Category: Uncategorized (Page 73 of 118)

I got my Costco American Express bill a few days ago, and this time it was met not with dread, but with anticipation. You see, it’s rebate time! If you use the Costco American Express Card, you get a rebate on everything you buy–from 1% to 3%. We try to use this card for everything, and I’d like to figure out how to pay bills with it instead of bill pay from the bank just to up my rebate. So, our rebate check is for … $381.62! I’m thrilled.

Thank you for your well wishes. I am thankfully getting over that monster cold, but it’s been a rough week.

Yes, I did take my children to the Discovery Gateway on Monday, as promised. They were so excited, and cleaned their rooms and even vacuumed them before the 9:30 deadline. I dragged my sorry self and a purse full of kleenex to the car, packed the kids in the car, and off we went. Luckily, I had four free passes, so I only had to pay for two of us because, Man, that place it a bit on the expensive side, don’t you think? $8.50 per person. Wow! But, anyway, the kids just LOVED it!! They played with those balls in the tubes for a very long time. They would have stayed longer if I hadn’t dragged them on to the next station. John especially liked the building zone where he could operate the little crane, and Natalie enjoyed being a letter carrier. Jenna had fun in the farm, and playing in the water, and Cole and Megan tried the rock climbing wall. It was fun to make our own little movie and comic strips, too.      Oh, how much I would have enjoyed it if I weren’t sick. Yes, I was still very sick, and went through my whole stash of Kleenex. I had to resort to using long strips of toilet paper I pinched from the bathroom. I looked a sight, too, what with my red nose and super chapped nose and lips. I’m sure the kids and other parents were scared.

Monday night Ryan went and got me some actual drugs from behind the counter that have the actual effective ingredients in them. They worked MUCH better. I have to thank Ryan for taking care of me, and taking care of the kids when I didn’t do much this weekend. He’s awesome.

Oh, and as promised, here’s just a little picture of my curtains, which are finished and hung. Unless I decide I don’t like it and start over. Don’t laugh, it could happen.

This week I would like to get myself back into the habit of reading my scriptures.  Every day.  Even if it’s just for a few minutes, I need to have some personal scripture study.  Our family scripture reading is going ever so slow.  We read a verse or two each before dinner.  It’s not the best, but right now it’s the best we can do.  We just finished 2 Nephi tonight–hooray!

—Jenna was so excited to go on the bus today.  She got the ok from the dr. to do all the walking she wants.  She got x-rays and a new cast yesterday (with the waterproof lining, thank you very much!) that she’ll need to keep on for 3 more weeks.  But walking is fine.  So, she’s all ready to go out to the bus stop–in a blizzard.  No.  So, Ryan took the girls to school on his way to work this morning and I’ll pick her up from school since it’s PHAT Friday (parents help all teachers) at school today, and I plan to go in and cut or staple or something.

–I’m fighting a nasty cold right now.  Loading up on the Cold-eez, and drinking lots of water, but my sinuses hurt and I couldn’t breathe last night because my nose was stuffed up.  I’m sneezing all over the place.  Did one of you give me this lovely cold?  I didn’t think so.

–Last night we had a “Backwards Dinner”, which just means we start with dessert.  I thought we had ice cream, but it turns out we had only a tiny bit of ice cream left, so they got to choose ice cream or red, white and blue popsicles (who knew I had those in the freezer?) for their “first course”.  The kids think that is fun, and they ate the rest of dinner without too much complaining.

–Have you seen the show “Are you smarter than a 5th grader”?  It seems like a pretty dumb show, but I let the kids watch it last night and now they aspire to be on the show as the kid helpers.  I wonder if the kids get paid?  Could be a nice side job if they didn’t have to go to California to tape it.

–Yesterday I bought a CD of 2007 Grammy Nominated artists.  I feel so hip.

–I’m planning to go see Amazing Grace with some girlfriends tonight.  Anyone seen it?

This week I’ve been attempting to make some drapes for my front room.  It’s a weird bay window with weird framing, so it won’t work out like I thought it would, but hopefully it will still look good.  As usual when I’m in the fabric store, I bought WAY WAY too much fabric.  So, if you are in need of some burgundy fabric for a project, I have three different coordinating shades.  But it’s a good thing I bought too much because, as usual, I have measured, cut, sewn, re-cut, re-measured, re-sewed, unpicked, and sewn again.  First the cording I got was too thick and wouldn’t fold and drape correctly.  Then I changed to a fringe, but that didn’t look so good with the little stripe I had in there, so I took out the stripe, added the fringe, and hopefully it will turn out looking decent.  Although I enjoy sewing occasionally, it’s not my thing, and I’m definitely not good at it.

As you may remember, Jenna has been in a cast for 4 weeks now, and last time we went in to the doctor, he said she should start putting some weight on her leg.  You know, just kind of limping or walking with help so she can get started with the whole walking thing.  So, yesterday I was asking her to try to stand on both feet and just see if she could do it without it hurting.  Well, the next thing you know, she’s walking around.  I put the little cast shoe on her, and she was WALKING–BY HERSELF through the house!  Then I had to tell her to sit down and stop walking so much until we get the ok from the doc.  I took her to school today, and even though she can walk, let her have the wheelchair.  She has a dr’s apt tomorrow, and we’ll see what the x-ray looks like.  Even though she says it doesn’t hurt to walk, by bedtime she was tired and I think her leg ached from all that unexpected exercise.  I’m just so shocked that she can just up and walk like that after having not walked for over a month.  Little kids are such quick healers!

