WHAT? 2 blogs in Sept?!

Impressed? You should be!



Yep, I am blogging again. And actually I am a little surprised myself. :)



Things are going pretty well here. I'll do a little recap, which will be very little before I get into my usual babbling.



Lily had her first day of Gymnastics last week and LOVED it. She only cried once with the bars and lets face it, they are a little scary. They were the scariest to me as a kid too. Of course it is only a VERY short little bar and Miss Katie was holding her the whole time, but she freaked out none the less. But as soon as she was away from the bar, she was fine. She really had a great time and ever since has been practicing her "nastics" and putting her hands up to say "ta-dah" after she does her somersault. Very cute and I am loving it. I love for her to have some interaction with other kids, and she asks everyday if we are going to "nastics today?". I only took one picture at the very end (when I remembered), but I am sure over the next couple months I'll have plenty of opportunities to take more.



Lily is definitely in that 2 years old "kids say the darndest things" phase, and I LOVE it. She is constantly saying things to crack me up. I can't think of all of them and these probably won't sound that funny without hearing her little voice say them but here are a couple examples from this week. We pull up to our community's gate and I roll down the window to punch in our code at the box and Lily, from the back seat says, "I want french fries mama" all excited. She totally thought we were at a drive through! It caught me off guard, and I cracked up. One day I was coming home from the Dr and I walk in the door and she comes running to me with her most excited happy voice and yells "Mama you're home!" runs into my arms, gives a big hug, and in the same happy/excited voice says "I'm pooped!" Hooray! What a welcome home present for me. Why she couldn't have told daddy 2 seconds before I walked in, who knows? But her excitement in me being home to change her was pretty funny.



Izzie is going through the "separation anxiety" stage and if any of us walk out of a room and leave her alone for 2 seconds she freaks out. She always wants us within a couple of feet of her. Not very conducive to getting stuff done, but oh well! She is still just a sweet and good girl and I am so grateful for her!



Matt is still doing great in school, although as we look at school costs for him to finish everything up at ASU over the next year, so that we can apply to Anesthesia school, it is pretty sad. I am definitely happy that we have downgraded all our living expenses, but we have been able to avoid debt (except our car) for our whole marriage and the big fat school loans are intimidating, especially because I know that right afterwards we will be going back to school again and needing way more school loans. Hey Obama, how about instead of pumping $ into everything else, lets forget about healthcare and corporations for a minute and make college more affordable, especially medical based programs of study. Seriously. Its pretty ridiculous. Matt is also doing great at work and I am so proud of what a great nurse he is. He is such a hard worker and good daddy to our girls. He's got a lot on his plate, and sometimes I forget what a good man he really is.



As far as I go things are going well. I was released last week from my activities calling (I guess a little blog complaining goes a long way!). It was good. Although I really did love that calling and I WILL miss it. As the bishop said "I had a love/hate relationship with that calling". The girl they replaced me with will do awesome, so that makes it easier to let go. The primary kids sang in church yesterday and did great. I love being able to work in the primary and help those kids learn about music. Our program is next week and I am anxious and nervous and excited etc. I'll let you know how it goes!



I've got a couple of appointments this week, that should go well. The one specialist that things are still unresolved with I don't have an appointment for 2 more weeks. Which is a BUMMER because she has me on this medicine as a temporary fix until we can find a better method of treatment and it is a pain! It makes me SUPER tired and I am not allowed to run at all or do any medium intensity exercise. It is really frustrating and I just can't wait to get everything figured out and get off this stupid med so that I can start running/working out! It has been my goal to do a 5k, and they have one here at Thanksgiving that I was planning on doing, but I am going to need some serious work to get my stamina up after these dumb pills. I am not sure when I will be able to be off them, but I feel really frustrated. We are going to stay in Newport Beach for 5 days in Oct and that means a swimsuit and long days on the beach, so the no exercise thing has had me pretty stressed out, so 2 weeks ago I decided I would go on a crash diet. I have done really well at sticking to it, but it has been really hard. Seriously, it should be so hard. I am seeing the scale go down, which is great, but I definitely feel like I am losing muscle, which is a bummer. Anyway, the first week I lost like 6.5 pounds which was awesome, and this second week it has slowed to a pound every 2-3 days. Which is still great. I can't really "see" a difference in my body yet, but my clothes are starting to fit a little better and the scale is going down so that is good. I am in the mid 130's and I hope to be in the 120's in Oct and hopefully by then we will get me off these meds and I can start running and exercising again! I still don't think I'll ever get back to my HS/college 115 but low to mid 120s would be good for me I think. Anyway, yes, that was a lot of rambling. If you are still reading good for you!