Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

So at the beginning of the year I made resolution to lose 20-25lbs. I have had this extra weight ever since I was pregnant with Aaron and have never been able to loose it. Well, I will admit that in January I didn’t do much to lose the weight. In fact Eric and I got into this really bad habit of eating ice cream at around 10pm everynight. So, of course, I gained about 5lbs. Oops! Well we put an end to the ice cream and on Feb. 2nd I joined a gym.
I have now been motivated to lose this weight so I have been getting up at 6:15am every morning and working out. I go 5 times a week. Three times a week I have been jogging 2 miles or more and two times a week I lift weights. Then twice a week I walk about 1.5 miles round trip to the park. After not seeing any results after working out for 3 weeks I decided to join weight watchers to help me keep track of what I am eating. I have been on weight watchers for a week and a half now. I have done pretty good for the most part but it is so hard when I am home all day and have access to my kitchen all day.
Since I started working out I would weigh myself on the Wii fit board every morning. According to the Wii I have maybe only lost about1.3lbs in since I started to work out a month ago. The graph from this last month is all over the place. Does that just sound wrong to anyone else? I really don’t know what I am doing so wrong. I thought I would have at least lost the weight I gained in January by now.

I am also so frustrated with Aaron and bed time. When we put him into a big bed out of his crib when he turned 2 he did great for the first 2 months. He would go to sleep when we put him down and he would wait for us to come get him. Then he discovered that he could actually get out of bed himself. After a long struggle with that we resorted to locking his door and letting him cry it out. Eventually he went back to bed or fell asleep by the door. Now he is tall enough to turn on his lights. So as soon as we put him to bed and lock his door he is right out of bed and turns on his lights so he can play with his toys. We have constantly gone in there and put him back in bed. He even tells me what I am going to say. “No lights, stay in bed.” Then within seconds of me leaving his room he is back out of bed with the lights on. We tried just ignoring it as long as he is quiet. Well he was up until 11:30pm last night. Then he was up again at 1:30am with the lights on and then ready to get up for the day at 6:00am. My baby sleeps better through the night than he does. It is driving me crazy. I don’t know how to keep him from turning on the lights. We have put a night light in his room so that he could still see in his room but that did nothing. I just don’t know what else to do but it makes it impossible for me to wind down for the day when I am putting my toddler to bed all night long. Any suggestions?
Sorry if this is a complete blog of complaining but I need answers to these problems and I don’t have them. Ahhh!

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So Frustrated

The letter of the day is A. A for Amazing, Awesome, and Amazon.

I was downstairs cleaning up the kitchen this morning, when there was a knock at the door. Well, actually it was a tell-tale knock knock THUD, which means that the UPS guy has come to the door, knocked with one hand, and used his other hand to throw whatever package he brought at the door. I get a bunch of stuff from UPS and it’s always the same…and no matter how fast I run to the door, by the time I get there the guy is in the truck and gone. It’s the equivalent of being doorbell ditched.

Anyway, I heard the knock knock THUD and assumed that someone in the house had ordered something, since I wasn’t expecting anything. When I got the package, however, I saw that it was an Amazon package addressed to me. This immediately caused me to panic. I’m a big Amazon user and sometimes I order things and then forget about them, but since we’re done with all of our holiday shopping (and freshly broke because of it), I was worried that I had pre-ordered something and forgot about it.

So I brought the box in and opened it, expecting to find a gift for someone that I had accidentally already purchased another gift for. Instead, I found a gift wrapped package. I never get things gift wrapped from Amazon, since I’m cheapo and would rather just muddle through all that myself, so this was my first clue that I didn’t send myself this package.

The second clue was the note on the top:

That’s right. The package came from Kate, who has been over in Iraq for more than a month now. My sweet, lovely, wonderful friend took a break from defending our country and sent me a Christmas surprise:

It was good that she wasn’t here to watch me open it, because I totally burst into tears and I have a feeling she would have found that unpleasant. I know this because we have a lot in common and the last time I gave someone a gift and they started to cry in front of me, I wanted to take it back and go, “uh…I didn’t know you were going to do that…so I’m just going to leave this over here and maybe you can open it later when I’m not in front of you and forced to deal with your emoting.”

KATE, I LOVE YOU!!!! And I love my prairie goodness! This is even better than a stuffed camel!

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The letter of the day is A. A for Amazing, Awesome, and Amazon.