Thank you for your encouraging comments.  I did make it through the day, sneezing and all.  Although this isn’t a blog about my quest to go without sugar, I just have to talk about it for a bit more before I can move on.  So, if this bores you, just click on to someone more interesting, ok?

This has nothing to do with religion, this quest.  It’s really to prove to myself that I can do something.  And, yes, I’d like to lose some weight in the process.  My last three attempts to lose weight have failed, and I find myself stuck at the same weight as I have been for about two years now.  It’s hard on your self esteem, when you try and try again and find yourself failing time after time.  I realized that food is  controlling me.  When I walk through the kitchen and see a half eaten pop tart, I would pick it up and eat it.  Whether I was hungry or not.  I hadn’t thought before how much I would like a pop tart, but there it was on the counter and I didn’t want to waste it, so PoP it would go, into my mouth.  Yesterday, someone toasted a pop tart and then realized that there were waffles in the freezer, so they gave the pop tart to John, and ate waffles instead.  John, being the picky eater that he is, left the pop tart on the counter.  I had to walk by it several times, and finally I asked him if he even wanted it.  He said no, and I (brace yourself!) THREW THE POP TART AWAY.  That, my friend, is the kind of self control I want to have all the time.  I want to be the kind of person who can throw a pop tart or a cookie or whatever half eaten food is there– away.

I keep dreaming that I’m eating sugary things.  First it was a donut.  In my dream, I was talking to Tess, and I absentmindedly picked up a donut and just ate it.  Then I freaked out–thinking, did I just eat that donut?!  Why did I do that?  Last night I dreamed I was on the Disney Cruise with Lisa and her family.  I ate and I ate and I ate.  When I woke up, I’d think, did I really eat that food?  NO, it was a dream.  Thank goodness.

So, yes, I am a little bit obsessive about this thing right now, and I’ll try not to go on and on and on about it from now on, but even though I’ve only lost a pound so far, I think this is a healthy thing to do, and hopefully it will be good for my self esteem to be able to stick to a commitment and prove to myself that food is not the boss of me.

I’m writing to you from Rehab, where I’m going through sugar detox.  They let me out once a day to use the computer.

Although I’ve been sugar free for 5 days now, I’m going through a rough patch right now.  I should remind myself that I successfully avoided all the treats at our ward book club on Thursday night.  That I watched a movie at the theater with no Jr. Mints, and that I didn’t even taste the cookies the kids were making last night, rather I made myself some sugar free pudding.  But I was hit with a sneezing attack while at Jenna’s school this morning (maybe the dust from taking down the bulletin boards, who knows?) and I’m still suffering.  I went to the grocery store to pick up a few essentials, and I was bombarded with sugar at every turn–treats from the bakery, easter M&M’s, marshmallow peeps!  The list goes on and on–you all know how the grocery store is.  And I was hungry and sneezy and generally not feeling up to the challenge.  I had to stuff a bagel into my mouth in order to make it out of there without caving.  And I’m not supposed to eat bagels, remember?  Something to do with a wheat allergy, but I couldn’t rip open the plain rice cake package fast enough and the bagels were on the top of the cart, so it had to be eaten.

ARRRGGG!  I have no willpower!  I’m weak!  I’m not up to the challenge!  I don’t know if I can make it! HELP!

(and on a totally unrelated subject, if you or someone you know would like to go see “Seraphim Falls” starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson on Thursday, let me know.  I have a bunch of passes I picked up while shopping on Saturday)

Hey, it’s Robin’s birthday today.  Go on over and leave her a birthday greeting, why don’t you?

We went to a funeral today for Ryan’s dear Uncle Lewis.  He was a great man and it was a beautiful funeral.  His son and daughter (Ryan’s cousins) did such a great job paying tribute to their dad, and reminding us all that death is not the end.  One quote was especially interesting to me, “we are born to die, and in dieing, we will live.”

At the cemetery, there were flags and the colors from Veterans of Foreign Wars.  They gave a “15 gun salute” (I’m not sure if there were supposed to be 21, but there were only 5 of them there) and even played taps on the bugle.  It was very nice.  The weather was bitter cold with blowing wind, but only a light snow falling.  Even though he was old and in poor health and we are all relieved that he will no longer be suffering, I can’t help but think how lonely his lovely wife, June, will be now.  And how lonely I would be if Ryan were no longer with me.

We drove by our old house (which backs up to the Lehi cemetary) and noticed how big the maple trees are now.  We planted those spindly little maples that we dug up from Michelle’s parents’ back yard when we had only been in that house for a year or so.  They were so tiny and we wondered if they would even live.  Now they are nice, big trees (bigger than any we have in our current yard) and it reminds me that some things change, and some things stay the same.  Things change.  Life goes on.  Things grow old.  People grow old.  I’m thankful to be surrounded by such wonderful people.