Why Dave will be the one helping with math homework

Dave's favorite TV show is Smallville. And I must admit, it is a guilty little pleasure for me, too. Tom Welling, anyone?

We are just finishing up watching Season 5 on DVD. And since we did not see a single episode of Season 6 (it was on at a bad time), we are not quite ready for Season 7 to begin on September 27th. Here is a only slightly paraphrased transcript from an actual discussion we had at 11:15pm last night.

Me: (very excited) We can have a Smallville marathon!

Dave: (brushing his teeth) Huh?

Me: (getting more excited) We can get my parents to take the kids for the weekend and just hole up and have a Season 6 marathon. That way, we'll be all caught up when Season 7 starts!

Dave: (sound of spitting)

Me: How long would we need? (begin talking to myself) 22 episodes at about an hour each. How long is that?

Dave: (long pause) I'll give you just a minute more to figure out 22 x 1.

Me: (realizing my own stupidity) Oh. Right.

FREE RYKA SHOES!!

Do I have your attention? Thought so.

My friend, Beth, is having a shoe giveaway over at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

And because she is so doggone generous, she's actually giving away a 2nd pair over at Tales From the Scales.



Two free pairs of Ryka shoes, people! And you can enter at both places!


WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE???

Thursday Thirteen - Jake

So last Thursday, I took care of 13 Emmaisms. What kind of mother would I be if I didn't put the spotlight on my son this week? So without further ado, here are 13 things that make Jake Jake.

1. Reading - Jake has been reading since he was about 3 1/2. He's a boy genius, I tell ya. And he doesn't just read the pre-readers, either. Today we were reading "The Wizard of Oz" and when I say we, I mean he was reading to me. We haven't been able to spell out surprise plans like Z-O-O in this house for a LONG time.
2. Toothless Wonder - He seems to have a knack for nearly (or completely) knocking his teeth out. Dave and I joke that by the time he should be naturally losing his teeth, he won't have any left.
3. HAIR! - This boy has some of the thickest hair I have ever seen on a person (besides me). He walks around most days with permanent bed head because it just gets in one position and stays there. You have to pretty much dunk his head in water to get it to lay down. Which reminds me, he's probably due for a haircut.
4. Blues Clues - Jake would watch Blues Clues 24 hours a day if we would let him. And when he's not watching it, he likes to get the whole family together to act out a fake show. Emma is Side Table Drawer, Dave is either Steve or Joe, I am Mailbox and Jake is always Blue. We had a new record this morning for number of clues in a single game. He usually has us find 4 clues...this morning it was 6. I had to find out what Blue wanted to do with an apple, a ball, a picture frame, me, chalk, and Jacob. That was fun.
5. Hide and Seek - He loves to play hide and seek, although he's really not very good at it. He "hides" in plain view. When he is hidden, he says "I'm right here!" until we go and find him. His favorite time and place to hide? Under the kitchen table, with all the chairs pulled out, when Dave gets home from work. The kitchen is the first room you walk into from the garage.
6. Leapster - Jake is addicted to his Leapster. He played it so much when we first got it for him that we finally had to take it out of the house and put it in the car. He is now only allowed to play it in the car. If we go on a long car trip (say...8 hours to Illinois), he's only allowed to have it for 30 minutes, then he has to take a 60 minute break. And he counts down almost every single minute. I wish I were exagerrating on this one.
7. His sheer size - Jake's a big kid. I don't mean his overweight or anything. He's just tall and solid. He's only 4 and people regularly mistake him for a 6 or 7 year old. He weighed over 10 lbs. at birth and never slowed down.
8. His bedtime routine - We really have to start paring this down. Every once in a while, we'll add something new to his routine, but we don't ever take anything away. I rush through it on the rare occasion I cover nighttime, but when Dave is doing his thing, it can take him up to 45 minutes. There's the obligatory time for hygiene, 2 or 3 books, general goofiness, back rubs, head rubs, nose rubs, prayers, talking about our day. It takes a LONG time. And Jake LOVES it!
9. Marbles - He got a marble chute a year or two ago for Christmas, and it's his favorite non-electric toy. It's about the only thing that keeps his interest long enough for me to waste away in front of quickly jump on the computer.
10. The Alphabet Song - O.K. I've already said he can read, which is going to make this one sound strange. He doesn't know the right words to the Alphabet Song. He's good to go until he gets up to L-M-N-O-P. When he sings it, it comes "H-I-J-K-and the letter P". Go ahead. Sing it to yourself. Amazingly enough, it works.
11. Hi Neighbor! - We try to really hammer home manners in this house and evidently we are doing something right. If Jake is in the room with someone he doesn't know, he will walk right up to them and say "Hi! My name's Jake! What's your name?" Which we love, but is oddly coming at about the same time that we're starting to talk about stranger danger. Any advice on how to have an open, polite kid in a increasingly dangerous world?
12. Teddy Bear and Ball - These are with him almost constantly. He likes to carry them around the house with him and if they aren't in his bed at quiet time and bedtime, then we have to do a whole house search for them. And ball is not a cute name for some other kind of stuff animal. It's litearally a stuffed ball.
13. Favorite things - provided by Jacob himself while I sit here and type this... color: gray; TV show: The Upside Down Show; song: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; food: macaroni and cheese; daddy: David; book: Get Out of Bed!; friend: Kaia (his cousin...sorry Maddy!)

