Operation New Leaf

Well, it only took a year, but I finally got all that stuff out of my basement.  The stuff I didn't sell went to consignment shops or was donated.  I'm so please that I got that monkey off my back.  Onto the next thing...only...I don't know what the next thing is yet.

Someone said I should start a blog...

I told them that I had one, but I don't post to it much and it is pretty boring.  Maybe my Facebook statuses are more exciting.  I guess I should post my good ones here instead.

So, I was sitting at the table eating breakfast with Gibson and started having rambling thoughts:

I'm watching the cars rush by outside as parents rush to get kids to the bus stop then get to work and I'm thankful that we don't have to rush like that and I can let Montana sleep in.

Gibson finally decided to eat scrambled eggs again and with spinach in them too. This is truly a blessing since he's won't hardly eat anything healthy.

I dropped my toast with fruit spread, but I caught it! Unfortunately, I caught it fruit spread side next to my right boob.

Anyway, I was really feeling quite smug about what a fantastic day it was going to be and how it was full of win until that toast thing happened. It was like karma was telling to quit being so cocky.

Oh well, today is supposed to be warmer.

Gibson's 2nd Birthday

Here we are at the beginning of 2014.  I've signed up for the 100k Transformation Challenge through Bodybuilding.com.  I'm looking way bigger than I thought I was.  I was actually embarrassed to post my "before" pictures.  I wasn't even like that when I weighed my heaviest.  Really, there are two winners and each get 50k.  So far, I'm not off to a very good start.

Today, we celebrated my son's 2nd birthday.  We did a construction themed birthday.  It was unbelievably hard to find that type party supplies.  So, I went to Home Depot and go the cheap aprons and carpenter pencils.  I found some cheap 3 ft. tape measures at Walmart.  Finally, I found some wood coloring construction equipment.  All-in-all, I think the goody bags turned out good.  I also made his cake.  It wasn't has hard as his zoo one.  The best part is that I didn't have to make several parts of the cake a couple weeks ahead of time.

2013 Coming to a Close

Well, the year has just flown by.  I am ready to start the new year.   I think my theme for 2014 is to downsize and refocus.

 I'm continuing to work on The New Leaf project.  I found it's been easier to sell our pre-owned clothes rather than new clothes on Ebay.  I still have plenty to go through, but I'll get there.  One bite at a time.

I'm also refocusing on my fitness goals.  I'm going to focus on gaining strength and continue my 5k runs.  I'm going to start eating in a deficit and see how that goes for a month or two.

I'm also going to focus on keeping the house in better shape.  I say this the day after Christmas while it looks like a toy store puked all over my floor.  Oh well, I'll get there.

Figuring out how to let them just go...`

I've come to a realization today.  I took both of my children to the local children's museum.  This is an activity I would normally cringe about.  Me, by myself, with both of my kids, at a museum.  I was prepped for it to be stressful.  So I did what should have been second nature.  I just let them play. You may be thinking, "Well, of course, why wouldn't you do that?"  The answer is that I don't know why I haven't thought of it before.

Let me explain.  When my daughter was an only child, we had pent up all our hopes and dreams on this one little human.  I had waited for her for so long and when she finally got here I wanted to show her the world.  We dragged that little 1-3 year old girl all over the place.  We took her hiking, to the zoo, to different museums, festivals, nice restaurants and out of state vacations.  We did this in an attempt to make her life as full as possible.  It sounds great, except when we went to these places we expected her to be on our schedule.  When we, the parents, decided that she had done an activity long enough, we would push her along with promises of bigger and better things to see.  We didn't do it to rush her really or to be mean.  We did it because we felt that if she didn't see absolutely everything to see that she would miss out.  We now realize she doesn't really remember any of it at all.

Here we are with kid #2.  We've not been to near as many places with my son as we have with my daughter. One reason is because he just doesn't have the same demeanor.  He gets loud and irritated easily. Also, we just don't have the money to do all those things.  I do feel like he's missing out.

Back to my point, today I took them to the children's museum...by myself.  We went for museum day so it was free for us to go.  I finally did the opposite of what I normally do.  I just let them play.  Since I wasn't paying I didn't care if they spent the entire time playing at one station.  I didn't care whether they knew there was a whole upstairs section or not.  We spent four hours at the museum.  Most of that time was at the water table then the Lego table. Both are things they can do at home.   But guess what?  It was the most relaxing time I could have had with both kids.  So, what did I learn?  For God's sake just let them play.  They don't have to see everything and it's more likely to be a fond memory than a disappointing one.

End of Summer

Well, here we are at the beginning of September.  The only goal I've achieved so far is listing all my stock on Ebay.  If you want to see what I have for sale you can check it out at http://stores.ebay.com/Blue-Star-Knick-Knacks.

So here is what we've been up to... Montana was involved with the community theater with their production of Seussical.  She was cast as Young Kangaroo.  She was awesome.  However, it did take up most of our summer.  Rehearsals were 4-5 days a week from 7-10pm.  That's makes life hard for a little girl who's bed time is 8pm.

As soon as she show was over it was time to start school.  We decided to go with and online K12 school.  As of right now, we really like the program.  We are just going through the assessments and seeing where she is at and what she needs to review at this point.

I've been doing The New Rules of Lifting for Women for a month.  I'm down 2.75 inches overall, but not much else in the way of improvement.

And there you have it, that's what I've been doing  lately.

Why the hate on the 'burbs?

Here is a random thought.  What I notice, is that there seems to be a lot of "hate" on the 'burbs.  In full disclosure, I live in suburbia.  There are things I like and things I don't like about it.  So, here is my list of what there is to like and dislike about living in the 'burbs.

What I like:

• Not a lot of traffic
• Neighborhood kids for my kids to play with
• Clean
• Fairly safe
• Neighbors notice if something is not quite right. 
• A great area for outdoor exercise

What I don't like:

• Not much diversity
• There seems to be an awful lot of rules and regulations.
• Busy bees
• I have to drive to most places
• It's really hard to "bond" with neighborhood folks, when you don't watch sports or drink.
• I would love to have goats or chickens or both and obviously that's not happening around here.

Ideally, I would like to be a bit more in the country.  It seems like the hate comes from city dwellers.  So tell me, what's so great about the city?  I would like to know if there's something that I'm not seeing that I may be missing out on.