Some of the best discussions I have with my kids are in my car. I love that! Makes me sad to see parents driving around kids around town with the dvd player on or video games in their hands. Now, I have nothing against dvd players in cars for long trips, but if you are just driving home from the grocery store or to school is it really necessary to turn on the latest movie your child can't get enough of? Climbing off my soapbox...

As heard this week in my car:

MONDAY MORNING:
"Mom, I don't see any smush trucks."
"What are smush trucks Kyle?"
"Trucks with smushed cars on them"
"Aha."

MONDAY AFTERNOON:
"Are you ready to go swimming today?"
"No, I'm going to drown"
"Kyle, you are not going to drown. Ms. Colleen is there to keep you safe and teach you how to swim. She is not going to let you drown. Do you know who else is there to keep you safe?"
"You."
"And who else?"
"Jesus?"
"Yes, Jesus."
"But I don't see Jesus."
"No we can't see Jesus, but he is always with us. He lives in our hearts."
"We ATE Jesus?!?!"

TUESDAY (a child in my classroom):
"My mom says the pig allergies are coming"

TUESDAY AFTERNOON:
"Mom, there's the bread truck!"
"Yes. Do you see the ice cream truck?"
"Yes, but I don't like the ice cream truck because I can't eat ice cream."
[odd that the bread truck is okay since he can't eat the bread either... guess I have him fooled with the gluten-free variety I bake him every week]

WEDNESDAY:
"Mom, there's the Heart truck!"
"Yes, what color is the heart?"
"Blue."
"No, it's purple. See the word above the heart? It says, P-U-R-P-L-E, that spells purple."
"But it's blue. It spells blue."

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON:
"I'm wearing Mater pants (pull-ups). He's like a tow truck."
"A tow truck like a smush truck?"
"No, a smush truck is NOT a tow truck."
"Then what is a smush truck?"
"A truck with a smush car on it."

Apparently, I had this one all wrong. I was thinking tow truck the whole time, but Miss Amy tells me he's talking about an 18-wheeler that carries the smushed cars to the junk yard.

So as you can see, most of our conversations are about transportation right now. But I still love them. I wish you could hear his little voice telling me about all of it.

In other news, he did great at swimming today. We've progressed from sitting on the side with our feet in the water to actually walking around the steps of the hot tub and blowing bubbles. Soon, very soon he'll be back to bubbles-kick-and-row which is where we left off last summer before he decided he was destined to drown.

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I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon...and the weight loss bandwagon...and the shredding bandwagon. Oh well! I know why I haven't been blogging - I've been reading the Twilight series and I am hooked. I can't get enough of those books. The good news is that I am in the home stretch now just a few hundred pages away from being done. I have forfeited many hours of sleep just to read one more chapter.

The weight loss bandwagon? Part of me is ready, the other part just doesn't care right now. There is so much going on with school coming to a close, spring programs, Kindergarten graduation, planning summer activities (and reading those dang books!) that I don't even give my diet a second thought right now. Throw into that a weekend away which led me to skip a weigh-in and well, you see? As of today, I am back down 1.2 pounds from my going up a couple of weeks ago, so I guess that's good. Especially considering that I'm not even really trying.

And the shredding challenge? I was so excited about it and then we left town and then we got new floors and well I just haven't gotten back into it YET. I will get there. The workouts are amazing. The pain is worth it. And above all even after only 3 days, I could tell it was working.

So there's not much new going on here. Kyle started swimming lessons if you can call it that. He refused to get in the water. Well, he put his toes in the water and then started screaming when I gave him to the instructor and she held him in there for the next 20 minutes. I had to walk around the other side of her garage to a hidden patio to wait it out. Listening to him have a fit about being in the water is so hard. He used to love it. I'm not sure what happened. I guess it will just take some time. We go back this afternoon (at which time I will hopefully finish that last book!).

And our floors? Our floors are INCREDIBLE. It's taking some getting used to the increase in noise level in our house. We haven't purchased any rugs yet and aren't planning to for quite some time, because, well who wants to cover these up? We had wood put throughout the downstairs. We left the kitchen and bathrooms tile but put wood in the entry, dining room, living room and master bedroom. The guys who installed it were meticulous and it shows. We love them (the floors, not the men who installed them, but they were nice)! If you live around here, I highly recommend Loom Craft in Spring. They did a fantastic job and we got a great deal.

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Okay, sorry about the absence. Last week got really busy and then we left town for the weekend. Then last night my computer was acting up again so I couldn't even check email until I got to work today. Talk about being out of the loop! It had been since Friday morning! At least I had a much needed break.

The big news today is that my wood floors are gone...for a day at least. Actually I was really looking forward to my carpet being gone today, but it's still here. Yuck. I was beaming all morning thinking about coming home and not having to look at that awful disgusting carpet ever again. And I walked in the door to find that the guys had spent the ENTIRE DAY tearing up my old wood floors which they had anticipated to take just a couple of hours. They were not very chipper when I came home. I hope tomorrow is easier on them. And I just can't wait for my new floors to be installed. It is going to be so pretty.

I might as well get to the bad news. The last time I wrote here was also the last time I shredded. Life got in the way AGAIN. And I don't anticipate getting to it tomorrow, but I do need to go into the Y tomorrow so maybe I'll work out while I'm there. Since I have to make the trip anyway. And having gone on vacation this weekend I highly doubt there has been any movement in the correct direction on the scales. I may just skip this week's weigh-in tomorrow and come back next week.

