Ten Years Down......Eternity to Go!

Well Bryan and I had our ten year anniversary on Thursday May 29th. Time has really gone by fast. For those that don't know...Bryan and I are really low maintenance type people. We counted our new play set and grill as our presents to each other and just planned a small date (dinner or something) It was a school night and Bryan usually does not get home from work until around 7:00, so we didn't plan much. However that afternoon he called to say that the afternoon at work had slowed down so much that he could come home, BUT they had carpooled so in order to come home, I would have to go pick him up. I had to think about it for about half a second and hopped in the car. Barlow and Andrea agreed to watch the kids a little earlier than they had planned and I went to get Bryan. Unfortunately when I got to the clinic I found him inside working on a patient on the floor of the clinics gym.? Come to find out she would have been his last patient and when she was doing her last exercise on the bike he was going to finish his paperwork so that he would be ready before I got there. BUT as she was getting on the bike, her foot didn't clear and she fell over. I guess she re-injured her almost healed leg, and hit her head, so Bryan was working on reducing the new swelling, then we had to wait for someone to pick her up because with her new injuries she could not drive. We ended up leaving there only a few minutes before the carpool would have left. Oh well.

We went out to eat and then went to see Prince Caspian (LOVED IT!) After the movie we stopped at Walmart to get the soundtrack to the movie (I love to listen to classical music in the house, I find it helps me relax). We also picked up the soundtrack to the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. (Unfortunately the kids like to listen to crazy loud chipmunks louder and more often than classical music......it is not as obnoxious as you would think)

Anyway, we had a great time and look forward to the next ten years (by then our kids will be getting ready to leave home! Wow!)

PS. I spent most of the day trying to get my scanner to work so that I could scan in some of my wedding pictures, but alas, I could not get it to work, so I will leave it up to your imaginations)

Mobility?!?

Ashton is now 7 months old and has officially learned how to get around. His favorite thing is paper, and fortunately for him there is normally paper ALL over the house. I have been dreading this day, but alas it is here, and he is so cute that I find myself cheering him on! Go figure.

Poll Answer

Ok, whoever guessed 7 lbs (even you 5 lb guessers) are in HUGE trouble!!!! No one ever guesses that high for me and I was totally working harder than Bryan! Then there are those of you who always guess 1-3 lbs. Haven't you learned yet? Anyway to get to the point Bryan lost between 4-5 lbs. We have successfully removed all treats from the house so it is less tempting to break down and eat them. (for those of you interested I lost another 2 pounds) It feels great to eat better and get in shape, I am actually enjoying it! Thanks for the help.

Stimulating the Economy

We have been thinking about getting a playground set for the back yard for a while now, but when we got an unexpected check from the government we decided to throw caution to the wind. We looked around but of course found our best deal at Costco. We called up a friend with a truck and brought home six large boxes full of wood. Everything we read online said that these kind of playgrounds took a few days to build. We started that night and two weeks later we have a completed playground. It comes with the works, rope ladder, rock wall, slide, enclosed fort, tick tack tow game, steering wheel, telescope, picnic table, and a place for 3 swings (or two swings and a trapeze bar) The kids have had tons of fun and hopefully it will help out this summer.

Oh ye of little faith!

Well, the "POLL" worked (the pole was not to bad either). It is hard to say just how much I lost though. I started on Sunday morning last week, but this Sunday morning I forgot to weigh myself. When I remembered in the afternoon, the scale showed that I had lost 4.6 lbs, but I usually weigh in first thing in the morning because I weigh less then, so I decided to wait and see what I weighed in at on Monday morning, and when I did it showed that I had lost an additional 1.6 lbs!!! For a grand total of 6.2 lbs!! So it was one week plus one day, but still pretty good! I have been so hungry all week and have not had any simple sugars (except for my some birthday desserts....thanks to those who had birthdays :) Anyway, that means that I am now only .6 lbs away from my most recent low (I had gained back a little more than I originally disclosed) Thanks for the support. Bryan is convinced to be "good" with me this week and really watch what we eat and exercise more.

My house is not like a Zoo

Bryan was able to get last Friday off work, so last minute we decided to take the kids out of school and head to Portland, OR to go to the Oregon Zoo. Portland is about a 3 1/2 hour drive so we decided to get a hotel for Thursday and Friday nights. On our way there we noticed some signs showing a scenic route that passed by several waterfalls. Because we got a late start Thursday night we decided to wait and see them on our way home. When we got to the hotel the kids were so excited that it had a pool, so we had to check it out, even though it was 9:30. Luckily the pool was open until 11:00. We had a nice relaxing morning and headed to the Zoo. Trevor's favorite animal was the sea lions, Kaylee's was the "ringtails", Nathan's was the tiger (which is odd because the tiger was asleep and we could not really see him) Anyway, right after we stopped for lunch I realized how quite and peaceful it was at the zoo. The animals were mostly asleep, but even if they were awake, they just sat there or sometimes walked around. I have heard the expression before "wow, it is like a zoo in here" And have always considered my house to qualify for that expression, however it hit me when we were at the zoo, that my house is nothing like a zoo. I need a new word to describe it because the zoo was way to calm to be compared to my house.

