Oh Crap!

Oh Crap!! I'm now well (12 hours at the exact minute I'm writing this) into my 34th year. Is that right? I turned 33 today at 12:28 p.m.... so that means I've lived 33 full years and I'm starting my 34th year. Now that I've thought that out, I think it makes sense. This is how I look on my 33rd birthday! With a little help from my friends at Kodak! I would have left it w/ regular color, but I had just woke up from a nap and my hair was a mess, my skin was blotchy and no make up.

For my birthday, we decided to go to Outback Steakhouse. We got a gift cerficate from a friend... kind of... but that's a long story... ;0D. And we were going to go to a movie but the movie we wanted to see was no longer in the movie theater. Rob and I split our food. I got the 16 oz. prime rib and Rob got the chicken. I tried a Sour Apple Martini. Now I can say, been there, done that... Meanwhile, across the aisle from us sat our neighbors whom we have had some minor conflict with in the past. We got to witness them scam the resturant. It was kind of funny. She was complaining that her steak was too dry and told her waiter. Mind you, it took her eating 2/3 of said steak before she all of a sudden realized this. The waiter brings out the manager, and the manager brings out a new steak. He and she split the new steak, eat it gone, and then eat the 'too dry' steak. Now, this really bothered Rob, way more than it bothered me. Rob thinks they should have left it. All in all... it did seem kind of sneaky. Rob was embarrassed that I paid so much attention to the situation and she even caught me watching it go down. What can I say?? I'm a nosy neighbor! After dinner I was given my FREE birthday ice cream. I love birthdays! After dinner, we decided to rent a movie instead of go to the movies. We've already seen every movie there, but I did almost talk Rob into another round of "Twilight." Alas, I ended up loosing that battle. Off to Hollywood video. I take the video up to the counter... and lo and behold... you get a FREE movie rental on your birthday!! Did I mention I love birthdays? And I was worried she was going to bust me that my license expired today. We even got a FREE pop refill at the Chevron by our house... of course... we always get FREE refills at the Chevron by our house, but since it's my birthday, I'm pretending it was for that reason!

So I love the "CRAP" picture! This is on the Nampa-Caldwell Blvd. between Nampa and Caldwell. Every time I drive by I think, I'm getting a picture of this next time. And this time I did. I may use it again if needed!

Holy Mockamole!!

I really, really like Mexican food and one of the highlights for me is a really good guacamole. But since I'm dieting, I decided guacamole (actually Mexican food in general) is something that I should probably avoid to some extent. But as I surfed my favorite website last night, I ran across a mockamole recipe made from sweet peas. At first, I was skeptical, but Rob talked me into going ahead and trying it. Not to mention I read everyone else rave reviews of it. I made it for dinner tonight and it is by far some of the best "guacamole" I have ever had. I'm so excited that I have to share it with you.

* 1 package frozen sweet peas
* 1 C cilanto
* 1/4 c. onion
* 2 cloves of garlic
* 2 T. lemon juice
* 1 t. oil
* 2 t. salt
* 1 T. cumin
* 1 1/2 t. crushed red pappers
* 1 tomato
* 1/2 jalepeno

Throw it all into a food processor and blend. Make sure the peas are really mashed.

This recipe is actually less than 1/2 the calories of traditional guacamole, about 23 calories a serving.

May I share something rather disgusting??

So just for kicks, I've been wanting to try the biore blackhead removing strips thingies. I'm pretty sure that's not the offical name for them, but this is my blog and I'm going to call them how I see them. So each little box costs $6.54 at a large store that starts with the letter W. You can get them in a 6 pack or 8 pack... the 6 pack being the stronger of the 2. Since this was my first time, I went with the stronger, of course. Well, 3 strips later, I finally read the directions and figured out how to use them. Had I not over-thought the first strip, I would have got it the first try and not wasted 2 of them. Finally,I get the little sucker on there and now it's time to wait 10-15 minutes. This was a rather enjoyable time at 1:30 am. I dumped my trash in the upstairs bathrooms. Then I picked up the shoes in my closet. I got bored with that and left half of them on the floor. I also got tired of tripping over dirty laundry in the upstairs hallways, so I hauled all of it to the kid's bathtub (just so it can be thrown back out there in the morning, but I'm happy now!). I folded some laundry. You know, 10-15 minutes can be an awfully long time when you're trying to patiently waiting for your blackheads to be removed. At last, the time was up and it was time to pull off the strip. Now let me tell you... it felt like I was taking off the top 2 layers of my skin, but I didn't. OMGosh... what the... what is that on there??? I swear... I have never seen anything quite as gross as what was on that strip. It looked like little worms. This was so gross that I had to take a picture and share it with you! But I think I'm a biore blackhead removing strips thingies addict. You will find me cleaing my bathrooms and hallways and folding laundry, etc. at 1:30 a.m. with a white strip across my nose once a week from now on!