We started a new little tradition this year – the ‘ELF‘ delivering a little present to Lance & Tallie on Dec 1 with some Christmas jammies that they can wear all month! We told Lance all day the elf was going to come and so after dinner we went into the family room to listen for the door. Speen ran out the back door and door bell ditched us and was back in the family room before Lance even noticed! It was so cute, Lance kept saying “the elf came to the door!”

Oh I love my little cuties!

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The ELF came to the door!

My two little kiddies… Can’t believe Tallie is already one month!

The GoOsE is SPOILED! Charlie and Michelle came over the other night, and look at Lance’s bedtime serenade… lucky boy!

Lance was a peacock at my parents ward Halloween party!

Halloween started off with a visit from “grammy” bearing Halloween cookies!

Then I really wanted to try to get a cute family picture.

Love this picture of Tallie with her eyes wide open!

BIG FAN of my mom!!! She is SO DANG CUTE to my kids.

BIG FAN OF THE CUDDLES!

The carving of the pumpkin!

Getting reading to go trick or treating. We had Lance be a lion again because this costume was a lot warmer.

Spencer’s favorite part of Halloween is scaring all the trick or treaters. Lance would stand in the window as the decoy and when people would come to the door, they would see Lance through the window and say “what a cute little guy” and then Speen would rip open the door and scare em!

Sunday morning – I slept in and when I woke up, Lance was wearing this… and no he does not dress himself yet. I asked Spence what his thoughts were when he got Lance dressed (Christmas tree socks tucked into pj bottoms with army shorts on top with a zip up hoodie with no shirt underneath???) and he said he was just trying to get some warm clothes… hmmmm???? Well that is one reason I LOVE little boys, they can get away with not matching!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!

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HaLloWeeN!

Can you believe it’s November already?

Tonight at dinner, talk turned to Christmas presents and plans for 2010. I just don’t know how the time flies so quickly! I feel like I’ve been waiting for this winter forever, but now that it’s here I can’t believe I missed the fall.

Kate will be shipped out soon and in a month Riley will turn two. Kyle and I will hit our one year anniversary and before I know it Randy will graduate from high school and people will be asking me if I’m going to my ten year reunion.

Last night, though, it felt like time was sliding backwards. As the sun set, Kyle put on a cape and I put on some cat ears and then we loaded up our candy bucket and sat on the porch to watch the kids trick-or-treat. It's so easy to feel like you're still eight years old when you see kids running across the lawn with their winter coats zipped up over their princess dresses. We stayed outside for more than three hours and passed out kit kats, chocolate bars with almonds, starbursts, peanut butter cups, snickers, blow pops, glow bracelets, nerds, smarties, laffy taffy, twix, m&ms, whoppers, skittles, butterfingers, runts, dum dums, gummy teeth, and capri sun.

We easily saw more than 400 trick-or-treaters, from babes in arms dressed up like vegetables to kids that looked like they could have been in college, sheepishly asking for candy. I love it. Kyle and I were ready to grab our pillowcases and join them. Of course, it doesn’t take much to bring out the kids in us!

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Can you believe it's November already?Tonight at dinner, talk

We had a fabulous Halloween and shared the spook-full night with our friends the Birds and Barells. Calahan was a hoot! He’d run up to the door just a few steps behind Jack and Wyatt screaming, “door, wait!” Then he’d give the door greeters a sweet little, “halloween! trick-treat! thank you!” then run off to catch up with the big boys and do it all over again. If you asked him what his costume was he’d look at you with a mysterious grin and say, “saur -a-saur, ROAR!” and throw his hands up in the air by his face. Oh I love this holiday and can’t wait for next Halloween!

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Saur-a-Saur and Darth Vader

It is crazy how much I don’t feel like blogging anymore. Sorry! I know I am not the only one though because some of you are just as bad as me. I still love to check out everyone else’s blog but I am never in the mood to update mine.

I think I finally have figured out how to manage two kids and a dorm. Things have definitely gotten a ton better for me. I was hitting some post partum depression for awhile. I think the stress of a new semester and two kids was just too much for me. I think going on that cruise was a wonderful break for me. It gave me the energy to come back and do better. I am trying to keep a positive attitude about everything and enjoy my time with my kids. I love being a mom and love that I can spend all day with them. They are just so cute.