Visit other Thursday Thirteen lists!

Wordless Wednesday

For more pics, visit WW or 5 Minutes for Mom

Slug Bug

I am not a morning person. I never have been. But still, I try to get up with Dave every day at about 5:45am so that we can down to the basement and do an abs workout on DVD. Some days I make it, some days I don't.

I made it today but a little part of me wishes I would have stayed in bed.

Just a couple of minutes into the DVD, Dave freaked out a little bit and yelled "What was that?" Since my eyes were only half open, I had no idea what he was talking about. I opened them up to see him wiping his hand and looking around at the floor. "I just put my hand in something slimy on the floor."

It turns out that a slug was making it's way across our basement floor and Dave had the good fortune to stick his hand right on it. Fun. After the initial freak out (Dave doesn't like squishy stuff), we started wondering why there was a slug on the ground.

We don't have an answer, but you can be sure we'll be looking out for slimy stuff whenever we are down in the basement from now on.

Smart Habits Saturday

Things have actually been going really well here, this week, despite the fact that I am a day late on getting this post up. Jacob is still having a few outbursts every now and then, but for the most part we've been having a lot of fun. It's helped that I have been taking the time to do the important things like play with him and Emma, and going places that give me and him an outlet (like the gym while he plays in the childcare room). It's been a huge help.


And since school is starting here in 11 days (not that I'm counting or anything), I think it's time to start getting everyone acclimated to a smoother morning routine. I've made Jake a chore chart for the whole day, broken down by time of day (before breakfast, before school, before quiet time, and nighttime) so that he can see everything he needs to get done during the day. I'd like to get to the point where he can go on autopilot in the morning while I help get Emma ready. We need to be out the door by 8:45am, and we lately we haven't been ready until 9:30 or after.


The other thing I would like to do is get back into the habit of going to my weekly Weight Watchers meeting. As a lifetime member, I am only required going once a month, but I find that I really do a lot better when I have that meeting to go to every week. I've been on monthly meetings since February, so this may take some getting used to!


Check out Lara's site for other's habits!


Here are my other habits/goals for 2007:

Simplifying - getting better

Post to blog before vistiting others - struggling with

Limit kids TV time - not a habit, but doing well

11:30 bedtime - habit

Emma's bedtime routine - doing a lot better

Work before computer time - struggling with

8K a Day - I'm actually up to 10K a day!

Wear my pedometer - habit

R-E-S-P-E-C-T - getting better

Food Journal and Scrounging - getting better

Increased personal reading time - struggling with - just need to find a good book!

