Attempting to Organize my Life

I am always running around. I have 4 sons, 3 different schools and 1 very active 2 year old at home with me. Their activities include Track, Young Marines, Gymnastics, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Special Olympics and other things I am sure I forgot just now. We have the the annual check ups, semi annual dentist visits and the unexpected my son is hurt urgent care visits.

Between all of this I keep forgetting things. I have an Ipod Touch that I love and it has a calender where I keep my appointments, but at an emergency doctor visit I have probably left my iPod at home. So for months now I have been searching for the perfect solutions. I have seen the household life binders and tried a few different ones, but all of them were missing something. Now I think I finally have the best one for me you can find it here.

That site has a video how she put hers together and why. I think it is very good. At the bottom of the post she has the complete binder for you to print as a free printable. Cool Huh? I love free! I also love free things that help me be a better mother and wife.

What works for you?

Long Time and no Blogging from me

Sorry. I have the most energetic two year old in the world and he keeps me running after him. Even now he is sitting on my computer talking to me and begging for my attention. I know you are thinking why aren't you giving him your attention. Well I have been all day. I have a few episodes of Scooby-Doo, Cailou and Micky Mouse Club House down by heart. Not to mention the many books I read to this little man every day. Yet, I would not change it for the world.

In this economy we haven't been getting much business and there are a few things I need and/or want. So I am getting back into Swag Bucks to get a few free items. I did this a lot in the past and today I found out I still had a free $10 credit at Amazon.com. I ordered Toy Story 3 for my little man the shipping was free too. So I did some checking and found out the credit was from Swag Bucks over a year ago. I love that site. So I am going to start up again and search for fun and free things to make my men happy. OK once I ordered a few books for me with my credit, but that was only once.

Now I am not being paid in any way to tell you how wonderful they are. They just happen to be the site that made me happiest today in my cyber strolls. So go check them out.

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No Excuses

Baby and I were sick there for a while. I am happy to say I am pretty much better. I am sad to say my little man is a little slower to mend.

So along with my new home I want a new body.

I have been working hard to make our house a home. Unloading boxes and putting things where they belong, adding to the give away/goodwill pile. It is a work in progress. I am sad to say I still haven’t come across my Healthy Diva Christmas trade stuff. When I find it, it will be off in the mail.

Baby has been a Wonderful exercise tool. When he needs attention I pick him up and do some bench presses. Yep, he works well being over 23 pounds. I am feeling the burn. He also helps me do crunch thingies. I put him on my legs while bringing both my neck and legs together. It feels like it is helping my stomach. We also do double leg lifts together. He shows off his adorable dimples while I count and make funny faces at him.

I have also been working at eating better again. I don’t know about you, but when I stress out I crave chocolate and other “bad” foods. Awe my homemade pizza. One of the great loves of my life.

Along with baby weights I have been working on cardio. I have to do this. I am feeling so sluggish and sad that I only have 3 skirts and one pair of jeans that fit OK. I hate being this far off track. So here I go yet again. My life has settled and I have no excuse for staying this way.

The thing that really threw me off the ledge of overweight comfort is Family pictures. We hadn’t had any taken for just under 4 years. So when were offered a free 8 x 10 by our insurance agent for Christmas, we jumped at the opportunity. We had done some more moving that day and were only able to find all solid long sleeve shirts (so we don’t match well) and we ran to get our pictures taken. I thought my hair looked OK, boy was I wrong I have frizzy hair and it shows. I have been indoors with baby a lot and I look like Casper the friendly over weight ghost with witches’ hair. Yep I am big, frizzy and white as can be. Still I ordered 5x7’s for my family for Christmas since they all need to see baby.

So now that I made this my Health and anything else I feel blog I have you all to encourage me and listen to my ups, my downs and anything else I feel like blogging about. Thanks You all for your support.

Going Private

For all of my Family and close personal friends I am going private in a new blog. I will keep this blog for my journey to health and any other non personal things I want to blog about.

I made the new blog so check your email for your invitation. If you didn't get an invite and feel you should, well then you probably should have. I am sorry to have missed you. Please email me or leave a comment and I will send you an invite.

I want to be able to write more about my kids and at the same time feel more secure to share more pictures and personal information. It will be fun to see how this works out. I know going private is hard for the people wanting to look. It can be a pain to log in, but I think this is best for my family.

Life is never dull in our house

We did it. We finally moved Saturday November 8. I love our house. I will post pictures soon. I haven’t taken any since Baby B and I have been super sick the whole dang time. Now he has a double ear infection, croup and a super bad cold. To top all that off yesterday he got 4 shots.

