Where Do We Go From Here

Like a lot of other Americans at this not-so-great moment in history, we are about to be forced out of our house. We bought it almost exactly 3 years ago, thinking at the time that house values would go up...well...you all know the rest of that story. Anyway, now we find ourselves in the position of finding a place to rent. I've been looking at a few places in the area and in the meantime, searching for a job for myself too, so that we can actually come up with the rent each month. We will probably not be saving much by renting, that is, if we want to live in anything better than a 100+ year old cracker box. I guess that would be better than living in a cardboard box...but not much.

I really hadn't necessarily wanted the world to know about our predicament, at least until we had exhausted every avenue of possibility as far as trying to avoid the foreclosure. But close friends and family pretty much know what's going on anyway, so here it is for all the world to see.

There is one house in town that I have looked at, and it seems like it would work for us. Ray is going to look at it with me tonight, and hopefully, if the other couple that has "dibs" on it decides they don't want it, it will be our new home soon. Please pray for us through this difficult situation. I'll keep you updated as much as I can without a c0mputer of my own. Thanks.

Week 24 Weigh-In ~ A Pretty Good Week

I was debating whether or not to weigh in last night at all, since I'm considering doing the every other week thing now to save money...but in the end, I bit the bullet and went and weighed in. The week had gone better than I thought, even with eating an entire order of Applebee's honey bbq'd wings last Friday night, I ended up losing 1.8 lbs for the week. That makes a total of 37.4 lbs gone so far.

We have been having fun visiting with my cousin and her husband, and went to a family get-together at my Aunt and Uncle's house on Sunday night. Tonight will be their last night in this area, so we're going to my parents' house tonight to see them one more time. I'll try to post some pics of us as soon as we have a 'puter that works better than this one does. I'm taking two computers to my son in a few minutes...hopefully he can make one that works out of the two. Catch y'all later...

My "Twin Cousin" is Coming!

Okay, I know there is no such thing as a twin cousin, but that's what Bonnie and I have called ourselves all of our lives. We were born on the same day at the same hospital 50 years ago, and loved to spend time together as kids. We would always pretend we really were twins, and actually had a few people convinced that we were during our teen years.

Shortly thereafter, her family moved to Iowa, where she met a man that she fell in love with, and ended up graduating from H.S. early and marrying him on May 1, 1976. He had joined the navy and was home on leave after basic training if I remember correctly. After that, they were off to IL...then CA...then the island of Adak in AK, and eventually to Burlington, WA. I'm pretty sure I've only seen her twice in the past 20 years...and that was out there. Bonnie and Tim have not been in MN in probably about 26 years. But they will be here this afternoon! I'm so excited. My gf's are a little upset with me that I'm skipping out on "Ladies night out" at church tonight to have dinner with my cousin and our husbands...but they'll get over it. I'm sorry I won't be there, but I hope you understand and have a great time without me. I know I'm going to laugh 'til I cry...cuz that what Bonnie and I do whenever we get together.

Wordless Wednesday # 10 ~ Can You Find The Girl in This Picture?

Molly in the butterfly house at the state fair. Do you think the butterflies thought she was a tree?

Week 23 Weigh-In ~One Third of the Way There!

I decided to skip a week last week, since I would have had to go elsewhere to weigh in because of the Monday holiday. I also didn't think my weight had changed much in either direction that week, so it didn't make sense to spend money driving to another town just to find out nothing much had changed. Also, as a lifetime member, I really only have to weigh in once per month so as not to pay for skipped meetings. Just for the sake of saving a few bucks, I may not weigh in weekly from here on out. I know it helps me, so I'll probably try to weigh in at least every other week.

I got myself another gold star last night, having lost 2.4 lbs over the past two weeks for a grand total of 35.6 lbs gone!!! Hallelujah! I was really hoping to be about halfway done by the end of this month, (which will be 6 mos. back on program), but I guess I'll settle for being a little over 1/3 of the way there. After all, I didn't put on over a hundred pounds in a year, so I shouldn't expect to take it off in a year, right. I'll just keep plugging away at it. I honestly haven't been trying all that hard lately either. Just think what I could do if I actually tried.

In other news, I had hoped to blog this week about rejoining the workforce after 8 years at home, but that was not meant to be. I had applied for a full time cake decorator postition, but was not the one chosen in the end. I was told it was a difficult decision though, and that they would keep my app on file in case something else opens up. Hopefully it will soon.

Wordless Wednesday # 9 ~ The Battle of the Sexes Begins at a Very Early Age!

My grandson CJ and his "girfriend" Lily

A Fair-ly Good Day

I did update my fair food blog earlier, but I thought I'd let you in on some of the other things we occupied our day with...other than eating.

