Monday Workout Summary

Today's class was a challenge, but I made it through without too much difficulty! 30 minutes of cycling - 15 minuets of which were alternating between cruising and sprinting, lower and higher levels of resistance. Very similar to that which would be in a spinning class. It was tough, but maybe I will have to try out one of the spinning classes in the near future!.

After that it was back to the paired exercises - do one of the machines and then go over and to the corresponding floor exercise to go with the machine. Today we were using resistance bands to work out upper arms and chest. Those were tough! Lisa and I decided that those are going to hurt tomorrow! At the end of class we took 10 minutes to work our Abs as a class. This time I made it through the whole series of reps without having to stop!

So far this class has been super! It is giving me more options on what I can and need to do on those days that I cannot get to the gym!

Wednesday... after class I will do 3 miles on the treadmill in less than 45 minutes (working to improve that time from the Wyld Turkey Race on Turkey day!

Round and round we go!

Well, it is officially the end Thanksgiving weekend 2007...

What a crazy week! I say week because my parents rolled into town on Tuesday, my Uncle on Wednesday. So the office was turned into the Guest Suite again, my dad claimed the couch in the basement and everyone was happy. It was really odd this year to only have 6 people at the house for Thanksgiving! My brother, his girlfriend and daughter were spending Thanksgiving with her family and Dan flew out to California to spend the holiday with his family (first time in many years - his trip out there was a whole different adventure!).

Darrin and I started Thanksgiving day with the Wyld Turkey Run/Walk at the local YMCA. A 5k walk to get you moving - make you feel not so guilty about all the food you are going to eat later! He set the goal of finishing in 50 minutes. We started out at a jog - easier to go wtih the flow of runners at the beginning to wait for them to spread out.
Over the 3.1 miles, we walked, we jogged, we ran. I knew that we were keeping a good pace and it was going to be close to finish at his goal. There was one guy that we saw out on the course that had his 4 year old with him. That was so cool to see. The first time we saw this guy, he actually was jogging with his son on his shoulders! Now that's some good added resistance!
When we left the park trails and got back to the main road, Darrin knew we didn't have much further to go and he got his second wind! Once we reached the corner of the parking lot, Darrin said it was time to run. Strong finish to the line! As we got closer to the line, her realized that we were at about 48 minutes - he was going to beat his goal!

Once we finished the course, we headed inside for a small snack and find out our offical results...

48:08 !!

Now that's our time to beat for next year!

Friday morning was shopping... alarm went of at 3:45! We were at the stores by 4:35. 4 hours later, we were able to get just about everything that was on our list - after visiting the 4 stores on our list! We even got my Uncle up and out the door by 4:30 (who usually would just shake his head at us for getting up that early to shop!). He was on a mission to get a new CHristmas tree to go in his new house!

Friday night we went to the local comedy club/theatre for the stage show that they were running. One of the best shows I have seen there in a long time! John ended up not goign with us becuase he got sick at the last minute and I told him that I woudl pay to see it again so that he could go too! Maybe next weekend...

Now part of the Christmas lights are up outside, will start hauling out the reast of hte holiday decorations tomorrow and by next weekend they will all have a home again in the house.

It just seems like every year, we start seeing CHristmas decorations earlier and earlier. Not only in the stores, but in people's yards! Christmas trees on sale right next to fake spiders and goblins. Then as soon as some people take their Goblins down from teh house, the CHristmas lights go up.

Now I can understand putting hte lights up when it is still nice outside, but please don't turn them on until at least after Thanksgiving! Enjoy each holiday as it comes - we dont' need to see your Christmas decorations up at Easter!

Time to update!!

I guess it has been longer sine I have been here to post than I thought! So much has been going on the the last month and that means that I have not been able to get here to post anything!

Business is going great. My promotion when into effect November 1st. I currently have 4 active ladies on my team (two of which have started in the last month). They are all doing well! In fact, they are all doing so well that it looks like I will be able to earn a trip to Hawaii!! I will only earn the trip for one, but still it is a great accomplishment. The next decision is going to be, will I take the trip and go with the girls, will we buy in John and him and I go with the rest of the winners, will I opt to take the cash buy out and use it towards a vacation for John and I at a later day? Such choices!