Our short time in our new home has been super eventful. For those of you who don’t know on top of our regular jobs we serve in jobs in the church for free. My honey was released from his calling in our old ward only to be called as an HC in our new ward before our first Sunday there.

The boys have been attending scouts in our new ward and having a lot of fun. I love how they are always made to feel welcome no matter where we go. Well they have been working on swimming stuff. So A was trying to find the perfect (light weight) outfit to wear to jump in the pool in. He found a pair of pants and the button was missing. He wanted to dress nice since our family needed to attend the first meeting with E in our church clothes. So E being the sweetie he is found a large belt and was attempting to add an extra belt hole so the belt would better fit A. Yes, he sliced his finger right to the bone. Oh, it was such a mess. This happened right as we were getting ready to run out the door to be on time. Awe the memories I get living with all men. Let me just say it took a long time to stop bleeding. I grabbed some superglue to take with us and we left. So E excused himself to go clean the wound and put some superglue on. Being a man it is a mess. I wish he would have let me help. All the other men were so kind, but did get a nice chuckle out of this.

So when we arrived at the Seminary building (nope we don’t have our own Stake Center yet) there were a lot of trailers and lights. Parking was jammed and it the lights were drawing our attention. My Father in Law said the movie “The Spy Next Door” staring Jackie Chan was filming there. Traffic when we left was worse. Still I was able to get out and drive up the street to the pool to drop off the two oldest for scouts.

When Eric got home it was so fun to hear about his experience. What really made me laugh was that he couldn’t shake hands with the others since his cut was on a knuckle and he was afraid that it would reopen. I love my hubby and all that he does for our little family. We have been so blessed.

Gratitude

In getting caught up in all that I have missed over the loss of the net due to our move, I was reading the Healthy Divas post on Gratitude. Today I want to share five of the things I am grateful for.

1. I am grateful the Lord blessed us with a house of our own.

2. I am grateful for all the friends and family that have/will help us pack, move and clean the old house.

3. I am Super Grateful for my 5 men. Yes I may be seriously outnumbered, but they are all mine and I wouldn't have it any other way.

4. I am grateful for my health and the health of all of my men.

5. I am grateful for the Internet and the knowledge and communication in gives me.

I have other things I am grateful, but these five (in no particular order) is enough for now. I hope you have a Wonderful day.

What are 5 things are you grateful for today?

What does my Birth Month mean

So I am tired and worn out. So for fun I found and decided to post this little quiz. It is almost true. I found my colors to be wrong. I would have to say Green would be my color.

Your Birth Month is September

Tolerant and inspirational, you are wise beyond your years. You are universally sympathetic and a great humanitarian. Your soul reflects: Devotion, light, and love Your gemstone: Sapphire Your flower: Morning Glory Your colors: Brown and deep blue

What Does Your Birth Month Mean?

Newsflash

Brantley's First Tooth

November 4, 2008

After months of drool-soaked bibs, Brantley's first tooth was spotted on November 4, 2008 poking through the gum. Mom is excited about the new pearly white, but knows this is just the start of many months of fussy teething. One down, 19 to go!

Halloween

I just wanted to take a minute and share my Halloween pictures. They are from a family dinner at my SIL's house. I am sad to say my older boys don't want to dress up any more. I am feeling so old, again.

I Feel Bad

Isn't this the cutest smile. Look at those double dimples.

I feel so bad for not posting as much as I would like. We are getting ready to move next week and things are a bit crazy here at home. I have so much organizing and packing to do. Not to mention chasing after my super mover, baby Brantley who is just 5 1/2 months, but can be somewhere different in a blink of an eye.

We are blessed. So much has gone on with the house situation. I just have to say we are being looked after and for that I am grateful. I am reminded of a song with this sentence "We are his hands, his hands of heaven on earth." I have seen a ton of heavenly hands on earth lately and a lot of times they are helping our family.

My belly is pudging out a little. I am sure it is the stress we are under. So I have to say the getting fit is on the back burner until we are settled into our new home. I am eating much better and with all of the cleaning and packing I am sure I am burning a ton of calories.

I have gotten off track...

Healthy Update:

Between worrying and searching for ways to get the last bit of money we need to close on our house I haven’t done as well as I should on getting healthy.

I have added milled flaxseed to my breakfast and anything else I can think of. I add it to oatmeal, Great Grains by Post and my yogurt. I love the flavor and I can feel the benefits. Does that sound weird? Well it is true. I have also added a salad a day for one meal. I sprinkle it with almond slices, egg slices and chicken. Boy it is getting to be a staple. I have even added some weight watchers snacks. I love chocolate and this way I can have some and not feel too bad. Working out has gone out the window this week. I have missed my torture session both Tuesday and Thursday and I think my thighs are mad at me for missing it.