Limit personal computer time - struggling with

1 on 1 kids time - getting better

Nothing to read

I am officially suffering from a Harry Potter lull.

I finished the book about a week ago, and I have yet to find something that I can sink my teeth into. I've started a book that Dave just finished, but that's more of a "treadmill read" than a "shirk all other duties read".

What's everyone reading right now? Can you offer up any suggestions? I need to get my hands on a good book!

Thursday Thirteen - Emma

I've taken up the habit of apologizing to my mom about once a week for any, um, undesirable behavior I may have exhibited as a child. Because I'm quite certain karma has come back to bite me in the backside.

Emma is a drama queen. And she's a ham. And while she is quite possibly the cutest girl child I have ever laid my eyes on, she's a handful. And she owns that title proudly.

So for my first ever Thursday Thirteen, here are 13 "Emmaisms" that sometimes make me want to bust out laughing, sometimes make me want to bang my head against a wall, and sometimes make me want to lock her up for the rest of her life.

1. Foot stomping - She just turned 2 in April and has developed a defiant foot stomp that I wasn't expecting until her preteen years. I ask her to do something and she stomps her foot, crosses her arms, flips her hair and says no. It's precious. Sometimes.
2. Screaming - O.K. This one doesn't make me want to laugh. Ever. The girl has a set of pipes on her that rivals the best sopranos in our church choir. She has actually made wine glasses that were hanging in another room ring from the severity of her scream.
3. Head shaking - This one cracks me up, but I'm afraid it will lead to either vomit or personal injury. While sitting in her booster seat, she shakes her head violently until she looks like she is going to pass out. She laughs as well as a disoriented person can and repeats 5 times.
4. Singing - Emma will sing anytime, any place. But only if she feels like it. She's quite the performer when the mood strikes her and she looks lovely holding her microphone and singing what I think is "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the top of her lungs.
5. Shoe kicking - She hates shoes. She doesn't like putting them on and as soon as she has the opportunity she kicks them off. One of these days, I just know that we'll be in the car and she will actually hit the driver in the back of the head with a high flying sandal.
6. Inappropriate diaper removal - We've had to start putting her in onesies whenever she is in her crib because we've had too many messes to clean up from her taking her diaper off. Now, she still tries to take it off through her onesie. It's quite a sight to get her up from her nap and see that she has tried to pull her diaper off through the leg hole of her clothes.
7. 1,000,000 faces - I have never seen so many facial expressions on any one person except for maybe myself. She can turn them on and off in the blink of an eye. It's really quite amazing...and a little disturbing.
8. "Help you?" - She is really big into helping now which is usually great. But sometimes she offers help when you don't necessarily need it and gets quite frustrated with you when you aren't gracious enough to accept her help. She really likes to help me go to the bathroom. Which basically means she stands there and stares at me and then cheers when I'm done. Good times.
9. "Rocks!!!" - Emma loves rocks. I don't know why. She likes to climb on the big ones and carry small ones she finds. Her favorite is when people use rocks instead of mulch for their landscaping. She gets so excited when she sees all those rocks there for the taking...and throwing.
10. Dancing - She knows a thing or two about tempo, this one. When it's fast music she runs around like she's got ants in her pants. When it's slow music, she slows down and channels Stevie Wonder in slow motion. Someone has even taught her to close her eyes and sway when the music is slow enough. I don't know who that could've been.
11. Falling down - Another of her favorite pasttimes is running in place and then suddenly falling down on her butt. She's actually airborn for a minute because she jumps first, she just chooses to not put her feet down on the descent.
12. Volume control - This kind of relates to the screaming. Emma knows one volume: loud. She hasn't quite grasped the whole idea of "inside voice" so everything that comes out of her mouth is a yell. I keep a constant supply of Tylenol for the headaches.
13. Hugs - This girl gives the best hugs in the whole world. Every time she hugs you it's as if there is no one thing she would rather be doing at that exact moment. She holds on for dear life and doesn't let go. They make my heart melt.

