What a week

It has been a long tiring week here at our house. Hubby has a project deadline of May 9th and is working 6 days a week 12 hours a day plus his hour commute each way. On his birthday we saw him for half an hour, the next night another half and hour, didn't see him last night due to volleyball, and will be lucky enough to spend an hour and a half with him tonight. He will be working over the weekend but said he will take Sunday off.

His lack of sleep has affected my sleep as well. I find it weird that I have a hard time sleeping when he is not next to me. I have woke up many mornings this week around 4-4:30 and have not been able to go back to sleep. This lack of sleep has really caused me to be avoiding blogging.

Hopefully this weekend I will have a chance to catch up. I want to post some birthday cake pictures.

If you have a chance and you need clothes for your children Walmart marked quite a few things down to $1 a piece today. Mostly leggings and long sleeve shirts. (Don't know what is marked down in the boys section since I don't have any boys) Anyway, great deal for clothing! Better than used clothing prices and they are brand new.

Weight Loss Mondays

Well I haven't posted any weight loss news for almost two weeks due to our vacation. Just before leaving on vacation I managed to make it down to 129.6 and was thrilled. Of course with vacation brings bad eating habits and no exercise. I wasn't surprised to return home to see my weight had jumped to 132.0 Fortunately through exercise and diet I was able to step on the scale this morning to see 128.8. I was shocked and didn't even believe it at first. I got on the scale two more times just to make sure it was true! I felt soo happy. I have now to date lost 11 pounds! I can't believe it. Now my new problem will be trying to find money in the budget to buy some clothes that fit! ;-)

Disneyland splash mountain

I just had to share this photo we bought from Splash mountain at Disneyland. Aly and I are in the middle of the boat and our friends Amy and Taylor are in the back. While Aly didn't like this ride I was very proud of her for how brave she was and how well she handled herself. The big drop at the end was the only time she screamed and we were done she politely said she didn't want to do that ride again.

Did you know that KK was big enough to ride the Matterhorn? Apparently you only have to be 35 inches and she is just between 35-36 inches tall. She also was tall enough to ride the Mickey Mouse roller coaster. She loved the Mickey Mouse roller coaster and asked to go on it again and again. She rode the matterhorn but we were not too sure if she liked that one or not. She kept her hands over her eyes the whole time.

Aly didn't really like the Mickey Mouse roller coaster and didn't even want to try the Matterhorn. She wanted to stay with the mellow rides. Hopefully next year when we go she will be ready for some more thrill rides, otherwise KK will be passing her up on most of the rides while she stays behind watching ;-)

Previous Family photo pics at Disneyland

I thought it would be fun to go through my pics and find some of our old ones from previous trips to Disneyland.

I am not quite sure on the dates of these pics but my guess would be that Kayla is somewhere near one and Alyssa is near 3 years old with the picture on the left. The picture on the right perhaps Kayla is 4 months old and Alyssa is 2?

The picture on the left was last May just before the girls turned 2 and 4. The picture on the right was this trip.

Can you tell Disneyland is our favorite family vacation? After all it is the happiest place on earth!

Our trip to Disneyland with the Glanville's

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we went to Disneyland. We met my best friend Amy and her family. Amy used to live in Pollock Pines but she moved to Montana almost two years ago. We try and meet in Disneyland once a year to see each other. Alyssa and Taylor used to be best friends so it was really fun for them to see each other.

The first ride we had to do was Dumbo and it ended up being one of the favorite rides. The picture on the right is Alyssa and Taylor in Minnie's House.

The picture on the left is Kayla and Mommy in Minnie's house and the picture on the right we are on the teacups ride.

Teacups was definitely a family favorite ride as well. We even got Taylor and Timmy to love this ride.

I think we must have gone on the Merry Go Round 20 times or more. Eventually due to tired feet both Mommy and Daddy started riding on a horse too!

Since Daddy liked spinning so much he took all of the kids on the teacups while Amy and Angela wimped out and went on their own teacup and didn't spin it! Aly is showing off her new hat in the picture on the right.

Our family vacation

This week neither started as planned or ended us planned do to unforeseen circumstances. We did however manage to make it to the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland. We had a great time at the San Diego Zoo. We got there at 9 a.m. and left around 3 p.m. Believe it or not we were able to see all of the zoo except for the petting zoo.

The girls had fun climbing on the hippo statue and climbing in caves.

Daddy's favorite spot was the Bonobo's exhibit. He must have spent a half an hour looking at them!

Mommy's favorite thing was the hippo exhibit. The girls really loved the giraffes and it was the giraffes first day in their new exhibit.

