SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT...

O.K. First of All...
I need to catch up on my tags! My friend Sarah had tagged with with the same one I grabbed off of Carrie's blog the other day (sorry Sarah, I spaced it), plus Bonnie nomiated me for the Blog Award the other day. Here it is...

The rules of the award are:
1.The winner can put the logo on her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3.Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4.Put links of those blogs on yours.
5.Leave a message on the blogs of the girls you’ve nominated...

So, here are the blogs I regularly visit (or should I say SHOULD regularly visit, if I were more on top of things) to check on my peeps...This is actually the list of all the blogs in my "favorites" folder (more than I was suppose to list I think. Oh well!)
Sarah
Lisa
Jill
Kendal
Misty C.
Gina
Toni
Angela
Bonnie
Joy
Amy P.
Barb

Many of these women are scrappers that I met at the Pacific North West digi retreat a couple years ago. That was such a blast! I wish we could all get together again!

I LOVE YOUR BLOGS!!!

Keeping Busy
Max and I have been keeping busy the past week with Zoe being gone. We've been plaing a lot of Wii, but other than that we've also been roller skating, swimming in the kiddie pool, playing games, and enjoying some great books and magazines. We rummaged through the entire September issue of Family Fun the other day and found some great activities. We did a fun experiement with our sense of "touch" yesterday involving bowls of different temprature water, played around with some optical illusions, and had a blast making anagrams out of our name. An anagram is a new word/s made from scrambling up letters in existing word/s. Check out the anagram maker HERE to make your own. For example, my new name is Mean Ma Cheesy, LOL! Max is Shaman Exec Me Well. Teehehe... Zoe (using her middle name also, because we didn't have enough letters otherwise, is Lacy Sneeze Honn Me, and Jeff (using his first and middle name) is Foamy Fresh Jet. What fun!

We also have been going to the farmer's market regularly to get good eats. In addition to some fabulous little yellow cherry tomatoes and a bag full of pickling cukes that Max and I are going to mix up today, I also picked up a boquet of one of my favorite flowers, Zinnas! Aren't they GORGEOUS?

Max couldn't even wait to get his swim trunks on the other day and jumped in the kiddie pool with his jeans on, silly boy! I think he just wanted me to take his picture jumping around and shaking like a wet dog.

We've been keeping an eye on our spider. She is getting bigger and bigger.

MY NEW OBSESSION
is to be healthy and back to a weight I can be happy with. I've always struggled with my weight, more over the past 13 years of course, after having children. I was successful about five years ago when I joined Weight Wathcers online, quit my sit down job, opened a daycare and became more active. I lost 45 pounds and was loving life! I pretty much got rid of all my "big girl" clothes and started fresh. Well...five years later I'm pretty much right back where I was again. I feel like we do lead a fairly active lifestle, and I do cook healthly meals for my family. So what is the problem? Well...most of it I am blaming on my new academic career of sitting on my rear end for hours on the computer attending on line classes. Other factors, of course, include my ever climbing age, my lack of motivation to get up early and exercise (I used to walk almost every morning), and bad habits staying up late and snacking. School starts in two weeks and right now I have one pair of shorts and two pair of capris that fit me comfortably (and I refuse to buy more, bigger clothes)!!

Soooo......It all stops NOW!
I'm back on WW online. I started off the week with two days (and I think that's all I can take) on the Cabbage Soup diet to clean out my system and loose some water weight (I lost five pounds of it too), I've ordered Jeff and I Camelbak packs to take on hikes and bikes, I've been getting in some extra activity, planning meals, and actually going to bed at a decent hour. Most importantly, I've gone public. Now you know my goals too, no looking back and NO EXCUSES! I've also discovered a new magazine that has had me consumed in the evenings, Body and Soul.

For a little motivation I revisited a fun favorite site that I used for inspiration years ago. My Virtual Model is a site intended for online shopping so that you can create a model and try on clothes through several online stores such as Sears, and Landsend. Personally, I just like to play with my model. It's fun while loosing weight to watch your model shrink. So, I've reentered my new, astronomical weight, and here I am....UUUGH!

But that's OK, because here's what I'm going to look like again before Christmas!

and let's put some jeans on me....LOL!

Now that's better. Apparently there is an option to add your own face to the model now, but I think that is a little too creepy for me. I'll stick with the ditial mug instead. Wish me luck!

AND LASTLY....
Look what's coming up in two days! SBB is going to be having a STORE WIDE SALE for three days! We've got a great new collab kit, Vintage Market that will be available when you spend $10 or more in the store too. Check back in a couple days for more previews, and I might even have a little freebie for you.

Enjoy the rest of your week!