bleck....

okay, here it is....I havent changed weight at all this week.....hmmm....actually I gained a pound! Better luck next week....less pizza!

149lbs

fast trip leaves road burning

I don't think it could have gone any better than it did yesterday. Three kids, one dog, one teen, and two adults took a four hour trek (one way) stopped for two hours and turned around, three kids, one dog, no teen, and two adults, drove back the way they came. When I returned home I found the house clean and three kids asleep enough to carry them upstairs to bed. Fantastic if I do say so myself. Like a symphony! My grandparents were beyond pleased to see us and my grandmother especially liked the dog quilt I brought her. (do you remember it?) poor thing was stuffed in a closet half finished. It was all about the challenge. I mulled over the thought of finishing it in one night, really all I had left was to quilt it, bind it, and oh don't forget the blanket stitching around the pooches. The timing was so close that I had to finish it at my other grandmas house before presenting it to her but it was worth all my efforts when I saw how happy she was to receive it! Now I need to finish that baby quilt for my friend becca....then on to starting one for decaff addict. quilts quilts quilts!

and now to the rain

Nothing like a week full of sunshine to give you a false sense of serenity. California must be expensive because people pay extra for the forecast. My husband is a professional firefighter, plus things are always on fire in Cali..Ha. to che' oh overcast skies. Someday someone will invent a weather machine and you can bet your boots they will come from one of the north western coast. Its been real cold this winter and walking in the rain reminds me of a slow and pain full attempted suicide in which you never really quite warm up from. Quite possibly this might explain all the coffee and tea consumption and the real reason for the espresso explosion along the coast line. With all the rain and foul weather we inevitably turn to movies. This is not to banish the thought of puzzles or boardgames or even origami which are a great avenue for time burning, but usually falling asleep on a puzzle leads to unpleasant jigsaw lines embedded in your face for up to a day later. I myself rented (aka spent good money on) mama Mia, by far the worst musical I have ever seen...it blew 'the wiz' away. I can sum it up in one small phrase. Menopausal cougars gyrating to teen music and singing with the aid of studio enhancement. A sponge bob quote fits perfectly " that one was so bad my eyeballs threw up!"
Today I will try to forget how utterly excruciating it was seeing pierce Bosnian sing.....off key. Four dollars and two hours lost from my life I will never get back!!!

funny things

After a month, perhaps longer, my middle child still insists his name is Thomas. He even goes as far as introducing himself as Thomas, emphasizing heavily that it is in fact HIS name. We visited my parents church last week and during the first service they have all the kids come up front and listen to a little lesson followed by candy (every child's favorite motivator for quiet) This weeks lesson talked about 'who you look up to' My daughter answered God, some of the other children said their parents my son said "hi my name is THOMAS and I think people look up to me." I couldn't hold back a smile and chuckle. Only Thomas would do something like that, so for now on his Internet name will be Thomas. Funny when my daughter chose a name for herself it was almost unpronounceable and she forgot it the next day. I wounder what the baby will name himself?

My niece Jamie is staying for a few days, its nice to have other people to talk to besides the usual suspects. I am rusty at being a teen and my mental wheels have been cranking hard to think back that far, but she is being quite tolerant of my attempts :) I will be driving her back on Thursday and hopefully will visit my grandparents also..yes yes I know what your thinking "bla d bla bla, get to something interesting other than your day to day!" but I feel like its all I have lately! Just same old stuff. We are now in the D section of the children's books. Fun research in my opinion. I probably already posted this but seriously its amazing the lack of good boy books there are. 1 In 10 ish. I recently came into some government money (aka tax return) and have to decide....do I take the writing course???? I am thinking so....After it not working out for Christmas and feeling so disappointed about it.....I'm thinking I will (so wishy washy today huh?) My mom and I saw ink heart over the weekend and it was soooo good. It made me want to write books so bad, now for the confidence! Trust me I will come up with more intriguing stories to talk about in my next post, goodness knows its been long enough since my last you think this one would contain a book.

catch you later...ps sorry for the lack of pics I still am camera-less

city destroyed few left alive.....

