Disneyland Countdown

The kids (as well as Josiah and I) are super excited and can hardly wait for our trip to Disneyland next month!! This will be our 3rd year in a row going in February and we will probably continue going each year for the rest of our lives, so I decided that it calls for a countdown!

I am not a very creative person. Show me something and I can copy it, no problem. So, to google I went, in search of someone else's creative idea to borrow. I was surprised to find that there aren't many Disneyland countdowns out there, other than something you might throw away after one time use. That was not going to work for me! I did find one idea that I liked but I didn't know how to make it work, because I don't have a cricut. I liked the basic idea of it though, and knew I could use that and hopefully figure out the rest.

After spending several hours at a few different craft stores, and a lot of back and forth with ideas, here's what we finally came up with...



We spray painted a cookie sheet yellow and mod podged Disney themed/colored paper to the front for the background. The #'s we printed using Waltograph font which you can download for free from the internet. I had a bunch of bottle caps left over from a previous project so we spray painted them red and black to go along w/our color scheme. We then found a bunch of pictures either from Disneyland or that remind us of our past trips to California and pasted them into Word. We decreased the size of the pictures so they were small enough to cut w/a 1" circle punch. We put clear epoxy stickers over the tops of them and then glued them into the bottle caps. We then glued magnets to the backs of the bottle caps and those will be used to place on the #'s as we countdown our days to the trip.

Now, if there could be less arguing over who gets to start the countdown!

Midway through November...

I found the courage (or whatever it was that I needed to find) to call and make the appointment to have my wisdom teeth removed. I called on a Thursday and scheduled it for the following Monday (which happened to be the day before my anniversary and 2 days before my birthday...not the best time to schedule it, if you still hope to enjoy those two days!) so I had the entire weekend to freak out over it!

Josiah had a presentation he was preparing for, so he wasn't able to go with me. My mom was able to take the day off from work though, so she was my designated driver.

The appointment was scheduled for 9am which was good, because I had to fast the 8 hours prior to. I informed them of my concerns (being put under and my jaw possibly locking during the procedure) but they took good care of me! The anesthesia they gave me wasn't as strong of a sedative...they referred to it as a "twilight" sedation. I figured I'd still be conscious, just very relaxed. I remember them starting on the first tooth and the next thing I remember was the assistant telling me she was setting up my chair and that I should sit for a moment before walking to the wheelchair that she had ready for me. Crazy! But in hindsight, I'm glad that I wasn't alert during the whole procedure. I honestly don't even know how long it took.

They only removed three. My dentist wanted to keep my bottom left. I guess it's extra pretty, or something. In talking to several people who have had theirs removed, I feel like I got pretty lucky. I only had a tiny amount of swelling and had no problems talking/opening my mouth. I do still have a weird spasm-y type pain on the right side of my head from time to time, near my temple and/or behind my ear, which I've read it's normal? I'm hoping... Anyway, I'm glad it's behind me and the healing process seams to be going well.

Now to move on to planning for Thanksgiving!

Life is passing by...

October is almost over! AaaahhH! I'm not sure where the time has gone! And since I've become so bad about blogging it all, one might think that we've done absolutely nothing during that time! Which is 1/2 true. We've done dentist appointments and concerts and church callings and the gym and rearranged some rooms and cleaned out some junk from said rooms and plenty of other stuff I'm sure!

I am currently in need of having my wisdom teeth pulled. I've been putting it off for a couple reasons: reason #1) I am having some anxiety about it. (them putting me under, the possibility of my jaw locking while in the middle of the procedure and never being able to close my mouth again! and what if I never wake up from them putting me under? I guess then I wouldn't have to worry about if my mouth will close or not...) reason #2) Money. I wish it could be free! The problem I'm facing now though, is there is some pain involved. Never fun! Fortunately I have some Tylenol w/codeine left over from a previous visit to the dentist...

Wednesday night is the Young Women's Evening of Excellence. Rylie and I are trying to work on a project together for it. It's hard to put 10 hours into something that I haven't made a priority, when I've got a million other things that I'm trying to do. Even though most of those million other things aren't priorities either...I think it's harder to do something when there's a deadline. I'm better working under pressure but this project is going to require more time than what I've got. Ugh! I feel like I'm failing sometimes!

August 10, 2011

Rylie started jr high today. She is attending Desert Ridge Jr High and I can't believe she is growing up so fast!! In 2 years she will be in HS! AaaaaahhhhhhH!!

Last night was "Back to school" night for Desert Ridge. She got to find where all of her classes are and meet all of her teachers. Hopefully that helps to ease some of the nerves for today.

