Friday, November 30, 2012

Random Things from last week!

The Friday after Thanksgiving, I did not have to work.  So I decided to drive down to Kentucky with my father-in-law with my three rowdy boys to visit my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his wife, and my all grown up nephew.  We spent over 6 hours in the car that day!  Whew!  The boys did really well until the last 30 miles when they started hitting.  Then there were tears.  Then there was yelling.  And then they fell asleep for the last 10 minutes of the trip, of course.  I think Molly, the large St. Bernard in the picture was very excited to have some company!


When we got home, my husband had made a giant pot of jambalaya.  I ended up going straight to bed. I think the 6 hours in the car did me in!  So the boys dug into the dinner while I slept.  Thankfully I woke up the next morning and felt much better.

Saturday afternoon we all went to pick out a real live Christmas tree.  I say all of us except for Moose (my middle son).  He decided to stay at home and play with his cousin and my mom (who had just dropped off my oldest son).  I threw out my old pre-lit tree last January.  The middle section of the tree would not light up, and I was tired of fighting with it.  So I promised the boys a real Christmas tree this year.

Of course, we took a wonderful family picture at the Christmas tree farm without Moose.  We just may have to photoshop him in.  I think this would make an excellent Christmas photo card!!  We had such a fun time picking out the perfect tree.  I think it's a humdinger of a tree!!



Thursday, November 29, 2012

What to write about?

I feel like I have a lot of things I want to blog about these days, but I feel like I don't have the time it takes to sit down and come up with something coherent.  So I will just talk about a few random things.

Today is my 15th wedding anniversary.  I chose to celebrate by working some extra hours at my job (we get so busy towards the end of the year)!  My husband chose to celebrate by spending the day out in the woods hunting.  We have to be the most romantic couple in the world!  Fifteen years goes by really fast.  I remember the weekend we got married it was unseasonably warm for Indiana, and gas cost 99 cents a gallon.  I remember the gas price because my college best friend and I couldn't believe how cheap gas was.  I think we talked about it a lot that weekend!

For our tenth anniversary, we spent a week in Hawaii.  So for our fifteenth anniversary, I decided I wanted a new wedding ring.  I have been talking about this off and on for a few years.  And this year my husband made me go ring shopping.  We went to two stores, and I came out empty handed.  I just could not bring myself to spend thousands of dollars on a new ring.  I decided to get my old ring's prongs fixed and dipped in rhodium.  It looks a thousand times better and only cost eighty bucks.  My sister thinks I am crazy for not buying a ring.  Oh well, maybe in five more years I will be ready!

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Dinner Funk

I have been in a real funk when it comes to meal planning and dinner making.  My poor family has eaten lots of corn dogs, turkey sandwiches, cold cereal, and spaghetti.  We also have eaten out way more than normal lately.  Maybe I know the holidays are coming (which they always do!), and I know I will have to cook then.  That's what I'm doing (wink wink!)!  I'm saving all my cooking energy for the next 4 weeks.  Maybe my family will actually talk to me then.  I do have two funny dinner stories that happened this week.

Thursday evening, I had a meeting to go to, then a literacy night at the twins school, then I had to get my oldest son to his basketball practice.  I knew I would not have time to sit down and eat with them, so I made a simple dinner that my husband could throw onto plates for everyone.  I opened a can of green beans and 2 packages of smoked sausages and threw them into the crockpot.  I also got all fancy and bought a package of The Original King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (which we all love!!).

When I got home from my first meeting, they were sitting around the table, and no one liked the sausage.  It was turkey sausage (which I don't normally buy), but it was all they had at Aldi that day when I was grocery shopping.  So no one liked it, and I think my husband was the only one who actually ate it.  In one of the quiet moments that evening, my middle son burst out with "At least she cooked us some dinner!".  I love that boy.  Ironically, his favorite part of the meal were the sweet rolls which involved opening a package.

After the Thursday fiasco, we decided to eat out Friday at Steak-N-Shake.  We were going out to eat without any coupons, and not on the kids eat free deal (which our Steak-N-Shake does on Saturday and Sunday).  So I was all upset about how expensive our meal was going to be.  But then they made my husband's burger wrong, so he had to wait longer than the rest of us.  So they took his entire meal (including his shake) off the bill.  Cha-ching!

The manager who came to talk to us was once a waiter, and my oldest son congratulated him on his promotion!  He was so nice to us, and thanked us for not yelling at him or our server.  I'm just glad my family actually ate the dinner (that I did not make)!

Maybe next week I will do a little better with meal planning, or maybe not!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Blogging about weight loss

I typically don't talk about losing weight on my blog.  I find other topics much more interesting!  But recently I have had so many people ask me how much weight I have lost {which is a beautiful thing!} that I decided to blog about it.  First let me answer that question by saying I really don't know how much weight I have lost.  I am a tall girl (6 feet tall to be exact) and I weigh a lot.  Always have.  So I just hate weighing myself.  I only get on the scale at the doctor's office.  So I really do not have a weightloss number to give.

Second there was something about the year 2012.  I would be turning 38 in August.  I had a 20 year high school reunion.  And my daughter was getting married.  I wanted to look good as a {step} mother of the bride!!  So when I found this little sign on pinterest, I decided this was going to be my year.


Third I bought an elliptical machine in January and parked it in my bedroom right in front of a television.  This is the first piece of exercise equipment I ever purchased.  And I told myself I was going to use it.  Every. Single. Day.  Not five days a week or four days a week, but every day of the week.  And I have used it.  I love it!  Coming from a girl who hadn't worked out in years, I can truly say I look forward to getting on my elliptical machine every night.  I have also watched hours of mindless television, but I keep telling myself I am getting healthier!!

So here is the proof.  The picture on the left was taken October 2011.  We had family pictures taken, and I loved them...except for the ones of me.  I kept thinking why did I wear a sweater that showed all my fat rolls?!?  But in reality, no matter what I wore, I would not have liked the pictures of me!  The picture on the right was taken on Tuesday {yes, that is my I VOTED sticker}.  And when I looked at the difference I was shocked!  I really didn't do anything magical the past year.  I just decided This Was/Is My Year!  And maybe I will inspire someone else to have a year like mine.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Happy November!

It was really cold this Halloween!  Once it got dark, it got even colder.  Before we went trick-or-treating, we ate Papa Murphy's pumpkin pepperoni pizza.  I decided to pick one up on a whim yesterday.  We hadn't gotten Papa Murphy's in a long time because the kids would not eat it.  They prefer Papa Johns or even Little Caesars.  My husband and I love it so much that when we first moved here from Colorado (almost 10 years ago...wow!), we would drive over 40 minutes to pick it up!  Now we have one just a few miles from our house!  I was pleasantly surprised when all three boys ate a piece and did not complain.  Maybe bribing them with candy helped a little bit.

My oldest son whose dream is to play in the NBA (what 11 year old boy doesn't dream of this?) decided to be Rajon Rondo for Halloween.  He kept going back and forth about trick-or-treating and finally decided not to go.  I was a little sad, but we let him stay home and pass out candy.  We saw lots of kids older than him in our neighborhood, so maybe next year he will want to.

Captain America and Thor were all about the candy for about 10 minutes.  Then they got tired, a bag got too heavy, a bucket got spilled after tripping and falling, it got really cold, and they were done!  We only stayed out for about an hour, which was more than enough time to collect more than enough candy.

Now that BOO! BOO! is over, it's time for GOBBLE!  GOBBLE!  I cannot believe Thanksgiving is only three weeks from today.  The days go slow, but the year goes by fast.