Friday Ramblings

I saw this sign at the zoo last week. It really needs to be a t-shirt.

I took my kids to work with me today. They spent the first 3 hours fighting with each other, while I made phone calls and grew frustrated with the painters who would not let me get to my desk or computer. I realize how lucky I am that I can bring my kids to work with me occasionally, but I really wanted to knock their heads together. After lunch I put the Boy to work unpacking the new conference chairs and the Girl shredded documents for 3 hours. Stuff was done.

I would like to get a bunch of cleaning done quickly so I can spend the rest of the weekend chilling. My husband and I are having our first date since the start of baseball season, and I want to spend the rest of the weekend reading and sleeping. I love reading and sleeping.

Ooh, and maybe doing something arty-crafty. And taking some pictures, which I have not been doing enough of lately.

But now I'm going upstairs, where my bed is waiting, very impatiently.

It's Sunday and I'm chilling with my bad self, and have not excuse not to blog, but I have just not been feeling the bloggy love lately. I think the main reason for that has been the fact that I have not managed to achieve anything lately, and I've been stressing about nothing. I'm doing nothing with all my fab health goals, and I've been totally lax with all my super-fun summer plans. Part of that might be the fact that I've been playing mama taxi constantly - the Girl was at 4 different day camps for each week of June:

(Spinning a plate at Circus Mojo camp while helping another girl)

This has left me with very little time for swimming and riding bikes. Don't get me wrong, I like my life fine, but sometimes I envy some of my other bloggy mommy friends who make an effort to make their summers easy and relaxed. I'm still working 3 days out of the week, so those two days I'm home, we're busting rear trying to clean the house and do all the things we don't get to do while I'm at work.

But July is here, and the Girl only has one week of daycamp this month, so I fully intend to take advantage of my 2 free days a week. We WILL camp before the summer is up.

Now that I'm sitting here typing, I'm remembering all the cool things that have been happening that I want to share: like Relay For Life 2 weeks ago. My MOMS Club has had a team for several years now, and we always try to make it a party. The more fun it is, the more people come, the more money we raise for cancer research and programs and services for cancer patients in our area. And the more attention we draw to the cause. It was a muggy one, though, and we were some sweaty girls. Especially when we did a Zumba session at 11:15PM. But the rain held off for a long time - we weren't chased away by storms until 2AM.

Last Friday night I took my Brownie troop to an overnight at the zoo. What a very cool program they run there - the theme was how animals adapt to function in their environment, especially those that are nocturnal. We enjoyed having the zoo almost completely to ourselves, seeing the Night Hunters exhibit at night, a night hike, and a bird show in the morning. Before we went to bed, the instructors brought some of their animals into our room so we could see them up close and touch:

(This is the cutest armadillo I have ever seen.)

The floor we slept on was very hard, my back hurt for two days after, and their were cockroaches in the sleeping area (not in a case or anything, real pests. They have an insect house, so they can't spray for bugs. In Chicago, cockroaches were gross, but small. Here they are really freaking big.) That kept some of us awake most of the night. But the trip was excellent, and I would definitely recommend it.

This past Friday, my MOMS Club walked in our town's first Independence parade. We had a great time - it was hot, sweaty, and a decently long parade route, but we will definitely be doing it again. After the parade, we went over to our community building for a festival. Not much there, just a firetruck for the kids to climb in, some inflateables, Kona Ice, of course, an Army band, and a lot of room to wander, socializing and eating with neighbors and friends. We loved every minute of it. Then we all sat and watched the fireworks, which were really good...it was an awesome day. I have pictures...I'll have to post them later.

So you see, we've been busy, and I haven't been focusing on some things I really need to focus on. We will be going to Chicago for a visit in a couple of weeks, but other than that we will be able to relax, and really enjoy summer. And we will camp, darn it.

Oh, we have been hitting those superhero movies. Green Lantern wasn't awesome, but it was fun, and Ryan Reynolds....so pretty. So unclothed for so much of the movie...

To make you giggle...

This clip slays me, so I thought I'd share. Nothing new or fascinating, but something I read on Facebook today (Samuel L. Jackson reading a "children's book") reminded me, and I wanted to share:


Also, if you are feeling it, please support my Relay For Life efforts this Friday night at Cooper High School, either by donating, or, if you're in the area, coming by to see us!
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY11MS?px=2674772&pg=personal&fr_id=29065

Hope you're having a fantastic week.

Holy crap! Has it been a month?

I was informed the other day that I haven't blogged in over a month, which is mostly due to a heck of a lot of baseball. Enormous amounts of baseball. Both kids are playing this year, and the earliest games have been rescheduled, so we are playing several games a week. I also have to admit to a bit of shame - I posted that whole "I'm making changes, and this is what I've done so far" post, and then, very quickly, fell off the wagon. Started ditching the exercize, eating crap, and gained back several pounds. Not exactly the updates I was looking to post, so I didn't bother posting at all.

Ok, so I was being a whiny little girl.

And now I'm done whining. I like feeling strong, darn it, so I went to Zumba Monday night, and I've exercized each day since. I've also set up a standing walking date for Sunday mornings - I'm terrible about exercizing on weekends, which is dumb, since that's when I have the most time. I don't like to disappoint, so my friend Dee and I are going to walk Sunday mornings. I put my little notebook back in my purse - time to start writing down the food again. I pinky-swear, I will post an update here at least once a week. I certainly don't want to disappoint you lovely people, either.

