Not feeling very well

I got the stupid flu that The Prince had last week. I've got a fever, a cough and really bad body aches. :-( Hopefully, tomorrow will be better, and I'll get back to posting here. I'm starting to really love my blog.

Blessings to you.

On the weight loss front

I forgot to mention that I got some good exercise today! When I went to bed last night, I thought, "You really must get up and take the dog for a walk tomorrow. It's not supposed to rain, so you have no excuse." When I woke up, I had the same thought. It took me about an hour to get it all together, but out the door I went at about 10:30. Man, it was cold. Now, those of you in the mid-west and northern U.S., don't scold me. It wasn't cold enough to snow, or even have ice on stuff. It was cold for Southern California.

There was a cold wind blowing in my face, and big, dark, ominous looking clouds coming in my direction. I hesitated, then called my mother-in-law. I asked her if she would come rescue me if it started raining while I was walking. She said she would, so I kept going. I wanted to go to the post office and back (which is only about a mile from my house).

I dropped the mail, and turned around. The good thing was, I kept up a brisk pace due to being cold and because I didn't want to get rained on!

The doggie and I made good time. We were only about 5 houses away from home when it started to rain! We ran the rest of the way. :-)

Then, since it never did really rain hard, I got motivated to do some weeding in our backyard. I don't know if I've mentioned before that we did construction 5 or so years ago, and our backyard never recovered. It's concrete, dirt and weeds...(Marilyn, here is where you cover the computer screen while your hubby is in the room) and a 1,000 sq. ft. garage. Oh, yeah, I did mention this before. :-)

The soil is very soft and moist because of all the rain, so I spent about an hour pulling up all the green stuff back there. I didn't finish, but I was out of breath, so I figured I probably burned a few calories. Yay me!

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled program.

I've been tagged!

Toni tagged me for this meme. This should be fun!

Here are the rules:

1. You must post the rules before you give your answers.
2. List one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name).
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and that they need to read your blog for details).

A Actively seeking Christ. Could also stand for Anxiety. I haven't been able to get over it lately.
N Need a haircut (well, actually, just a trim).
G Gotta have chocolate - one little piece of dark chocolate, most days.
E Eclectic homeschooler. Meaning, a little of this, a little of that.
L Like to laugh (I wouldn't be married to Gearhead if he couldn't make me laugh. I would have killed him by now.) :-)
E Eyebrows need waxing. :-)

Sorry, y'all. I don't think I was very good at this one. Two of the six have to do with personal hygiene! *sigh*

I hope you come back after reading this drivel!

Okay, I tag...
Lady T
Tigerlilly
Daja
Elisa
Christine
Marilyn

Hairy situation

So, I told y'all about The Princess and our adventures in hair color. Thought I'd give you some pictures to ponder.

I loved the red. She had it during her play (see pics from "A Christmas Carol.") Her blue eyes really popped with the red.


Here she looks a little emo. For those of you folks who don't know what "emo," is, let me elaborate. Emo is short for emotional. You've seen those kids who have their hair dyed black, hanging in front of their faces, wearing black skinny jeans. Another notable about emo kids is, you can't tell the girls from the boys. The Princess is not emo, she just plays one on t.v. Not really.


And here she is after a misadventure with some curlers. She has naturally curly hair. This is the result when she uses foam curlers overnight. I kinda think she looks like Harpo Marx.


I tried to upload a pic of the very quiet Harpo, but I couldn't make it work. That's okay. The black helicopters would probably rain down on me, and you'd never hear from me again...


This is kind of a very scary picture of me, for several reasons. This is the first day I dyed my hair brown from blonde. I had very dark circles under my eyes, and no makeup, except that I did remember to darken my eyebrows. I also look like I want to kill someone. I don't, but it looks like it.

I like that my eyes look green. They are usually hidden behind my glasses. So, now you know what I look like - sort of. Sorry to do this to you on a Saturday. :-)

Sick, sick, sick

The Prince has a fever, The Princess has a sore throat, and I'm not handling it very well. I don't know why. I just want to run away. When I'm sick, I prefer to be left alone, so I don't coddle the kids a lot when they're sick. However, they want to be coddled, and I don't wanna.

I finally got some work. After a month of no work. On the day that my kids are sick. What are the chances? I felt horrible driving away this morning while The Prince was coughing up a lung. Fortunately, both the jobs I had were quick, so I wasn't away very long. And I made some moola - always a good thing.

Can you tell I'm stressed? Even my writing is weird.

I think I'm sick, too. Sick of thinking and talking about this possible Texas move. Sick of living here. And yet, God gave me some bright, shiny moments today and yesterday.

I was out at 5:30 p.m. yesterday to take The Prince to guitar. There was no traffic. It was rush hour in So Cal. The cars were going speed limit. I'm not complaining, but it was surreal.

We also had a field trip yesterday to a nearby university. The kids learned about rain forests, the animals that live there, the plants that grow there. It was neat. I am afraid, however, that going in and out of humid, warm buildings into the very cold outdoors probably pushed the kids over the edge, health-wise.












































After the field trip, we hit a Wendy's with our friends. And what follows is a picture of one of the sweetest babies in the whole, wide world. The Prince has dubbed her "Our Little Ray of Sunshine." I call her "Sugar," 'cuz she's that sweet. She has three older siblings that adore her, in addition to her mommy and daddy. Those cheeks get smooched many, many times everyday.

