The good, the bad and the yucky!

So eating healthy is good and bad. Let me break it down...
The Good
1. Feeling better
2. Weight loss
3. More energy
4. Hmmm...I'm sure there are more good but just not coming to me right now
The Bad
1. It is EXPENSIVE
2. It can be a bit restricting
3. I miss Diet Coke, Aspartame and all
4. Did I mention expensive?
5. Time consuming, it is much quicker to go through the drive through or purchase a pre packaged, preservative filled meal
6. Organic fruits and veggies don't last as long, they need the preservatives to last more than 2 days without wilting/molding
7. Requires a lot of thought and label reading
8. Vegetable based breakfast sausage
Yep, I bought frozen veggie breakfast sausages. What do they taste like you ask? How about a mixture of goo and cardboard, yeah I think that about sums it up. I'm really making a good effort but this is where I will definitely have to draw the line. They were super disgusting and I think made Trent almost lose his appetite which is a difficult task. So I think I still had a good dinner minus the cardboard and goo rolled up to look like a sausage, Trents dinner I don't know you be the judge.
My dinner...
egg whites scrambled with reduced fat cheese, mushrooms and onions
whole wheat english muffin - I only ate 1/2 of one of the halves
turkey bacon and about a tablespoon of hashbrowns, I just needed a little taste...
coffee (black) - my new lifeline to caffeine
Trents dinner...
6 egg omelet (the whole egg, not just the whites) with mushrooms, onions, like 5 pieces of bacon and cheese. Oh yeah, don't forget the package, yep an entire package of sausage gravy
A huge mound of hashbrowns
coffee, with more creamer than coffee
I guess the healthy eating for the family is a work in progress...

Fun New Blog

Blog hopping has led me to this great site. Right now they are having a contest to win an ipod, you can learn how to enter here

Wednesday Tip of the Day

After you wash and dry your sheet sets put them into one of these large Ziplock "Big Bags" with a couple dryer sheets. The next time you change your sheets they will smell freshly washed!

We Can't All Come and Go by Bubble!

Last night my friends and I went to see Wicked at the Wharton Center in Lansing. "We can't all come and go by bubble" may just be my favorite line! We were in the very last row of the entire place but the show was so amazing it didn't even matter. I had heard from several people that it was a great show and they were so right. If you have an opportunity to see it, I would highly recommend it. I don't want to give any of the story away in case you haven't seen it but if you have and you can remember some of the other great one liners feel free to comment! **A piece of advice, if you do go and are tempted to buy the soundtrack there, don't. It was $28.00 and everywhere from wal-mart to itunes carries it for around $10.00.

Papers, papers everywhere

We seem to have an issue with papers...projects the kids do, the newspaper, mail, junk mail, stuff from church, bills, coupons, a tree or two from Fidelity (they send me very faithfully stacks of papers that make NO sense to me), I am actually going bonkers trying to come up with a way to harness everything. We don't have an office and that is part of the issue, so the kitchen counter, table, computer desk whatever gets cluttered with all of the above. I feel like I am a pretty organized person but the papers are taking over! I guess I am just bitter because it is 1:20 am and I am still cutting coupons from like 6 papers ago, 1/2 of them are expired. I think I'll go to bed.

The Rock Wall

In March Ally climbed the rock wall at Dicks Sporting Goods in Okemos. Every time we go there we spend about 30 minutes playing on the escalator and watching people on the wall. This trip Ally decided she was ready to do it herself. We were so proud of her, she did great!

Bug Howse

I love the new experiences of kids and the creativity of my own. They found this plastic container in a pile of stuff my Aunt Laurie gave us. They took out the beanie baby and came back with the "bug howse". Ally is learning to spell and if you have been there or are heading there let me tell you it is tough. Why wouldn't you spell house that way, she looked at me and said h o w s e, and made the w sound a couple times and just stared at me.
If I were a bug this is for sure where I would want to live. Though I probably wouldn't live long without air. My kids love "light bugs" and the other day Ally actually wanted to bury Emily, her dead firefly. I told her we could probably just get away with throwing her in my flowers, that's probably where she would have wanted to be anyway. Luckily this suggestion was met with no opposition. She opened the door and flicked her into the flowers.

Need a pedicure?

I will be in Alexandria in November maybe I should check out Yvonne's salon...GROSS!

Summer vs. Winter

Why do summer days go so fast and winter days seem to go so slow? Daylight is already starting to end earlier and before you know it we'll be needing a sweatshirt when the sun goes down.

Working Woman of the Week

So following my friend Sara on twitter led me to find that she is the Working Woman of the Week. Sara that deserves a shout out and a link! It doesn't say how she won this honor but way to go! I can't wait to see the plaque.