KB toys is going out of business...every thing is 60% off..including there lifelike Godzilla toys. I cant deny the fact my three love the classic Godzilla flicks and actually sit through the Japanese speaking version just to see him destroy the city. My dad saw the toys and picked up three, two classic Godzilla's and one mecha-Godzilla. My daughter immediately gave her monster feminine qualities and a name to boot. "blossom" she is a little girl Godzilla who bosses all the other monsters around. The boys were more than happy to comply and now they are all playing in the back bedroom nicely. Who my husband is does come out in the children every now and then, tonight its the love of old cheesy horror movie monsters. What other girl would take a hideous radio active dinosaur and give it feelings and emotions? I can only Laugh out Loud.

next month

Many things are happening in life next month. Somewhere around the 13Th we are leaving to work at the bible camp for two weeks then turn around and rush my husband to the airport where in turn he flies off to Bolivia for another two weeks. I haven't solidified my schedule of where to be, but it can safely be assumed I will not spend that time alone at my house. Yeah I think I am a little green with envy, well more like slightly tinged with envy. If we had gobs of money lying around I would be taking the kids on a road trip to Disney land. Until Nancy (the dog) digs up millions of dollars in Spanish gold we are stuck doing whatever. I have been planning on getting inked again and two weeks would be just about the right time line to surprise my hubby...the only hang up is I don't have a design I like yet. I'll borrow a camera and blog it if I do commit to another lifetime mark.

weekend

Its been fun...but now I'm done

this weekend has been very nice

I had the chance to sleep in, twice

my morning time was filled with ease

no one to dress no one to please

but now that I have so much quiet

I'm glad my life is full of riots!

I have always been the morning person in the family, I just cant sleep in. When my husband and I were first married it was pain full to sit around the house and wait for him to wake up around 9 or 10. Its so easy to forget until you encounter it again. So maby being awakened at 5:30 am every morning isn't fun (I never was an alarm clock person) But it sure is nice to have someone around in the early part of the day so I don't have to spend it by myself...even the dogs sleep till 10! Today I get them back, only after sorting through the toys and tossing a few!

we have the weekend without the kids.....now what to do? This morning we took the dogs for a walk and later today I think I will play tomb raider till my eyes fall out, then off to a movie and dont forgett going out to coffee~

angry at creeps!

Every neighborhood has them,...some live in their jeeps aka the creep in the jeep, some drive around red trucks with lawn mowers in them aka the scary truck guy. Yesterday I discovered our local psycho man I thought was just an old nosy guy. THOUGHT. I discovered him yesterday while pumping up my bike tires next to my house. He drove by and then stopped in the driveway of an empty garage next door, Idiot! like I cant see you getting out of your car and staring at me! ugh. I WAS SOOO mad! Usually when people do things like that it creeps me out and I hide in my house but this time I was just so upset that he dare ruin my perfect day I was sorely tempted to walk over and spew expletives at him and include several animated hand gestures just in case he didn't get the point! Instead I chose (with better judgment) to load the kids up on in the bike trailer and ride the opposite way, out of wagon mans view. I rode opposite the road I live on and spied on him! see if you like it buddy. There he was getting out of his wagon and peering at my house again. Obviously he realized I had rode off under his nose and proceeded to drive the direction I went. Here I am still fighting mad, wondering if I should go home or what. I checked behind me and no wagon man. Yes at this point I was telling myself he was just a nosy man and really, probably, most likely meant no harm (or he didn't guess the direction I went) We pressed on and went to the park, I was determined to not let it kill my day of fun. There we played and had fun. I made a couple of phone calls to friends and my husband telling him about the weirdo. I was on my last call to a very close girlfriend when 'ta DA' HE drove by again! s-l-o-w-l-y...I made it very obvious I was on the phone..a phone I could use to call the cops if i needed and he kept driving. Better judgment told me it was time to go since I only had about an hour of daylight and so we took another rout back and I packed up and left for the night. OOOhhhh I am still MAD this morning! I cant believe people can be so intrusive and crazy. My husband said he would take care of it, and I think that is the better option.

welcome to the neighborhood

I'm not sure what it is that attracts such 'colorful' individuals to the place I live. I stand utterly amazed at how rather odd all my neighbors are. Down the street from us lives a couple who is very suspicious of people who come to their door. our closest neighbor has reclusive tendency's and isn't exactly friendly and lastly the new neighbors we now have behind us are lesbians. The house that stood empty for 2 years,..I had hopes city girl would take a hint but no such luck. Sigh, could this area become ANY less appealing?

weigh in..

this morning I weighed myself in and I was 138lbs. I have cut out high calorie night snacking and between meals snacking. The goal for calorie intake is 1200 to 1500, and as far as I can guess I am closer to 1500. My daily activity has increased. This morning I hit the gym and worked out on the treadmill for 45 min. then did some sit-ups (bleck) My starting weight was probably closer to 143ish..

my measurements for January

current- projected

bust 36 bust 34
waist 28 waist 26
hips 38 hips 36
thy 22 thy 20

my weight for January

current weight 138 projected weight 128


next month is dress shopping for the opera!

secreat agent date

A couple of things to think about..