Our weekend was fantastic. We headed near Austin to the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort. We had a great time. It was so relaxing which was just what we needed. The kids had a blast and despite the chilly weather on Saturday, Katie and I actually braved the lazy river for about 20 minutes. Then we headed over to the heated pool while Kyle played on the "beach". Both kids had pony rides which I expected to just be walking in a circle in a corral, but were actually 20 minute trail rides for each of them with a guide. They loved it. Both of them rode "Strawberry" and have been talking about her since. We enjoyed delicious food and all sorts of entertainment. Katie was really excited about the "Don't Mess with Texas Animals" show during which she was able to pet a gopher snake and a baby alligator as well as see/feel numerous animal skins.

Here are a few photos from our weekend:

Playing on the playground

Katie on Strawberry

Coming back from the trail ride

Kyle with Strawberry

I'm not so sure about this

Bluebonnets in the Butterfly Meadow

Katie posing while Kyle and Derek napped

Check out my Easter eggs!

Katie waiting for her turn at the Egg Hunt

And sadly, there is no beautiful picture of my children together dressed in their Easter attire. Maybe one of these days I'll pose one, but they just were not cooperating this year!

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Yowzers! I am beat right now. I just completed my third day of Shredding...at 9:10pm. Definitely too late in the day for this! I am so tired, but at the same time so energized that I'm not sure I'll get to sleep when I want. But I am still proud of myself for doing it. I had grand plans of completing it earlier in the day, but first thing in the morning does not work for me. I enjoy my sleep too much to wake up earlier than 5:30. And today I was cleaning the house and out running errands all day. We had a small Easter Egg decorating party this afternoon also which concluded with 2 egg hunts because one is never enough!

As for my weight-loss this week, well there wasn't any. In fact, I gained 1.4# so I am back where I started this challenge. I'm not that upset about it because honestly I know that I had lost this week but then I went and ate fried shrimp and french fries (and queso if you must know) which just led me right back in the wrong direction on the scale. But I also started working out this week so I'm going with the whole muscle weighs more than fat excuse too. :-) The good news is that even though I gained I have noticed that my favorite jeans are beginning to hang a little looser. My friend Carrie even told me this afternoon that my pants were too big. Thanks Carrie! And I feel so much stronger from the workouts the past three days. I love feeling the burn in my legs when I walk up the stairs, espite the fact that during that last circuit tonight I actually cursed out loud at Jillian. Good thing the kids were asleep!

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I'm so proud of myself. Granted, I have a little cheerleader who has been asking me all day long if we were going to do "Jillian" this afternoon. Apparently when she said "we", she meant "me" and she just gets to watch. She did do some jumping jacks with me though. Kyle on the other hand was right there with me. He even tried to pull a Jillian and climbed on top of my back while I was trying to do push ups! That didn't last long.

I was sore today, but not too bad. I apparently did the modified versions of the workout. The only trouble I had during today's workout was on the 2nd set of side lunges with arm raises (whatever she call them). By the 2nd set I couldn't hold the weights anymore so I just put them down and continued without them. But I was surprised that I already am starting to have more endurance during the cardio.

While I am on this 30-day challenge, there's another 30 day challenge going on that I wanted to bring your attention to. Someone that I attended high school with has challenged himself to 30 Days on $30. I know that I personally couldn't do this, but he's trying to bring attention to the fact that many of the world's poorest do exactly that. Go check it out.

Let's hope these workouts pay off tomorrow on the scale! I was doing good until the weekend hit...

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I just completed my very first shred. The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans has started a 30-day Shred Challenge which involves completing the Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred DVD every day for 30 days. I finished it at least 15 minutes ago because I have showered, changed, eaten a yogurt and have been sitting here for at least 5 minutes and I have to tell you my muscles are still shaking. I just kept telling myself "it's only 20 minutes." Actually it's a good routine because I don't think you are really doing anything longer than 30 seconds (except for the last abs set which is one exercise for 1 minute) so it is easy to push through the pain. Well, not easy, but you know. The challenge is to complete it every day, but being honest with myself I am aiming for 5 times per week. To go from couch potato to working out 20 minutes every day seems quite daunting.

I'm going to lie down now. I'm worried about how I'll feel tomorrow...

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Week 1 is done for the Shrinking Into Summer Challenge over at the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans. I am pleased to report that I am down 1.4# - hooray! Unfortunately the only reason I am down is that I was sick on Monday and failed to eat anything more than 6 crackers for over 24 hours. But it's a loss, so I'll take it!

I spent the weekend in Corpus with one of my college roommates and her mom scrapbooking. We had a great time and really didn't snack all that much, but we did have breakfast tacos, pizza, cinnamon rolls, kolaches and Mexican food. All of that adds up to not a great start on my challenge. But really I didn't feel like I went overboard on those things, just that I probably shouldn't have eaten that extra piece of pizza or those chips and queso. All in all, I feel like I did pretty well this week. And I had fun scrapbooking, so it was worth it!

The good news is that I put my jeans on yesterday and they were a little bit roomier. Hooray! I'm also hoping to win that 30-Day Shred DVD by Jillian Michaels which is being given away over at Shrinking Jeans, but you gotta enter by 3pm today. It sounds like a terribly painful workout, but there are those times when I long for that pain that I felt when I was working out at Isofitness which is now One 30 Fitness. That was pain, but it was good pain. If you live in the area, have the money and the drive to do it - it works. But the first few weeks you ache like you've been in several car accidents repeatedly. Ouch.

Here are my stats:
Starting Weight: 1_9.6
Today's Weight: 1_8.2
Loss of 1.4#
Goal Weight: 1_9.6 (that space is one integer less than the first space - ha!)

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