Wordless Wednesday

We have reached new heights in boredom here...

For more pics, visit WW or 5 Minutes for Mom

What's left...

I'm not entirely sure how my collection started. I remember my boyfriend at the time was named David (not my husband) and I think he was the one who bought me my first one. Then suddenly, people just started buying them for me. The strangest part is, I don't even like the candy.

At the height of my collection, I had well over 200 Pez Dispensers. Although I had 200 of them, I only had about 110 unique dispensers. That means for 90 of the designs, I had multiple dispensers. Those were the ones I was most proud of. I would look at my display and think how lucky I was to have two Snowman Dispensers, one loose and one in it's original blister pack. I would laugh at people who would ask why it was important I had two of each (that was my ultimate goal) and think, "Well isn't it obvious? I want them...just BECAUSE". How clever I was.

Several months after I had started collecting, my family took a trip to California to celebrate my brother's graduation from grad school. And before we left, I knew that I would be making a little side trip. Never mind the fact that my siblings were making fun of me. Never mind the fact that I was the only one who wanted to go. Never mind the fact that it was a good 45 minutes away from where we were. How could I visit California without visiting my mecca? I knew that come hell or high water, I would be visiting the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia.

I slowly came to realize that while I liked the dispensers, I didn't really know why I was collecting them. It wasn't a collection I had started for myself. It was if someone said "You should collect these" and I just blindly agreed. This realization came very soon after I had stopped dating the David who had started my collection. Coincidence? Probably not.

I eventually took down the display in my bedroom, but I had a hard time actually getting rid of the dispensers. I had spent a lot of money on them (relatively speaking, of course) and I had grown a little attached to them. After they stayed in a box in my basement for well over a year, I finally parted with them. There were some specific designs that I gave away to other collectors. I sold a few on Ebay. I even gave away one of my favorite motorized dispensers at a Christmas party. But the majority of the collection ended up in the dumpster.

There were several that I couldn't part with. My daughter, Emma, has laid claim to what's left and they have become one of her favorite pasttimes. As I sit at the computer, she loves dumping the basket out and asking me the name of each dispenser. While the collection was someone else's idea of what I should be interested in, they really do make me smile.

This is an entry into Scribbit's monthly Write Away Contest. August's theme was Collections.

MDWLC - Week 15

Finally, we've had a little movement. I'm down a .5 pound this week and I think it's because I'm walking more. Or I guess I should say I'm trying to walk more.

Eating out still remains a big obstacle for me. I know what I should have, I should have a big problem actually forming the right words once the waiter arrives. "Grilled Chicken Salad" suddenly becomes "Manicotti". "No thank you" for dessert morphs into "Tiramisu". It's amazing the tricks I can do!

Here are my goals for this week:

1. I'm finally making the jump to 10k a day on my pedometer. It's tough to do without getting on the treadmill but I'm trying my best.
2. A 3rd serving of dairy every day.
3. No eating after 9pm. This one is getting easier and easier!

Check out Tales from the Scales to see how everyone else is doing on the May Day Weight Loss Challenge!

MDWLC starting weight (5/18/07): 158
MDWLC current weight (8/21/07): 156.5
Loss/Gain to date: -1.5 lb
Goal weight for next week (8/28/07): 155

ssshhhhh! it's a surprise!

Dave and I just planned a weekend away...with the kids.

We got an ad in the mail for one of those hotels that have an indoor waterpark attached.

Jake and Emma? Yeah. They love water. A lot. As long as it doesn't get in their eyes. Then we could have a problem.

Anyway, for Labor Day Weekend, we are taking the kids away for one last hoorah before school starts. And we aren't going to tell them, because we're sneaky like that. That, and they have no concept of time so I don't want to hear about it for the next two weeks!

And the weird part? I'm actually looking forward to it. Huh. Go figure.

Blushing...

I have been honored with an award that caught me totally by surprise. Really, any award catches me by surprise, but anyway.

