Photo Update...

We finally got around to taking some pictures.  I think the bathroom mirror lies, because I'm not seeing this smaller face when I look into it. This is such a strange thing to me...this losing weight.  I've tried in the past to make it work, but gave up within 10-20 lbs... and now I'm at 45lbs down and still encouraged to go on.  I know hard times will come, but I just don't want to give up.

Signed,
Rambling me.

P.S.  A body shot is also included on the photo page.

I Didn't Even Mind

It's been crazy busy around here.  Life is good and going on, praise God.  I had to stop and add this post today because for the first time in just about forever, I found myself in a photo and I wasn't embarassed.  It's not a fantastic photo, but I'm in it...and again... I don't care.  To me, that is one of the craziest things ever.   This feeling is so weird and I know it sounds dumb, but I had to share the thought.

In case you're wondering, I'm the one in the upper right hand side.  No, not the one with the cowboy hat. :)

Photo Update...

Tonight, I was going through some old pictures I found.  Old as in May of this year old, so yeah, not really old old... but before we started working together to lose weight.  Anyhow, I found one of myself and thought I'd mimic it to see if I could tell a difference.  Yep, I could...cheek fat is melting.

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Usually, we leave this holiday to the birds, but today decided to have a little fun with it.  Kelly and I started off with some green eggs for breakfast.  There wasn't any ham to go along with it or we would have done it for sure.  We did make breakfast tacos out of them though.


Wasn't long after we had the idea of making a rainbow cake for dinner and set off in search of supplies.  Seems apparent though, that our little town leaves this holiday to the birds also.  We went to three stores and came up empty handed for trinkets. Other than some t-shirts and hats, we couldn't find anything.  No gold coins.  Nothing.  So we just went with the whole rainbow in the sky theme and chose white frosting as our cake 'decor'.  

Anyhow, two cake mixes, two frostings, some milk and a box of white mac & cheese (just sounded good for lunch) and we were on our way home.  Mixed up the cakes, pulled out the two boxes of food coloring I have and there's no red in either one!  Guess what... back to town we go.  Two stores later, we found food gel.  It didn't even matter by this point, I wasn't going on another wild goose chase.

When we got home, we mixed the colors and baked them up.  Here's the results...and by the way, it really was fun to see it come together. 

And yes...yes the bottom layer does look concrete.
Purple is a tricky color to mix.. lol :)

No Pirates Life For Me....

I'm a realist.  I could not bring myself to go to Pirates Fest.  Just couldn't.  Felt silly and weird for even thinking about it... truly.  I know that sounds mean and to all those who enjoy it, fantastic...but just not my cup of tea and I'd be a stick in the mud (enough with the cliches.. lol).


So we went to the National Museum of Transportation and climbed aboard old trains all the live long day (railroad song...get it).  These are some of my favorite shots of the day.

You can buy a ticket to ride...we did not.

Notice the passenger door compared to the baggage doors... sure does tell of an old society where everyone walked and was much thinner than today.

There's an actual train tunnel on site, but no one is allowed in.  The cool breeze in that area however was fantastic!

Sorry for the butt shot, couldn't pass it up.

This train fascinated me.  It's powered by 3-4 locomotives and does not move by itself.  Any guess what it may be?

This is me standing in front of it.

And here's Carl.  Did you guess a snowblower?  I didn't know what it was until I read about it.  But it was used in Wisconsin to clear up to 12' of snow off the tracks until it was replaced in 1984.

Rusted and standing alone...my favorite of them all.  It was built in 1899.

Hope you enjoyed the trip too. :)

The Girl Gets Around

Just thought I'd share some pictures from Kelly's trip.  They went through 14 states and 4 Canadian Provinces in just two weeks.   The boy in the photos is not her boyfriend, just a good friend who was also invited along.

The visited the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Times Square while in NY.  Kelly said she loved the busyness of Times Square and would like to go back.


They went to Atlantic City, New Jersey and buried each other in the sand after poking around in the casinos.


They visited Thunder Hole in Maine's Acadia National Park.  Can you see Zack at the bottom of the picture?


Next stop was Niagra Falls on the Canadian side.  They arrived at 1am and took a tour the next day.


And then had lunch!


The end.

A Piece of My Family...

I love my Brother-in-Laws.  I have several.  There's Joe, Donnie, Ronnie, Larry, Harvie, Terry and Allen.  And for whatever crazy reason in my head, I just categorized them by length of family membership, with a sub-categorization of my husband's family by closest relation and then age.  That was really weird and I'm beginning to think there may be some truth to me being OCD.

