100 day celebrating

I totally forgot to blog this last week but it was too cute not to share. C. is home sick today with a stomach virus. She is so hungry but every time she eats she gets sick again. Poor baby. I am crossing my fingers it doesn't pass thru the whole bunch of us!

The Day with Nana!

I didn't get to celebrate my birthday with my folks until last Friday. This 34 birthday has been great! I just keep on celebrating! So I drove down and spent the day with Nana and Papa! I went to mom's work and then we had a big ole county meal. Yummy white beans! I really wanted a greased dripping roll and piece of pecan pie!!! Choices Choices Choices! We had a fun day!
See where Caroline gets her posing from!

Biggest Loser Week 2

Talk of shortening the competition from 12 to 8 weeks. We all compromised for 10 weeks!!!

Steve and Mckenzie adding up the total percentages!

Yipee. We did it. This week Steve and I were the biggest losers. We were nervous because the 2nd week was harder than the first. Mckenzie has all the stats on her blog.

Tagged Again

I keep getting tagged. At first I forgot about it-then ignored it....it's not going to work. I have officially been tagged by Chrys, Cynthia, Cindy (from Katie's blog) and now Katie. I kinda liked the format of Katie's tag game better so I guess I'll use it! I don't have to think as hard.

4 Jobs I've had:

1. ymca cheerleading coach!

2. aerobic instructor

3. photographer

4. preschool 3 year old teacher!

4 Movies I've watched over and over

1. The notebook

2. Gone with the wind

3. Mulan

4. Fox and the Hound (this is all b. would watch when A was born-it gave me a much needed break when A. would sleep-we have it all memorized!)

4 Places I've lived

1. TN-Johnson City

2. TN-McMinnville

3. TN-(not much variety in this life-What can I say I love TN)

4. Rexburg-Idaho

4 shows I watch

1. The big Idea ( I love this show-if Uncle A had TV and cable and if he watched TV he would love this show too!!!)

2. Brothers and Sisters

3. Oprah

4. Grey's Anatomy (My FAV)

4 Places I've Been

1. FL

2. GA

3. UT

4. TX

4 People who email me regular

1. Lisa

2. Chrys

3. Brandi

4. Steve

4 fav. things to eat

1. Continental breakfast at hotels!

2. Peanut butter bagels

3. brownies

4. solomon family Carmel cake

4 places I'd rather be

1. Asleep

2. At the beach

3. With all my family both sides

4. In my house but super clean!

4 things I look forward to this year

1. Andrew turning 12 and getting the priesthood at church-passing sacrament

2. 2 nephews getting baptized

3. finishing the biggest loser and dropping more weight!

4. Growing magical memories to a new level!

I am tagging Heather, Mckenzie, Meghan, Mary Katherine, and Doralee! All my sils you've been tagged by Katie in case you haven't checked!

I hope I did this right because if I didn't I am sure one of my dearly beloved SILs will let me know!!! I mean that with LOVE!!!

What a week-end

Blackman middle school came home with 2nd place in the state of Tennessee. We had some fun and tough competition. We had a blast. Blake did really well. He won and lost some of his matches. We were so proud of him. Our family ended up staying the whole week-end. We had a blast. Don't want to go back to routine tomorrow but at least we feel we have had a little break!

Happy Birthday Mitchell

Can't believe your 12! Heather our babies are growing up! Mitchell hope you have a great day today. I am so excited for you to pave the way for Andrew. I can't even believe you will be holding the priesthood Sunday. Happy Birthday. We Love You!

YIPEE FOR BLAKE

We are so pumped. We thought because Blake lost his last and only loss for wrestle off this season that we were going to miss the opportunity to wrestle for the middle school state tourn. As it turns out Coach Bill is going to take him after all. He said since he started all season he would still take him. We are so thrilled to get to go wrestle the last middle school tourn. We have had a great middle school season and although wrestling season is not over-middle school wrestling is. It has been great to have both the boys on the same team. One huge benefit for having your kids a year apart!

Happy Birthday Aunt Brandi!

Happy Happy Birthday Aunt Brandi. Hope you have a great 32! I never knew being 30 something would be so much fun. I used to think it would be so yukky being in my 30's but I love it. And I am glad you all are here too so we can be in our 30's together!

Happy Birthday SIL

Winners for the week!

We made it our first week of the biggest loser competition. Hunger-sore legs from working out and I am sure some not so nice words in the process. I still feel like I am detoxing from no sugar in my diet. I know it will be worth it. I kept thinking all week Why did I agree to this!

But Monday night at weigh ins it was so much fun. Bill did all of our percentages in the laptop. I wish they were closer so they could do it with us.

Chrys took our pictures while we celebrated. As a whole group...5 couples we lost 84 pounds! I am so excited to do this together.

