Kirsten's Birthday Party

For Kirsten's 12th birthday, we invited a bunch of girls over to a spend the night party at my boss's pool house. We had an awesome time, but didn't get much sleep.

My friend Sherrie, from West Memphis, enjoys making cakes for my kids and always does a "fantabulous" job. Her cakes are awesome, amazing, creative, gorgeous, awe-inspiring, cool, and many other adjectives. We cannot thank her enough for sharing her time and talent with us.

Kirsten received many handmade gifts and she loves them all. These girls are beyond amazing in their creativity.

She loved each and every gift, but I couldn't get close enough to see the gifts or photograph them.

She didn't really want to put candles on her cake or to cut the cake, because she didn't want to mess it up. But we did it anyway and she blew out all 12 candles and then everyone enjoyed the delicious cake. (Unfortunately, I still have some cake and am still eating it and gaining back all the weight that I might have lost. Birthday cake is the number one thing that I cannot say no to. It is my absolute favorite thing in the world to eat.)

The girls had so much fun swimming. We had to make them get out of the pool after three hours just to rest and eat.

They were knitting and crocheting while playing Apples to Apples and talking. The only time they were quiet was after 4 am when they were all sleeping.

We had so much fun hosting these creative girls and enjoyed seeing them interact with each other.

The talking continues...

A group picture of all the girls.

You Gotta Love It!!

I LOVE TENNIS! I LOVE THE GRAND SLAM TOURNAMENTS! I LOVE IT WHEN ANDY RODDICK WINS! If you don't watch tennis, you miss a whole lot!

This phenomenal tennis player excels at serving. He has one of the fastest serving speeds reaching 150 miles per hour!

He sometimes struggles during the game, but he never gives up!

We had a spend the night party for Kirsten on Friday night (I will post about it later) and we didn't go to sleep until after 3:30. I woke up at 7:20 and went strong all day except for yawning every 10 minutes or so. The Andy Roddick match was supposed to start at 2:00 am and I wanted to wake up and watch it, but simply could not make it. However, I woke up at 5:30 this morning and to my surprise, the match was just getting underway. The match before this one lasted for 4 hours and 38 minutes and his match was late getting started. So I was excited that I got to watch almost the whole match. It was a great one! Andy Roddick wins and continues to the next round.

JUST WONDERING???

Can I still say that I am on a diet or at least cutting back if I admit that I just scarfed down not 1, not 2, but THREE fresh, hot, hamburger buns that my mother made. It is better than 4 or 5, but seriously THREE!! Yikes!! At least the scale registered a 1.1 pounds lost this morning. But, I don't think the idea is to pack it all back on at one meal. Oh well, back to the old drawing board. On a side note, I am planning on cleaning my entire house today, so I guess that I need my energy.

SO SO SORE!

After working out at the gym on Tuesday and Wednesday, I decided to go for broke and go again today. I really like the aerobics classes and the instructor keeps mixing up the exercises so I am finding new muscles that hurt along with the ones that are already sore. Right now, my ab muscles (yeah, I wasn't sure that I even had any before) are so sore that it hurts to sneeze, to cough, to stand up, or basically breathe. I am hopeful that the soreness will wear off by tomorrow. I won't be doing any more classes until at least Tuesday, so I figure that I will be fine by then. Love the new looseness in my clothes!! WOO HOO! I really can't wait to weigh on Tuesday, but am trying to be disciplined about it anyway. I hope that it will register another loss, but I realize that if my clothes are looser, that what the scale says is secondary. I am also going to start back running again on the days that I don't go to the gym and see where I go from there. I have taken off running since the half marathon to make sure that my foot is completely healed from whatever happened that made it hurt. It has become a convenient excuse to not run, but I really am ready to start again.

A Little Success

Yesterday morning I got on the Wii Fit to see if I had lost anything this week. I had made myself not weigh at all after gaining for two days at the beginning of last week. I was glad to see a 4.2 pound loss. YEAH!! That definitely has spurred me on for this coming week. I guess that I will weigh in on Tuesday (same as Biggest Loser) and not weigh in on any other day. Last night, I went to the gym and did spin class for an hour and then did an aerobics class called Muscle Fusion for an hour. I was pretty tired but felt good that I had accomplished so much. This morning I got up invigorated and went back to the gym (the only classes offered on Wednesday are in the morning) and did a circuit class and then a 30 minute spin class. Yes, the classes are tough but it is easier to push yourself to finish while other people in class are watching. The last circuit in the class was walk most of a lap and sprint the last section -- we did that a total of six laps -- and it really felt good to sprint. I am also considering going to the gym tomorrow for another aerobics class. We will see what tomorrow brings. I know that these classes are definitely working out my cardio and hopefully making the number on the scale go down.

New Year's Resolutions?

