Painted the wall and hung up the new tv!

my cuties! all dressed up for halloween.

HAPPY HARVEST!!! MOONING SEASON HAS BEGAN!

New Family Additions......

Our cat Jasmine had her kittens early early early Sunday morning. Everyone was still asleep and I'm sure with my kids that is how she preferred it after being packed around like a stuffed animal by Ciana for the past week.

Damon was the first up and the first to discover the little bundles of joy. Of course he just had to come and wake us up with the good news, LOL.

I am just now getting around to posting it because I was not able to get a good pic on my phone (no flash) so just now took a nice little pic on the digital camera. She only had the two kittens (thankfully) and is being a really good Momma to them. Since she won't be outside much until the kittens are older I went ahead and bought her some can cat food for indoor cats (contains grains and garden greens). Being a mom myself it is great to have some good special foods when nursing.

My plan for the kittens is to find them new homes once they are weaned. I was thinking about getting all of them fixed once they are old enough as I believe that would make them more marketable and possibly include a gift of litter box, litter, food/water dish and a small amount of food as incentive for people to take them off my hands. Wouldn't you be more willing to take a kitten if it was already fixed and came with everything you needed for it???

FWD:FWD:damon lost a tooth

Damon lost a tooth!

FWD:looks so happy for school

Looks so happy for school!

Purses made with tabs from soda cans! Pretty and a great way to reuse materials.

April snow showers? Yep, we got snowed on last night. Lovely. At least it will likely be melted off by this afternoon if it stays sunny!

a little home decorating...

Ooopps! I did it again......

Signed up for a gym membership that is. It has been a week now, I signed both Justin and I up. Standard 2 yr contract. Got in at the tail end of their grand opening sign up special so did not have to pay any type of sign up fee.

Now I have not had the best of luck using gym member ships when I've signed up for them in the past...twice. With the exception of Curves, which I don't really view as a typical gym.

I would be good for a couple months and then just stop going. I just could NOT keep up the will power to go work out on my own and by myself. I'm sure there are those out there that can relate. This is the new Gold's Gym all the way out here in Tooele and boy is it nice inside! They have a lap pool, sauna, hot tub, basket ball court, 2 raquet ball courts, spinning room, aerobics room, cardio cinema room, a small but seperate women's exercise room with weight machines and cardio machines, big locker rooms, a huge main workout area with all kinds of weight training machines, free weights, cardio area and one of the best things (IMPO) a (we'll watch the kids while you go workout) daycare service!!!

It has been nice having Justin there to ask me, "Have you worked out today?" and of couse I get to ask the same of him. I think this will help to keep us both on track with getting into better health (and of shape too of course!).

My weight is still at a plateau, part of the reason for joining the gym, but my body composition is still chaning as well as the shape. What that comes down too is that I have been replacing fat with muscle. While this is deffinately a good thing and I do love it, *sigh* I also want to see the #'s on the scale start to go down again. So, I've also commited to seeing a trainer 2x per month there at the gym. My reasoning is that the trainer will know what exercises I need to do and in what orders and how often in order to maximize the fat loss and gain muscle where needed. My lower body is fairly strong. My upper body and core are deffinately not equal in streangth though and one of my goals is to streangthen and shape those parts of my body.

Now I need to find the will power to get up early enough in the mornings to do a class or two during the week. The offer classes like spinning, total body conditioning, yoga and a couple aqua classes too.

Please send me lots of stick with it will power vibes for both the new exercise part of my lifestlye change and also to the diet portion of it. There are days when the only thing that sounds appetizing is cookies and ice cream, though I don't follow through on it as the thought of eating only cookies and ice cream makes my teeth hurt and stomach turn at the thought of eating that much sugary sweetness.

Yumm.... roasted chick peas

These are the savory ones.

These are the sweet ones

These are oven roasted Chickpeas, also know as Garbanzo Beans. They turned out similar to Corn Nuts. I made one sweet (cinnamon & sugar) and the other savory (seasoning salt & garlic). I liked the savory one the best and I will likely make these again at some point.

My little princess in her new dress!

My little Princess and little Prince...

My sweet little ones are at Grandma's for the weekend. Looks like they are having a good time! Here they are with their cousin Caprice. Mine, of course, are the little girl up front and the boy in the back :)