me today, how is she juggling all these things and still SMILING? I want to punch her in her face.

So instead of doing anything, I do nothing.  Time to break the cycle.  If you have suggestions of what works for you PLEASE share them with me.  I'm tasking myself with not saying "I'll try" and instead will actually DO things today.

I already logged into MyFitnessPal, logged the breakfast I shouldn't have eaten, stopped avoiding the bathroom scale and logged my weight.  I gave myself a brief moment to mourn the weight I had lost and gained back, and to be disappointed in myself for eating like a hog this morning.  I can't go back and undo anything I've done, I can only move forward.

Can I get all the yardwork done in one day? No, but I can write down everything I would like to do and start ticking things off the list, or I could create an Indiegogo project and raise the money to hire someone to do it for me lol. Anyone want to chip in on that? My stretch goal would be a hottub and a tiki bar :)

But really, I think making a list might help, a realistic list that doesn't have to be all done in one week. Seriously though people, share your ideas with me because whatever it is that I am currently NOT doing is absolutely NOT working for me.

Juice Fast Day 3

Most of you said I would never make it through one day, but I did. I am now most of the way through day three and I am feeling fine! Day one was interesting. The juices took a lot of getting used to, especially with my strong gag reflex I have towards vegetables or anything healthy. I had never used a juicer before either so I had to play around with that a little. The clean up kind of stinks, but since I'm juicing for five days straight I just rinsed everything out and left it in the sink for the next time.

I slept like a baby the first night. Day two I woke up feeling more energized than I have in a long time. I skipped my morning coffee and instead had a cup of hot green tea. Not wanting to waste all that extra energy, I headed off to the gym and did some light weights and 35 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical. I kept the level down and only picked up the pace for a few minutes, until my body started telling me to slow it back down. After the gym, the kids and I headed on base and stocked up on more fruits and veggies. Hannah, my 13yr old, wanted to try some smoothies out so she got stuff for those too. Dizziness hit me about halfway through the grocery store and I did feel like I had less energy for the rest of the day.

 Aside from a mild headache, which I'm guessing is from lack of caffeine, I felt pretty darned great. I even made the kids breakfast and took them through the McDonald's drive through AND later that night didn't even bat an eye when my cousin and houseguest plopped a couple pieces of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory into the fridge. Hunger did kick in around dinner time, but I was trying to choke down the beet juice that I still haven't mastered yet, and cook dinner for the kids. I somehow refrained from sticking my face in the bowl of pasta I made for the kids, glared at my beet juice, dumped it down the sink, and cheated and made a smoothie out of juiced fruits and the fruit pulp.

THAT WAS NOT CHEATING! (ahem, Kelly)

According to the fast, if the hunger pangs are persistent I am allowed to have a piece of fruit or a small salad. Instead I juiced fruits which I think is more along the lines of not eating food and only having juice and therefore I am my own personal hero and not a cheater.

Today marks day three and I did have a rough time sleeping last night, so I took a unisom and slept like a baby. I was a little groggy this morning, probably from my sleeping pill, but I got everything together and hit the gym this morning again. I did about 10 minutes of light weights, and then only made it 30 minutes on the elliptical before I started getting dizzy.

Hailey and I took a trip to the natural food store, and I got some actual raw cashews to use in my cashew milk instead of the ones I had from the normal grocery store that had salt in them. I'm hoping this helps the consistency of my cashew milk this evening and the flavor. I'm going to make a big batch to get me through these last couple of days. Hailey got a fresh organic apple and munched on it the whole way home, all the way telling me how yummy it was. Probably much better for her than her typical after gym "fruit snack" that comes in the form of Dora and Boots.

I have every confidence that I will make it through to day five. I even picked up some organic brown rice at the natural food store for my five days after my fast so that I can mix that with my veggies and ease back into real food.

Oh and since I promised...I made a video blog about it too. You can catch that on YouTube by clicking HERE.

The Mommy Gamers 11: You Down With O.P.P.?

I haven't been posting my new podcast here on my own personal blog and I'm not sure why. Shame on me, laziness I guess. I'll try from now on to post it here as well as everywhere else we're posting it and maybe lure a few of you lurkers into becoming listeners. Getting this podcast going has been a bit of a struggle. Our original crew fell apart rather quickly, but in the last couple months the show has gotten stronger and better than I'd ever anticipated. With each new show and each amazing weekly guest host we are learning and improving the content we put out. Anyone who has produced a podcast or even listened to one as it has started out knows that they grow over time and we hope to continue to put this show out and make it bigger and better each week.


 Marcia aka PandaJax and Desirai are joined this week by Nori Fox, a mother and grandmother, Microsoft MVP, Xbox Ambassador, part of the good game network, and gaming for others charity...is there anything she doesn't do?

 October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the ladies kick off the show with a prevention tip. The new Xbox Gamerscore Rewards Program is discussed, as well as Kinect TV, Mists of Pandaria (yes again), and Marcia brags about her new set of WOW Mega Blocks. TV & Movie chat this week includes some disappointment over the Once Upon a Time season premier and the new show Revolution, Breaking Dawn II tickets are already on sale (what's up with that?), and Desirai took one for the team and saw the movie Pitch Perfect.

 Alligator pool parties and diaper shortages kick off the news and hot topics section of the show. Health and Fitness topics include an update on Desirai's PCOS, and Marcia's vain attempts to lighten her Melasma marks that linger after having three children. Finally they wrap up the show with an "awful" contest where you could win a lovely set of the "nipple" buttons in the feature picture of Episode 10 on the new Mommy Gamers website!

 Remember that you can subscribe to The Mommy Gamers podcast for FREE on iTunes. Remember to follow them on Twitter, and Facebook too!