Well, it is that time of year and we all make them. I hope that your's are going better than mine. I have started to use my Wii Fit Board again in addition to all my other exercising. Unfortunately, part of that is getting weighed daily. You would think that with cutting back -- to no soft drinks and almost no sweets (I mean nada, zilch) -- and with exercising 4 times a week at the gym and staying active at home, that I would see a little movement on the scale. Oh, by the way, there is movement it is just in the wrong direction, :( I am not giving up however, and I realize that it may start happening one day soon.

It is hard to juggle working two days a week, school five days a week, and exercising at least 4 days a week and hopefully 6-7 when the weather cooperates. Three years ago, it was no big deal to get up at 5:30 every morning and walking anywhere from 5-6 miles and then walking in the afternoon also. That was three years ago and I am not quite there yet. It is so hard to get in a routine of getting up that early to exercise when you bed is so comfortable. I love the winter months and I love being outside in the cold. But, I do not like being out in the dark and the cold. It is hard to get in any kind of routine right now, but hopefully soon I will get up everyday to walk/run. I know that it only takes three days for something to become a habit and I hope that when the temperature goes up later this week, that I will start that habit. Right now, I will content myself with going to the gym on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

SNOW DAY!!

This is the view that we woke up to this morning...

Kirsten has to make a snow angel every time it snows. Unfortunately, we did not get as much snow as we wanted, but we made the best of it.

Alec has to make a snow angel also.

Look at my two snow creatures.

Alec pretends to throw a snowball at me while I am holding the camera. Thankfully, I have trained him better than that and he only pretended to throw it.

A real snowball fight. So much fun.

Mitch bought an inner tube for the kids to slide with. It worked a little; with more snow it would have worked great.

Playing bowling with cousins for the pins. The kids loved being knocked down by the person riding the inner tube. We southern folk know how to have fun in the snow. We usually don't get much snow, but we play in what we get.

Happy 2010 to Everyone!

Yes, I do realize that it is 3 days past the new year, but I have been a little busy. I worked New Year's Eve until 5:00 and then rode with a friend to Memphis to take her daughters to a church gathering. After that, we drove to another friend's house to ring in the New Year. We had a lot of fun visiting and playing games and praying that the children did not get hurt playing with fireworks. Yes, there were "adults" out there. I say it like that because they were old enough to be called adults and they had children of their own, but most of them just acted like kids anyway. Everyone is safe and unharmed, I am glad to say. The closer it got to the New Year, everyone came in the house and visited. Several of us moms played Apples to Apples. I have never played this before but it is so much fun. Unfortunately, you need several people to play to make it a lot of fun and everyone needs to be at least 12 to really understand the game. But, if you are having a big gathering and people are from all age groups, it can be a blast to play.

We left our friends house around 12:45 to drive home and sleep.

The next day, Kirsten, Alec, and I drove to my in-laws to help take down their Christmas decorations. I thought that we would not be able to get everything taken down, boxed back up, and taken to the attic which is two flights up. But my kids were real troopers. They got in there and worked very hard. They were taking down decorations and helping to box them up. Alec was really helpful and carried up many, many boxes. My mother-in-law has a very large collection of Christmas Village pieces and this collection alone takes many boxes. With my kids help, we were able to get everything done by 2:45 and headed home to eat HOMEMADE tacos at my mother's house. This is something that we all look forward to. Everyone in our extended family loves taco night. My mother mixes us the batter and I cook them on a griddle over our gas stove (they cook more evenly on gas) and then we all get around the table and enjoy. This night we had a few extras and served 20 people -- great food, great company. After supper was over and the kitchen was cleaned, we started a game of Trivial Pursuit. However, my family playing Trivia can be a little much for "outsiders" to handle, so I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart to purchase our own edition of Apples to Apples and we played that instead. It was so much fun and in this game you can be goofy and silly and that adds to the fun.

The next morning (Saturday) I got up early and went in to work to prepare for the first of the year rush and we had a big rush of people. We close and 2:00 and we were so ready for that. When I got home, Mom had already made a bunch of food for our pastor's family (his wife fell and broke her arm very badly while ice skating) and they were coming home and we thought that we could fix some food that could be easily gotten out of the freezer and heated up. She cooked pizzas (homemade, of course), garlic bread, cookies, some of Ms. Heather's famous chili, and I cooked a bunch of waffles (homemade, again) that can be frozen and heated quickly and one-handed, we hope.

Today, it is to church and then to the gym and hopefully to bed early, as I have to work again tomorrow and then we start back to school on Tuesday. We also have to start running again 3-4 days a week. The kids were already supposed to be running again, but they have had runny noses and coughs so I have not pushed them. But we are starting this week.

Hope you all had a great start to this New Year that is full of hope and possibilities.