Hay Bales Fun

Last night the kids and I were playing on what's left of the hay bale pile, which is about 30 bales. For some reason the kids always think this is great fun. I don't really get it. Have itchy hay all over my body just isn't too great to me. But.....the kids love it! Here are some pictures I took of them:

This first one is so typical of Chris and Benji. When I get out the camera they both instantly start making goofy faces. Benji acts up and tries to make me laugh. Chris does quiet, but silly things.

Here is Clara being brave at the top of the bales.

While playing on the bales we found 2 arrows from Jacob's bow & arrow set. We have him shoot the arrows onto a target on the bales and they often get lost. So he was excited to find these lost arrows. He was throwing them off of the top of the bales and wanted me to get a picture of one of them flying through the air and....surprise, surprise.....I managed to do it!

Here's the last kid, Debbie giving me a "HUH?" look. Or is that a look that says "I've said cheese enough, can't I be done yet?"

My Favorite Things

Yea, yea.......I know that kids are not "things". But I decided to use the title anyway. This is one of my assignments for May I had to do for The Wishblading Well. The squares in the back are files of theirs.

Losing Weight

UGH! This is such a hard thing to do! And I get tired of the struggle! But.........since the beginning of the year I have actually been doing it!!!! On January 1 I decided that I needed to "just do it". I am a huge fan of the show The Biggest Loser, so I decided to go with what they do............minus the hours and hours and hours of working out. LOL! So I have been counting calories. I try to eat around 1300 calories a day. Sadly, many days I am over that. I find myself always reading the nutritional info on things. One of the biggest shockers is comparing the calories in a box of something with how many servings in the box. They really trick us there! Did you know that there are 2.5 servings in a 20 ounce bottle of pop? I shudder to think of how many calories I've downed drinking my favorites, Mountain Dew and Root Beer. One of my favorite foods has always been cereal. Since I was a kid I loved my bowl of cereal in the morning!!! I would sit there, eating my cereal and reading a book. In the last years I would usually have more than one bowl...........yum, yum! Serving sizes for cereal are SO small and you can't forget the calories in the milk you pour over the top. I'm sure that there were many days I would eat 750-1000 calories........just at breakfast!!! No wonder I was gaining weight!

For the last 5 1/2 months I have been watching my calories and trying to put some miles on the treadmill. And, surprisingly, it's been working!!!! Wohoooo! As of this morning, I have lost 33.6 pounds! To get to my goal weight I need to lose another 28.4. I am over 1/2 way there!!!! So I keep plugging away.......counting my calories........working on smaller portions........trying to excercise.......not eating cereal.......drinking a diet root beer every once in a while.

I'm doing it!

BTW, I'm adding a weight loss ticker to the sway bottom of the page so you can keep up with my weight loss progress. I'll be updating it once a week.

This past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day. This may not mean too much to most of you, but to a scrapper it's a big deal. LOL! I scrapped as much as I could on Fri, Sat, and Sun in between laundry, kids, a soccer tournament, kids, church, and kids. Here are some of the pages I got done. The first one is of Dave and Jacob playing Battleship. Jacob is amazing at this and I have to try as hard as I can to not have him beat me! The next one is of Debbie on the day she was officially placed with us for adoption.
I love this picture of Dave on the tractor. He was giving us a hay ride when I took it and it so sums up how he is! Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of my Mom passing away. Kind of in honor of that, and because I've been meaning to for awhile, I did a scrapbook page about my dad. My dad is awesome!!!
Here's Jacob in his favorite position in the whole world, all crouched down and perched on his feet. This looks horribly uncomfortable to me but he loved it. In Kindergarten and 1st grade he would do this on the chair at his desk. He was constantly falling out of his seat! In this picture he is perched like this on top of a porch railing at a cabin we were staying at. He obviously has amazing balance while "sitting" like this.