1. When you get married and run out of things to say the conversation proceeding either becomes non existent or extremely interesting
2. where does ketchup really come from?

During a most coveted and sought after coffee date with my husband, I had a captivating conversation involving espionage and recruitment. Considering we ran out of things to talk about quite some time ago I set up a system of asking and answering random hypothetical questions in great detail to fill in all that dead space which might have occurred. The question was this, "If you were a spy, how would you have been recruited." Easy yes? one of those I cant believe you asked such an obviously easy question..right??? Wrong! After going deeply into Kerry Phagen's bio history we found he became a spy out of boardum. Yes, there was the typical underlying of anger and resentment most adults carry around, but not enough. After many years of diamond smuggling etc. the government contacted him to do their dirty work and he said yes for the sheer reason he had nothing better to do. We sketched out his character together for at least an hour. The details were complete, even down to how he stayed out of public attention and where he lived. The whole thing made me glad we ran out of things to talk about...just think if we were still discussing life?!

And now to the ketchup question. Where DOES it come from. Most people don't know this and I believe this is the first time the secret has been published.

Ketchup, originally pronounced cats-up, comes from a south American country along the amazon river. Many years ago the native people had a difficult time with the ocelot better known as a tree cat. In the evenings as they surrounded their fires to talk and sing the ocelot would climb into the rafters in order to pounce on and eat the younger members of the tribe. At the climax of the situation there were more cats than villagers. Something needed to be done and other than burning their homes down there seemed to be no way of solving this infestation. The surrounding tribes were called to a meeting, the council lasted for days until everyone grew so weary they decided to take their only option, burn down the village and start from scratch. Defeated, chief Mahalah Linkie walked into his hut for one last night when suddenly his only remaining son dashed ahead to his doom. The chief shouted the first words which came to mind cataalaaa ooopppaaa! (translated cats-up) and flung a fist full of the red cataalaa plant into the ocelots eyes destroying its sight and saving his last child. The rest of the villagers followed suit leaving the ocelot population near extinction. Medical missionaries later mistook the red poultice for food during a village visit and today we are bottling it in factories. You might choose to be deceived by the picture of a tomato on the front, it is much more attractive looking than the actual source. The cataalaa plant resembles a large skunk cabbage with oozing red blossoms. Believe what you want, read the back of the bottle to soothe yourself or you can take my lead and remember a small amazonian village every time you eat hamburgers.

cleaning freak

With all the vacationing we have been doing and the amount of company I have had here the house has been in maintain status instead of the usual clean morning and night. I decided to postpone the zoo trip to anther day after a long night of a croupy baby. Its typical for January to pass that bug around. I woke to look at the house as it usually greets me after a trip away, scattered toys and a sink full of dirty dishes. My kitchen was taking on a real world war look and if I didn't clean it soon the temptation of dropping a bomb on it would be unbearable. What a mess! After wiping down the cupboards, organizing the drawers and tossing the junk I looked at the clock to find 3 hours gone from my life. Its certainly a good thing I love to shuffle and toss. Please read the following with the understanding that I KNOW you are rolling your eyes

It was better than a back massage. Granted my kids ran around the house like banshees destroying all the other rooms, but to have three hours with my own thoughts was glorious. I needed a little mental therapy. Now the rest of the house is destroyed but I have one room to stand in and breathe easy.