I felt totally unprepared for today. I picked up a few basic BTS supplies over the last couple of weeks but never really go all out. It's toooooo expensive!! I typically wait til Meet the Teacher night and ask if there is anything specifically that they need and make sure the kids have those things. This year I think each of the 3 younger kids' teachers said..."Do you have a copy of the supplies list?" I hate that they make those lists! I have bought a majority of that stuff in the past and 1/4 to 1/2 of it gets sent back home unused at the end of the school year. Last year Camden brought a few things back home just a couple days in that he wasn't going to need. I didn't even get a list for Rylie until last night and of course the things she needed were basically sold out. Next year I'm going to go in early and buy up a ton of stuff. Then I will put together kits of what each grade "needs" and sell them for a small profit...It will save some parents' time and headache. (Not really going to do that, but wouldn't that be ideal??)

Alyssa left for school this morning feeling fairly sad, knowing that her big sister is not going to be at the same school. Alyssa has always been very independant but she definitely looks up to and loves Rylie. There is such a sweet bond between sisters!

I'm curious to see how much Camden grows this year. I bought him a pair of new school shoes a couple weeks ago which seemed to fit fine when we got them. He went to put them on for meet the teacher night and they were too tight. He's got big clodhopper feet! He somehow ended up with the worst part of each of mine and Josiah's feet traits. He got big feet from me which alone is bad enough, but then the bone on the outside of each of his feet sticks out quite a bit which he gets from Josiah. Anyway, he is just about taller than Alyssa. He's going to be expensive to dress over the next few years!

Trenton started 2nd grade today. My baby! How can he already be in 2nd grade?! He was complaining a little bit this morning about his stomache hurting. I'm not sure if it was just nerves or if he really wasn't feeling good. I have found in the past when he complains about his stomache...it usually ends with him leaning over the toilet. He went to school. Hopefully I don't get a call from the nurse!

Now I get to readjust to being alone at home everyday again. Probably won't be too hard. I just wish I would spend more of that time being productive. I got all caught up on laundry in the last couple weeks. My goal is to stay caught up on it. Really caught up is not the right word. I got all the clean laundry hung/folded and put away. That is quite an accomplishment for me. So really my goal is to keep laundry off my bedroom floor. There are also many areas in the house that I want to get organized. That is another goal. And blogging. I want to be a better blogger. Mostly for the sake of having my family's history kept. If I get readers in the process, so be it.

My Weightloss Journey..

This morning I went running (mixed with walking) as I do about 4 days a week. Only today I went the furthest I've ever gone. When I came home, I was so proud of myself and wanted the world to know and I considered posting about it on Facebook. The problem? I don't really want to post it on there because when I post on FB I feel like it's not for me, but for others. I want to post about it for ME! It didn't even cross my mind to put it on my blog where only a few people come and look. Until I was just on my sil's blog reading a guest post about a weightloss journey. It is very inspiring. Then it hit me, why not post my "journey" here on my blog??

So for starters, Josiah and I decided about 1/2 way through January that we wanted to shed a few pounds before taking our trip to Disneyland. He had just finished off the last of our supply of Dr. Pepper the day before and we committed to not buy anymore. Another thing we had committed to do (or NOT do in this case) was to stop eating fast food several nights a week, especially french fries...something that I love!

I was going to start fixing grilled chicken every night for dinner and for lunch we were going to eat turkey sandwiches on 100% whole wheat bread. We didn't cut out mayo completely, but instead of making sure the entire piece of bread was nice and lathered up with it, I would put just enough to moisten it and it didn't even reach the edges. For breakfast we would eat either low fat yogurt or healthy cereal or something of the like.

Aside from just eating better, Josiah and I started walking between 1.5 and 2 mi in the evenings, and I was running about 4 mornings a week. We also used the Kinect as a form of working out and would do that a couple days a week for about an hour. We were surprised to find how much of a workout you actually get from that!

We both had a realistic goal in mind for how much weight we wanted to lose by the day we were scheduled to leave on our trip. For me it was 9 pounds. I will admit the first 6 pounds came off pretty quickly and I knew it was most likely water weight. (I retain so much water when I consume Dr. Pepper! Which is why I've tried so many times to quit drinking it! It has been so much easier since Josiah has been staying away from it too!)

I've always read that you should only weigh yourself once a week, typically because it can be frustrating to see when you're up a pound from the day before. We decided we were going to go ahead and weigh ourselves daily anyway but only really look at the weekly weight for how well we did that week. But I've found that seeing my weight each day gives me more motivation to keep going. Even if my weight is down from the day before, I know that if I go running, it will be even less! But if my weight is up a pound or 2, I know I need to do better today than I did yesterday. It's all about control.

We did really well with how we ate right up to the minute we left for California. We rewarded ourselves a couple times with some Chipotle or something similar, but ate smaller portions and didn't get the Dr. Pepper! (From the fountain is my favorite form so it is especially hard, if we're out, to not get one.)