So anyhow, I thought I'd start sharing a family member of mine maybe once a month with everyone.  This month it's my husband's brother Ronnie.  Why him first?  He stopped in the other day and that's when I got the idea to do this... so that's that.



So it was about 95° when I went outside and I find him in his helmet.  He'd been there for 10 minutes already.  I asked him if he was hot... he said "yeah."   I told him to take off the helmet.  

Ronnie is turning 46 this year and he's not looking too forward to it.  He's going to be going for a swim in our church festival's dunktank.  Can you guess who'll be in line to take a shot?  He was trash talking me about it, so I'm hitting the button even if I miss the throw.



Ronnie cracks me up.  He's always telling people he doesn't know how I put up with his brother for so long.  I tease and ask him if he's saying I married the wrong brother.  He smiles and laughs and says "Noooooo, I'm just saying..."



Facts about Ronnie
1.  He's a twin.
2.  He owns two mopeds, a dog named Goldberg and a bunch of WWE wrestling belts...but he doesn't have a drivers license.
3.  He gets nervous when I tell him I'm taking his picture.
4.  His refrigerator has a lot of bologna and candy.
5.  He's worked at his job for almost 15 years, I'd guess.
6.  He's proud of his family even though he's never been a parent or spouse.
7. He's realizing now that he's too old to roughhouse.    *I think he's realizing it.*
8.  He is very softspoken.
9.  Unless he's watching wrestling, football or gets mad... then you might move.
10.  He had heart surgery in 2009 and we're blessed he's doing so well.



I could have written a book full of facts about this guy because I love the heck out of him (and the other guy in the picture too), but I stopped because I'd rather tell you about some of his crazy adventures that involve his moped.

Ronnie loves to ride his moped.  He told me the other day that the headlight was out but that's okay, because he would just hold a flashlight while driving.  *I am not making this up.*  I told him it would be safer to duct tape the flashlight to his helmet.  He disagreed.



And one night, when his headlight was working, he was coming home about 9pm after watching a movie in a nearby town.  It was about 10 miles from his home and he was riding (his moped) down the right lane of a highway.  All of a sudden, a car hit him from behind and he went sliding and the bike went flying.  When we got the call that he'd been in that accident, you can only expect the worst.  He was going slow and in a place he shouldn't have been.  But can  you believe he walked away with nothing more than a few patches of road rash?  Talk about God's provision.

The reason he stopped in the other day was to drop some birthday cards off to my girls.  He said...
 

I know the girls loved them as much as they love him.   And that's as much as I do.  I'm glad I can call him family.

((HUGS))
Kathie

P.S.  The night with the flashlight thing,  I volunteered to pick him up but he said no.

Remind me why we keep him?

The year in review

2009 - A look back.

*click on the picture for a larger size*

As it begins
Our vacation ends
Kelly spins and
Kelly grins - with long hair for now.
church softball yes, long hair no more
Sarahs new prescription
Swimming at night
College registration
Birthday girl and
Birthday girl - both on the same day
photos in the bathroom
10th grade homeschooler
Dog tired
repainted to black
a trip to the zoo
a really nice day
Beating up the teacher
20 years married
Graduation party
Changes happening everywhere
Halloween
A birthday party
One very happy man
and a very happy girl
No cats in the tree!
Working together for me.
just waiting
and here we go again.

Apparently, we need to pay more attention to directions.

So... Kelly & I gave Letterboxing a try this morning.  Basically, you find a hidden box that someone has planted by using directions at the Letterboxing.org site.  Well, we found out, we're more look and go kind of girls than the lets be sure to read the directions in depth kind of people.

We had three locations... the first one should be easy.  Look for a hamburger shaped rock.  What the heck?  There aren't any hamburger shaped rocks....they look more like, well, rocks than hamburgers.. lol.  We didn't get that one since we didn't take a picture to compare with, but we're going back. 

With the Second box, it was a little hard because we searched and thought we found it!  It was actually very possible, but when we asked the employee to help us reach it and told her what we were doing, she said "good try, but that's not it.  And sorry, you can't leave until you do find it.. lol."  So we retraced our steps to the door and started all over again.  Finally we had some success and here's an example of what a letterbox may look like.


And I know now that we need a stamp.  We saw some really cute things in our book, so we'll have to get something more personal to us.  We had to sign off today.  The bathroom was in use... so we had to find a different hiding spot to sign in.  To celebrate, we bought a yoohoo & an orange crush and headed out on our way.


