Friday, May 28, 2010

The best things in life...

The best things in life cannot be seen or tasted but rather felt.

That was the quote that had me crying watching the Today Show this morning. A women who was one of the first to graduate from the Naval Academy is now watching as two of her children are graduating from the academy this weekend one son and one daughter. The amount of pride on her face was indescribable.

Austin is 1 today! Hard to believe that little princess was laying under the Billie Rubin lights in the hospital one year ago today and I was busy fainting. As with everything, times change because after all the sun will rise tomorrow and our only choice is what to do with it.

We have moved her birthday celebration back to next weekend so my folks can be here, they are on their way to Oklahoma to meet the newest edition to our family Miss Liberty Elaine.




Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Good morning Blogger!

Yet another teenage morning for me, woke up late so I will have to finish up part of my workout this afternoon. D'Oh!

It was the Biggest Loser finale last night, and while I can't talk about it because J hasn't hasn't watched it yet, I can say that I am increasingly scared about what will happen when I get down to my goal weight. It seems as though most of the people from Biggest Loser gain back some of the weight if not all. I have gotten down to my goal weight several times but have only managed to stay there for a few months before the weight starts to creep back on. While swimming yesterday J and I were talking about how great it will be to sleep in, we figure in a year (hopefully less) we will have lost all the weight that we need to, so we won't have to hit the gym at 5am. But in all honesty I think I am stuck getting up for a long time if not forever, which sounds super depressing.

Joe went to City Council yesterday to talk about the new regulations they are attempting for our industry. For anyone that wants to watch him, here is the video link just click on Item 11 and he is one of the first speakers. I am super proud of him for putting so much into this and getting so involved.

http://www.springsgov.com/instantitems/formal/

Friday, May 21, 2010

It is beautiful outside!

It is beautiful outside! I am just waiting on Austin to wake up so I have someone to play with. :-)

I am in the process of a HUGE project at work and can comfortably say that I am not in over my head but I am definitely treading water. Here's to hoping that through my many owed favors and the fact that I don't ever quit, that I will come out on the other side no worse for wear. Speaking of which you wanna know what saying I like SO MUCH, it comes from that country song..."If you're walking through hell just keep on walking because the devil may not even notice you're there." Of course I use this same saying for shady neighborhoods and kiosks in the mall, but I am sure it works when you're in hell too.

I have the Run to the Shrine tomorrow morning at O'Dark Thirty. For those of you that have been to our zoo, it will be a race to the top of the Shrine at the top of the zoo. I am not sure how steep it is but I know that it will be a challenge, sounds like a great workout on a Saturday morning, well and I get to see all the animals. :-)

I got a speeding ticket yesterday. Boooo! It wasn't even like I was hot roding or anything but instead I was rolling (literally I had touched my gas in 500 yards) down Union hill when he clocked me doing 51 in a 40. He jokingly said that he gives everyone 10 miles per hour over on that hill because it's so steep and then starts pulling people over after that. Ahhhh, I'm glad I could be in that elite group. Of course my insurance card was expired too, so that added to the hilarity of the situation while my car nearly ran out of gas waiting on him to write the ticket and Austin was screaming in the back. Now I am stuck going to court....awesome!

I was probably so excited yesterday rolling down Union hill because I was carrying some of my plants for my garden which got planted yesterday while I was stomping around saying Razzle Frazzle Fritz. But now I have a strawberry patch! Yahoo!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Now we're cooking with gas!

Guess who has two thumbs and fixed all of her sprinkler heads yesterday?!?!?

Yeppers, this guy!

As I was leaving for the gym this morning I was pleasantly greeted with my sprinklers gently watering what will become my amazing lawn. Of course Joe instantly starting asking questions about how long and what days I was watering. I kindly reminded him that now that Austin and I run the house it's essentially Thunderdome and we make the rules. For those of you that know Thunderdome you know that it means there are no rules. :-) Yes, we are watering everyday because I want nice grass, heck I have already spread a ton of weed and feed and what not on this lawn not to mention the new seed I am going to put down today (now that my sprinklers work). I am going to be able to cut it up and sell it as sod here before long since it'll be so nice.

Speaking of leaving for the gym this morning...I would have thought it would have gotten easier by now to get up at 5am. I am not sure how people do it. I mean this is ludicrous. I drag my teenage ass out of bed every morning and am genuinely angry about it until I get to the gym.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The Cat Sanctuary!

One last picture that we all took with a real life tiger cub. You can tell how happy I am to be petting him and how cold it was with Austin's red nose.

I cut the suckers head off...