Now, on another note, it's summer! And it has been a hot one already. My wonderful boss has allowed me to go part-time for the summer, so I can spend more time with the kiddles. The list-lover in me can't resist writing a list of things I want to do this summer:

1. Ride our bikes to a place we'd generally drive, at least once a week.

2. Go swimming - a lot.

3. See all the good superhero movies - so far we've seen Thor and X-Men: First Class. They were both pretty freaking good. You know the best part about superhero movies? The superheroes are always played by hotties.

4. Go camping.

5. Plant stuff - make them grow.

6. Go hiking

7. Visit the observatory for one of their family nights

8. Read a lot - signed up for the library program today.

9. Clean out the storage room

10. Another yard sale? Maybe?

11. Take a lot of pictures

12. Visit my family in Chicago

13. Make my own ice cream

14. Try to find fun, free things to do.

15. Spend time with friends

16. Make something cool

17. Paint my Girl's and my toes cool colors

18. Play golf with my Boy (I really don't like golf, but he really wants me to play.)

19. Do more yoga

20. Play with my kids

How about you? Any good summery plans?

A big day.

This is my guy. He turned 14 today.

I won't even say how old that makes me.

Happy birthday to my Boy!

Happy Mayday, blah blah

Ahh, Kentucky in the springtime. There is no more beautiful place, when it's not raining. And it's been raining a lot. Baseball season started almost a month ago and we finally managed to play our first game yesterday. We're going to be making up rained out games in July at the rate we're going. The Girl pitched for the first time. She walked a lot of kids, but she got the ball across the plate. So, way to go, Girl! And she hit awesomely! The Boy's game started 2 hours late, ugh. He pitched pretty well in the first 2 innings, but walked a lot of players in the third. He also was not hitting well, which surprised me. I have a lovely, painful sunburn to show for the day - my nose is really red. It has been so wet I haven't been able to mow in over 2 weeks and my yard seriously looked like a prairie. So my brother and I tag-teamed the front yard last night as it was getting very dark, and then I went out to do the back yard this morning, which was wet and clumping badly. Why am I telling you all this? No real reason, just reiterating how very rainy it has been. Seriously, people, a prairie. Speaking of the word "reiterating", I had to sit through a (very long, boring) training the other day and the woman running the training kept saying "reINerating". It was irritating.

I have a bunch of pictures to post, and some other updates, but I need to ponder and put my words together first. Enjoy your Mayday.

My focuses...foci?

I mentioned some time ago that I made a choice to focus on good health and fitness for this year. I have not spent much time blogging about it, mainly because I thought to keep my efforts in that area separate from this blog, and only writing about it on my Spark blog, but that leaves me with very little else to write about. Other than the usual family/work stuff, I've been pretty hyper focused on two things - job search and health/fitness. The job search is going pretty well - I was offered a job at a small elevator company, which I turned down, hoping for something with a little more mobility (and a few less drug dealers in the park across the street.) I have interviewed for three other positions in the past two weeks, and had a second interview at one. Not the one I really wanted, which was (mistakenly, of course) offered to someone else, but I am optimistic.

The health/fitness stuff...that is going well.

This is me, in November. I hate sharing, but hey, I'm all about honesty here. I had a great time at my sister's wedding, and I really did love that dress, but I'm a fat girl. And I'm tired of it.

I've made this sort of commitment before, trying to lose weight, get healthy, etc., but it feels different this time. I've been working out consistently for 2 months. I'm making progress weight-wise - slowly, but surely, but more importantly, I am feeling so so so much better. I have energy, and I can carry things further, move faster, and work harder than I have in years. And this is affecting my life so much, I really should share it here. So here are some of the things that are working for me right now:

1. Zumba! I started doing it once a week last year, and it really sparked a renewed interest in exercize for me. I started working out harder the rest of the week so as to have more fun during my classes. Lovin' my Zumba!

2. SparkPeople.com - free trackers, access to advice from personal trainers and nutritionists, and my favorite part - teams and challenges. I am part of two separate team challenges which are totally motivating. And it is all free! I just passed my first weight-loss goal - time to order my incentive - my Sparkpeople t-shirt.

3. Diet Dr. Pepper. Not exactly health food, but I have a real problem with drinking pop, and I'm not a fan of most diet pops. I like the tingly carbonation, ok?

4. Kashi Go Lean Crunch. Really good for you, I eat it for breakfast most days of the week with a banana. Completely fills me up for hours so I'm not noshing all morning.

5. Fit Bottomed Girls and The Great Fitness Experiment: Motivation and fun, the first is a website written by women who are really into fitness, the second is a blog by a woman who likes to try anything - exercize-wise. I'm particularly fond of FBG's DVD reviews - I read them and check them out from our library to try.

6. Speaking of DVD's, my favorites right now are the Element yoga dvd's (FBG Jenn says they have a high "hippity-dippity" factor, very new agey, and I've found I'm very drawn to that sort of thing. Big surprise, right?) and Leslie Sansone's Walk Away the Pounds Mile a day DVD, which I do all 5 miles in one day. But I'm finding the WATP dvd's are starting to only work for my easy days, and I need some tougher ones, which is great. I want to find a good kickboxing workout, but I'm not loving Tae Bo as much anymore - maybe someone knows a good one?

The weather is getting better, which does mean more outside workouts - loving that. I'll share more great things as I find them, and I'll share my progress, if you all don't mind, since it gives me someone else to be accountable to.

And now I'm going outside. It's too freaking nice to be in this basement anymore.