On the morning we left we weighed ourselves one last time. My total weightloss at that point was 12 pounds! 12! That's 3 lbs more than my goal!

We knew that while we were in California (especially while at Disneyland) that we weren't going to be eating as well as we had been the previous 4 weeks. I personally was a little nervous about that. We had plans to eat ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries, as well as fattening food at the restaurants around Disneyland and fast food for dinner, including french fries! Disneyland serves coke products but for whatever reason they don't have Dr. Pepper, so there was no temptation there, and we were awesome about just drinking water the rest of the time.

Josiah was really hopeful that all the walking that we were doing in the park each day would help to balance out all the crap we were eating. It was honestly weird to not weigh ourselves each morning and we felt like we should have brought the scale!

Needless to say, when we returned home, we had each put a few lbs back on. The worst part was we had brought home quite a bit of junk food from Disneyland, not to mention the Girl Scout cookies that we'd bought from our neighbor had come in the day before we left to California which didn't get eaten on the trip but were then still here waiting to be eaten. We had come home on Saturday and Monday was a holiday. We attempted to eat better but it was not happening right away with all that junk food sitting around! We decided we were still on vacation since Josiah had taken Monday off and the kids didn't have school so we would focus on jumping back on board Tuesday.

That was this past Tuesday and we've done really well. (Excluding Tuesday night when I tried to grill chicken but the grill decided it was too full of greasy drippings and tried to start a fire so we went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner that night but only got 6 oz steaks and did NOT ask for more bread when they asked if we needed more and we drank water! /end run-on sentence...) I am happy to report that I have been able to take off every single pound that I brought back with me from California!

My walk/run this morning was 5.5 miles! The furthest I've ever pushed myself. It felt good knowing that I did it. I use RunKeeper to track my routes. It's an awesome website!

I am excited to continue on with losing weight. My next goal is to be down another 13 lbs by the summer. I think it's totally doable and I can't wait to get there!

Stuff..

I'm feeling very crampy today! UGH!! Miscarrying is the worst!

This morning I took Alyssa to the dentist. She had a baby tooth that was being stubborn and holding on for dear life! It was barely loose and didn't have much room to wiggle around. The adult tooth grew in several months ago but way behind her teeth. Since I hadn't taken Alyssa in to the dentist since the end of 2009, I hadn't paid a copay for 2010 and being so close to the end of the year I decided I'd just wait incase she needed any other work done. Now we won't owe a copay for the rest of this year so we'll have to make sure to get any new work done!

As it turned out the dentist wanted to pull 2 teeth, to give the adult tooth a chance to move forward. He mentioned braces which I know she will need, but I would rather wait til she's a couple years older. Chances are her teeth will do a lot more shifting over the next few years.

Here's Alyssa trying to open her mouth with a numb lip...


Monday morning I took Camden to the doctor for some bumps that he has on the back of his leg. He's had them for a few months but they didn't seem to bother him at first so I didn't worry too much about them. Then last week he started complaining about them hurting so I finally made the appt. Turns out it's Molluscum contagiosum.
She didn't prescribe any medications which is fine by me. Time is all it really needs. She recommended using some Cortizone for itching.

Camden had his first den meeting on Tuesday...

He was very excited and couldn't wait to leave! It didn't start til 6 but as soon as he walked in the door from school he wanted to put his cub scout shirt on so he would be ready. Funny kid!

We are anxiously planning another trip to Disneyland. It's almost all that is talked about around here! Josiah ordered this book from Amazon. It's called The Disneyland Encyclopedia: The Unofficial, Unauthorized, and Unprecedented History of Every Land, Attraction, Restaurant, Shop, and Event in the Original Magic Kingdom. He's spent a lot of time over the past few days reading every detail. We are planning/hoping to go the 3rd week in February. Hopefully it works out.

Busy!

This time of year, without fail, is busy busy busy! This year I actually have added to the regular stress by making bottle cap necklaces to sell on ebay. It started when I bought this magazine at Hobby Lobby for Christmas card ideas, only instead I got caught up in the idea that it shared of making bottle cap crafts. What they showed were magnets but to me they looked like Christmas tree ornaments so naturally I decided I wanted to try making some.

Well...(small sidenote) I had bought some Monster High dolls at Target a few weeks ago that I was going to try selling on ebay. In looking them up on ebay to see how much they were going for, I came across bottle cap necklaces that were made w/images of these Monster High dolls...and they were selling. I had already put money into a big lot of bottle caps, all I needed was some chains and to know for sure how to put it all together, so I googled that info. Wow! is ebay addicting!! The best part though, was that they were running a deal where you could list for free as well as free "buy it now". That's always been the drag in the past, having to pay to list things and not knowing if it will even sell.