Yesterday I received a package..it was surprising to find the ups man stopping at my door considering this is a 'no fun' month and I haven't bought anything from amazon lately. After bringing it inside and thinking somehow I ordered it without knowing I discovered my sister in law sent the kids and I a care package,...you sneak! The contents were three Wally's (giant stickers for your room) a horse, airplanes, and a Hawaiian scene. The Hawaiian scene will go over top of my washer and dryer :) in hopes of dissuading me from thinking about all the laundry I have to do each day. The other two will be in the kids room. It was a very nice day brightener and very special to have someone think of me.

more Homeschooling

Now about half way through the school year I am checking back to give you a report...

the pros

1. great flexibility-we went on a months worth of vacation and still was able to log in and have the accountability
2. teacher support-my daughters teacher is very interested in what she is doing and the new things she has learned
3. the curriculum in spectacular-it eases your child into math and phonics so gradually that when you finally look back you cant believe how far you are
4. I can be selective- they encourage you to teach your child what they need to know and skip the things they already understand

here are the con's

1. No community feel- Their activity's are usually 2 hours away
2. you have to have a computer- log in is critical

there you have it! I hope it was helpful! WAVA (virtual public schooling) might not be right for everyone but its certainly a perfect fit for us...How has your homeschooling year been?? are there amazing things about it you would like to share? let me hear about it!

sorority girls

Last night on a sheer act of spontaneity several of us gathered around 'city girls' giant television and sunk our brains into some good quality mush, known to the men in our lives as a chick flick. Sydney White is the story of Snow White with a modern day college spin.(didn't realize it until much later) Everyone is attractive, as usual, and Amanda Bines does an okay job playing the pretty girl who doesn't know it. It was enjoyed mostly for its laugh out loud moments and the fact Amanda Bines has the skinniest thy's ever known to woman kind. We sat around afterwords and laughed about how none of the group had gone to conventional university and skipped out on hazing all together tho this blogger would have had too much fun, perhaps some things are better left undiscovered. The way they described their relationship with each other in the sorority is how I feel about my girls.'City Girls' husband commented earlier about the fact WE were ganging up on him and ran to another abandoned husbands dwelling place to avoid further persecution by members of the xx chromosome persuasion. The only thing we were missing was the caffeine addict who is currently on decaff, she was too tired to come. Bless her for those sacrifices she has made during pregnancy.

Challange

My friend and I are long distancing it. We have both struggled to keep active since my departure a year and a half ago. We also both want to look great when we go to Utah 9 months for now...its harder to hide underneath layers of clothing when its 115 degrees outside. I could do survivor if it were in the artic!

Someone once told me girls don't sweat they glow, but I believe that to be a 'feel better' lie. I certainly have a real knack for sweating AND stinking in high temperatures so the only compromise here is to grasp reality and work out till the cottage cheese growing on the back of my legs turns from a brie to a nicely aged cheddar. Lofty goal, I know. Lucky for me my mother was one of those parents who chose to tell me I could accomplish anything if I put my mind to it...so here I go, my readers are on this trip with me like it or not so I'll share the stats and the goals. Once a week I'll log in my numbers.

weight-145ish
goal-127

next week I'll log my measurements etc. thanks for being here to listen!

red eye night

So vanity got the best of me and I popped in a pair of contacts which had been soaking in the same solution for quite some time, it is nice to see with out the goggle face. My eyes itched as usual and I assumed it was because my allergies have been more aggressive as of late. 'Not so' chirped the little bird of idiocy into my ear! My contacts had been swimming in a solution only likened to a peatry dish in a lab. When I did remove them for the night my eyes resembled an addicts or an alcoholics with blaring redness and light sensitivity. "Ill sleep on it" I said to myself. The next morning? Much worse I'm afraid! Thankfully its NOT pink eye (we have crossed that bridge already) so no worries about the kids catching it, but the real back draw is my eye drops are not killing it. The fact I might have discovered a rare bacteria that I could name after myself doesn't thrill me, usually when I catch something all I see are little dollar signs flying out of my wallet, I think I will visit the optometrist in the next week and see what he can do for me...and perhaps get a new perspiration for Glasses!

commings and goings....

bwa ha ha haw!
last year Our PlayStation 3 died. (ok ok 1 week ago) and this year (two days ago) I found my camera had gone capoot. No! its NOT the batteries this time. I couldn't bear to send the PlayStation to the factory to get fixed for $150 so I started digging...first through google then through u tube. I found out many many people had the same problem as me and all it took was replacing the tiny blue ray laser inside. So easy? YES! thanks to several videos on the Internet. It was a $60 fix. Now I can help Laura Croft discover lost civilizations and kill giant mythical creatures..instead of staring at an overpriced book end. The camera is a different story. Were back to my phone for now. That boy of mine could break steel.