Monday, April 28, 2008

31

Tomorrow I turn 31 and for the first time in a looong time, I have so much going on that I completely forgot about it and don't really care about celebrating it.

All of a sudden, life is very busy. I actually offered to coordinate a series of events at my church for women. One a month for the next...however long we decide to keep doing this. The first event is Wednesday, May 14th and I am feeling a little bit of pressure to make it freakin' awesome so that the women that go to it will really be blessed and want to come back for more.

Stephanie graduates this weekend and Brian and I will be traveling sans kids. I am not nervous at all about leaving them with the grandparents, but I know that while it will be amazing to actually ride in a car for more than 30 minutes without having to concede to my little tyrant's demands for control over the music selection, I am going to miss them terribly. I also still need to buy a dress, since the whole weightloss thing hasn't gone so well and I sent all my fat clothes to Mexico when I lost weight after Aimee. I refuse to wear maternity clothes.

I am also in charge of making sure care packages for the college students at our church get put togather and delivered for final's week, so I'm remembering the importance of delegating and I've been calling and emailing people with their tasks.

I don't like drama in my life and I had a disturbing little piece of it last week. I'm not sure how it's going to be resolved, but I think that brutal honesty, prayer, and maybe maturity (I am almost 31 now, you know) have kept me from obsessing and losing sleep over it.

School starts 4 weeks.

God is good.

Friday, April 25, 2008

I think I'm officially one of *those* animal people....

I am cooking dinner for my dog. He has a stomach thing and I was advised to give him rice and ground beef. I don't have ground beef, so I'm cooking the rice in my fancy Organic Free Range Chicken Stock from Trader Joes.

I will be ordering Pizza for the humans in the family.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Giving In..


I've received a lot of compliments on the pics that I post here. Although I said I would never do it, I'm going to give in and give credit where credit is due.

When my in-laws come over, my mother in law basically spends 75% of the visit with the camera glued to her hand. Somehow, she has learned how to make that camera obey her every command at the very moment she commands it to do something. My camera still takes a good five seconds to take a picture, even after I've given it a pep talk.

So I'm giving credit where it's due. Most of the pictures I've posted have indeed, been taken by Carol W., family photographer extraordinaire.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Great Days...






Great Days!

A few weeks ago, a recruiter that has placed Brian in jobs in the past called to see if Brian would be interested in taking a different job. He campaigned hard, calling and emailing daily with new details about the job offer that made the pot sweeter and sweeter. A really big raise, good benefits, a nice job title, the prospect of ascending in the management ladder. Did I mention generous relocation benefits? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this awesome job is in Alabama. I have to admit that we thought about it for about 1.5 seconds. The huge bump in salary was even more tempting because the cost of living down there is almost half...yes half of what it is here. A house like ours would cost less than half of what we are paying for ours right now.

That thought was immediately erased from our collective mind as we considered what our life would be like without our parents and siblings. It is true, we depend on you. A lot. Great days with you drive the point home.






Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Seashells

I am so happy that it is finally spring. The sunshine and warmer temps have warmed my spirits and I am find myself feeling more myself and more deeply in love with everything. I am appreciating in a new way how truely funny and wonderful my two cuties are. Aimee cracks me up all the time with the new faces she is making and the funny things she is saying. Daniel is so aware. He and Aimee get into these cute squeaking matches. Daniel will squeak and Aimee will imitate, then he'll squeak again, and so on and so on. Aimee can make him laugh histerically just by saying "tickle tickle tickle", even when she is sitting on the other side of the room.

I would like to collect these little moments like seashells and store them in a box under my bed so that I could take them out when I find that my spirit has been chilled by my soul's winter. I wish that on those days when things seem dark and unhappy, I could hold these moments in my fingers and close my eyes, so that I could come back to these joyful times - even if only in my memory.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Random


Aimee wanted to smell everything today. She asked me to carry her to the stove so that she could smell what I was making for dinner. Than she spent the rest of the evening going around the house looking for things to smell.


