The disappearing man!

Brent has been exercising since last Oct. He goes into work every morning at 4:14am. He hops on a treadmill and runs for 30 mins. On Saturdays he and I go over to Fox Hills the local resort we have a membership at and we both hop on treadmills for 30 mins. I don't usually run.....much.

This all started as a contest that I set up with him at basically a whim. We were talking weight and of course we both have plenty to loose! We both wanted to loose about 35 lbs and so I said we should have a competition, first one to loose the weight wins, of course. No I did not do percentages, yes I had forgotten that men loose weight just by spitting, as one friend said. It's just what came to my head.

I honestly didn't think we'd stick to it. We've certainly lost weight before, or tried to and have obviously not stuck with it, although the weight has stuck to us.

He's done amazingly! He discovered about two months in that missing his workouts really, really impacted his stress level at work and so now he has a double motivator for running. It's very rare for him to miss a workout. The only day he doesn't run is Sunday. (we're not going to talk about me.....cause unfortunately the only to say is that I gained weight, not lost it!)

In January, I shot myself in the foot and loaded an app on his phone that allows him to easily track his calorie intake and his exercise. He immediately became OCD with it and dropped more weight in the last two months than he had the previous three months. He tells me all the time how happy he is that I did that for him....... I did it for myself too, but I'm really struggling with my eating habits, so the only thing I became OCD in was avoiding the app.

When he started he was wearing a XXL in shirts and size 40 pants. This Friday we went shopping and he bought a size L shirt and size 36 pants! He's back to the size he was when we got married 17 yrs ago (our anniversary was yesterday!). Pretty amazing. He did opt to buy XL button down shirts as he's not comfortable with how "tight" they are on his chest, personally I thought he was looking pretty hot in them! And I did not think they were to tight. But the polo he's wearing below is a Large.

He's lost over 43 lbs since Oct. 11th, 2010! Way to go honey, I'm so proud of you! (please excuse the quality of pics, I was trying to get them done between his coming home and our leaving for church. He's working 6 nights a week, 13hrs a night, right now)




Yes, he did reach his original goal weight, but in the mean time his co-workers heard about our competition and decided to do their own. They all put some money in a pot and their deadline is June 1st. So Brent is going to continue to see how much weight he can loose until then. He would like to see 220 if possible. He's now at 243.

And his prize...... a three day weekend in a hotel, playing golf and hanging out with me, with no kids. Mine was supposed to be three days in a hotel by myself.....I at least get the three days still and when he's playing golf I will be by myself......so I think I might be cheating a bit here.....

We have another deal going and if I can loose 35lbs by June 1st, I still get a prize. So I am still trying to get it done. You would think keeping up with two teenagers, another one who turns 12 in June and the younger two would burn it all off me, without any effort!

SNOW!!!

We had a blizzard in December. It shut down a large part of the state and dumped approximately 10 inches of snow on us in 24 hours. The storm was followed by high winds making visibility nonexistent.

It takes a lot of snow to shut down anything here and this is only the second time in 12 years of living here that I can remember everything shutting down, including the malls. They were shut down on Sunday, and that Sunday was two Sunday's before Christmas, so you know it was an extreme storm!


These are pictures from the cabin. We were pretty lucky as none of the trees surrounding the cabin actually hit the cabin when they bent over from the weight of the snow. We did loose a tree earlier this year, to a wind storm, but it was along the driveway and didn't damage anything when it came down.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I hope your day is everything you want it to be!

Maxism

Max will say to us, "I love you."

And of course we reply "I love you."

And if we do not end it with "to", he will say it...let's see if I can create the feeling.

Max: "I love you."

Mom: "I love you."

Max: "to?"

Mom: "to."

If I do not repeat the to, he waits, and prompts me again.....

OK, have I seriously warped the child so much he can't accept that I love him, unless I say the TO!!!? Mom says as a child if she did something with me once, that was the way she always had to do it ever after. And boy can I see that in Max. And boy does Mom have my sympathy!

The good news is that he does it to Brent equally, so at least we've both managed to warp him together!

