Here I am!

I know my posts are few and far between, but that is a reflection of how busy things have been recently. In a good way. :D

We got approaved for a home loan through the USDA!! We've looked at roughly 10 houses, and finally found one that is perfect. We're going tomorrow for our 2nd walk-through of this house. If everything looks good, we're going to put down an offer!!

Front of house


Newly remodeled kitchen


Living room and dining room


My scrapbooking room!!!


Please keep your fingers crossed for us.

I'm finally losing weight!

July 27th was my first day of getting up at 5am. (I get up at 4 on sundays because I have to go to work early.) I've gotten up that early every single day (except for 2 where I was feeling sick, like this morning. But I still did my morning routine when I finally got up.)

I was 180 lbs when I started. I'm down to 165.3 now! I've lost 14.7 lbs!!!
I've gone down 2 pants sizes and I've lost 7 1/2 inches off of my hips!

According to my wii, I have 83 more days to go to my December goal. And I only need to lose 1 1/2 lbs by then.

I completely stopped eating dairy because of digestive issues.
I quit drinking soda.
And yesterday was my first day of drinking only water. I'm shooting for a month of this.

I may be signing up at a fitness center. I really want to. And it's right across the street from my work, so I could stop in there after work and get in 1/2 hour to 45 minutes before going home. It's a 24 hour place.

I'm just so excited about all of this! I've been a steady 180 since a couple of weeks after Orin was born. I never thought I'd see 165 again.

We're in the 2nd quarter of school already!

Where did the time go? We've already finished with the first quarter at school.
Morgan did awesome! She got 4 A's and a B+. She's reading at a 5th grade level (5th grade/7th month to be exact). Her teacher said Morgan is an absolute doll and she'd give anything to have a class full of Morgan's.

Orin's teacher said that he is so smart and polite. And she's sure that he is smarter than she is. lol

Fall pics...

afternoon at the park

I took Orin to the park after school on tuesday to have a picnic and play. He really hammed it up for the camera.







And he had a great time playing. He'd never been to this park before. All of the equipment looked like dinosaurs.

Busy Busy Busy

Life has been busy for us.

Both kids are in school now. Morgan is in 3rd grade and doing excellent. Orin started preschool. He goes on tuesdays and thursdays for 2 1/2 hours a day. He LOVES it. And he was so upset when he had to miss yesterday because he was sick. He had a fever monday night and then tuesday the fever got even higher.





I've been getting up at 5am every single day for the last 8 weeks to exercise before the kids wake up.(except for 1 day where I decided I needed to sleep in, but I exercised when I got up.) Makes it easier to do without them arguing. I've lost 7.4 pounds in these 8 weeks. I've also lost 5 inches off of my hips in the last year!
Only 32.6 pounds to go till I'm at my goal weight.

Saturday's trip to see Grandpa in IL

Wow, can't believe I didn't blog in July.

The kid's and I took a trip to IL on saturday to see my grandpa. We had a great visit and also got to see my Aunt Mary, Uncle Rick, Laura and Aunt Iris.


After that, we went out the the cemetary where mom is at.





Then we went to the big rock again @ the Lewis & Clark memorial site.
We also discovered that there is a museum down there too. Awesome! http://www.greatriverroad.com/lewclark/campriverdubois.htm




My GPS is so funny. I asked it to give me the fastest route from Granite City to Rolla, and it took me THROUGH the residential areas of St. Louis. Interesting drive though. Once we got to Sullivan, we HAD to stop for spicy tacos at Jack in the box.

We had a great time. And believe it or not, I've never made the trip to IL without another adult in the car to guide me. I did it all by myself (with the help of my handy-dandy GPS system). We'll have to do this again soon. I want more tacos. lol

My bff Jenny came to visit!

I haven't seen Jenny in over a year. We don't see each other nearly often enough.
We had a great time "playing tourists" in my own town. lol


First, we went to see the stonehenge on campus.


Then we went to lunch @ McD's.
From there, we went to the walking bridge by the courthouse that goes over the RR tracks. And we took pics by the Phelps County Museum.


After that, we went to the Millinneum Arch. This was pretty cool. In the 15 years that I've been here, I've never stopped to see it.


