Super Busy Saturday!

What a crazy busy day! Started off my morning by driving to San Jose to pick up my tomato seedlings from Finny! I got to meet Bubba and Jada and see her cool meadow, vegetable garden and bees! Pretty damn exciting! I only got partially lost on the way there.

Google Maps has some 'splaning to do about their crappy ass directions. When you get off the freeway and it says "continue on" but you have to pick if you should go right or left? Not good. Especially when you pick the wrong one but don't realize that until it's pretty far away!

After our visit I drove back home, grabbed Trevor and walked down to the car show. There were a lot of cars this year! My friend Eric from work and his wife came to hang out with us. My friend Lupe worked for part of it and then her fiance came out to meet us. Scott and the girls all came down at one point. It was a nice day and we pretty much just hung out and talked and had a few drinks. Good times!

Check out this fabulous slide they had to keep the kids busy.

I think they should put this up every weekend and I'll just send my kid down to have fun. I'll even send snacks ok? Love that it was free too!

Before Trevor went in the water thing he took my camera around and took pictures of all the cars he liked. Pretty much anything with flames!

After we got home we were starving and realized it wasn't too late for us to join the rest of my family for my dad's birthday (I had made plans for the car show before the birthday plans), so we drove over to my brother's house. Had dinner and hung out and then drove back home.

In two minutes my oldest will be is now 18. 

:sniff:

Tomorrow Today we'll be going to the beach. 

I guess I'll put away the 12 loads of laundry later, we only live once right!

Big Sticks Are Awesome

Is it wrong that when I saw these in the store I thought "wow those would make some awesome kabobs!"

I stopped in the store today to get a can of black beans. I only had $3 cash and didn't really want to use my ATM card but I had enough for the beans and a soda. These were right by the check out so I just grabbed one. I feel like such a cheater. Sorry Diet Coke, I still love you better!!

Tonight for dinner I made this recipe for Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake.

I forgot the corn! DOH! Remembered after I had put it in the oven and was figuring out the calories. It was fine without it though.

I actually ended up cutting this serving in 1/2 so it would be less calories. I figured it out to be 330 calories for 1/8th of the recipe. I obviously added some olives and I also had to use regular cheese since SOMEONE who says they didn't do it ate all the fat free cheddar cheese I had bought for quesadillas.

Trevor had kept asking me if he could sleep on the couch tonight. He sleeps out here almost every weekend and vacation. Kind of like camping out. I kept telling him no it's not Friday yet he has to sleep in his room. So the little booger got himself all cuddled up and fell asleep over 1/2 an hour before bedtime.  Guess he wins.

Educational Day

 Today I got to go help judge a science fair for work again. Fun fun! 

Don't I look official?

Nothing too exciting this year. The ones that won were ones that actually followed all the directions and included all the information correctly!

I worked over eight hours today. That means someone else should be cleaning for me right?

After work I ran to Costco to get a new nose piece pad thing for my glasses. Wore them all day with just one. Couldn't really tell til the end of the day when it started bugging me. They just snapped a new one in for me, no charge! I picked up some shrimp with cocktail sauce for me and some popcorn chicken for everyone else for dinner.

I was home for about an hour then we went to Jessica's awards ceremony for school. Last one until graduation. This was for the IB program. Some of these kids are so smart I couldn't even understand what they were going to go to college for.

Here she is getting her awards & sash to wear to graduation. It was nice that they called the kids up, gave them there stuff and read off what they were proud of, what IB tests they were taking, what college they are going to and what their major is going to be.

It's like a warm up for graduation. Pretty sure I am going to have to remember to take tissues.

I remember being her age. No idea what I was going to do with my life, going to school the bare minimum and working. By this point in my senior year I had moved out of my parents house into my own apartment and commuting to school. It was kind of surreal listening to these super smart kids all with a big plan on what they are going to do with their lives. I hope that at least half of them make it to their goals. Life tends to not always go as we plan.

Tractors, Trenches and Tasty Dishes

This is the tractor I was behind for awhile this morning. There are a lot of them on the road right now. Some of them are so strange looking. They look like they can turn into Transformers!

(yes that's a crack in my window, I should probably get it fixed it looks like a rainbow)

This is the irrigation trench I went out to measure today. I was talking to the owner of the orchard when I accidentally stepped in part of the trench. I was down IN the ground before I knew what happened. 