Halloween was a lot of fun this year! We decided to volunteer at the zoo for their annual Zoo Boo. Darrin loved that! Instead of going to collect candy, he was passing it out to the little trick-or-treaters that were wandering the zoo. When we left the zoo, Darrin asked if we can do it again next year. It was really a great experience for him. It was really a fun night! The funniest part was, only a handful of kids actually knew who we were dressed up as! But the adults all knew - apparently kids these days have no clue who the Addams Family is! We did get some photo's from Halloween posted so feel free to check them out!

In fact that photo site listed above is a great site that John found not too long ago that we have been using on a regular basis! It is fast and easy to upload pictures and create your own albums! Be sure to bookmark that site and check back frequently because we add new stuff - especially with the upcoming holiday's!

We also have found a really cool ScrapBlog website. Here you are able to create your own Scrapbook blog! I started doing a few pages and am probably going to do more. Very easy to do, we are just trying to figure out is there is any way that you can print out your pages after you finish them! Here you can find our adventures at the Pumpkin Patch this year and then our Halloween adventures. I am still working on the cover page for the Halloween Album and still need to add the photo's from trick-or-treating, so check back for those later!

The Holiday Season is right around the corner and everyone is busy getting ready. Thanksgiving once again is here at our house. We Will actually only have a small crowd this year. Brian, Brenda and Dessa are spending Thanksgiving with Brenda's family (there drove here last year to be with us). Dan is actually spending Thanksgiving with his family in California. This is the first year in many years that he will not be with us for Thanksgiving! So there will only be 6 of us this year. But we have 35 pounds of turkey to cook!

Yes that's what I said! 35 pounds and only 6 people! My uncle decided that he wanted to do a deep-fried turkey this year. Now I have tried DF turkey before and it is ok. Better fresh than reheated, but only ok. John thought the same thing... we want good leftover turkey! SO I bought the 10-12 pound turkey that will fit in the fryer and then a 24.5 pound turkey for the oven! Hard to say just how much will be left over! I just know that everyone will be able to have as much as they want and then some!

I am also trying to make the other side dishes as health friendly as possible. Last year I made many of the dishes with low fat and fat free products and no one noticed the difference, so I am going for it again this year! We are also trying some different recipes... onion, herb and chive mashed taters in the crockpot, stuffing also warmed in the crockpot, a new recipe for cranberries. I will post the recipes later if they are worth making again!

Time to get back on the wagon and stay there!

I just finished a 6 week Group Express fitness class at the Y last week and today was the first day of a new one. It was a really good class - 30 minutes of continuous strength training in the gym. No weight machines to work with! Everything was weights, stability balls and your own body. I had contemplated taking the same class again with the same trainer, or taking a different class at about the same time that was a combination of cardio and strength - this was also an hour instead of just 30 minutes

I opted for the new class. So far I am thinking that I am really going to like this class! She told us that each class is going to be 20-30 minutes of cardio and then each day would vary somewhat in what we did for strength training. Very cool! When it is something different all this time, it is harder to get bored with a class!

I think this class might be just what I need to get myself back on a regualr workout schedule! I have been doing pretty good about getting to the gym Mon/Wed/Fri, but need somesort of motivation to get there other days! I seem to always find some excuse not to go! Taking this class might give me the boost to really watch my food intake too. The trainer told me that I was welcome to bring in my food journal once a week or so and she would go through it with me. Very cool!

Kittens catch their first mouse!

We knew the day was finally coming that our kittens would catch their first mouse! Today was that day! I got home from the gym to find the kittens both in the kitchen. Fozzy with a guilty look on his face and Silver was sitting on the floor in an odd position. It was after I started walking toward them that I realized that SIlver had a mouse in her mouth (realized it when she decided to drop it and it attempted to scamper off). Silver promptly poundedon it again and proceeded to bat it around the kitchen like a hockey puck. Fozzy sat there with a look on his face that said "but I wanna play with the new toy too!"

They must have caught it in the basement and hauled it back upstairs to play with it. We very rarely see mice upstairs so that was the only logical place where the mouse came from!

