MOHAWK!!!

Nate had been asking, since before school got out, to get a mowhawk... which I am not particularly fond of but it seems to be all the rage with the kids this year. So he finally convinced us(Michael) that he should get one and Michael brought him to Rooney's to get it cut.
I actually think it is rather cute. Not that I am going to let him know that but(LOL)... here is a before and an after picture.

Last Day of School

Well, today was the last day of school for Nate. I have had a great time volunteering this past year. Mrs. Lake was SOOOO generous to all of her volunteers, she gave us all a beautiful poem.

Starfish

One day a woman was walking along the shore. As she looked down the beach, she saw a child moving like a dancer. She smiled to herself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So she began to walk faster to catch up. As she got closer, she saw that the child wasn't dancing, but instead he was reaching down, picking up something and very gently tossing it into the ocean.

As she got closer she called out, "Good morning! What are you doing?" The child paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing starfish in the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"
"The sun is up and the tide is going out. The starfish won't survive on shore."

But child, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach
and starfish all along it. You can't possibly make a difference!"

The child listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish
and threw it into the ocean, past the breaking waves and said-
"It made a difference for that one."

One person CAN make a difference!

With the poem she gave all of us a beautiful starfish necklace, as well as some notepaper, a card and a starfish(dry). I am so grateful, but it makes me feel guilty, I volunteer just to get in there and help out not for the extras. It was such a nice day to go in although a little crazy, the kids were very excited for summer. I am looking forward to it as well although I may just have to FORCE Michael to take some time off.

Ok Seriously!!

We have been home from Disney for a few weeks now. We had a great time took lots of pictures. It was a little tough getting around to see everything with the big group we went with BUT it was lots of fun I just wish we had been able to spend more time there. I felt like we missed a lot of the stuff that Jackie would have enjoyed, we did not get to any of the playhouse disney stuff in Disney Hollywood or any of the little mermaid stuff, but she loved Magic Kingdom so maybe next time.

I had been really concerned about the food issue with Jackie's Celiac BUT the food was awesome. They made her her own pancakes, or Waffles every morning, the chef came out to talk to us and made sure it came right to us. We had to wait a little bit but it was definately worth it. We only had problems once and that was an error on the servers part and was caught by me before she actually ate any of it. THANK GOD, I would NOT have been happy dealing with a sick child because of server error.

On an entirely different note we have gotten a new addition to our household this week, her name is Bella, she is seven weeks old and is absolutely adorable. She is a yellow lab and is the most mellow pup. She is a wonderful addition to our family and we are having such fun with her.

APRIL Fools

I posted!!! HAH!!

OFF to Disney

We are off the visit Disney World today. I am up at 630 getting the bills paid for the week and just thought I would post a quick note. The kids had a really hard time going to sleep last night they were so excited but they are still sleeping oops change that Nate just came out and scared me half to death and he is already dressed and SOOO EXCITED!!!

See you all soon. I'll tell Mickey you said HI.

Hannah Montana and Nate

Nate has gotten into this Hannah Montana craze. I am finding it sort of funny, BUT he says it is because he likes her "brother" and "Rico". I don't mind too much cause I sort of like the show too but what is going on with my 7 year old.

What about Phinneas and Ferb too. He "HAS" to stay up to watch it this week. This is almost making me a little crazy, but he has to have all of his "stuff" cleaned up, and be ready for bed before he watches it. I guess that is a good thing, since my living room has been clean when the kids go to bed for the last couple of nights and I have not had to do it myself. YAHOO!!

Did I use too many "Quotes" or what??? LOL.

Saving Box tops and Shaw's receipts --- Clutter or ???

I have been saving Shaw's receipts for a few months because they will donate 1 percent of the purchases* to a non profit organization. I also save the box tops for the schools so that they can get stuff for them. I know they(Box Tops) helped get things a few years ago.

Here in town the elementary school had a collection spot(for the Shaw's Receipts) for one of the sick kids in town, cannot remember if it was Acacia or Athena. I do not know if they still are but I have been saving the receipts anyway. I figure that every little bit helps.

Does anyone else do this? I am starting to feel like if I didn't it would help with my clutter.

New projects that i have completed recently

Here is a picture of a countdown calendar that I made for us to keep track of how many days left until Disney.


Here is a picture of a birthday card that I made for my sister. This was my first layout for a birthday card, a little different than my usual scrapbboking pages.

I have to say my cricut has been an awesome "gift". I have made so many pages for my scrapbook albums and now these 2 projects. It has been worth the $$ spent.

Things I would much rather do than housework...

I would much rather be playing with the kids, reading a book, playing on the computer, scrapbooking, gardening...oops wrong time of year, shall I go on...