Woot! Woot! I've lost weight!

I was trying not to weigh myself too often... it just depresses me. I've been on the diet and exercise train since right after Christmas so.... that would be... about 2 1/2 weeks (Hey 50 weeks til Christmas, folks!). I will say I ate way too much on New Year's eve and on New Years day we went to Outback Steakhouse w/ friends, you know who you are, and I probably ate a little more than I should have. I wasn't feeling great and that helped there. Except the Bloomin' Onion at the beginning and the cheesecake at the end... Anyway, that was a week and a half ago and I'm over it! So I know that I'm starting to get on Rob's nerves! It's actually kind of funny. I'm always nagging him to loose a little w/ me and he'd prefer to... well, eat! So when I'm counting calories, I point out every little calorie he's eating too. I think he's motived now. Last night, he walked 3 1/2 miles with me after the kids were in bed.
I watch every little thing I put in my mouth now. It's great. I didn't realize how much I grazed... all day long... until now. It was insane! And I exercise like crazy. I walk/ run the stairs every night for 30-45 minutes. And I also do Turbo Jam for 45 minutes. I don't really like that, but it's what I'm doing right now. And if Rob starts walking with me then I'll have that too. I tried to get him to do the Turbo Jam and stairs with me and he reminded me about his broken foot. Good excuse, I guess.
Drum roll.... in the last 2 1/2 weeks, I've lost 10 lbs. and I'm not even starving myself!

My mom has killed my Miracle Baby

Sadly, this is true. On the last day of school last year, my kids walked home from school and as they came into the house, one of them innocently tells, "Oh, Mom... the car is meowing..." like is was nothing out of the ordinary. From past experiences of cats using car engines as their resting spots, I warned the kids to stay in the house, not really sure I even wanted to go out there. And sure enough, the car was meowing, quite loudly. So I pop the hood and there sitting down on this little ledge in there was this itty bitty round ball of orange fur. I decided to let Rob get the kitten out but he (cat) was having none of that. So I decided to go for it and I stuck my hand down there and yanked that baby out of there. How did that kitten get there, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Rob went to a junk yard earlier that morning, clear across town. A cat had a litter of kittens in the bushes out front and this little angel decided to hitch a ride to our house. The fur on the back side of the kitten was singed (that looks weird but I'm pretty sure it's spelled correctly) all the way to the skin. But he was otherwise fine.

So I call my mom to see of they need a cat. And even if they didn't need one, they were going to get one! And they actually needed one. I took him over and the rest is history. Expect then, we found out HE was a SHE... I've never, ever seen a pure orange cat turn out to be a girl. Until now. Over Christmas, my dad decided to have cat (the name is still being disputed) spayed. This is how it works it seems... Yesterday, my mom came home and let the cat out, went into the house and waited to cat to join her at the window. Cat normally comes in through the window. Cat doesn't show up for several minutes and my mom actually got concerned about this. I'm not sure I would have to be honest with you. Mom goes out the the garage, and there is cat stuck under the garage door. With a broken spine. Shockingly, if you knew my family and they way we used conduct this sort of "business," my dad took cat to the vet to get an X-ray. But it's not looking good for Miracle Cat.

3 words: NO MORE POTATOES!

I love, really love, potatoes! And I have been trying to loose a little weight. I've been kind of watching what I eat, but more importantly, I exercise at night til I don't think there is any sweat left in me! I decided to do a little research, calories in, calories out... to see just how great I did today. I was really excited, til I realized I ate like 1000 calories(maybe even more)in stinkin' potatoes!! I really had no idea. I think I audibly gasped when I read that. So heed this warning: don't eat the potatoes. I could have eaten a salad and the ENTIRE bottle of salad dressing and been in better shape than this. And just to add on here... as far as my researching went... I realized that I'm actually considered underweight for my heigth, but IMO I could shed a few. But I have had 4 wonderful babies and they really got me out of shape. So I really just need to tone up. I guess I need to go back to high school and college days when I was running alot more (3-8 miles a day). It's been a long time since I could even dream of doing that!