I'm ok but wow that was kind of scary!

This is the picture I accidentally took when I fell in the trench. Makes me laugh! I didn't even know I took it until I got back to the office and I was going through my pictures I took.

 This is the delicious dinner I made tonight. It's a Pioneer Woman recipe. 

I exchanged the higher calorie items for lower calorie ones.

93% lean ground beef, fat free sour cream, low fat cottage cheese, and I used 3/4 cup fat free cheese. Everything else is the same. It came out to 276 calories for a large piece. 

Very filling and SO good I wanted to lick the plate!

Social Butterfly

I've been gone every day or night since last Thursday. While it's been fun I really need to stay home tonight and wash some disgusting dishes that have accumilated in my absence! Funny how you can be gone and the dishes still pile up! Well maybe not so funny ;)

Saturday night while we were gone apparently a house down the street burnt down.

Fortunately it was empty, That's probably how it ended up burning down though. Some stupid people messing around in there I'm sure. It could have been a really cute house if someone gave it some TLC. It had a nice porch on it. Guess it will just get bull dozed now. I wonder if someone will build a new house on the lot. Out where we are you can only build a new house if there is existing septic on the lot.

ETA here's a picture of it engulfed in flames in the local paper

So Sunday we went to our friend's house to BBQ and swim. My friend's husband makes the best BBQ'd chicken! It was so good I had two pieces. I took a little shrimp ring with cocktail sauce in the middle for us to snack on. I think that is going to be one of my new party foods. Apparently you can get a larger one at Costco.

I didn't take any pictures but we had a lot of fun! We are going camping with these friends again at the end of July.

Yesterday after work I met up with the same friend and our other friend to celebrate a birthday. We went to a mongolian bbq place. You can make a pretty healthy meal there. I should have left out the noodles but they were good! I got the shrimp too.

After dinner we went to the movies to see The Lucky One. I read the book back in 2010 when I was trying to read all the Nicholas Sparks books. Before I gave up on most of them being stupid sappy love stories. I did like this one though.

My friends and I decided to take a picture in front of the poster teenager style. Took me about 5 tries to get us all in there (and no poster lol). It was hilarious though and we were cracking up.

Oh look here's the poster lol



Can I just say "hot damn" they have some good love scenes in the movie? Makes up for the slow parts!

The movie seemed pretty true to what I remembered in the book. I think the Dad was meaner to the kid in the book though. I'm remembering him being REALLY mean about the violin and him being the one that gave the kid the bloody nose with the baseball.

All in all a good movie.

After the movie was over we went to a couple stores in the mall. We went over to Victoria's Secret since my friend had some coupons. I was totally cracking up about the underware with sayings on them. WHO WEARS THIS CRAP? All I can see them being good for is some sexting.

I think these were the most "tame" pair they had.

After the mall walk we went to Starbucks to finish our night. Great night out with the girls!

Tonight? Dishes! And I hopefully will cook dinner too!

Damn Cupcakes

Remind me next time I decide to go somewhere that I know is going to have a lot of bad choices in food to eat before I go, ok?

This morning I weighed in over a pound heavier.
Yeah that would be the taco dip, tortilla chips and 2 cupcakes.

DAMMIT!

It took me all week to get back down to what I was last Sunday and then I messed it up again.

The party was ok. Not too many people showed up. Towards the end it ended up being about the same as her party last year.

I didn't drink since I'd had a lot of wine the night before.

Her cousin and his girl friend were letting their kids drink. I have a REALLY hard time with them letting the kids drink. I'm not just talking about a sip of beer but several beers and shots. The youngest is only 15 and he was drinking along with the others.

Do you think it's ok for kids to drink when they are at home with family and not going anywhere? I know some people think that's ok but I really don't like it.

Today we are going to another friend's house to swim and have a BBQ. She's a non carb dieter though so she'll have more healthy things to eat. Plus we'll be playing in the pool so that will burn some calories right?

I'm trying to decide if I should wear my old swimsuit that bags out in the ass but fits good everywhere else or my newer one I bought because that's all I could find at the end of summer last year when I couldn't find my other one. It's a bit big and kind of ugly but the ass doesn't bag out. Decisions decisions. Ah to have such hard things to think about, it's a rough life eh?

