I DID IT!!!!!!!!

I totally get my new running shoes, I met my goal, and I'm so happy. Thanks to Dagny for cheering me up. I'm still going to continue working out (hopefully) but I can feel myself getting stronger, especially in the stomach muscles. Once I pick them out, I should take a picture and post my new shoes. :) Merry Christmas everyone!

Struggling to climb back on the wagon when its speeding away at 90 miles an hour

I sometimes find myself in a funk. Lots of different things put me there, children put me there a lot, but thats a different story.

My weight puts me there the a good portion of the time too. I was always the "skinny" girl, but I didn't realize how much of that was how much I was running all the time with track and cross country. Ever since I quit those, my weight has been a constant struggle, save one time. Last year I joined a gym, it was wonderful. I was working out five times a week, doing cardio and strength training, and getting back to being skinny, then my husband stepped in. I swear to this day its because I pointed out to him how much smaller my chest was becomig and how great it was, he denys everything. He "convinced" me how much money we could save in the long run if he bought me my own eliptical machine and then I could work out at home. Since then, rather than losing weight, or even maintaining, I have been gaining again.

I really want new running shoes for my birthday (although my secret want for a birthday present is another gym membership) and I've told myself that I have to lose some weight in order to "earn" my birthday present. So, I've been trying to climb back on the wagon after falling off, and I feel as though its going too fast for me. Sometimes I just want to give up and be fat, but I already feel so gross and just a "little bit" overweight.

I've been "better" about working out each night, I'm just trying to keep it all in perspective, but I seriously think that I'm going to have to starve myself and still work out each day in order to make my goal. Wish me luck, because I really want new shoes.

random

I LOVE my new job. Some have requested house pictures. I still haven't figured out how to write around the pictures. These are from last spring, before we even put the offer in on our house. I need to take more, and upload them. But that might not happen for a while. We're getting a new furnace this week, so we won't be as cold.

The story behind that, when our home inspector went through our house, he passed the main furnace, and said the second furnace, that is for the addition (which is pretty much our kitchen) didn't work, and would need repairs. So, earlier this month, I had a furnace company come out, because they were advertising furnace tune ups to make them run more efficiently for the winter, and help us save $$. However, when they were out, they said that our main furnace didn't really work after all, the heating element was cracked, and that can make carbon monoxide leak out. So, our home warranty people had to come out and inspect our furnace, and we requested they take a look at the second one as well, so that they could get any repair work needed on that one paid for by the warranty. They cleared us to get a brand new main furnace and we only have to pay $400, while furnaces cost up to $8,000, and merely cleaned the gas valve on the other, and got it up and running. So, I've had a warm kitchen, and freezing everything else, but they are coming on Thursday to give us a new furnace, YAY!

New Job

One week from tomorrow I start my new job. I'll be moving on up to our corporate offices into the billing department. True, its not necessarily a pay raise, and I'll most likely get yelled at a lot more often. However, there are many many bonuses coming from this new job.
1. I will be working the same days and hours as Alec.
2. We'll get to carpool and save $$ on gas, and help the environment a little more.
3. SATURDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! off
4. I will get to get out of the horrible office that I'm in. There is so much politics and favoritism going on there, I hate it. We have people that are so in with the boss, that when they come in to work, they are mostly getting paid to visit and chat with her. We also have people that are "sick" and take advantage of it all the time, by either not working, or calling in every single Saturday because they are "sick", and they're on FMLA, so there is nothing the bosses can do about it. I think that its rather convienent that they are only sick on Saturdays, and no other day of the week, but no one listens to me. The same person that is sick all the time hardly works when they are there, they sit on their cell phone and text all the time, even in front of customers.
5. I won't have face time with customers anymore! Its okay sometimes, but to see the looks that I get when my coworkers are the ones sitting and texting and ignoring the customers. There are six of my coworkers that text all the time and ignore customers, and I only have two other coworkers in the office besides those six, and the managers.
6. I won't get blamed for certain coworkers lack of understanding anymore. We have one lady, who is very nice, but she is from Venezuela, and doesn't understand everything very well, and makes A LOT of mistakes, and I get yelled at by customers for her mistakes all the time.
So, as you can see, I don't give a crap that I'm not going to be making more money in my new job, but I'll be free from the little mini "hell" I've been living for the last year, and in a better position to continue furthering my "career" at RC Willey, however long it lasts.