Here she is with her Uncle Paul over the weekend.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Daniel Brian




When I was pregnant and found out that I was having a boy, we used to sit around and imagine what he would be like. We would say that he was probably going to be the exact opposite of his sister, Aimee. Aimee looks just like me. She has dark hair and dark eyes. She has an explosive temper. Her disposition swings like a pendulum from one extreme to another. She is either deliriously happy or utterly devastated. The elements of her composition are tears, and laughter, and squeals of happiness. She always smells like strawberries and cotton candy. She is aggressive and determined. We would say that Daniel was going to be a chubby little polish boy that would smell like butter and mustard. That he would be steady, and reasonable, and frugal like his father.

Daniel is now six months. Let me tell you a little bit about him. I think he looks exactly like his father. Believe it or not, he smelled like butter for the first 4 months and his crib sheet needs to be changed very frequently because he sweats in his sleep. While his sheet does not smell like mustard, it does smell like vinegar, which is an ingredient in mustard. Daniel is the most cheerful baby I've ever seen. He smiles freely and frequently. Crying is reserved for extreme circumstances and he prefers to communicate his needs with mild fussiness. His eyes are so bright that you can see the whole room reflected in them. His smile is like seeing a birthday cake with blazing candles.

Every morning, Aimee happily bounces into his room and immediately climbs onto the side rail of the crib so that she can yell, "Hi Morning Daniel!" She grits her teeth because she is so excited and full of emotion to see him and aggressively grabs his hand and then lets it go when I tell her to be gentle. Daniel receives this greeting with a great squeal of joy and enthusiastic kicking, not minding the aggressive hand holding/pulling or that the morning greeting was delivered through gritted teeth.

Beyond the joking that Brian and I did, we never really imagined what our kids would be like. I was ecstatic with joy and surprise when I met them both. The first time I saw them, the air was knocked out of my lungs. I feel unworthy that God would create such beautiful perfect little things and place them under my stewardship. Here's to hoping I don't screw them up too much.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Let's talk weight loss

I stopped going to my Weight Watcher's meetings in February because I momentarily (for like 6 weeks) felt like going crazy. I gained back 8 pounds, but I'm not going to cry about it now. I kind of enjoyed every calorie I put in my mouth and now I'm over it. I went back to WW 2 weeks ago and found that my meeting had a new leader. I have been to lots of different locations and seen lots of leaders (maybe 10) and I've never seen a leader that wasn't a grandparent until now. Not only is the new leader totally NOT a grandparent, she is totally hot. I'm talking skin tight black dress paired with shiny, pointy, red, knee-high boots hot. All hotness aside, she is also kind of annoying in that energetic cheerleader at a funeral kind of way. But she is hands down the best leader I've ever had. I would even say that I love her.

Let me give you an idea of what the WW meetings are like. You walk in, hand the receptionist your little card where you log your weight and step on a scale. The scale has a little display box sitting on the registration desk where only the person sitting at the desk can see your weight. They write your weight down on your little card and then you go into the meeting room. If it is your first week at WW, you are shocked at the number of people that weigh 125 lbs that struggle with weight issues and you are relieved to not be the fattest or thinnest person in the room. The leader gives a short talk about that week's topic. The talks are always very helpful, but it isn't like therapy or anything. They are usually very clinical. This week's talk was about emotional eating. Hot girl did such a good job that here it is, 5 am on a Wednesday, and I can't sleep because I'm thinking about why I'm overweight.

WW is all about control. You control what you eat, how much of it, and when you eat it. It's not a rigid diet. It's a system to help you understand how you should be eating to be healthy. Control isn't really hard, but it takes a lot of effort. Usually, when I'm following the plan I feel in control of my life. I would even say I feel happier. (To be read in a whiney voice) SO WHY DOES IT FEEL SO DIFFICULT?

Food has been just about everything for me except for what it should be. At WW we talked about using a tool called, "Reframing" which basically means, changing the way you think. That is probably the hardest part about a weightloss journey. Every holiday, every stressful situation, every moment of boredom is an opportunity to go back to old behaviors. This weight loss battle is like a spiritual struggle for me. I go back and forth and sometimes I feel overwhelmed by it. For now, I'm going to take on the attitude that I did this weekend with the closet cleaning. I don't really want to do it, but I'll do it anyway and feel better about it when it's done.