Aly brings home Paddy from school

On Monday Aly celebrated her pretend 5th birthday at preschool. Since she has a summer birthday her teacher picked another day for her to celebrate. Last year when she was turning four she was really confused and expected to have a party at home with presents etc....She didn't really get it. This year she understood it better and was excited as she knew she would get to take the class panda bear Paddy home. Here is the letter we had to write for the class about our experience with Paddy:



All year long Aly was anxiously awaiting her turn to take Paddy home. Well, Monday was finally the day! As soon as Paddy got in the car Aly snuggled him close. When they got home Aly and Paddy watched the movie “The Waterhorse” They loved it! KK, Aly’s little sister started to get jealous of the time that Aly and Paddy were spending together so they both began fighting over Paddy. Paddy didn’t like it and felt scared. Aly and KK had to share Paddy and take turns. While it was hard for Alyssa to share Paddy, she did a good job. KK wanted Paddy all the time, including bedtime, so Alyssa slept with Paddy the first night and KK slept with Paddy the second night.

On Tuesday Aly had a dentist appointment. Paddy was a little nervous about going to the dentist so Aly held onto Paddy tight. The dentist counted Aly’s teeth and she even let them polish them. Paddy was so proud of Aly for doing such a good job at the dentist.

Tuesday evening Aly had a friend named Jenna over and they both loved playing with Paddy. They let Paddy play on a boat and they fed him his bamboo.

Aly is happy to bring Paddy back to school today and let him have a turn to visit someone else’s house.

The Plumber: Tortoise VS the Hare

In the past month we have had two different plumbers come over. The first one installed out hot water heater and was so slow it took him three hours to do it! The second plumber we had over today came to fix a copper pipe leak behind the shower. While he was here for two hours he only charged us for one hour of labor.

Let me tell you a bit about the slow plumber first. Ed got the entire job ready for him by finding the leak, cutting the sheet rock near the leak, and removing the bathroom cabinet. After having such a slow plumber when they charge $95 an hour we have learned to do as much as possible ourselves. So all this plumber needed to do was fix the leak. Well, apparently the whole to access the pipe wasn't big enough. Instead of him using a knife to cut more sheet rock he just used his hands and ripped it off--now hubby will have to make a clean cut around the area himself. Here's the big one, instead of cutting the copper pipe with a knife he ripped it out with his hands causing the copper pipe to rip out farther away than it needed to be replaced. Now he was replacing a section past the toilet and ripped out all that sheet rock by hand!

In between all this ripping out he is upstairs cussing and saying he hates plumbing and that he will never do this again. He manages to cut his hand twice and gets blood all over the wall, floor, etc and doesn't clean it up. He is so high stress that he is stressing me out. All that comes out of his mouth is negative. At one point he told me he was 40 and his birthday was at the end of the month and he thinks he is going through a midlife crisis. When he is ready to turn the water back on to check his leak the well doesn't go back on and he is back to pissed. Good thing he was outside so my children didn't have to hear it. I told him that hubby could come home and figure the well problem out and he was so frustrated by it he agreed, I paid him, and he left!

The slow plumber was always quiet and professional. My biggest problem with him was that he added things on on hot water heater without consulting us. Also the fact that he was so slow milking the clock.

So who would you choose? The fast bad mouthed plumber or the slow plumber that milks it for all he can?

I think I will try someone new and forgo both!

Weight Loss Mondays

This past week I was able to loose a pound. I weighed in at 132.4. Total calories burned for the week was 4,853.3 This equals just a bit more than 1 calorie burned which means my daily food intake was not so good.

I have found that if I want to loose 1-2 pounds a week I need to burn 900+ calories a day. If I want to maintain my weight I can probably just stay around 400 calories burned per day. I still have a bit more that I would like to loose as I get ready to wear a swimsuit in just 4-6 more weeks. The good news is I am toning up more and it is nice to see some definition in my legs.

I love sugar way to much to give it up so working out will be a regular part of my life. We all have to compromise somewhere. I know sugar isn't healthy for you but I do love it. I don't over indulge but I do like to have at least one thing sugary a day whether it is a piece of candy or a cookie or a piece of chocolate. It is all about moderation and balance and I am working on that to find out just what is good for my body!

Aly Reads to KK

Aly is getting to be such a good reader. She is reading many Dr. Suess books with great fluency. KK is even lucky enough to benefit from Aly's reading skills as Aly is now reading books to KK. One of KK's favorite books right now is Go Dog, Go by Dr. Suess. I was able to get my Flip video camera a record a portion of Aly reading to KK. I didn't record the whole thing as it would have been 3+ minutes long. It makes it much easier for uploading videos to the web if you keep them at 1 1/2 minutes or less.