I managed to get past them, avoiding the mouse (I really do not like mice on bit!!) to call John to let him know that our kittens were officially mousers. It was at that time that I also decided that I would try and get a picture of them with thier mouse (probalby not the smartest thougth of hte day). As I was standing in the living room, leaving John a message, and picking up the camera, I turned around to find Silver prancing into the living room, proud as can be, with that little mouse hanging out of her mouth by it's tail! She was bringing me her prized to me to show it off!! I looked at her and told her to get away from me with that mouse and she decided to drop it!!

Apparently the mouse was nto dead - it managed to get away from Silver and scurried under the couch! THe cats tried getting under there any way they could to get that toy back! Unfortunatly I did not have time at that moment to try and find the (most likely) wounded mouse... I had someone coming over for some computer training in 15 minutes! I still needed a shower!

After Pam left and Darrin got home, we turned to couch over and there was no sign of hte mouse. We are hoping that it was not really wounded, just in shock and would be able to find it's way back to the basement. I am just hoping that it was still alive and I don't start smelling it pretty soon!!

At least we know that the kittens can catch those mice!!

A new school year brings great changes

As many of you might remember, last year with had some issues with Darrin in school. We were curious as to what we were going to find out when we went to Parent Teacher Conferences this year. Last year was very trying for all of us, including his teacher!

Last night marker the first Parent Teacher Conference of the year. Darrin had some incentives riding on how this conference went! He kept telling us that he was doing good, but we wanted to wait to see for sure (we learned the hard way last year that what he said was not always what was really happening!) Grammie has bought his a really cool pirate ship to paint, but he was only going to get the ship and paints if we got good reports! So now was the moment of truth!!

The conferences were actually Student lead, so Darrin was in the hot seat! His teacher and student teacher were both there to add their input but the first half of the conference was all him! He showed us some great work that he had completed and then shared what he THOUGH his grades were going to be. This is where his teacher stepped in and filled us in on what his actually grades were...

WOW... big differences from last year! All A's and high B's at this point! His was only missing ONE assignment! This was a huge improvment from last year (missing assignments, incomplete assingments and more!). We were expressign some of our concerns about what we had been dealing with last year (the talking in class, daydreaming, missing assignments, incomplete work etc). Both his teacher and the student teacher looked at each other, looked and Darrin, then at us as asked if we were talking about the same kid!

They have had NO issues of talking or other class disrutions, all his assignments are finished (with the exception of the one that we knew he was missing) and he is participating in calss discussionsn regularly! He is actually at a higher reading level than they look for by the end of 5th grade! He loves math and science and is always eager to learn more.

WooHoo!! The old Darrin is back! Now we are just hoping that he continues the great work! It will be a while yet before we get that first report card (not til after Thanksgiving) so we are anxious to see the results!

How things can change so quickly!

My business has been cruising along nicely, without too many bumps in the road! It has been really great to not have to worry about the little extras each month! My calendar as been consistently full for the last few months and that has been a great feeling! My biggest goal has been to build my team a little more so that I can bring my business to the next level.

And how things can change so quickly!

I found out a few weeks ago from a friend of mine that her mom has been seriously thinking about starting her own lia sophia business. And she wants to sign up under me! Very cool! I just met with her (and her daughter who is going to be doing alot of her computer work etc) and she is very excited to get started! She wants to do enough shows each month so that she can switch to working only part-time at her other job.

Then Last weekend I also got a call from my hostess the day before her show to tell me that she just lost her job! She wanted to turn her show into a starter show! Her and her best friend are signing up together and sharing the business!

Now the training begins! With the added new teammates, I am hoping to be able to promote to Unit by for November 1st Now I am just keeping my fingers crosses that as a team we will be able to make the numbers each month!

If two years ago someone would have told me that I would be successfully running my own business and building it each month, I would have told them that they were crazy! But here I am, doing just that! This has been an exciting ride that I hope to continue! It has given me the opportunity to provide things for my family that I would not have been able to do, working a normal 40-hour a week job! And I can work at home in my pajama's some days!

I suppose I need to get back to work now! No one really knows what tomorrow will bring, but let's hop on and enjoy the ride!