I took an entire series of pictures of this little darling. One of the blessings of our homeschool group is that there are many young families, so I get my baby fix on a regular basis now. :-) You saw all those cute little boys the other day, right?


Thank you, Jesus, for "E."





I avoided traffic today, as well. I only cussed once when a guy in a truck sped up on me as I was trying to change lanes. I may eventually be able to put a fish on my car, at this rate!

Both my jobs went incredible smoothly, and the clients were all very kind, and nice to talk with. That is another blessing. I hate it when people are snotty or just plain boring. Additionally, I made double the money on one job because it entailed more work than they previously told me. So, yay me!

And, I got a close-up view of some snow today! The area I was working in is at a little higher elevation than we are here, and the snow was just a few miles away on the foothills - I took pictures with my camera phone, but you couldn't really see it very well. Then, as I was driving home on the freeway, a mini-van with snow piled on top was chugging down the freeway. Made me smile. See, I'm counting my blessings and feeling better already.

I'm off to cook a roast. I know, I know, it's almost 8 p.m. on a Friday. We have tons of leftovers from the past few days of cooking, but I got an awesome deal on a roast because it had to be sold by today. I just don't want to leave it uncooked, so I'm going to make Herb-Crust Chuck Roast. I let you know how it comes out.

This is turning into a long post.

I have to tell you something incredible. Ready? I GOT MY FIRST BLOG AWARD!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not thrilled or anything...OKAY, YES, I AM!!! It's a kindness award from my bloggie girlfriend, Sniz. Isn't she the bomb?! I have to put the little label on my blog, which I will do since she sent me instructions. However, after reviewing this post, she may take the award back. How kind could I be if I want to escape when my kids are sick instead of lovingly caring for them? *sigh* Maybe I'll wait on posting the label until she sees this post. :-)

Have a beautiful weekend!

Busy day!

Got up this morning to a phone call from a company I do work for occasionally (infrequently is more like it these days). The job I had for this morning changed to Friday morning. Okay, good.

Then I got rolling, the Prince arose from his slumber, and I spent too much time on the computer looking at blogs. :-) The Princess I let sleep in. She's been under the weather with a sore throat and headache for a few days.

I had an 11:00 job, which took all of five minutes. Came back home and tried to get stuff done here. I actually washed a window *gasp*. I feel like the house is shaping up a bit (and staying shaped up), for the first time. My dining room table is somewhat cleaned off, as is the bar in between the kitchen and the dining room. And the kitchen counters are wiped off more regularly, and don't have as much stuff on them, probably because I'm cooking more than I ever have. All this can be attributed to the fact that I'm about 95% a stay-at-home mom now. My work (that used to take up about 25 hours a week) has slowed to less than a crawl, which is why the Gearhead is working so much.

I decided I'd better make some food to have here for the kids, as well as for Gearhead. The man tends to eat me out of house and home during the winter. Don't know why. I made Easy Garlic Chicken. It is soooo yummy! The whole house smelled like garlic.

Then, I had a 3:30 job...that took a stinkin' two hours. I really wish I could put sound effects on this blog. That one would sound like the "Psycho" theme.

Meanwhile, Gearhead was here at home watching three darling little boys. My friend, Daja, and her sweet hubby, Gana, had an event to attend tonight, and asked if we could watch their three middle kids. Man, they are fun. When I got home, they had been here for about an hour-and-a-half. They had already eaten, and were having sword fights with The Prince and his friend (who I enlisted to come over and help entertain the little ones). The boys were so very good. I got some good snuggle time in with them while we watched "Spy Kids 2" and "The Incredibles."










When Daja and Gana got here to pick them up, Gearhead went out to talk to Gana (who was waiting in the car with the baby). He told me later that he told Gana how great his kids behaved, and how much fun he had with them. It was really great to come home and find him laying on the floor with them, and feeding them, and making them feel at home.




That was my day! I hope your's had as many blessings as mine did!

I got in trouble for that last post...

The Gearhead was reading my blog last night, and gave me heck for not posting what kind of Harley he has. It's a 1950 Panhead. There, I said it.

Threw more stuff out today. Lots of stuff. Our trashcan lid is barely closing! Gearhead took a van-load full of clothes and other various and sundry...stuff to Goodwill. We keep the receipts and use them as charitable contribution write-offs. Gearhead doesn't like yard sales, so this is my alternative.

Texas update: The Gearhead's buddy that lives there is lining up some interview-type things while he's visiting. It will be interesting to see what comes of that. I still don't know how we'd manage his looking for a job while trying to sell our house here. I have to trust that God knows the details and will provide a buyer, even in this market, if He wants us to go.

I'm tired tonight. The Princess has a friend spend the night last night, and they stayed up late, then got up to watch "Titanic." Can't watch that movie without balling my eyes out. Just so ya know, I edited a few parts for the kids.

Okay, off to bed.