Tammi at ValleyGirl has found me worthy of the Nice Matters Award, and her description of me was truly humbling.

As for the award itself:

"This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you've been awarded please pass it on to others who you feel are deserving of this award."

And now to pass it on to some other folks that definitely deserve it more than me:

Michelle at Scribbit - I strive to be like Michelle and her little corner of Alaska. Someone that has as many subscribers and commenters as she does and still takes the time to send individual e-mails back is tops in my book!

Cyndy at I've Made Such an Ash of Myself - You wanna talk about brand-spanking new to the blogging world, Miss Cyndy only has 6 posts up. I know Cyndy and she truly is one of the nicest, sweetest, most sincere people I know.

Really, I could honestly give this tag to every single blog I read. But for the interest of time (my timer just went off), I'll leave it at those two. Please visit them, they really are very cool.

Just a few more weeks

So today was the last day of nature camp, and I have to say I'll miss it. Jake had a blast and came home everyday sweaty and exhausted. I think he really enjoyed it!

All of the parents were invited for a wrap-up cookout today for lunch and that was a lot of fun. The kids had a chance to eat and run off that last little bit of energy before they return to their normal lives. All Emma wanted to do was play in the sand. That girl has an unnatural fascination with all things dirt. And rocks. That girl loooves rocks. She definitely didn't get that from me. I'm no girly girl, but I'm not a big fan of dirt either.

I love my kids, but I am SOOO excited that school starts back up in 2 1/2 weeks. This'll be Emma's first year of preschool so that means on Wednesdays from 9-11:30am, I'll be all by my lonesome. And my grand plan for the time off? Clean. Uninterrupted. Oh, and bowl every other week. Mustn't forget the bowling!!

Wordless Wednesday - Temporary Solution

For more pics, visit WW or 5 Minutes for Mom

MDWLC - Week 14

Well, I think it's safe to say, I'v flatlined...literally. As you can see from my nifty graph below, not a whole heck of a lot of movement on the scales. Oh well, that's that way it goes sometimes. I've been doing really well with getting 8500 steps a day in and I'm trying to get back to 96 oz of water a day.

Now if I can manage to stop eating entire bags of chips the night before weigh in...

Check out Tales from the Scales to see how everyone else is doing on the May Day Weight Loss Challenge!

MDWLC starting weight (5/18/07): 158
MDWLC current weight (8/14/07): 157.0
Loss/Gain to date: -1.0 lb
Goal weight for next week (8/21/07): 156

There's hope!

First off, I want to thank everyone for leaving such great comments for me over the weekend. It was really encouraging to see what everyone said and it helped me out a lot! THANK YOU!!

We had a pretty good weekend. We spent the whole day together on Saturday doing family stuff which hasn't happened in a while. We went to the park, had lunch, played board games...it was very relaxing. Emma's attitude is still grinding on me a bit, but I'm trying to bite MY tongue before I bite HER head off.

My cousin threw a surprise 70th birthday party for my uncle yesterday. He and my aunt drove all the way in from Oklahoma to see my cousin's family. He wasn't very happy when he found out they were going to go to a party for my cousin's co-worker. Of course he was very surprised when the party was for him. It went really well and Jake and Emma had a blast playing with all of their cousins. The only tears were from Emma when it was time to go home, but they were both just exhausted. It was a great day. I started getting a little agitated by the end of the evening, but I was tired too so my tolerance was down.

Today was the first day of a Jake's nature camp. He'll be gone this whole week from 8:30-12 noon. I honestly think it'll do us both some good to have a little break from each other. Emma and I were able to make it to water playground with some other moms and kids from church. Emma had as good of a time as Emma can. There was a lot of whining and there were a couple stare downs between her and I, but over all it went well. Jake seemed to love camp and was very excited to tell me that he had seen some "Queen Anne's Lake". We've had a great day so far, the time we've been able to spend together.

I think the key is to not let things build up so much before I need to let the steam out. I'm feeling much better than I was even a few days ago. I think all I needed was a little perspective. It was good to get it out and it gave me an opportunity to step back and realize the things I was stressing about won't really matter in the long run.

