Monday Musings and Meanderings

It Looks like a very nice day outside again, even though I have not yet stepped outside my door today. I should go for a walk. The only thing is, I told my grandson I'd take him with "next time", so it won't be a very long walk...I don't want to have to carry him back.

Ray is working on a project for some friends of ours this week. He's finishing their basement bathroom. Thank God, (and Dan & Jody) for this job opportunity. If any of the rest of you (in our area), have any remodeling, home repair, room additions, painting, siding, etc. jobs that you have been meaning to hire someone to do, just give Ray a call. He really can do almost anything! And he does it very well.

I'm feeling very old this week. My oldest son, Jeremy will turn 30 on Wednesday! I need to go through a bunch of pictures, so I can do a Happy Birthday post for him. I was thinking this morning, that if we had more money at the moment, and I had only realized that Molly had 5 days off, we could have planned to take a trip to Phoenix, to celebrate with him. Hopefully, he and his son, Alex can come visit us in Minnesota when the heat gets unbearable for them this Summer.

We have a busy weekend ahead. First off, Friday night is our monthly Ladies Night Out! That should be fun, and does not require a whole lot of preparation for me. However, I probably shouldn't stay long because...we have our Awana Derby and Float-a-boat on Saturday morning. I usually run a small snack shop during the derby, so that the racers and spectators can purchase something to munch on during the races. I need to get to Sam's Club sometime this week to pick all of that up. We also have to locate the Pinewood Derby track (that we borrow each year from the local Cub Scouts), and pick it up and get it to church and set up by sometime Friday evening....which should work out well, since I will be ready to hang out with the girls at LNO after we get everything set up, and I'll be there already.

After the races are over, (around noon), we'll have to clean everything up, and come home and pack up all the karaoke equipment, grab some clothes for the night and head to St. Cloud for the first annual "Cousin Connection" get-together. My sister Kathy and our cousin Marty have decided to get all the first cousins (there are about 35 of us in all) and their spouses together at a local hotel. We're going to have dinner there, and we're bringing the karaoke/DJ system so we can all make fools of ourselves have a great time dancing or singing. We're planning on staying overnight, and having brunch together in the morning too, so that should be a nice break for us.

Speaking of karaoke, we just ordered 78 new discs off of ebay. We should be getting them some time this week. This will add around 875 new songs to our collection. I've been busy this morning trying to get a list of them typed up...very time consuming.

Monday Morning Musings

• Despite the fact that we lost a dear friend this weekend, I am comforted in the fact that we know he is in the presence of the Lord right now, and I'm pretty sure the first word out of his mouth as he entered the Pearly Gates was WOOOWWW!!! If you are someone who was blessed enough to have had your life touched by Pastor Tom, you will understand.
• Even though my hubby and I did not go on the couples retreat with the 17 other couples from our church, we were able to spend some quality time together yesterday. He had some work to do in a building in downtown Minneapolis, so I decided to tag along and spend the day with him. I did have an ulterior motive to going to work with Ray though, I was able to TOTALLY AVOID the Super Bowl! Yippee!! We had no TV or even a radio playing. I'd heard a lot about this building, and what he was doing there, but I couldn't quite picture it in my mind. I took lots of pictures, I'll do another post with them a little later.
• I was planning on going to weigh in tonight...but now, after getting on my scale this morning...I'm not so sure. If nothing else, I do have a physical scheduled for Wed. morning. If I don't get to WW tonight, I'll update my froggy chart with whatever weight the doctor's scale says I am...but that could be scary too.
• On a positive note, one of my emails this morning was from CATHERINE'S...you know the store for us "Plus Size" women. The subject line said, "We miss you." That gave me a little chuckle. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against CATHERINE'S, it's a great store. It's just that since I've lost some weight, (I'm now in their smallest size), I have a hard time finding very many clothes there that fit me. I'm sorry, but I will not miss them when I am too small to fit into ANY of their clothing! They won't lose me totally though, I can still use my CATHERINE'S card at Fashion Bug, where I just found such a great deal on a winter coat, that I couldn't possibly pass it up.
• I purchased a new exercise DVD over the weekend. It is Leslie Sansone's Walk at Home, "Walk Away Your Hips & Thighs". It has a 2 mile power workout, and also a lower body toning workout on it. The package came complete with "The Fit Cuff", which are velcro ankle cuffs, connected by a big rubber band thingy. It is designed to be used with the toning exercises. I'm thinking I'll walk at my own speed to begin with, and probably start with a mile and work up to 2 miles. If I do that 3 times a week, and alternate with the toning exercises on the other 2 days, that should work. That's my plan anyway. Wish me luck, I'm going to go start right now.
  

Monday Musings

It's official, not only has my 11yo passed me up in height, she has also gotten a bit taller than her "big" sister, who is almost 15 years older than she is. So now, my younger son (Joel) is taller than my older son (Jeremy), and my youngest daughter is taller than the oldest one. I'm thinking the girl got a bit too much sunshine over the past summer, or something. Molly was thrilled though, when Jess lent her this green sweater, and gave her a pair of jeans that were a bit too tight for her.

Speaking of my younger son Joel, he finally came to visit yesterday. I wanted to take a picture of 3 of my 4 children together, but the older two wouldn't cooperate. They had the funny idea that their loving mother would post said picture on her blog for some reason, and neither one of them was ready for a picture. But I did catch this one of CJ beating up on Uncle Joel. Just ignore the fact that I hadn't made my bed yet, and didn't think to close the bedroom "door" before I took this picture. Okay? Hey, it was Sunday...and I had just gotten up from an afternoon nap.
Anyway, as some of you may have noticed, I have not been changing my weight progress chart lately. That's because I haven't gone to weigh in the past 3 weeks. I'm afraid that with all of these holiday parties and events we've been to lately, that I may have actually gained a few pounds, and I was hoping to take it back off before I went to weigh in again. Well...that's not exactly working, so before I backslide just too much, I've decided to "bite the bullet" and go weigh in tonight...even if I have to admit that I've gained, and make my little froggy hop backwards just a little bit.

As I posted a few days ago, I won a blog make-over from seemydesignsbyshauna.com, playing a shower game at Sassyfrazz's cyber shower. Shauna is working on my new blog design, Yay! Look for it sometime later tonight or tomorrow. I'm really excited about that, so maybe it will cheer me up when I have to post my weight gain...if I can post it on my newly made over blog.