I heart...

the YMCA. it's my new favorite place. since we are not having anymore kids, i guess it's time to get all this baby weight off. i don't want to be like some women i hear...their "baby" is 21 and their weight is still not off. :)

i heart:

• it's location - it's less than 5 minutes away.
• the cornerstone plaque - telling about how the ground was prayed over & about the bible that's in its foundation.
• the bible verses all over - my favorite one is by the ladies locker room; "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
• the elliptical machine - it's so challenging.
• the row machine - it makes me feel strong. :)
• fitness tap - it just makes me smile.
• how the childcare workers know our kids by name and say hi to them when we walk in.
• how the kids love going.
• the encouraging emails & compliments i get from the staff who recognize me and tell me my hard work is paying off.

okay, so much for the love fest about the Y. i must admit, there is another reason i love it; fitlinxx. i have an id i put in when i work out and it logs how much time i spend on the machines, etc. it also ranks me according to fitlinxx points (you get 5 for every minute you work out), calories burned and weight lifted. in my age group (30-39) i am currently #29 out of 279. yipee for me! i have slipped a little in my rankings in the past few days. i've been as high as #20 this month. and also this month, i've lifted the equivalent of 2 african elephants. i don't lift much - i'm concentrating more on my cardio. :) it helps a ton that every machine has it's own tv.

so anyway, working out is my new obsession - i guess because i want to be high in the fitlinxx rankings. is that wrong? :) sometimes during the day it's all i think about; when can i go, how long can i stay, can i go twice in one day...

Too much television

i promise i'm not exaggerating any of this. angie is my witness.

i was on the phone (in my room) talking to angie last week. emily walked in, saw a bottle on my dresser and picked it up.

mom, this is clorox disinfecting wipes.

hold on, ang. what did you say emily? this (shaking the bottle), is clorox disinfecting wipes.

how did you know what that was?

i saw it on nick jr.

now, i'm teaching her to read but i doubt seriously she can read the words "clorox disinfecting wipes" -- talk about getting into my kid's head with commercials. last night she told me she wanted to star in her own commercial. she wanted to show kids how to use clorox wipes; safely. too much t.v.? yes.

Emily's world

i caught emily looking out the window this morning. she was all decked out - had her favorite crown on, her fairy wings, her wand, her mood ring, sparkly bracelet, lip gloss & her favorite gaudy necklace.

this is emily most of the time. she's always dressing up and playing pretend. oh, to be emily. in her world, she is the princess & is in charge of her kingdom. she meets little resistance with the prince & the knight. (somehow she gets them to play princess with her (everyday)...those poor boys never get to play boy games. but they don't mind, they just love playing with her.) she gets a little bummed out when the king and the queen make her eat green beans instead of peanut butter, or not allow her to eat icing with a spoon right out of the can. in her kingdom there is no punishment for being disobedient...no time out & no hot sauce on naughty tongues. more than once she has said her subjects get to do whatever they want.

i hope a little of this lasts forever. i want her to always be the way she is; picky eating and all. in just a little over 6 months she'll be starting kindergarten. i'm a little afraid her spirit will somehow be broken. i'm praying now for her adjustment...it's going to be a tough one. how i will miss her during the day. but i do look forward to spending lots of time with the prince & the knight. it'll be different, but fun. i wonder if we'll still play princess when she's at school?

Moment of the Day

unsupervised moment of the day: "washing" dishes, taking a "bath"

what i hear:

emily: oh, it's a little chilly
ethan: yeah, i've got bubbles on me

what i find: two guilty looking kids stripped down to their underwear with one foot (to the calf) each in a sink filled-to-the-brim with soapy water. water all over the floor, wet clothes on the floor and countertop.

what do i say? nothing at first. i just looked at them.

mom: what were y'all thinking?

emily: well, we thought we were smelly so we were going to take a bath.

about 10 minutes before i told them they could wash some dishes, but obviously i stayed out of the room too long not to nip in the bud what came next. this was totally my fault, so there was no punishment, but i did tell them they lost their washing dishes privilege. i did come in just in time to avoid disaster though. :)

Question of the Day & an eavesdropped conversation

ethan is 3 1/2. he is absolutely full of questions. most of them, i can either answer or fake like i know the answer and tell him something. yesterday, he caught me off guard with a question i did not want to have a long conversation about.

ethan (after going to the potty): mom, i know that when you flush the potty the water goes to the ocean. but where does the toilet paper go?

mom: well, i guess it goes to the ocean too.

ethan: okay, mom.
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emily and ethan love the PBS show Word World. the gist is the characters on the show are their words...like Pig is made up of the word p i g. last week i heard them playing one scene of Word World over and over again and laughing their heads off.

sheep to ant: this is the pits (the fell into a pit)

emily and ethan: HA HA HA HA

ethan tooted: this is the toots!!!!

emily and ethan: HA HA HA HA

i had to laugh. that was funny. normally when either of them do something vile and disgusting they blame it on the invisible family member, toejam. at least ethan owned up to it that time. i know we have to stop this now, because i can so see ethan in sunday school burping or passing gas and then yelling out - TOEJAM!

Post Christmas Post

i'm having a little bit of trouble getting back in the groove of updating...but i was called out in the ultimate blog-stalker, angie, in her new blog so i decided to comply. :)

we had a great Christmas. as y'all know, ethan has shown a great interest in playing the electric guitar so he got one for Christmas. i thought ethan would be much older before i had to say this phrase -- TURN DOWN YOUR AMP!" he's 3 1/2...what in the world will it be like by the time he is 5?!

so anyway..it's been too long to do a real after-Christmas post, so i'll leave you with a little Christmas morning jam session. enjoy.


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

and in case my dear MIL reads this, yes, the boys wore their cute Christmas pjs that night - but both of them woke up wet and had to be changed before coming downstairs. :)