Now if I can just remember that when this all happens again with the next "phase".

Smart Habit Saturday

So here we are again. If you read my post yesterday, you would know things haven't been going so well here. If you didn't read my post yesterday, let me tell you. Things haven't been going so well here.

What I need to start doing is simplifying, just like Lara talked about today. I need to stop trying to do everything perfectly and just start doing what I can. It does none of us any good for me to be constantly stressed out and unhappy. No matter how much I want to, I cannot fit everything into one day. My family needs to start coming first and everything else is secondary.

Here's a little list I compiled of things that will not cause the end of my existence:

1. Unmade beds
2. Unfolded laundry
3. Dirty floors
4. Dusty shelves
5. Crusty counters
6. Unwashed dishes
7. Checking e-mail only once a day
8. Excercising
9. Not blogging (GASP!)
10. Eliminating non-essentials from my to-do list

So with this list in mind, I am going back to square one this week. I will not be taking on any new habits. I need to really work on the things I already have, and I need to learn to pare down and not obsess when I haven't done everything on my list, let alone not done them perfectly.

Check out Lara's site for other's habits!

Here are my other habits/goals for 2007:

Post to blog before vistiting others - struggling with

Limit kids TV time - struggling with

11:30 bedtime - pretty good

Emma's bedtime routine - struggling with

Work before computer time - struggling with

8K a Day - struggling with

Wear my pedometer - habit

R-E-S-P-E-C-T - struggling with

Food Journal and Scrounging - struggling with

Increased personal reading time - struggling with

Limit personal computer time - struggling with

1 on 1 kids time - struggling with

Slipping away

I'm not feeling a whole lotta joy in my life right now.

It sounds harsh, but it's true. I feel myself wanting to retreat into a little hole of nothingness and not come out until....I don't know when. I don't know what the conditions would need to be to get myself out of this current downward spiral. I feel myself trying to recover from a slippery slope and it ain't going so well.

I've been having a lot of problems with Jacob lately. We just haven't been getting along so well. I am constantly yelling at him and he's being unbelievably whiny and demanding. And it's a vicious cycle, I tell ya. The more demanding he gets, the more upset I get. The more upset I get, the more whiny and uncooperative he gets. I just don't know what to do. He demands so much attention and to be honest, I just don't want to be around him anymore.

Emma is a monkey see, monkey do. So she has been picking up on Jake's bad habits. And she has been taking off her diaper during naptime and totally soaking everything...and then sleeping in it. I'm pretty much done with her, too.

And because of all of that plus other stuff that is going on, I feel myself wanting to retreat from everything. I have almost no interest in anything anymore. I've been on edge and short with the kids and Dave. I seem to be living in a constant state of being annoyed and upset. Most things feel like a burden; blogging, stuff I do for my church, cooking, cleaning, scrapbooking, eating right, you name it. Last night, I had the feeling that I just want to curl up in my bed and hopefully when I wake up I will somehow have miraculously developed new diet/parenting/housekeeping/time management skills.

I am 1 of 6 kids in our family, and most of us have been on medication or in therapy for depression. To this point, I have not been one of them. I have a heightened sense of the warning signs, almost to a fault. I often wonder if I am on the brink of depression, but then a second later wondering if I am just using that as an excuse. I think the difference is that I recognize the behavior I'm exhibiting and want to change it NOW before it gets to the point of therapy or medication, and I think that is definitely possible.

I just don't know where to start. Dave wants to help, and I would gladly accept it if I knew what to tell him. I don't know what I need to do to get myself going in the right direction. Time off (girls night out, dave staying home with the kids) hasn't really been helping lately because it just makes me feel guilty and like I'm a failure, and the behavior still continues after I get home. Things have just been so screwy lately at our house as far as schedules and routines that I'm just feeling totally off kilter. I definitely need an attitude adjustment, but how do I get one of those??