With Aaron in the big bed we have the crib set up for Kaylee. We tried to let them sleep in the same room together but it was very hard because they would wake each other up. Aaron would sometimes climb into bed with Kaylee and wake her up. No one was getting sleep in our house. So now I have Kaylee sleeping in the pack n play in the living room. Sometimes Aaron gets up in the middle of the night to play and one morning I found him asleep back in the crib.

We are slowly working on potty training Aaron. I haven’t made the official switch to underwear yet but every once in a while I let Aaron sit on the potty so he can get the idea. It was funny one day when he tried to get on the potty himself and some how pull the seat out from under him and he fell in. He wasn’t quite sure what to do and mommy and daddy just pulled out the camera and laughed.

Kaylee – She is now 5 months old and is a very easy baby. She is very patient with mommy when she needs to take care of her demanding older brother. Kaylee smiles at everyone who pays attention to her. She loves to suck on anything and everything and is always drooling. She doesn’t roll over yet but she can sit up all by herself for about 10-15 seconds. She loves playing with Aaron’s toys. Aaron keeps reminding Kaylee that she needs to “share” as he takes those toys away from her. Overall she is a very happy girl and we are blessed to have her in our family.

Winter is almost here and it has already snowed a few times (luckily it didn’t stick around). When it did stick to the ground I pulled out Aaron’s snow gear and let him go outside. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the snow but he liked it.

Kaylee is so sick of lying around. I can tell that she wants to get up and play with the rest of us. She must have some killer ab muscles because she is always lifting up her head like she wants to sit up.

My little princess!

I have two adorable kids and I love them very much!

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2 Adorable Kids

How quickly you forget what a blessing it is to be able to sleep through the night without any interruptions. For the last month this little precious babe has been a thorn in the side when it comes to sleeping at night. We plan on having him wake up in a fury of madness at least 4 times per night. (last night it was more like It’s like we have a newborn in the house again! (minus the 30 min feedings and diaper changes, thank goodness). We are ALL feeling the consequences of being woken up every few hours, UGH. We are guessing that Cal is experimenting with his freedom of not being in a crib anymore. I even took him to the Dr’s to make sure nothing was wrong with him. And let’s be honest, we did have him sleep with us a few times in the beginning when we were literally zombies and couldn’t put the babe back into his own bed. I think he thought it was quite cozy snuggling up in between ma and pa.

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How Quickly You Forget

I just read this post at EatPlayLove and it got me to thinking about the “drop by”.

In the neighborhood I grew up in, dropping by was just part of the deal. I remember my mom’s friends stopping by and chatting, my friends knocking on the door to ask if I could jump on the trampoline and neighbors gathering on front lawns or back porches to talk.

I’m glad I live in that sort of place now. My neighborhood seems to put up the “come on over and visit” flag when we hang out in our front yards, kids riding bikes between driveways and little ones chewing on toys in the warm grass. It’s one of my favorite things about warm weather- friends sitting in the shade, talking. But what about the “drop by”? What about just seeing someones car in the driveway and thinking- “maybe I’ll stop in for a few minutes to say hello”? No treat to drop off, no “purpose” to the visit- except reconnecting with a friend.

A few weeks back, my friend happened to stay a little later after a summer class I had going for the kids. Our girls played with toys in the living room while we chatted and caught up. It was so nice to hear what was going on with her and her family. She only lives a few doors down, but sometimes I feel so out of the loop! Right then I resolved to talk or call at least once a week with friends! Then, yesterday morning, a good friend knocked on my door. I was a bit surprised, but totally thrilled to see her! “I was in the neighborhood running an errand and thought I’d stop in…” she said. I was baking bread- and asked her to come on in and hang out for a while. Our kids played with toys, I got up to my elbows in flour and she sat on the bar stool and we just “caught up”. Yay, us! Yay, friends!

What is holding us back from just dropping by? So my house is not always white glove clean. But, I think most of our homes are that way, we live in them for heaven’s sake! No one is going to be offended or grossed out by a few dirty dishes or an un-vacuumed floor. Yes, we are busy- but really, so busy we couldn’t stand on the porch and chat for 10 minutes? I don’t think so! And don’t we all feel just a little happier when a friend has stopped to chat? I feel more connected to my adult side, too- not just my “mommy” side after being with friends.

Let’s bring back the drop by! Pop in at my house for some cold lemonade and some warm slices of bread anytime. Don’t let drop by’s become extinct!

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Bringing Back the "Drop By"