Party Time!

I'm hot! It's almost 90 out today! I tried to take a nap and woke up sweaty. Ick. I was taking a power nap since I think I might have slept four hours last night.

I went to go see Travis Tritt with my Mom's friend (who is basically like an Aunt to me) and my Mom. I don't really know his music since I didn't really start listening to country music until about five years ago. He put on a really good show though and I enjoyed myself!

The opening band was Whiskey Dawn, they were pretty good too and most of them are from my city. I found that rather exciting!

I didn't get home until pretty late so I was dragging ass all day.

Today is my friend's birthday so we went and hung out at the little corner store and had some drinks (wine for me) than moved over to our little bar and had one more before calling it a night. Nice hanging out with her and her fiance and finally Scott when he came out to hang with us.

Tomorrow night is her party at her house. I hope a lot of people show up for her. At some point tonight I told her I'd make cupcakes for her party tomorrow so now I need to run to town tomorrow and pick up the stuff. The least I can do for my buddy :)

It's going to a party and bbq weekend. Hopefully I can stay close to my calorie count!

Grocery Shopping Nightmare!

So I did a good one today.

Today is payday for both Scott and I. We both deposited our checks in the bank. I took the kids with me to Target to get a few things and then to the grocery store. I went to pay and it said insufficient funds.

Apparently we didn't have enough "available" funds to pay for the groceries. The kids had bagged it all up and had their snacks in their hands. I had to tell them to put them in the cart and then leave the cart.

I felt like such a heal!

They said they could hold my cart for me and I ran to the bank to figure out how to get enough "cash" to pay for everything. (That store doesn't take credit cards.)

 After about ten minutes I got enough cash from my various accounts and rushed back to the store, praying the whole time they hadn't put my two hours worth of shopping back on the shelf.

I ran back in and didn't see the cart.

An employee came over after a minute and said they had put it in the fridge. Whew!  That was a little too tight of a situation! Not to mention totally embarrassing! The lady was like, oh it happens all the time, don't be embarrassed.

Easy for her today!

Out With The Kids

Well I don't know what you all have been doing. Not commenting on my blog apparently! Probably out frolicking in the sunshine or something equally enjoyable. I spent Saturday afternoon doing I don't know what.

Then I went over to my friend's house and watched her get ready to go out for like two hours. Even if I take my time it might MAYBE take me an hour to get ready to go somewhere from the time I get in the shower until I walk out the door with extra make up, straightened hair and jewelry. AND I have kids. Apparently I'm a bit more on the simple side of "dressed up".

Speaking of getting dressed up I have hardly any tops that don't look like a lose bag on me. I'm a little excited for payday to come tomorrow so I can go buy myself some tops. Food would would be nice too. I think we have a few things of "cup of crap" aka soup up in the cabinet that we might be having for dinner. I just ate some left over beans I found in the back of the fridge. If I die later we'll all know that they were a bit past their prime.

Here's a bad cell phone pic of me right before we went out (way under dressed in jeans). Look I'm wearing heels. I wore them all night and didn't die. Can I just say that I cannot WAIT until there is no extra neck roll. Going to be the highlight of my year.

So anyhow my friend and I went out to The Ave. Originally we were going to to go there for dinner and drinks but we missed dinner time so we went to BJ's for that. BJ's has a lighter menu too. I'm loving all these places with lower cal meals. I had the Chicken A La Fresca and subbed out the rice for more veggies. Apparently double up on the veggies means you get TWO slices of zucchini instead of one and a lot more tomatoes. It's ok though it was still good.

Back to The Ave, I had been there once before with the same friend. Last time we went there it was a bit warmer out and when we sat outside we got dive bombed with bugs. This time we didn't have that problem but I couldn't help feel that I was like the mom in the room. The basic age there is like 25 with a few "older" like 50ish couples around. I think I prefer my little country type bars better. Less fake sophistication and a lot more Wranglers.