Here are my ideas of things I can change in the house and about our schedule. They may seem silly, but I hope they will help:

• More music - We usually have music playing in the house, but it's general the kids music. I need to play more of my music during the day and definitely listen to it when they are down for naps. Music generally makes me happy and I can actually feel the tension leaving my body while it's on. It may be a struggle though because Jake has a control thing going on now: if it's not his music, then he doesn't want any music.
• Back to a routine - I don't know if it's because of summer or because of Dave's travel schedule, but it seems like we have been flying by the seat of our pants lately. I need to get back to some sort of daily routine. The added bonus of this is that school is starting soon so it'll get Jake and Emma ready for that.
• The gym - Part of our routine was going to the gym. I can't tell you the last time I went. And I don't know why I don't go because the kids love it there. They have a blast because they are playing with kids instead of being stuck at home with me. I think I've stopped going because most days it's a struggle to get to breakfast without someone yelling so the stress of getting out the door to the gym is just something I don't want to deal with.
• Turn off the TV and computer - This is for both me and the kids. It has definitly become a crutch for me, no doubt about it. They are like a drug.
• Get Jake to play by himself - This will be the real challenge. If he's not bossing me around playing with me or watching TV, he really doesn't know what to do with himself. He has never played well by himself and his demands on me are starting to wear me down.

Any other thoughts from you home viewers? Any suggestions are welcome! Or if you just want to tell me I'm not alone in this crazy thing called parenting, I wanna hear about that, too! I don't ask for it often, but I'm asking for it now. I need your help!!

The tag - part 2: Me & My Hubby

This is the 2nd meme that Sue at Living My Dream tagged me with: The Me & My Hubby Meme. Here are 8 random facts about Dave and I:

1. While Dave will try any food once (shirako, anyone?), he prefers a single scoop of vanilla ice cream as dessert. I'm the exact opposite. I'm a very picky eater when it comes to entrees, but I will eat just about any dessert you put in front of me.
2. We own a treadmill. Dave has logged 421 miles on it. I have logged 19 miles on it. We've had it for nearly 2 years.
3. We both really like the comics turned into movies: X-Men, Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic Four. We're basically big geeks.
4. I am one inch taller than he is and I wear bigger shoes.
5. He has lived in 3 different states and I have never lived more than 20 miles from the house I grew up in.
6. We met during a community theatre production of Grease. I became his dance partner after another girl broke her foot 2 weeks before the show.
7. We balance each other out very well. Things that stress him out (usually) roll right off my back and he isn't phased by things that tend to make me flip out.
8. We both sing in our church choir.

Exciting stuff, I KNOW!! If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged! Leave me a comment to let me know your list is up.

Wordless Wednesday

For more pics, visit WW or 5 Minutes for Mom

MDWLC - Week 13

I maintained this week! Go me! Considering what I ate while I was away, I am quite happy with that!

Check out Tales from the Scales to see how everyone else is doing on the May Day Weight Loss Challenge!

MDWLC starting weight (5/18/07): 158
MDWLC current weight (8/7/07): 157.0
Loss/Gain to date: -1.0 lb
Goal weight for next week (8/14/07): 156

Until next week...

We are leaving tomorrow to go to Dave's parents' house for the weekend. 7 hours in the car with the kids. I'm talking pure bliss, people! And if history is any indication, both kids will fall asleep approximately 20 minutes before we reach our final destination. Fun stuff.

Jake is super excited though, he keeps talking about all the stuff we are going to bring when we go see Grandma and Grandpa. Leapster, books, his teddy bear...he can't wait.

Emma, on the other hand just likes to scream. At just about everything. And pouting, she's good with that, too. I'm actually more concerned about her on the trip than I am with Jacob. Emma is just not easily entertained unless she is literally bouncing off the walls (trust me, she ran into another one last night and just busted out laughing). She's a drama queen, that one.

Honestly, I don't know where she gets it from!

Wordless Wednesday

For more pics, visit WW or 5 Minutes for Mom