And this has nothing to do with potatoes.. but I have a smell in this house that is going to kill me and I CAN blame it on R. He decided to dump the trash... that's an a-okay thing to do, but it's not a-okay to carry the bag through the living room, very unneccessarily I might add since the garbage can is right out the back door, and dripped chicken or something icky all over the carpet. Just so he could turn off my Scensty candle warmer thing (that makes things smell good) that he hates and is just positive that it is going to burn us up while we sleep. Now the Scensty thing is back on, and not working well.

My life is back to being ruled by soccer...

So we had our first weekend of games. I must say that the 6 week break was nice, but it was also fun to see the girls back in the game. I never would have dreamed that I could enjoy watching so much soccer, but when you watch it 5 times a week... then you start to apprecitate their improvements. So we're doing indoor now, and its fun to watch. There's no out of bounds so you just kick the ball into the wall and play on it, there is shoving into the walls, subing is on the fly (just running in and out w/ out stopping), the field is about double what they are used to, and there is a 1 minute (yes! 1 minute!!) half time to regroup! (I would so love to play this way!!) Our team has 2 subs, if they show up. Our first game was Sat. The team we played was an upper bracket. Supposedly all the teams that we are playing are upper bracket, meaning better, but you'll see why I question this in a minute. So the Sat. game, we found out these girls played the fall indoor session, plus they've been practicing 3 times a week since the fall season ended. We just started practice back up last week. Needless to say.. They beat us... 9-3. I could have been much worse. We had 1 sub and a new girl... that's always weird. We had another game on Sun. This was a different story. The girls came in thinking they were going to get killed again. There was no sub this time so everyone had to play the whole game. We won this one. The score depended on who you talked to. It was 20-2 or 20-3 or 19-2. Does it really matter at this point? I'm not sure, but it does to some certain litle girls. By the end of the game, our team had pulled one player, the other team had added a player and our defenders were playing as forwards and forwards as defenders. And they still couldn't stop them. Everyone made a goal too. That's always fun. Briyanna almost scored from the half line again. I actually felt bad. You know I love winning, but when the girls are in the lobby crying when your leaving, you feel a little bad about it. I really hate to see what the team on Sat is going to do to them.
And the best part... I had my best gossip buddy sitting next to me! Maybe that's why I enjoy it so much!! I missed not having that for 6 weeks!

New Years Resolutions??

I hate New Years resolutions. So why do I make them every year? They're just a start of starting point for failure. I wanted to stop drinking coffee. I had made that decision a couple of months aog. But I quit in November/ December. Not that I won't drink cofee when I go to a coffee shop. I just don't drink 3 24 oz Strawberry Hazelnut Mochas a day. They were making me sick, not to mention the cost and the HUGE amount of calories. I got tired of being sick so I stopped. SO I don't get to add that to my list, but wish I could have since I succeeded! So this year, I have to make my standard list. #1 I need to loose 40 lbs. I want to by June! Wish me luck! I *might* keep you posted on this. I actually already started and have lost my first 5 lbs. #2. Read through the Bible again this year. That's always a fun one to try. I've only succeeded a few times. 2008 wasn't one of them. #3 I want to work on being kinder. So when I see someone I know, I want to be sure and go up to them and say "Hey!" I'm pretty good at trying to ignore people. So if I ignore you in public... call me out on it! #4 Be a funner mom! (is that correct grammar... doesn't look right) So I know that I just an absolute blast... maybe not. I just want to be a fun mom, cuz I know sometimes I'm not. #5 I will not, will not, will not coach soccer this year. Remind me of this when they try to guilt me into it this spring. Life's alot easier when I don't have that on my plate, no matter how much I enjoy it. Now... I'm just counting down to failure!

Happy New Years!

Just a few pictures from our New Years Eve party. This is the first year that we went somewhere other than my side of the family's for New Years. Since we spent Christmas up in McCall my family this seemed very fair, beside the kids LOVE to play with each other. So we loaded up and invaded Rob's brother's house... even though he wasn't there! His wife, Lisa, was though! Jeramy had to work. We ate til we were stuffed and played Canasta and Spades- even though we didn't know the rules for either game well- til 3 in the morning. The kids slept in til noon today. I woke up early as usual.

Most of the cousins. Kayden and Sean were asleep.

Me! Playin' cards.

All of us playing cards- Lisa, Rob's parents- Mary Jo and Tim, and me.

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Rob bonding with nephew Kayden. K wasn't feeling too good.

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Rob got ahold of the camera if you can't tell!