Back On Track

Things have not been good the past three weeks with my fitness routine and again making sure that I put myself first with my health and fitness.

I love, love, love water aerobics but since switching to the Y after the whole yucky water thing at the "bad gym"... well it was ALL GOOD until it got cold. In the evenings at the Y, parking isn't great and not real crazy about the locker room situation. I love going to the gym but I like just leaving and coming home and taking a shower in my nice clean bathtub...

Well, I haven't exercised one bit since my mom's birthday the first of November. My activity at the farm has been minimal because of the weather and time constraints. That has been hard on my emotional health because the horses truly are therapeutic for all of us. Our time with them has us out in the fresh air - being active and if you haven't heard this from me lately - they are just amazing creatures!!

Anyway, we went and purchased a nice quality treadmill on Tuesday from Exercise Essentials. I'm now getting up daily at 5:45am (I will every day except Sunday) and I'm walking between 3-5 miles at a run/jog!!

I've lost two of the three pounds that I gained at Thanksgiving!

So hopefully - I'm back on track!!

Please keep encouraging me! It scares me how old habits crept back in so easily and the numbers on the scale quickly reflected that! I could have never done what I've done without the love and support of my family and friends - so please help keep me accountable!!! PLEASE!!!

I can't let all that I went through the first of the year be for nothing! I just can't!!!

LA :)

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I got on the scale this morning and I gained THREE pounds! No more holiday food for me! It's the first time I gained weight since my surgery!! *sigh*
LA :(

Our Thanksgiving

We spent the day with some of the people we love most! It was great! We had great food, great conversation, lots of laughter and it will be a great memory!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. ~Author Unknown

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth

I got an email asking if I had and no, I have not...lol! Life's just been busy and it shouldn't be so busy that I don't blog because this blog helps me tremendously with my journaling in my scrapbooks... it's amazing how quick you forget the little things! And, life would not be nearly as wonderful without those little things!

So, since the last time I blogged I have lost 3 more pounds and I'm now in the 180's!! I'm also officially in a size 14 and wearing a misses size large. YAY!! I finally took my wedding rings in to be sized because I'd been wearing them on my left middle finger and they were falling off that finger and I went from a size 9 to a size 6. That's the good news - the scary news is we are entering the food focused holidays! I heard this morning on Good Morning America that the typical American consumes 5,000 calories on Thanksgiving Day! Isn't that crazy? It would be physically impossible for me to consume that now because of the size of my stomach but that doesn't mean that I can't make wrong choices! I will have to be very careful!

We are planning a great Thanksgiving! Gran will be coming, our best friends Lisa and Rick are coming and Lisa's two daughters, Sienna and Chanel will be here as well. That is 8 people. I'm fixing an 18 pound Butterball turkey. This will be the first time in SIX years that Don has not had to work on Thanksgiving day! I'm so very happy about that! Katie is very much looking forward to it all! Sienna has babysat for Katie a few times and Katie loves her! Katie loves Lisa and Rick and of course - she adores Gran so it will be a lovely holiday - I'm sure!

Don got to go on a field trip last week with Katie's 2nd grade class to Safety City! Wow, was he zapped that night...lol!!!! The kids loved him being there because it's normally all moms... He got this picture of Katie and her best friend at school Lily..



Katie had to dress up on Friday as one of her favorite book characters. She choose Junie B. Jones which worked out great since she happens to be a little girl with short brown hair.... it was fun to be goofy and creative coming up with Katie's take on this fun character!



Today I was reading Lisa's blog. It made me laugh and it made me cry. The laughing stemmed from her being thankful for her MAC and not having to deal with the frustrations that PC users have... ditto that Lisa! :) But, most importantly - it made me stop and think about the fact that we all have SO MUCH to be thankful for... small daily things! Things that we all take for granted. Things that we don't think about!

I'm fighting off getting sick. On Sunday - I was talking with Mom and we were talking about how my immune system seems to be so much stronger than a year ago. I typically got 2-3 sinus infections a year - 1 case of bronchitis, occasionally pneumonia, kidney stones and kidney infections - migraines, etc. Well, late Sunday afternoon I started getting sick! ARGHHH!!! I'm taking meds and trying to get some extra rest and I'm sure I'll be fine. Just goes to show - don't ever brag about something you don't want to happen.