I love white bread

I was raised on white bread, pure carb loaded, goodness stripped out, delicious white bread. We had bread at every meal. My dad used to make spaghetti or macaroni and cheese sandwiches with buttered bread. Sounds gross but those millions of carbs mixed together are fantastic. Don't believe me, try it yourself. Next time you have spaghetti, take a piece of fresh white bread butter it up, with REAL butter of course, put some spaghetti in there, fold it in half and dig in. This can also be done with original blue box Kraft. Using any other brand, easy mac or homemade has not been tested therefore I can't be held responsible. If you try it let me know.
So I am trying to make the switch slowly but surely to wheat. I have heard that unless it is 100% whole wheat you may as well be eating white, I think that is good advice but I guess I'll continue to try. I have found whole wheat tortillas and whole wheat english muffins that are good but I just can't get into a slice of dry, hard, seedy wheat. My last purchase of bread was "whole grain white" I think this is just glorified white bread but at least it sounds high tech.
I have been trying to add healthier foods to my diet and cut out those that I know are just plain bad. I gave up Diet Coke, again and haven't had any fast food in 3 weeks. I miss the Diet Coke but amazingly I am doing ok without the fried foods. I'll keep you posted on the white to wheat progress!

Family Camp

Family Camp is held at Somerset Beach Campground every year. We just spent the week "camping" with most of Trent's family. I use the term camping very loosely as Trent's parent had a room at the Applewood Lodge. Air conditioning, a real bed and our own bathroom is our camping experience. I know, really roughing it, but I'm just not much of a camper. His parents volunteer for the week and my wonderful sister in law was gracious enough to offer to keep the girls while Trent and I worked the beginning of the week. I stayed out there Wed-Sat and we had so much fun. I feel blessed that my kids were able to spend the week there.
Luckily she can just jump in the lake to clean off!
Playing in the sand is a big part of the day
Sawyer, Cecily, Ally, Wittaker, Lanie, Grammy and Roarke

Saturday was a yucky rainy day, we had planned on staying but the rain sent us home, it gave me a head start on laundry and getting back to life.

The best of the week:
The beach and the beautiful weather
Bible school for the kids
Time with family
Nightly Church service
Learning how to play speed Scrabble
Catching up with friends
The worst of the week:
Hoards of attacking mosquitoes!

Our Vacation - Texas 2008

Thursday the 26th...
Lanie woke up about 7:30, she is my early riser always! Since she was up Ally and I both were up also, we are sharing one room. Our biggest issue last night where everyone was going to sleep. We could have two rooms, two beds, but the girls wanted me with them so we have 1 room, 1 bed and an Aerobed. Who is sleeping with mom? Since we couldn't agree the girls got the bed and I ended up on the lovely Aerobed, at some point in the evening we all ended up on the air mattress and the lovely bed was empty.
We get up to see what's happening, Lanie sees the pool and decides she is ready for a swim at 9:30, I think we got out of the pool around 7:00 - FABULOUS 1st day of vacation.

Friday the 27th...
More swimming, more relaxing. It is HOT here and sitting in the sun actually sets your skin on fire. Dinner time rolls around and I am so excited, we're in Texas, I bet we'll eat something yummy! Nope, the kids choose Cici's Pizza ~ Yuck, not my favorite place.


Saturday the 28th...
Absolutely beautiful day today, of course we spent the morning and afternoon swimming and went to see King Fu Panda in the evening. My brother Corey was home and spent some time in the pool with us, the girls loved that. I'm sure he will appreciate the picture with the pink swimming cap popping up here.

Sunday the 29th...
We were planning on church today but everyone is exhausted and slept in so we didn't quite make it but had a great day just relaxing and catching up with the family.
Monday the 30th...
Grandma had to work until about 12:00 and Grandpa had a Doctor appointment. We were planning on going to the water park, Hawaiian Falls but Grandpa had an issue with his foot and wasn't able to get wet:( One of the things we do every year is go to Chuck E. Cheese, aka germ central, so that is what we did today.

Tuesday the 1st...
Spent the day at Hawaiian Falls with Grandma. We had a fabulous time. Both girls were so adventurous by the end of the day going right down the biggest slides. They both loved the lazy river and wave pool. Lanie wasn't a huge fan of the bucket that dumps like 5000 gallons of water over the entire kid section every 10 minutes or so, can't say that I blame her.


Wednesday the 2nd...
Grandpa had a meeting at work today and Grandma worked today also, so my friend Wendy and her kids came over to enjoy a little pool time. The kids have a sleepover with just Grandma outside on the porch, I was not invited.
Thursday the 3rd...
Woke up around 7:30 surprised to not find Ally in our room. Her and Grandma made it all night in their outdoor tent! We got ready and headed to Sam Moon in Dallas, the girls made out with new jewelry and accessories thanks to Grandma.
My cousin Garrett and his wife Emily arrived today from Arizona. My Aunt Tammee and Uncle Dave moved to Texas a couple years ago and live in Longview about 3 hours from my parents. We had lunch and spent a couple hours in the pool, yes we have logged a lot of hours in that pool! Ryan and I took the girls to see Wall E, another great movie. Lanie made it about 15 minutes into the movie and she was out. Both girls are going to be needing a vacation from their vacation.
Friday the 4th...
Spent the day just lounging around. We swam a bit, napped a bit and just hung out. We are all pretty worn out. We went to the fireworks in the evening and just had a great time! Tomorrow we leave, very sad, but we will be happy to see Trent.



Saturday the 5th...
Today we leave. We started the day with breakfast from McDonalds and went swimming of course. Eric surprised the girls with bumper boats for the pool, they had a fantastic last day in Texas.