Our hotel was only 2 miles from the Portland OR Temple so we made sure to drive past and show the kids. It is a really pretty temple.

Anyway, we had tons of fun at the zoo and went swimming again that night, and again the next morning before we left. The drive home took a little longer because we stopped to see all the waterfalls. At one of the falls there was a film crew there making a major movie. When we asked what it was, they told us it was called The Road. For more info on the movie click here. We thought that was pretty cool. We are so glad to be home though, trips are nice, but home is better!

Along came a spider and sat down beside her

So here is my story: I was sitting in my back yard working on assembling our new play set when I looked down and saw a spider on my leg. This was not just a little spider. It was a big hairy black jumping spider. We do see these sometimes in the garage or yard, so I wasn't shocked at it's sight, but the fact that it was on me was awful. I surprised myself by not freaking out and instead I thought calmly...."OK, what should I do?" My first thought was to whack the spider off my leg with the power drill that I was holding. I quickly dismissed this idea for fear that I would miss and the spider would "attack" me (these spiders don't actually bit, but I fear them none the less) or that I would miss and hit my leg. My next thought was to whack it off my leg with one of the boards I was working on. I again worried about a miss on my part (I am not the most coordinated person in the world) I decided rather to hold the board up to my leg near the spider and see if he would climb aboard. as I put the board near him, he reared up onto his hind legs getting into a "jumping" position. At this point my heart started pounding because the jumping position looks a lot like a "ready to strike" position. I was relieved thought when instead of jumping at me he took a few steps closer to the board and climbed on. Quick relief flooded over me. But now what to do with the spider for now he was sitting on the board I was ready to install on the play set. Once again my first instinct was toward violence and to just flip the board over and smash the spider. The main reason for not doing this was that I did not want to clean up spider guts off the board, so I tapped the board on a piece of cardboard causing the spider to fall off, then I slid the cardboard over to the fence and waited for him to climb off. You read right I let the thing live. This is a first for me, but for some reason I could not kill it, after all he had not attacked me when he had the chance. All said and done, I do regret a little not killing this spider, but I made up for it when I saw another one in the garage yesterday and stepped on him without a second thought. Pesky little creatures!
If you want to see what kind of spider it was click here

Shame on YOU!

Yeah, you read that right, shame on all of you. You totally let me fall of the wagon regarding weight loss! I had lost a total of 14 lbs, but I have now gained back 5 of those!! It is so much easier to lay the blame on someone else than to take responsibility myself, so that I why I say shame on you. If my support group had kept better tabs on me this never would have happened. Anyway, I am going to rededicate myself to the "program" tomorrow. No more pigging out and stress snacking. And back to daily workouts. I have put a new pole up because that seemed to work well last time. Summer is getting ever so close and I really would like to be able to put on a swim suit, so lets try to pull it together and be a little more supportive this time shall we?

Family

I just wanted to say how lucky I feel that I have been blessed with such a great family. Whenever people ask about my family I feel almost guilty telling them how great everyone is. I don't know how common it is to have your siblings/parents be your best friends, especially when there are six kids in the family, but I can truly say that my brothers and sisters (and their spouses) and my parents are my best friends. I was telling Bryan how lucky I was to have people I can call when I am feeling down and they always care about me and whats going on in my life. Sheesh, I can't even go a week without blogging without someone noticing. Anyway, I don't want to go on and on, I mostly just wanted to say thanks to all of my family members and the love and support that you give me.

AZ Does It

The first grade classes at the kid's elementary school always do a musical performance of AZ Does It. It is a really fun musical teaching the letters of the alphabet, their sounds and functions. They have been practicing for a while and we have the CD of all the music here (which we listen to every time we are in the car.) Trevor was super excited. Unfortunately the place was PACKED! So our seats were not very good, but we did get some video and pictures. The schools out here are growing like crazy. Last year they had 3 1st grade classes, this year there were 5. That is a lot of people to cram into the schools cafeteria! But we had a great time and Trevor did awesome. He is a really good singer and looked dashing in his ABC vest! (the video is kind of long, I tried to pick the shortest song, but it was still long)