Steve and I came in third. Together lost 18 pounds. I was so excited. I got so pumped up. Mckenzie and Zack were the winners for the week. Mckenzie lost 12 pounds in one week. Wow. Way to go Mckenzie that is so so so good. This will be worth it.

So much fun!

I can't even start to tell you how much fun we all had this week-end. Bruce and Brandi and boys- Gma- Bill and chrys and gang. My family and I were so sad when it was time to be over. They are counting down to be together again. Thanks for all the fun times and laughs. We loved it all!

More birthday

Bill surprised me with my favorite solomon tradition carmel cake. Yummy

And Steve topped off my birthday celebration with a cricut. I am loving it. Now my magical memories customers will have the cutest ever envelopes. Thanks Stevie!

I stole this pixs from Chrys! Thanks Chrys

I still get another celebration with my mom on Friday. I was suppose to go last Friday but A. got sick. So we postponed. I can't wait. I love to make it linger!

What a week!

I can't even start to go over all the events from this past week. Oh my goodness what a week! Bill and Chrys came in for the long week-end because our children were all out of school. I like to say they just really came in to help me bring in the big 34....but you know I know they really just came to visit us all for the long weekend. It just happened to fall on my birthday. We had a fun filled week-end-non stop fun and temptation of food. It was great having all this temptation for food in front of us to see how bad we would fall. We did fall a little but we still managed to do better than we normally would.

Chrys has every detail of the week-end posted on her blog so just click on over and read up on all the fun. http://solomonsurprises.blogspot.com/.

Heather got me this cool smoothie, drink blender for my birthday. It is so cool. One cup just change out the blender lid to a drink lid. Mix and Go...just my style. Does she know me or what?

thanks Heather. I love it.

Mckenzie surprised me with an arbonne drink mix and some other arbonne goodies that I have been wanting to try. This went perfect for my new shake maker. I am loving it. Thanks Mckenzie

That Lucy and Rachel never cease to amaze me. They came all the way over to my house and decorated my van and studio window. Honk I am 34...Let's just say I got lots of honks all the way to church on Sunday. Crazy girls. I loved loved it. Thanks for thinking of me and being great neices. I just wish you had came in to hang out with me! That would have made it even better.

I love you!

My Wacky Tacky Girl!

Leah Beth's our wackiest girl this week with wacky tacky day at school. Caroline would not change her hair style. See why we think Caroline is like Nana (she doesn't want anyone to notice her in a crowd, on purpose, at least!) Leah Beth is loving every minute of the weeks events. She has been so excited so I wanted to share.

Biggest Loser couples Competition

The game is on. I called Mckenzie today she didn't answer...bet she was on the treadmill or working out some where! I am hoping her competition mind keeps me motivated.

Here's how it goes:

• Each couple puts in $10 a week.
• All couples weigh in every Monday night.
• The couple that looses the most percentage each week together wins the pot for that week.
• The couple that looses the least amount percentage has to pay $20 for that week.
• At the end of 12 weeks each couple pays $100 toward the main prize.
• The couple that looses the most percentage of weight wins the main prize at the end of the 12 weeks!
• No dropping out. If you drop you still have to pay!

We talked about doing a group challenge each week and one couple being in charge of that but since every one is so busy we are going to work out together every Monday after weigh ins and challenge once a month!

The couple that wins the challenge will win a service from each of the loosing couples....babysitting, a prepared meal etc.

We are also talking about having another weigh in every 8 weeks after the competition is over to make sure we are staying on target.

We ended up with only 5 couples but that is still enough to make it fun.

I can't believe how excited I am about this. I had just decided to be happy with my fat self and get on with it. Mckenzie is such a motivator. I am so glad she called. So our couples are

Mckenzie and Zach

Luke and Cara

Bruce and Brandi

John and Laura

Gretchen and Steve

It will be fun to see what happens next week. I'll keep you posted!

Did you know

that serious hard core house cleaning burns more calories than aerobic class? This means-mopping, scrubbing and really deep cleaning with your whole body! Maybe I should just really focus on a cleaner house and then I'd be skinny and happy!

MY BLURB IS BACK!

Front

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Back
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It's finally here. Now I wish I had taken the time to go back from the beginning of the year and add pictures and entries but I feared I would never accomplish if I back track. But I am so happy that I just have the last quarter of the year. I think this will make me more excited about blogging everything!


I tired to just show a couple of pages so you can see the different page templetes, but there are so many different templetes to choose from this really doesn't tell enough. At least you can get an idea!

Breaking up is hard to do!

Today I am saying good-bye to some good friends of mine!

Good-bye I've known for awhile that I've needed to move on.

No Bake cookies.....I love you! NO picture..but these are my fav. cookies.