So today was supposed to be a HUGE day here on the ranch. I was actually going to de-winterize (yes you can imagine by the made up word that I was winging it on this one) the sprinklers and let it rip. But while mowing the lawn one last time before the grand unveiling of pressurized water, I chopped one of the sprinkler heads right off with the mower. Of course now I have all new respect for the lawn mower, maybe I should treat that with a more courteous nature. Now I'm back to the drawing board and have to figure out how to replace a sprinkler head, I am sure the instructions are on Google, aren't they all?!?!





Before I put Austin down for her nap I snapped a couple of pictures of her playing with the railroad ties in the sun. She still hates the grass and if she falls down in it screams, but if she stays standing she will tolerate it. Oh yeah and there was a fundraiser out at the Big Cat Sanctuary so we all packed up and headed out there in the rain. Here's some cute pictures from that.


She is completely content if I just let her eat the grass.
She was plucking the grass out of the railroad ties that the weed wacker missed.
She really couldn't get her little walked thing going in the grass but it was worth a try.
Here she is posing a tiger. :-)
Here's one of the real lions out at the sanctuary. They were amazing!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Austin Talking

So a little back story first.

I was eatting lunch with a friend and her husband years back and their daughter just learned how to walk. So she would "run" up to her Dad and have him walk her around the restaurant. I remember looking at Jenn and asking doesn't it hurt your feelings that she never asks you to walk her around. She laughed so hard she almost had to excuse herself. When she stopped she said, ummm no first off she will always be my little girl and secondly (because she breastfed) I have the food. I did not understand that laughter until last night.

Austin has been saying the word Daddy, she enjoys calling just about anything Daddy except the dogs that get something more like Dad without the "Y". But last night after a very busy day at the shop so Joe was pretty run down and tired she looked at Joe and said plain as day "Daddy". She continued to say it so Joe could capture this video as he was melting on the floor. Austin was then allowed to rip his phone out of his hands and do pretty much whatever she liked. :-) We always knew that she would have her Daddy wrapped around her little finger.

So now to the part where I got to laugh. Joe sent that video out to nearly everyone in his phone. One of his friends that just had a daughter was saying that he says Daddy to his daughter a hundred times a day trying to make it her first words just to drive his wife crazy. So the friend asked Joe if it bothered me that Austin said Daddy first and not Mommy, of course Joe then passed along the question to me. Here's where I got to laugh and repeat what Jenn had told me years ago.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Pound for Pound Challenge

So I watch Biggest Loser every week and everytime they show the Pound for Pound Challenge I tell myself I am going to do that one of these days. Well apparently that day came last week, and I signed up to lose 25 pounds. Which basically means that if I meet my goal the Pound for Pound Challenge people will give 14 cents a pound to my local food shelter. Everyone wins, I lose weight and hungry people get food. Well what I didn't realize is that this little deal that I made with the food devil has a time limit. In researching the FAQ's I found that the cutoff for weightloss is June 31st. So basically I have 7 weeks to lose that weight and for those that aren't math majors that 3.571 pounds a week. Which is do-able and a little more realistic than my normal 50 pound a week goal, but is still going to be an uphill battle.

With all that being said Austin and I just had lunch and she ate more calories than I did. I mean and why shouldn't she after all, she weighs nearly 20 pounds and I weigh nearly 200...about the same if you ask me. Needless to say I am starving!

I went out to eat with Tadd yesterday and came to the conclusion that one of my problems with working out is that I feel as though I "deserve" to eat whatever I want when I am working this hard. Of course we all know that's not true but I sure wish it was.

Oh and I am wicked mad to learn that you only burn 100 calories ~ish a mile when you jog/walk. I try to get in at least 3 miles in the morning and as it turns out that really isn't that much and to think I thought I was kicking ass.

Monday, May 10, 2010

My First Mother's Day

I was telling Joe last night that Mother's Day seems so surreal to me. I have spent the last 30 years telling my Mom happy mother's day and now people are saying it to me. It's still hard to believe that Austin is ours and we get to keep her, how many smiles can one little person give you...the answer is limitless.

We had a wonderful Mother's Day here with a big meal, sangria and cheese cake to boot.

I was just watching the news and apprently we are supposed to get snow tomorrow night so I will have to wait another week to plant my garden, it sure seems like we have a short growing season here in Colorado.

While unloading the dish washer yesterday I dropped a knife and as luck would have it sliced open my foot. Apparently feet are big time bleeders since I couldn't get it to stop...what would a busy girl that has a party to cook for do? Well I am not sure what she would do but I super glued my foot back together and nows it's all swollen and hurts when I put any pressure on it but is no longer bleeding. Again I would like put on my grave stone either "where there's a will there's a way" or "the poor woman never had the right tool".