And this Third letterboxing adventure is where it really became fun because we didn't follow directions closely enough.  We failed to notice a line of directions that said "go past the first entrance."  LOL, we turned into the wrong area and started our trek.  We were about 1/2 mile around the lake when I asked Kelly to read it again.  "Take the blacktopped trail..."  I had to interrupt her.  What do you mean it says blacktopped.  This is dirt.. LOL.  We started laughing and kept walking, knowing we were in the wrong place.  We came upon a fisherman and he said there's a trail on the other side of the lake.. heheh... What dorks we are.   Anyhow, we had fun and snapped some pictures while there.


Swimming anyone?


Wildflowers everywhere...except where the grass has been cut.. lol


Better fish than boys...


My new favorite picture of her...

We headed back to the truck to find the trail.  After we got there, I got out and my shoe caught on something and ripped the side seam (they were old) so we had to go home.  We will definitely be back to conquer that box very soon.

It's like a long lost friend...

I haven't blogged in forever.  It's been on my todo list.  At the bottom, but still on it.  I have to say though, logging in to post feels like running into a long lost friend.  I missed it and it's good to be back again.

We had our family reunion and it was a load of fun.  Most everyone was able to make it and it was really nice to see them all.  I can't even begin to tell you how much I love the campground we were at.  They had camper cabins, a huge dining hall and industrial kitchen with everything you'd need (-food) and the price was just amazing.  We all paid $10 per person for a 2 night stay.  We were in air conditioning at any time during the day (and boy was it hot for a while) and the nights were sheltered from bugs... it was just really nice.  I do have a few pictures of the family to show off... it was the one time I remembered to take photos of them (dh & the girls).


Kelly....at 8 am.  She wouldn't have been smiling if it was any earlier.. lol.



Sarah...smiling because she was ready to go home to get a cell phone signal once again.


And a picture of dh & his cousin playing a round of ladder golf (a ridiculously fun game if you haven't tried it out).

Well other than that, we've spent the summer doing homeschool group things, running here and there, having a good time and watching Sarah play softball with our church. *Photo imposition*

It was a fun season and she really enjoyed it.  Kelly said she's playing next year, that's going to be fun.

Speaking of Kelly, she's been helping out with the K-3rd grade Sunday School classes at church.  She loves it.  I'd never have guessed that she'd have that kind of love and patience for the little kids, but she comes home every week with a story about something one of them said.  I'm glad she's involved with it and having a good time.

We signed up to be an international friendship family again this year.  Our students, I believe, are Korean.  The past few years, they been from Taiwan, so now we need to read up on something new.  Anyhow, we get to meet them at the end of September.  I'm looking forward to it.

I guess I can say that I'm thrilled with school starting back.  I love a scheduled day, it really makes things go so much smoother.  We did a lot of school throughout the summer, but for the month of July & some of August, they were out.  It was crazy then.  I won't even mention the bad parts, but I'm really glad to know that the old saying "this too shall pass" is so very true.. lol. :)

So you want to hear something really strange.  We're sitting at the table this morning eating breakfast talking about how Sarah won't be around with us next year at this time.  We were laughing and she said "you'll get to drive again."  That's when it hit us... Kelly will get her permit in June!  I won't get to drive my own car for another 2 or 3 years still.. LOL.   Awh, I'm just teasing.  I can drive anytime, but it's fun to let her drive while I keep asking "are we there yet?"

P.E. It's more than running laps.

Why run laps when you can rappel and swim all day?   Since the teens have been meeting continuously through the summer, we have been having a ball.  It's like a checklist we're crossing off... roller skating, bowling, football, basketball, swimming, baseball, volleyball...who knows what's next!
This week, the kids went rappelling.  We had 10 kids, 2 dads, 4 moms and our fearless leader along for the trip.    This is Sarah just starting the descent.  Kelly is up there too, she's over on the right (sitting).


Almost down...


Success!  **Her words..."Let's do that again!"  and she did... 4 more times.


The hard part about the whole thing was going up.  They had to climb a rock facing that was at about a 75° angle.  After Kelly sat up there so long, she got spooked and came back down.  I can't say I blame her, but maybe next time.

She spent time playing in the water and swimming with her friends.


I like days like this and needless to say, they both slept well that night. ;)

SWMO

Kelly's camp was about 30 miles from the Missouri/Arkansas border.  We took a couple of pictures from an overlook.  You can actually see the lake area in the photos.  Kelly's camp was on the mountain straight back in the first picture.  And yep...the Ozarks really are mountainous.  I didn't know we had things like that in Missouri.  I thought hilly areas, sure...but this was much more steeper than any hill.



Zoomed in.