Anyway, it turned into a little business for me and my girls. We used different images (non Monster High) and they took them to school to try and sell. Rylie has sold a few. I was actually surprised at the response that we got when we advertised it on facebook. I am almost out of chains. I reordered more last week but I haven't gotten them yet. I thought they would have been here yesterday. Of course the seller didn't provide any tracking info...which stinks!

It's been fun though. It's given me something to do. Sadly though, my printer is acting up. I ordered some new ink a couple weeks ago and it's not working properly. I guess that's what I should expect from remanufactured ink cartridges. I actually ordered me a new printer last week too. The one I have I actually got from my mom after she bought a new one because she was having some sort of problem w/this one. It has worked off and on. I decided to google it to see what reviews have been on it and it turns out it's not just mine but most people haven't liked it. Lots of people complaining about pouring money into ink all the time, and another problem I'm having where it only prints a portion of the page 1/2 the time, others were having also. That's when I decided maybe it wasn't just the ink...

So back to the beginning of this post...I had mentioned that I bought that magazine for Christmas card ideas. Yeah...I don't think cards will be homemade this year. I want to get them out before Christmas Eve. I did get a picture of my kids the other day to put in w/it, so that's good. Of course really, that's an understatement. I wish it had been that simple...of just getting "a" picture. The camera comes out and my kids can not be serious. I was so frustrated!!

Here's a few of what didn't get selected for the Christmas card...



I almost gave up because Rylie was having a girl moment and wouldn't stop crying.





She eventually got a hold of herself.





Then I wanted some individual ones...

Rylie 11


Alyssa 9


Camden 7


Trenton 6


Rylie wanted me to get a picture of her holding a present...this was the expression she came up with...


But this was my favorite...


Tonight I'm getting my hair cut. YAY! I go too long in between cuts! My last one was in May. But actually that's pretty good for me...I've gone much longer in between before.

Tomorrow's a 1/2 day for the kids. For mutual tomorrow night, the young men and young women are combined to make gingerbread houses.

Friday Alyssa is supposed to be singing w/the school choir for a school event but it's also our ward's Christmas party which I would much rather go to...I'm torn! Not sure if she's required to be at the school thing.

Saturday morning my mom and sister are supposed to come over to do some baking. (I hope they don't cancel!) And then Saturday night is Godaddy's big holiday party. Should be lots of fun!

I also need to get my lesson prepared for Sunday! Soo much to do! Where's all the time going?!

Fail!

Wow! I obviously didn't keep up with my goal of posting each day, something that I am thankful for! But still we had a nice Thanksgiving! And in reality, November flew by! I can not even believe December is here! Good grief!

Josiah and I went out super early Friday morning to stand in line at Target which opened an hour earlier this year than in years past. 4 am. We were there by 2:30 and it was soooo cooold! Once inside we got the 1 thing we'd really wanted to get and grabbed a couple other things. We paid and came back home and got back into bed. Too cold and too early!

After a few more hours of sleep we headed back out and hit a few more stores. Then we came home and did more shopping online. In hindsight we shoulda started our shopping online. (I think we will remember that for next year.) Now I just hope everything that we've ordered online gets here in time!

Alyssa sang at Barnes & Noble on the 30th w/her choir class. I wish there had been a better set up for it. I would have liked to see her. They were singing on the 2nd floor, which isn't a full floor...it's more like a mall where the center is cut out and you can see down to the 2nd floor. Anyway, they had the choir pretty much shoved in between some shelves of books and there was very little space for parents to stand/sit where they could actually see. We could hear them though and I guess that's good!

Tonight Rylie has an orchestra concert. She's fairly bummed though because they aren't playing any Christmas music. Lame!

We've got a lot going on this month and I can just see it flying by about as fast as November did! Hopefully I will get some pictures and get around to posting more often!

I hope everyone is doing well!

11-9-2010

On this day, *cough*thirty-three*cough* years ago, my mother gave me life. She has been a great example to me through-out my life and I've always looked up to her. She is the one I go to for advice and when I need a 2nd opinion. She is one of my best friends!

Today I am grateful for my mother! I love you, mom!

Oct. 10, 2010 My mom and I

11-8-2010

I'm behind a few days. I think that has been where I get so overwhelmed w/blogging, because I want to catch up on everything I've missed. So instead, I'm just going to pick back up today, and go from here...hoping I don't miss too many more days.


Today marks Josiah and my 13th anniversary. What an adventure the past 13 years have been. It hasn't been all peaches, but like they say... "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!" I believe that 110%! We are definitely a stronger couple from the trials we have encountered along the way.

Today I am grateful for my husband! It amazes me that even 13 years later he can tell me a story from his "pre-ME" years that I'd never heard before and of course, I fall deeper in love w/him! He hates the word "amazing" but to me, that's exactly what he is! AMAZING!!

I could not have asked for a better partner to go through this life with! Thank you, Josiah! For all that you do for me and our family! I LOVE YOU!!