To make the evening more exciting my friend was talking up this little short guy that was drinking champagne. They are just chatting along when this other guy comes up. Champagne guy says something about getting registered for his classes (which means he's probably 22) and then all of a sudden the new guy reaches over the little half wall and tries to punch him. He misses. Champagne guy puts his glass down and takes off after the guy where they take turns throwing punches. No one actually makes contact. Next thing I know he's back sipping his champagne. The fighter guy is walking down the sidewalk and the next thing I know he's throwing punches with some OTHER guy. Once again no one actually makes contact. Next thing I know they are all gone. Yep, that was about the excitement of the night.

At least if you were at a country bar they know how to fight right?

Easter Recap

In all my Friday night boredom I remembered that I never finished posting Easter pictures.

Here are the kids hunting for eggs. The oldest didn't want to hunt eggs, but then she did, and then re-hid them real quick. At first she wasn't even going to come outside but I told her if she wanted her Easter basket she was going to have to come find it. I promised I wouldn't put any pictures of her un-made face on the internet.  Since she has her own computer now I'd better keep my promises ;)

Things I see when I look at these pictures:

My Melissa is really growing up.
Trevor can't ever make a normal face when I take his picture.
I need to just plan to make my nephew an Easter basket every year since he was here last year too.

The nice thing about no one believing in the Easter bunny anymore is that you don't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn to hide eggs. Not that I ever did anyways, that was always Scott's job since he is the morning person. We have always used the real eggs from the Easter bunny. This year, for the first time ever, we never did find one of them. I guess we'll find it eventually right?

My little niece Ava is so adorable. If only she was happy to have me and anyone but her mom hold her for more than a minute. As soon as she realizes you are "not the mama" whaaaaaaa

That's 4 generations sitting & behind the swing. Not too long after that was taken the swing BROKE. Awesome. Scott said he can fix it. Anyone want to take bets on how many years that will take?

My other gorgeous nice Adrian. She's a little pistol. She reminds me so much of Jessica when she was little.
I got a ton of plastic eggs and filled them with candy and toys from the dollar store for her and the boys. She was so into it this year. So much fun to watch!

And a few pictures of big people ;) That's me in the lavender in case you were wondering (with my Mom)

and then of course we had cake and ice cream for the girl's birthdays. I now have 2 teenagers in the house!

My niece really liked everyone singing happy birthday. She got one of the big marshmallows on top of Jessica's cake to herself. She was in heaven! The girls got all cash and gift cards for their birthday. Every teenage girls dream ;)

51/50 The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

It's finally happened. I FINALLY finished a "free" book on my Kindle. I swear some of the stuff they put on there is just plain garbage. I really enjoyed this book though.


51/50 The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
by Kristen McGuiness

This is the story of a girl who is lost. She starts out looking for the perfect man, but through the journey of her 51 dates in 50 weeks she finds quite a bit of herself.

Here are some quotes I highlighted while reading (love that feature on my Kindle!)

"Because years ago, I was just like my father, always believing that I was something more than I was... Always thinking I deserved a certain life, but never being willing to change to make life happen."

Something I struggle with all the time.  Do I want to change my life?  If I want to change my life I am going to have to work harder.  Maybe it won't get any better? The unknown is the scary part, isn't it?

"Our struggles, our fears, they're only as big as we make them. And we can let these little things stop us from reaching our potential, or we can see them for what they are and keep walking".

Yep.

When reading the reviews of this book on Goodreads, there were some really high and really low opinions.  Just like any book some people dig it and some people don't.  I really enjoyed the journey.

Monterey Chicken, Spaghetti Cups, Wearing Rocks and Etsy

Here's a picture of that chicken I made the other day. I had it for lunch, still looks pretty delicious the next day and it was.

The spaghetti cups from last night. Doesn't look that great but it was pretty good and Scott was happy to take leftovers to work today. If you let the cups sit a bit longer they stay together better. It was really late by the time they were done last night so I didn't really care if they looked pretty at that point ;)

The other day in Target I noticed these. Gee I wonder why they are on clearance. Maybe because it's like wearing the big white rocks in my grandma's side yard on your finger?

I used to put those rocks in the seat holes in my big wheels. They made great noise when I went down the sloped driveway and did the e-brake around the corner.

I'm .8 pounds away from being half way to my first weight loss goal. I really need to go shopping for some smaller tops. I am going to pick up a few after payday next week! I'm pretty excited to NOT shop in the fat lady section of the store now. I'll be even more excited once I don't have to buy anything with an X on it.

I spent hours yesterday adding more stuff to my Etsy shop.