We also hit the park for a while and let the kids run off their energy.

Lastly, we finished off with some icecream @ DQ. What a great day.

My hair is so short!

I know, I was supposed to wait until after September. That way it would be a year since I've gotten it cut. But seriously, it's freakin' hot out there. So I got it cut. Since my hair was layered, the lady put it in 3 pony tails so that the layers would be seperated. The shortest layer was 8 inches long. The longest was 12 inches long. And I got a cute cut out of it. :D

Perhaps you didn't know...that my daughter is a genious!

In case you were still in the dark about her genious status....

Morgan got straight A's on her report card again for second grade.
And on her end of year AR (Advanced Reader) report, it says that she reads at a 6th grade level.

She makes me so proud!


I am so happy that it is summer vacation. No getting up at 6am every weekday just to have to fight with the girl to HURRY UP or you're never gonna be ready for the bus.

God help me, 'cause this fall I will have to get BOTH of them ready for school. 2 different busses, 2 different locations. The head start bus won't pick up out this far, so we have to drive him to K-mart parking lot and they pick him up there.

I will definately enjoy my 4-5 hours of quiet time though. :D

9 years of wedded bliss

Yesterday marked the 9th wonderful year of marriage for Chad & I.

It's hard to believe that it has been that long.
We've been through so much these last 9 years.

The best part has been bringing our 2 beautiful children into this world and watching them grow into amazing and smart kids. They complete our lives so perfectly.

I couldn't have asked for a better family.

I couldn't have asked for a better life.

Wish us luck

We go tomorrow to look at a house. It's 4 bedroom, 2 story, plus a basement!
4th room is mine for a scraproom! Basement is Chad's play room. lol
Here's the outside.

I like Mondays!

Yeah, I know that I'm the odd Mii out (and yes, I just made a wii reference!). But I DO like mondays. Especially when I'm off work. :D
But what made this an even greater monday? Well, that would be the new girl at work agreeing to bring me some Jack-in-the-box tacos on her way to work. She..Is..Awesome!

And yes, I did save some for Morgan. :)

Sick again

My baby is sick again. GI bug and an ear infection.
2 days off of school.
She feels better today. She's up playing baseball on the wii now. Yep, can definately send her back to school tomorrow.

This was at the dr. office yesterday afternoon.

April has been a busy month

Easter was great! I love knowing exactly what I work on Sundays so that Easter can be planned out perfectly. And this year, the weather was beautiful. We live in Missouri. The weather is always wacky in MO. And always cold and/or rainy on Easter. But this year, it was in the 70's and no rain. The ground was dry and the kids were in summer clothes. The egg hunt was perfect.



The pollen around here is horrendous. It's been so dry, and no rain for 2 weeks, that the pollen is looming in the air like crazy. And Orin seems to be more allergic than all of us combined.
Poor kid.


The last couple of days have been much better though because we finally got some heavy rain. The rain helped pull that pollen down out of the air. I didn't even have to give him his medicine yesterday and he slept without the cold mist vaporizer on. Hope it continues like this. I hate seeing him so miserable.

Morgan has learned to ride her bike without training wheels. We bought her a new bike for her birthday in December, but she hasn't been able to ride it yet, because the seat is a little too high on it's lowest setting. Chad is gonna use his dremmel to saw of maybe a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the post so that she can sit on the seat and still reach the ground.
So we've had her new bike stored away since December. I decided the other day to take the training wheels off of her old bike so that she can practice riding without them on a bike that she can definately reach the ground on. She's way too big for this bike, but it was helpful to her for learning to ride.
Chad helped her start out in the yard. He only held on for about 10 seconds, and then she was doing it on her own. About an hour later, she was walking her bike up the hill and riding it back down. She never crashed once.

Can't believe it's April already!

Where did the last 3 months go? They just flew by!

So, Orin can write his name now. This is the first time he's even tried, or shown interest in writing anything.
He is also sounding out words and can read a lot of 3 letter words.


Tuesday I took the kids for a walk. We ended up walking the entire mile and a half trail, round trip. 3 miles of walking with two crazy kids. We all had a great time.
(Click on the collages for bigger pictures).