I have a rather dirty/messy house this week and am so NOT in the mood to clean. I feel sort of guilty since Michael comes home from work to a messy house but this weather does not help. I have been doing the laundry at least but the rest of the house... you get the picture. I think not having the dog around to clean up after makes it all that much harder too, the dog hair used to drive me crazy.

We are leaving for Disney World in 16 days so hopefully between now and then it will get done. I really hate coming home to a dirty house. I should maybe go do some housework and make dinner but the kids are calling...

OMG it is a NEW YEAR

OMG, I cannot beleive it is 2008. I have not been very faithful to my blog throughout 2007, life has just gotten in the way and sometimes I feel that what I want to say should not be posted for all the world to see. I am in the process of getting the house clean and felt I needed a break.

I have been trying to keep it to at least a middle of the road type of clean for a while now, so it is not too bad. Especially since my mother was here this past week and she "helps" me clean. I think she like to help me organize. The funny thing is her house except for the dust is EXTREMELY similar to mine cleanliness wise, although they (my parents) have MUCH more room than me since they have a four bedroom house with a "formal" living room and dining room. I love her coming to visit but am glad that the next time we see her it will be in DISNEY WORLD in March so my house will not need to be cleaned. LOL.

I have been continuing my weight watchers meetings and hope to continue eating healthy and lose a "few" more pounds. I would love to be at 175 by our Disney vacation in the beginning of March. I am at 184.2 as of this mornings weigh in, so I have 6 weeks of weigh ins to get there. My final goal is going to be 135 I think, which is above the high level of my height range for me the low level absolutely scares me LOL(109-131 is the range).

I am loving the way some of my clothes are starting to get loose. I have been working really hard at trying not to snack on junk food when I am hungry I try to have a drink and some fruit or veggies, does not always work but i have gotten a whole host of snacks that I really like so that I can snack easily most of the time when I want to. I still love my sweets though, don't get me wrong just trying to limit them somewhat. Walking has been my standby on getting exercise although I am loving the workout that are available for free on demand when I want a change from my regulars.

Well, I need to get back to cleaning and go down and change the laundry. But I actually posted. ROFL.

Jackie-ism's

Okay My mom and I were out driving around wiht the kids throughout town tonight and admiring the Christmas lights that are up. We were going about 45 mph down route 58 when Jackie must have missed one of the houses and says to me "mom can you back up."

My mother and I could not stop laughing. Just though it was a cute one.

Merry Christmas to all...

The Holidays...

I have not posted in forever...
The Holidays are upon us.

We went to visit with my Dad's family for Thanksgiving. There were 41 of us all sitting down to eat at once at my aunt Janet's house. The food was awesome and visiting was great. I had only planned on staying until about 5pm BUT we did not get home until 930ish. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins that they kept themselves entertained and I actually got to visit with my aunts and uncles and cousins.
Michael was working, so he had turkey day with the guys at the firehouse. I missed him but I am sure that he had more fun with the guys than with my crazy family(lol).
We (Michael and I) have pretty much finished Christmas shopping, all we have left are the stocking stuffers. I am looking forward to Christmas, we are having people come here so that the kids can enjoys their presents at home. My parents will be here visiting as well which is actually a good thing cause Michael is working Christmas eve and probably part of Christmas Day (the guys that are on at the firehouse are there for the 3rd year on Christmas), so since Michael will already be there anyway he figured he would stay and cover for one of the guys so that they could spend time with their family.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving I know it has been a FEW days since but just wanted to pass my thoughts along.

Broken in to

We got woken up this morning with a call from Amy B, one of the dispatchers from Carver telling me that I might want to go check my vehicle to see if had been broken into, since quite a few of my neighbors cars had been.
Lo and behold, both of our vehicle which had not been locked (stupid I know, BUT we do live in a SMALL town) were both rummaged through. The only good part about the whole thing is that they caught the person who did it down the street walking around 800-830. The had taken Michael's Carver radio that he uses for the ambulance which uses the same band width as the police, as well as a dress watch that Michael had left in the console of the car. So, at the time that they caught the person they asked Michael to come down the street to identify his radio. That is how they were able to book him, although he tried to say it was "given to him." I love how theifs minds work it just cracks me up. If only our dog had been home I am sure he would not have hit so many other house 'cause she probably would have woken us up and he would have been caught earlier.

NYC

We went to New York this past Friday for John Dorgan and Kate's wedding. What a GREAT party. They had a band "LEGIT" rather than a Dj(which I personally prefer), BUT the band was REALLY good. John and Kate are very musically inclined as well so they sang a couple of songs too. It was a lot of fun.