Oh and the picture? Those are his fingers coming down over his head, right there between his eyes, pretending to be a bug....at least I think it was a bug. He thought he was hilarious! I thought he ruined a perfect picture. But I got over it.

cats

I am very sorry to say that our fourth orange cat was evicted Sunday morning. She peed on a guitar case that was in our bathtub, drying out from the soaking I gave it. I had soaked it in one of those sprays for cat pee. You know the kind you use on the carpet, so they won't smell it and pee there again. Well I had soaked it so much that I had it air drying in the tub. She peed on it and I heard her scratching around it trying to cover up. I promptly put her on the porch.

I really feel for her. She was terrified. But I just will not tolerate anymore peeing. And I won't tolerate the eight litter boxes it took to keep five cats from peeing. I am still finding litter all over the house.

At least for the moment..... I did talk to someone over the weekend who successfully keeps seven cats (most of them unrelated to each other) in her home and has very few problems. She swears by feliway or something like that. It's a cat hormone thingy. You plug it in the wall outlet and it sends out this scent that calms everybody down. I may try it and see if we can have a compromise of inside/outside cats. That is what I grew up with and we never had litter boxes!

And I know anybody can keep seven cats in a house. But they have to have a clean house that has minimal cat peeing issues in order for me to listen to them! This is my friend's parents house, and she goes and visits willing, so I know the house is clean even with seven cats. They do at times have one cat who starts to get testy and sprays, and then they use more of the feliway stuff in a spray bottle and it settles down again. Although her Dad said this cat was skating on thin ice and could end up outside. They have four outside cats who have heat pads in their cat house on the porch, so I'm not sure the cat would mind being booted out!

So that leaves Collin's Dandelion in the house. We're leaving the door open and we'll see what happens with her. She has tried to venture out in the past, but something always startles her. I think she'll come out of her shell eventually.

I will say that the cat who was evicted Sunday seems to have recovered OK and is actually venturing out of the porch as of Monday.

If you can believe it the kids tried to kidnap a friends cat last week! I don't think they are seeing the big picture! I will not take another cat!!

Family

My Mom was here for three weeks at the end of April, beginning of May. We didn't get a lot of time for pictures. We were too busy sorting, purging and doing a garage sale. A mammoth garage sale.

As we were getting ready to leave for the airport, she took some family pictures. Brent and I were headed to the temple, the boys were staying home for the day. We're not exactly dressed the same. It is in these pictures that I can really see how tall the older boys are getting!

So hop on over to my Mom's blog and see the gang!

http://snapshotsfromtheleeside.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-all-about-genes.html

Oh yeah, that Monday I managed to not only cut all five of the boy's hair, but Brent's too. And I did the unheard of, buzz cut across the board. I say unheard of, because in this house, it just doesn't happen to everyone anymore. Lee prefers his hair "long" and Collin has a certain way he likes and the little boys fight me anytime I cut their hair. So I tend to wait until they are way over due for a cut.

But this time I just cut them all the same.....it was pretty fun. I did get permission from Lee and Collin, but Lee woke up in the morning with regrets. He probably won't do that again. So I'm enjoying the uniform look and I know it probably won't ever happen again. They're growing up!

field trip!

We're headed south again. To the Milwaukee Public Museum. We were there Tuesday to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. We really enjoyed the displays and I learned some new things, which is always nice on an educational field trip! We also took in an Imax movie on Mummies. Which thrilled the boys to no end!

As Max said, the screen was bigger than a giant! So we decided that we really should go back on Friday and watch Avatar on Imax. I'll let you know just how sick I get! The boys are super excited and I'm cautiously optimistic. Not to give away anything if you haven't seen the movie, but can we say, fight scenes, flight scenes and just plain a lot of motion scenes! It has the to potential to create motion sickness for me!

So think of me today, driving two hours south, with six kids (a friend and her daughter are joining us), spending several hours in the museum again and then sitting through a three hour movie with said six kids and one other adult....has the potential to be madly fun or just plain maddening!