Fried pototoes....It's been real

Hot chocolate when I'm not even cold....Thanks for being there for me.

Chocolate kisses...Your the best

BLT....I love you enough to let you go.

Goodbye Fat Gretchen....Hello a new lifestyle of fun and exciting adventures!

Tonight is the night. We weigh in at the wrestling building with now 7 almost 8 couples! I think the weekly rewards are going to really help. Today I feel ready but I have drank 3 cups of hot cocoa so no wonder I feel ready. Here goes nothing!

The biggest Loser couples!

Steve and I are joining a biggest looser group with a group of friends. The only thing I know that motivates me is MONEY. Mckenzie came up with a great idea so here we go! I said I wasn't going to diet this year but I think I am up for some fun challenges. And to get to be with good friends while hunger sounds like fun to me. Details to come on Tuesday. We weigh in Monday night. HERE WE GO! The competition is on BABY.

Caroline says the cutest things!

Yesterday Caroline was getting into the car after school and she says, "Oh no, please don't tell me your listening to that Damn Ramsey again!" At first I thought she was swearing then I realized that is what she thinks his name is! http://daveramsey.com/. Cutest girl.....says the darnest things.

HORMONES

What the heck is going on in my house? This week this house is the hormone house. I think some people don't think of boys being as hormonal as girls but let me tell you....hormones are raging! And with Leah Beth's thyroid thing she is ahead on her hormone level which puts her about the same as Andrew so with the three of them and me this house has been upside down! Let me explain....it began Sunday night with LB-can't sleep. Monday morning I felt like I had a newborn being woke oh about 20 times with this terrible cry "I CAN'T SLEEP" I'm thinking neither can the rest of us now! Lisa came Monday to work and we began training for her new job responsibilities and the weekend shoots. My head was so blurry and hopefully I was nice. I can't really remember.

2nd Monday after school Blake looses his wrestle off. (If you not in the wrestling world...I'll try and explain. The wrestling team has a wrestle off before the upcoming meet. The player wrestles all the people on his team in the same weight class. The wrestler that wins then gets to wrestle varsity and represent his team in that weight class at the upcoming meet. All the other wrestlers will wrestle JV) So Blake has won every wrestle off the whole middle school season and he loose the very last one. WHAT!!! All that practice and practice and practice. OH Well! A very frustrating week for Blake because he now has to leave the varsity spot that he has had all season and not wrestle for the championship. He will however get to wrestle JV-(but my saying that didn't seem to help).
I know this blog is getting LONG...I will try and hurry!
3rd Andrew and his girl decided to break up. (For those of you that have opinions on crushes and don't allow your middle school to have crushes...I don't really want any opinions on the subject this week. We feel like it is a normal and natural part of life-heck we already have C's husband picked out!) Any ways although he says he doesn't care....and they both wanted "to like other people"...there has been a strange quietness with my most talkative boy.

4th Steve has worked 6AM until 10 PM all week and is limiting his diet...He's tired, frustrated, and enough said! He managed to still get me a laptop this week though!!! (Thank you honey for working so hard!) So any extra help he is with running children has fallen on me. Thank goodness my work load is much lighter than the fall. It's funny how the Lord always seems to bless us in that way. When my work load is heavy his always seems much lighter and when mine is lighter his seems heavy.

5th We found out LB has strep. This explains the mental break downs every single day all week long. Thank goodness we know she just isn't loosing it. I even yelled at her this week. I never ever yell at my kids....this parenting with love didn't work too well this week! I needed instant gratification..(it didn't work)

6th I think I might just have a pity party for myself today. My hormones seem a little out of place too. I just want to eat chocolate and cry. I miss my kids. I hate the first week back of school when they and daddy have been home. I get spoiled to having everyone around me. After we went to see Zach (our nephew) off for his mission farewell. Blake did the math and let me know it's only 70 months until he leaves on his mission. UGH...why does he like math so much. That seems a lot different than 6 years (or does it) OH well at least it's not 6 months. But I am glad he is thinking about it!

OH Happy Day!

My new lover!!!
Just kidding. Steve brought me the best gift home today. A new laptop computer. Magical Memories will work so much better now! Thanks honey for being so good to me! Wow! I was going to blog about all the crazy things that are going on in my house this week but this is much much better.

Studio Makeover!

Slowly I am trying to redo my little studio room. Since we moved here I have been planning to do this but I just couldn't find the time or energy. Finally here come the pink and brown. I would love it if I could get it to look like my little studio boutique, but a little at a time will have to work.

Chair covers

Diaper changing table
file cabinet
new uppercase living
door chimes so I can hear people come in! Now I just have to paint the walls and finish the curtains....will it happen????

Any more ideas shoot them over my way!