Life:

Last Saturday I checked the mail and guess what I found? I found a big envelope for me. Yea!!! I was so happy. My longest friend Jennifer from Alaska sent me an apron I won and another wonderful apron for crafting. I need to take pictures, but haven’t been worrying about my looks to much while I get the house ready to move. One day I will add pictures of these wonderful gifts. I never get mail and I am sure that is from never sending any and it is something I am working on.

I am getting very excited about moving. I need our own home. Our house (soon to be ours) is so cute, whenever I go look at it I feel like I have come home. Our family continues to pray that this will work out. We are scheduled to close November 7th. I have to say the ideas are flowing and I can’t wait to make that house a home.

For Family Home Evening this Monday we did a lesson on unity. For an activity we cleaned the garage. You know what I mean. We made sure the Christmas decorations were in the Christmas bins and that each boy put their stuff in their bins. It was so much fun. I loved the time we worked together to organize our home.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Don’t mess with Momma Bear”? My eight year old is behind in his reading. He has been diagnosed with a learning problem with letters. However that boy is brilliant in math. Well he is in a special class that frequently (too frequently in my book) combines with a regular class. Now they want a book report and project. Eric and I feel like he shouldn't do this in the regular class. I mean how cool would it be to do a report on “The Cat in the Hat” to kids that are doing theirs on the magic tree house or something? Boy I wrote his teacher a cute note and I am stressing to see what will become of this. Ugh I am so frustrated about this.

Now that I have caught you up on "What's going on here" I'd better go.

He can Roll!!!

At 5 months 1 day I missed it with the camera, then today at 5 months 2 days I caught it. Yea!!! Here I thought he would never roll because of his size. I am so proud.

You only need to watch the first few seconds. The rest was waiting to see if he would roll back to his back. He never did this time.

See video at the bottom of this page.

Stock pot and more

Today I decided to break in my WONDERFUL new stock pot that Bonnie gave me for my birthday. I had a craving for homemade Chicken and Dumplings. Being from the south I really wanted some southern comfort food. So I searched the internet for the perfect recipe since I have never made this from scratch. I found this Paula Dean recipe and knew it would be wonderful. (Kathy, sorry please don’t tell Mike)

My sons and I ran to Wal-Mart to get the ingredients that we didn’t have, including a whole chicken so I could get started. It was more fun then you could ever understand to fit a whole chicken in a pot with a bunch of other ingredients. It tasted so good. Here I am trying to loose weight and I run out after working out to make southern comfort food.

Speaking of getting fit. I am been doing fairly well in eating right. Adding more fruits and vegetables to my diet except for my weakness for ice cream. I ran out last night get to get a cheap Sunday and scarf it down. Boy did it hit the spot. Of course I pretty much jumped into bed so it went straight to my thighs again. My work out instructor lived up to her drill sergent reputation today. I was having a hard time keeping up in the warm up. Andrew came with me to watch and he came home and told his brothers how hard it all looked. I love it. I don’t have much coordination though so I don’t really try on some steps.

If I make this public, maybe I will work harder.

Did that catch your attention? I have mentioned it before and I will mention it again. I LOVE sparkpeople.com. Since I want to get back to my goal weight (I was almost there last May) I am working really hard to be healthy. I even joined a Biggest Looser challenge that starts today and this is the blog I posted. (It was a bad first day of a challange)

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Today I was to go work out with my friends. It isn't an easy work out. It is a lot like a boot camp and I love how many calories I burn. However, I may have busted a bone in my foot. It hurts so bad.

The two really stinky things are:
1. I have no insurance so I can't get it checked out.
2. My body is going to turn to mush.

I really need this work out twice a week. The exercise I did get today was lugging around my 22 lb baby, walking up and down the stairs and doing laundry. At least I wasn't sitting around.

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I will continue to post my progress here so I can have your encouragement. Thanks!

What we are doing to achieve our goal...

To start off we are doing much fasting and prayer. This is such a trial of faith for me.

Eric is looking to sell some of his territory of Southwesterncedaroil.com. It is his all natural pest control company. Can you believe he is the only one in our area selling all natural? I love the smell. He is also attending more marketing groups to gain a better business rapport and cliental. Boy is he stressed. He is also looking into business grants to help him out.

I am searching for any housing helps and calling other lenders to see what they have for the self employed. I am so glad I know as much as I do about mortgages and loans. I really appreciate the education my job has given me. We don’t qualify for the FHA MFA as Love is self employed and this is the most frustrating thing ever.