Saturday night I'm supposed to go out with a girlfriend for dinner and drinks. I'm pretty excited to get dressed up a bit and get out of the house to do something fun.

Another Day Another Donut

So this was yesterday's torture in the break room.

And to make it even more fun it's still there today! I didn't even walk over to it and open it to see what's left. I'm growing up! Maybe. I just keep thinking about being in my brother's pool with all their skinny friends and actually NOT being the fattest one there.

I think I can I think I can.

Last night for dinner I made this recipe

Source: kimmccrary.blogspot.com via Mom Taxi on Pinterest

I used fat free cheese on mine and that made it only 248 calories. It's a low carb recipe too. It was pretty yummy! I think the next time I make it I might mix up the tomatoes and the bacon bits. I didn't put the green onions on it since I must have used them already for something else. Couldn't find them in the fridge! I also just cooked the chicken on the stove in my cast iron skillet. The ignitor thing is broke on our BBQ and I'm scared I'm going to blow up trying to light it myself.

Tonight I'm making this

Source: emilybites.com via Mom Taxi on Pinterest

Looks yummy doesn't it?

Random

This reminds me of the time my mom put my hair up with masking tape. I think we'd call that a failed parenting moment. That was a bit painful to take OFF my hair.

They should put one of these down some streets in San Francisco. That would be AWESOME.

Eating Out

So my husband is addicted to some car building game, "Car Town" on Facebook. He's playing it when I go to bed and he's playing it when I get up in the morning. I think I felt him come to bed at some point last night.

That would contribute to my lack of photos the last couple days. Trevor went home with my Mom on Easter so I have this little bit of freedom because everyone else is old enough to take care of themselves. Yesterday I hit the thrift store on the way home until I needed to pick up Melissa from the mall.

I picked her up and realized I don't really need to cook dinner (Jess went to my Mom's in the afternoon too). It was just the two of us and Scott is usually more than happy to pick something up for himself on the way home from work.

We headed over to Applebees, which had the smell of construction zone going for it. It didn't take me long to realize that they had removed all the "fun" stuff off the walls and replaced the stained glass lights for something more modern. They obviously weren't finished with the remodeling and I can't help but hope that they put something else "fun" up on the walls. Otherwise it's just another boring restaurant, right?

This was my first time eating at Applebees since I started counting calories. We decided on the 2 for $20 entrees with the mozzarella sticks for an appetizer. Did you know that each stick is over 100 calories? Without dipping it in ranch! Yeah, so I didn't eat those. For my meal I got the steak with double veggies. It was delicous and I didn't have to feel guilty about what I ate.

When I was driving home I remembered that I had made plans with a neighbor to go have a drink and hang out for a bit. Good thing I didn't eat those cheese sticks! I had just enough calories left for 2 glasses of wine!

I have NOTHING on the schedule for today after work. Perhaps I should list some stuff on Etsy since it's taking over my bedroom!

20 Pounds!

Well I have a bunch of pictures to post (on my camera) which I can't access right now, but I just have to share that I weighed in this morning and I'm down 20 pounds!

AND I spent like five hours at a pizza buffet yesterday. I had one tiny sliver of pizza, some salad with no dressing and a gallon of Diet Coke (yes I know it's bad for me, no lectures!). I even cruised the dessert aisle but nothing looked good enough for me to not pass up.

I came home ravenous and devoured some chicken. Pretty sure that's the first time I've ever left a buffet hungry.

Here's to the next 24, which will get me to my first goal!

Happy Birthday Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Today is almost Melissa's 13th Birthday.

We are having an Easter and joint family birthday party for the girls. I cleaned ALL day yesterday and I'm so sore. I'm just going to do a couple things today and that's it. I don't have enough energy for my house to be spotless!

My nephew spent the night last night and the kids dyed eggs

 I made Melissa's cake with a bunch of Reese's in it and on it, I hope it tastes good :)

And Jessica made her Jelly Fish Cake. She got the idea somewhere online but I"m not sure where. It looks really cool!

eta: Jessica's Birthday is the 29th.

The slacker bunny hasn't hid any eggs or put out the baskets yet.

I weighed myself this morning and I'm down 19 pounds! Must stay strong today so I don't undo any hard work.

Have a great day everyone!