I'm a customer too

May 29th, our homeowners insurance agent gives me a call saying the state wants us to put handrails up on our front porch, or they will force our insurance company to cancel our policy, we have 35 days to get it done. My husband decides to have his friend help him out, he gives him the measurements, and the friend decides to research code and let us know. We hear NOTHING. A week later, the friend decides to come up and help with another project, and tell us that handrails can be done through Lowes, but they are special order and take a while to come in. I tell my husband that my grandmother knows people that can get them done, why don't I find out who, and call them. He is okay with me calling, but he wants pictures and examples of what they've done. We can't find any online, so I have to go to the place and look, oh wow, its your basic handrail, what a surprise. I tell them, come over to my house and measure please, and then make me handrails. They come measure almost two weeks ago, and then take off as soon as they're done, without talking to me. I hear nothing, Alec called them last week on Friday, but the secretary was gone, and nobody knew anything about it, we ask can you call back on Monday. Monday around three they finally call back, to give me a quote. I tell them, I don't care about your quote, I want these done, will they be done by Thursday. She doesn't know, they have been busy, she says she'll call me tomorrow. I wait all day today for her call back, nothing AGAIN. I get home, frustrated, thinking that I'll just call them in the morning, and I check the mail, there is a letter from our insurance carriers, its a reimbursement check dated June 12, a mere 14 days after I was notified, saying that our account is closed and here is our money back. I call the handrail people, and someone answered after hours, it must have been the boss, he was "apologetic" saying they've been busy with other jobs. I tell him, you promised me that the most it would take to get handrails would be one week, here we are almost two weeks later and they haven't even been started, I'm a customer too. Then I tell him its for my homeowners insurance, and he acts even more "apologetic". But when I ask the question, are they going to be done for my on Thursday, he doesn't know and he'll get back to me tomorrow. GRRRRR

Someone wanted pictures, so I'm attempting to learn how to post with a picture. I thought that I would write about my Dad's funeral, so that it would help me remember.

I was a little excited to walk into the funeral home, because I knew that I would get to see my nephews Binyomin and Avi, who live in Virginia with their parents and I never get to see them. They had fun playing with their cousins, Ian and Isaac, who I don't see as often as I should. Before the funeral there were three accidents due to wild running and playing between the four boys. The two four year olds learned to not run around anymore, but the two year old and the six year old didn't learn anything. My family surprised me shortly before the funeral started and told me that I was going to be conducting the whole thing. They thought I would take it best if they just let me know right before, rather than a couple of days earlier. Public speaking is my worst enemy, I wish they had just had Alec do it. It was hard for me to see my Dad in the coffin. I didn't want Alec to take any pictures with the lid open, but I probably should have because the mortuarys picture was grainy and yellow. My Dad would have loved the funeral. There were no bagpipes, no "God Be With You til we Meet Again", and his grandsons acted like themselves. Avi and Binyomin went up to their mom while she was giving a talk and added comments, Avi helped the piano player every time there was a song, and Isaac, while playing at the grave site, somehow managed to trip the mechanism that lowers the casket, and it started lowering into the grave, but one side was going faster than the other. This all made my mom very happy, and we know that my Dad loved his grandsons, even when they were naughty, so we know that he would have loved that day.

I know that the pictures requested were of the house, but, I can't access them at the moment, so we'll save that for another post.

All done!

There is nothing better than having too many boxes, too many helpers, and a little too much room in the moving truck. We closed on the house May 1st, and we got our keys on May 4th, so we spent almost every day we could coming up to our house and moving boxes of nonessential items up. Three days before the big move, Alec and I looked around the apartment, and started stressing as to how far behind we were. We really only wanted to move the big stuff on the big move day. So, we went into overhaul mode. Each day we would do so much, but still go to bed thinking we were so far behind. I was very tired, because rather than going to sleep around 10:30 which I love, I was staying up past midnight, just to get things done. The night before the move I was up until around 1:30 just making sure that I had as much of the cleaning done as I could. The plan was for me to never have to go back to the apartment after we had moved, so I had to clean clean clean.
The morning of the move, I was kind of sad because we had told friends and family 8:30, and the ward 9, and at 8:50 we still only had the one person that we had to go pick up in order to get him to help us with moving. Then my mom showed up at 8:51, and another friend showed up at 8:53, and then ward members started popping in all over the place. We had the truck loaded around 9:40, and my sister and Alec's brother arrived just in time for us to send them on to the house to unload. My mom and I finished cleaning very soon after the truck left, and by the time we got to the house, the truck was practically unloaded, and five minutes after that was done, our new ward members arrived to help unload. We were very blessed yesterday with lots of people willing to share their time to help us. I keep joking saying I wished they would help us unpack too, but my sister is actually willing to do that, partly because she wants my boxes for her move next month. :)

Homeowners

Alec and I will be moving into our first house this Saturday. We go from a maybe 900 square foot apartment to a 3000 square foot house, with an additional 1000 square feet for the garage/workshop. Plenty big enough for us to have our family grow in. However, we're going to try and kill the principle as much as we can in the next three years or so. That means that all of Alec's paychecks will be going to the mortgage payment, and mine will take care of the rest of our bills. Which means, no babies in the near future. I hope to start reproducing before I'm 35, so that gives me another 9 and 1/2 years or so. Maybe I'm just waiting for my nephews to be old enough to babysit before I have children of my own. Who knows, but I'm still young, and Alec and I HATE being in debt.

Oh, for all my many followers, my Dad passed away on January 24.