Now on to other news:

I may have busted up a bone in my foot, but I don’t have insurance right now (the state and I are working on this) to find out for sure. It starting hurting in the middle of the night and I honestly don’t remember what I could have done to hurt it so bad. Walking is a pain. Oh and I missed my torture work out session. I really was looking forward to it. I am getting a light bruise; mostly it just hurts to apply any pressure on it. Eric thinks I was so exhausted I didn’t think about it when I hurt myself. I was very tired. I have a little cold and felt like I was fighting the flu over the weekend. I can’t take any cold medicine since I feed Brantley. So now is the waiting game to see how my foot heals.

I forgot to tell you about Christian’s concert last Thursday, it was wonderful. He is so talented. He plays the sax and does such a good job at it. The conductor mentioned that his band was mostly 9th graders with only a few really talented 8th graders. The music was amazing. I love to attend concerts.

Random thoughts

Eric and I have felt for a while now that we need to move out of the house we are renting into a home that is ours. So for about a year now we have been looking for a home. We’ve looked at fixer uppers even though with Eric’s job and church calling he wouldn’t have much time to fix up a home. We have looked near and we have looked far. Well not really far just out of school and church boundaries. We have made offers on too many homes to count only to have them sold out from beneath us. We have thought and prayed and wondered what we should do next.

Now we have found a home. A nice small, beautiful and well maintained home and we won the bidding war. It could be ours. We just need a million bucks to get into it. OK not a million dollars, just more then we have since the loan economy keeps changing the loan we were approved for is no longer available. The FHA MFA won’t work for us since Eric has only been self employed for 1.5 years we don’t qualify. We have about 2.5 weeks to figure out what we are going to do.

What a trial we are facing. Our family is having a test of Faith. Even if nothing comes of this home we know we are doing what the Lord wants us to do. I wanted you all to know why we have sort of reverted into our shells. Please don’t tell everyone that the E family is moving. We have no idea what will come of this. We are just doing the best we can.

Now on to other news: Tomorrow I go in for my next torture session. OK, so it is just a work out that last week took 4 days to recover from. I have to admit, I enjoyed it. I love to be healthy.

Well I guess that is it for now. Bye.

No Pain. No Gain..

For months and months my family and friends have said “Elizabeth you have to come work out with us.” & “Join us at the stake center, you will love it.”

Yesterday being my birthday, realizing I am not getting any younger I went. Let me tell you our instructor is a wonderful drill sergeant. I attempted to keep up. With most of it I did fairly well. The walking lunges killed me adding in knee rises and/or kicks and I was feeling the burn. Ouch. I hurt so much. I couldn’t even coordinate myself to do too many of the lunges. So I was afraid that I wouldn't feel the effects of my hour long work out. Boy, I worried for nothing. I am in so much pain. Coming down the stairs is the worst. No maybe sitting is the worst. My whole body aches.

The sad thing is there is not another workout until next Tuesday. So I am sure my body will turn to mush before it receives its next shock treatment.

Speaking of yesterday it was wonderful. Before my boys left for school they all came to tell me happy birthday. Even if I was asleep they let me know they loved me. My Father called. We don’t speak too often, but when we have a nice conversation like yesterday morning I love it. I wish we were closer. My Mother called later in the day and my Brother JR too. I love hearing from my family. I miss them all so much. None of them have met baby B yet and that makes me sad.

Eric and I had to run an errand in the evening and I came home to fresh blueberry muffins made by C. I didn’t feel like having one last night, but it was a wonderful breakfast this morning.

I was very sore and even had a huge headache by the evening that Eric stayed home from his church duties to help me with the two youngest so I could get some rest. That was a nice gift in and of it’s self.

Thank you Everyone for the notes and calls. I appreciate you all.

General Relief Socitey Meeting

Wasn’t last night Wonderful? I love to go to the broadcast at the church just for the joy of being with my friends. Last night was no exception. I may not always feel super comfortable in our ward, but last night our ward showed a unity that we had not seen before. Our sisters all sat on one row and then took up most of the row in front of that. We did loose three sisters to the side lines, but we all went out for dessert after wards.

The talks were amazing. I was reminded that we need to let go of our insecurities and recognize the good we all do. We need to be better at reaching out to others and realizing when they have a need that we can help with. I like to take notes at all the different conferences and last night I couldn’t as we were all squashed like a can of sardines (what a good thing). Thankfully I recorded it so I can take notes here at home this week.

I am so proud of our ward and the unity we showed last night. I loved that we came together for dessert and spent time getting to know each other better.