Oh yeah and look at who thinks it's time to learn to walk...so much for getting things done during the day. :-)


Thursday, May 6, 2010

I'm still angry...

I need to stop reading the comments on Facebook about this new law in Arizona because it is causing me to get angry over and over again.

But while I am still thinking about it...

While watching the Olympics this winter I realized what my favorite part about the opening ceremony was. And even though they played Joni Mitchell during that awesome flying part I still have to say that my favorite part is waching all the countries walk in. Because of the alphabetical nature of the lineup we go close to last, I watch as all the rest of the teams walk in. Everyone looks so similar from other countries, the Swiss are blonde and pale, the Africans dark and slender, the Asians yellowish-beige. And then the United States, we are an amazing mix of shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds. I know we are a melting pot so we should look this way but a lot of the foreign nationals play for the countries that they came from (hence the reason why I am not sure we should even be competitive in the world of hockey). So the people that make up our beautiful rainbow are in fact Americans. I can't believe in 2010 that we still have some of the issues in our country that we do, one of them being racism. I know prejudices are hard to overcome, I know I carry a lot of them and try deperately to rid them in my life. I want to teach Austin not to judge a book by it's cover and to speak with people and give them a chance before you make assumptions. Beacuse after all if you assume you just make an ass out of you and me (which is how I learned how to spell assume as a kid "ass-u-me").

And on another note, it we are going to profile people for being something that they may or may not be we need to pull over all while males between the ages of 20-40 because they have to be a serial killer. And all people with any type of Star Trek paraphernalia because they are obviously in to child pornography (Canda noticed that in 95% of the arrests made in connection with child pornography that the offenders had some sort of Star Trek gear around their house). But we can't make assumptions like this because we live in the land of possiblities and freedoms that so many before us have died to protect.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Oh Arizona you make me so proud....

Ok that statement was literally dripping with sarcasm.


Let me get this straight Arizona passes a law that allows police to stop anyone they see fit and ask to see their proof that they are a United States citizen. Hmmmm, I read about this once. Where was it...??? Oh yeah apartheid in South Africa when the white government took over the land and wouldn't let blacks walk the streets without their "papers". Ok first off, and I will reference my Pooba for this one. I am seeing a lot of "acceptable racism" here, I would like to go on the record that racism in any form disgusts me. Secondly yes I would like for everyone to pitch in and pay their taxes just like everyone else and thus be tracked by the government just like I am. However, pulling over people with a tan in Arizona and checking for their documents is not going to solve that problem. Are these illegal immigrants looking for work, or perhaps a place to live...why can't we ask to see their paperwork then. Why not offer some sort of incentive to companies who hire people that are legitimate TAX PAYERS...let me kindly remind people that not only was my family brought here "illegally" and stayed but people all over the US don't pay their taxes...white, brown, black and purple. The issue here is not the immigration laws but rather that in this country you are innocent until proven guilty and now in the great state of pink jails you can literally be harassed for having an accent.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Fat Camp

Ahhhh, tonight is Fat Camp (The Biggest Loser)! I love Tuesday nights, even when we had a bunch of roommates I would run down the stairs in the morning asking everyone "you know what tonight is....Fat Camp, Yahoo!" and run off. Tonight is makeover week and as with most people that are carry around a lot of excess weight these people need to start looking at themselves differently on the inside and outside once the weight starts coming off.

J and I swam 22 laps this morning because in our 5am stupor we didn't remember that we were only supposed to swim 20 today. But we did it and are even starting to swim 4 laps at a time without breaks...of course we then have to take turns resuscitating each other but it's totally worth it.

And it's volleyball night, it's super windy out right now but sunny so I'll take it.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Summer's Coming

Another weekend has come and gone. We didn't record an amazing time at our 5 mile race on Saturday but we did finish with smiles on our faces and without taking breaks. I have to remember how far we come when I start thinking that we should be doing better. And of course there was 90 minute spinning on Sunday which makes us both delirious but is a totally amazing workout.

Our grass is getting green in spots and our trees are budding. It has been amazingly hard for me to wait on planting my garden this year. Being a Colorado native I know I can't plant before Mother's Day but with nice days scattered throughout the last couple of weeks that's really all I can think about. Soon though I will have all kinds of yard work to keep me busy. :-) You can tell that summer is right around the corner, we just started our Volleyball league last week and Joe's softball league is coming up in the next few weeks. It always feels nice to get out and play some sports with each other.