Quite an adventuresome weekend though as soon as we got into NY we hit a couple of REALLY big bumps and broke the rear struts on the car, we had borrowed my father in laws because it had more room and we drove with Jeff and Jen. I will tell you though when it happened we only had about 1 hour or so left to drive so we stopped at one point to see if we could figure out what the noise was but there was nothing major showing but god did it sound like we were going to break apart. But we made it to the hotel we were going to be staying at and emptied out the trunk and then the guys figured out that the struts were broken so we luckily found a repair shop down the street that was able to fix it for us by Saturday afternoon.

Saturday afternoon we went into NYC to see the sights. I am still amazed at how big Ground Zero is. That was our first stop for the day and then we walked all the way to Times Square with a stop for dinner and to go to the top of the Empire State building. It was a really nice weekend, even with the challenges of a broken vehicle in between.

Thank You for electric breakers

I came home from Nate's soccer today and found that I had no power in my kitchen so I went down to reset the switch wondering why it was not working. Flipped the switch came back up still no power. So as the rest of the house is still working and the kitchen is the ONLY place that has no power and only a fw things are out I think to myself what has changed since before we went to soccer. Well, the ONLY thing was that I had started dinner in the crockpot. So I go and check the crockpot to find it is cool not quite cold yet so I unplug it to see why and realize the at the GD cord is still partially in the inside of the pot in between the bowl and the metal so it had been melted through and the wire had been exposed which is what must have shorted out the breaker for the kitchen.

All, I am thinking is we could have come back to our house on fire if not for the breaker switches. But, thank goodness it just means a new crockpot for me and a change of how I am cooking dinner.

Weight Loss update

Ok, all I have not posted and I said that I would. I have been to 3 weigh-ins since I last posted. week 1 - I went up 2.2 lbs(193), week 2 - I went down .4 lbs(192.6) and week three I went down 1.4 lbs (191.2). So I tracked EVERYTHING week 3, but i weigh in in 2 days and have not tracked 1 thing this week so ...

I guess I really need to track or change to the CORE plan but i like my sweets too much. Either that or I need to take the time to get some exercize in every day to help counteract the sweets.

UGH, so I am now UP in Lbs since the Oct 2 not looking too good for me but i have to do something so I still going to go to my meetings and will starttracking again today.

Buttermilk Brownie Recipe

Make your own slide shows and scrapbooks

Alright just in case you did not get teh email and were interested in the recipe, here it is. the pics are some my grandfater took, about a half hour after the shuttle took off in FL.

Weight loss...

Ugh, what an ugly thing to have for a post, but I figure if I start to blog about it maybe it will help me take more weight off as the days go on. I have been going to Weight Watchers for 19 weeks and have bounced back and forth on my weight loss. I started at UGH 195 and am at 190.8 as of today. I was down 6/10 of a pound this week which I feel is great because I am not in a hurry. Because I would rather take it off slow and keep it off. I am determined to lose 5 pounds by Christmas, which means that I have 11 more weeks of weigh-ins to do it in (so about 1/2 pound a week).

Ok so... here are some scary facts:

I am 190.8 pounds and 5 feet 2 inches.
My BMI is 35 which is considered Obese.
My recommended weight is between 109 pounds and 131 pounds.
That means I need to LOSE 60 MORE pounds to be at the top of the healthy weight range.
1 pound of fat is equal to 4 sticks of butter

I know that I can lose the weight, because when I actually track what is going into my mouth I do really well that week. BUT, I have NOT been doing so good about staying on track. I find that if I do NOT GO to the WW meetings I am less likely to follow plan. It also helps to have a "partner" to do it with me. Luckily, I have a couple of friends who have joined so that does not seem like it is going to be a problem. The problem is the fact that I LOVE sweets. But I get to eat them "in moderation". My other problem is the fact that Michael does not seem willing to lose with me. He like sweets too, so it is hard for me when he brings stuff into the house. I want to feel like I have accopmplished something by getting back into my "old" clothes, although I think it may be a ways off before I get back into a size 6 or 8 I am looking forward to it.

So please help me on my way by supporting my decisions, BUT let ME make those decisions. I will update on weight loss as the weeks go by.

Nate's first spelling test...

Nate had his first spelling test today. Well, his first where they did not get to work with the teacher to get the words correct. He got a 92! I am SO PROUD of him.

My Life...

Ok all is good in my life. I am headed out to dinner with the hubby tonight to celebrate my Birthday. My kids are staying over at Nana and Papa's and My house is TRASHED andI mean TRASHED and I DO NOT CARE. I might get to cleaning it tomorrow if I feel like it but...

May go see a movie after dinner, Although, I do not know what I want to see. Just ha dthe urge to post rather than do anything constructive.