The day started out on a positive note. As soon as we got to the ticket booth, (where Ray was about to buy two adult and one child's ticket), a complete stranger walked up to me and handed me a ticket. He said, "Here, I have this extra ticket, tell him to buy just two, not three." I barely had time to thank the nice gentlemen, because I had to catch Ray before he had paid for our 3 tickets. We ended up getting in the gates for the price of one adult ticket ($11), and one ($5) discounted "kid's day" ticket. Wow! Thank you Lord! That was a blessing. The lady at the gate didn't question Molly's age either. She really is only 11...but since she's already 5' 8" and starting to "develop", most people assume she's 2 or 3 years older than she really is. Molly really wanted to go to the state fair this year for one particular reason. She had seen a percussion group called "Sheltered Reality" at an art camp that she attended this summer at one of our local churches. This is what they look like:

They had just started playing when we got there this morning around 10:30 AM. They were not far from the entrance, so we found them and sat down to watch. They were kind of loud...but very fun to watch. They're very precise in their drumming and choreography skills. They also have a positive message to give to the kids. Molly not only sat and watched the first show, (during which they invited audience members to come up and be guest drummers with them)...but she wanted to stay for the next show, which was to start about 10 minutes after the first one ended. Since Ray and I did not necessarily want to sit through another hour of this, we gave Molly my cell phone and stayed in the area...but did a little wandering through nearby buildings etc. I was a little nervous about doing that, but she wasn't going anywhere. She was enamored by them.

I'm pretty sure their music wasn't the only reason Molly wanted to sit through the next show ... I'm guessing she was also somewhat enamored by this guy. It's just a feeling, she'd never admit it, but if I were her age I'm pretty sure he's the one I would have picked as the cutest.



This year, we did remember to go check out the "Miracle of Birth" building early in the day. The last time we went to the fair was also on the last day, and by the time we got there, the animals were packed up and gone. Here are a few pictures of what we found in there:

These cute little piggies were less than 24 hours old. There were 13 of them in the litter. How would you like to take care of that many squealing babies all at once?

These sweet little twin lambs were born at about 3 am on Labor Day morning. One was 8 lbs and the other 8.5 lbs. That's about the size all of my kids were. Of course, I had mine one at a time.

They actually ended up being the last babies born in the birthing barn during the fair this year.

Next, I took a picture of some turkey chicks, where I overheard a man say, "I heard this is where all the chicks hang out!" Clever.

How long do you suppose it takes for these little guys...

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*


...to become these yummy drummies?Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Next, we went to the DNR building, where every year, an artist gathers "found objects", (junk), in the rivers and makes some sort of a sculpture out of them. That made for a pretty amazing looking "creature"this year. It looked like some giant ant, ready to take over the world.

Then they had a list of things that you were supposed to find in the sculpture. Here's Molly marking them off. If you found at least 11 of the items, you got a prize. She found 16. She got a cool poster for her effort.

At 3:00 we headed back to Baldwin Park for the last "Sheltered Reality" show (at Molly's request of course). She had decided she was going to be brave and get up on stage with them this time! That should be fun to watch. It was... except, just before she went up there, some rude lady sat down on a bench in front of us...and opened her huge umbrella, obstructing our view!

Some people just don't think. Yes, it was hot out and an umbrella for shade would be nice...but it sure doesn't help the people sitting behind you to be able to see what they sat down (before you) to watch!!! Thankfully, Molly ended up standing just to the left of the obtrusive umbrella so we were able to see her.

I thought she did a very good job keeping up with them. She said it was really hard to do, and that she kept messing up...but I didn't notice. I was proud of her. I have about a 3 minute video of her performing with them, and if I can figure out how to open it I'll post it here one of these days. Right now, I don't think I have the right program to do that on this computer. At the end of the show, since it was their very last show for this year's fair, they invited Sean Emery up on stage to join them. Sean Emery is a sort of Robin Williams-esque sort of character, who has entertained on the same stage for years with a juggling, unicylce and comedy act. That was rather amusing too. At one point he was on his knees balancing the cymbal stand on his chin, while others were hitting it. We came back for his last show at 5pm. After that we headed toward our last stop of the day, which was the Butterfly House. On the way there, we meandered through the fine arts building:

Someone had incredibly made this US map out of indivdual pieces of wood. It was really beautiful. There were a lot of cool exhibits in there, but this one was probably the most interesting:

Those are all rolled up one dollar bills. Nothing was glued down, they were just stuck in this metal grid thing. As we studied this piece of "art" we had to wonder if the border had at one time been completely solid, or if the artist had done it this way on purpose. I figured no one would be mean enough to steal from the letters...but how many would have been tempted to snitch a couple from around the border? We also wondered if they had a camera on the exhibit, documenting the whole thing. If so, it is sure to appear on Dateline or at least You Tube in the near future.

Finally, to our last destination of the day, we sat down and enjoyed watching the butterlies flutter about landing on people:

Ray found a new friend immediately. There were some butterflies who's wings were a beautiful blue color, but the blue only showed when their wings were spread open. I was trying to capture that with my camera, but they were not being very cooperative about it. Here you can see a little bit of blue.

Some people were literally collecting them and putting them on their person. Molly thought it would be a good idea to set a few on her purse while she was in there. She found one that was extremely cooperative.

This one was obviously a show off! It stayed that way on her purse until she finally took it off and gave it to someone else when we left.

Other people were sort of accidentally collecting them. This women walked around for the longest time with a butterfly attatched to her derierre. I guess he was a "butt"erfly? She ended up with one on the top of her head, and a few more on various body parts all at the same time.

Here's Molly posing for one last picture with her little friend, before she said goodbye to it. After that, we hitched a ride on a free trolley that makes the rounds through the fairgrounds, and rode that all the way to the gate. By that time, my feet were killing me, so I was very thankful not to have to walk several blocks to the parking lot. All in all, we had a pretty good time, and hopefully made some memories for Molly, that she can look back on in the future. Some day, she may even get over the fact that we would not let her bring her BFF, Liz along for her to hang with, so she had to spend the entire day with her parents. Aren't we cruel? Parents can be so embarrassing!