I haven't got to spend hardly any time at the farm in the past three weeks. That's probably lowered my immune system...lol! I'm actually not kidding! I truly think spending time on the farm keeps me healthier emotionally and when you are healthy emotionally - your immune system is stronger.

I canceled my lesson with Mary for tomorrow to try and get some extra rest in the morning while Katie is at school and then hopefully - Thanksgiving prep will kick into high gear when she gets home from school tomorrow. :) Katie is on a nine week break from STAR so maybe we can go to the farm on Friday while the rest of the world is CRAZY shopping on Black Friday!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving on Thursday! If you are traveling, be safe!

LA :)

Great Trip To North Carolina

I went to North Carolina this past weekend to help my mom celebrate her 65th birthday! So neat that we both had milestone birthday's so close together! It was a lot of fun. I got to spend time with Ronnie & Stacy (my cousin and his wife) and got to catch up with Uncle Ronnie & Aunt Linda.

But, I got some great quality time with my mom and my MomMom. Mom and I went shopping for clothes and also went to estate sales and garage sales for our eBay stores. We loaded up the Blazer - it was packed full of china and dinnerware! We were out early Saturday morning - so early we were using flashlights at this one estate sale that had their "junk" in the yard and their good stuff in the house. The stuff in the house was way, way, way overpriced but we got some great finds digging through piles of dinnerware on tables in the yard sale portion.

I was pretty jealous of their system for storing their store inventory. I'm always walking around going "bada bada, bada bada bada buh"... the tune to that old tv show Sandord and Son... the junk collectors. Well, our home isn't "that" bad but I feel overwhelmed sometimes and we are trying to decide whether to have a storage barn built in the back or rent a storage unit because we've run out of room and I still have 1000+ items to list.

They have a BIG basement with neatly organized shelves. They are doing a great job! MomMom is awesome at research and is really enjoying the stories of some of their finds. Mom cracks me up "Leeann, I could never do as well as you because I don't have the eye for this"... then she goes out and spends $4 on a box... a box that turned into $200 and is now in a museum in Pennsylvania. Yeah, mom just doesn't have the eye! LOL!!

MomMom and I got to catch up on all our political thoughts. I love my grandmother so much and I LOVE talking politics with her! She reads EVERYTHING! She is such a researcher and I always think that I am doing a great job of keeping up with world events, domestic issues, etc. until I talk to her and she tells me so much I didn't know.

Mom and I got MomMom a minocular for viewing birds, deer, etc in their backyard. She's really been enjoying being on their screened in back porch but her vision continues to deteriorate slowly so this will be a big help in her watching the wildlife in their back yard.

It was the neatest feeling in the world that they were able to give me clothes. It was fun shopping for clothes but it was also fun "raiding their closets". My cousin Ronnie made me feel so good... he would be talking and he'd stop mid sentence and say "Leeann, I just can't get over how good you look" and he'd give me a hug. Then, he'd go back to talking and then he'd stop and say "you just look so good" and then another hug, then back to talking. He did that almost the entire visit. I had not seen him since April.

I went Thursday afternoon and came home Sunday morning and the trip just FLEW! Ronnie and Stacey are going to come over soon to spend the weekend with us! I'm really looking forward to that!

Hope everyone had a great Monday!
LA :)

Fall Fun

We did the fall festival at Katie's school on Tuesday night. We didn't do anything on Halloween night because a lot of the "images" that are out there for Halloween have totally freaked Katie out this year and she's been having nightmares and really bad dreams... so we decided that the school festival was the only thing we'd do this year.










The thing at Katie's school was a lot of fun... a trunk or treat kind of thing where every trunk was decorated in a book theme... Katie nailed all of the books that were her age and under. I've included a picture of her with her first grade teacher, Mrs. Dean (then Ms. Huffstutter) and one of her best buds, Russell.





She had a lot of fun seeing some of her friends dressed up.

Halloween use to be so much fun when I was a kid and now it's gotten a little ridiculous. Seems like some people decorate more for halloween than they do for Christmas.

But, in any case, we had fun at the school. We were going to go to AC & Maxine's, Gran's, etc like we always do on the actual Halloween night but Katie was up until well after midnight the night before so that didn't happen.

I'm at Mom's for her 65th Birthday! Happy Birthday Mom!!! We are off to go shopping and have a great day together! I got to raid her closet last night which was so much fun. I'm wearing a Petite Large outfit today of hers! YAY!

More later!
LA :)