back to blogging

I've started thinking more about my blog again, so I guess I'm back to posting a little more often. We had a great weekend, with the band playing a gig on Saturday night that went very well - and it was a lot of fun, too! We had a great service on Sunday morning, and then we had lunch at the Olive Garden with Tim and Christy. After that, we went over to Downtown Disney and saw "Premonition." I thought it was a good movie!

After walking around Downtown Disney for a bit and admiring the Lego sculptures outside the Lego Imaginations store, we headed home where we relaxed a little and ended up ordering pizza for dinner (Domino's thin crust - lower fat and delicious!) and renting "Infamous," a movie about Truman Capote. I had already seen "Capote," the other (almost identical) movie from awhile back, and that really sparked my interest about the famous writer. I then read the book that is profiled in the movie, "In Cold Blood." I must say that I loved both movies and the book. Although I didn't like Sandra Bullock's interpretation of Nelle Harper Lee (author of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and one of Truman Capote's best friends).

Today is an "off" day for me - I get to rest up from the weekend and exercise and catch up on laundry, etc. We're going shopping tonight - Brian needs some shorts and I need a bathing suit!

I'm dreading Idol tomorrow night. I'm just so afraid that Sanjaya is going to stay again. If I were him, I would be mortified. I mean, people are calling him "the worst" by voting for him via Howard Stern. I believe I would figure out a way to bow out gracefully, but I'm not him, thank goodness! I can't wait to hear Melinda, though.

42 pounds

That's how much I've lost in the last year. I lost the majority of it from April to October, then maintained for several months, which I've never done before. Sometimes I still can't believe it.

But now I'm ultra-motivated since we've booked the cruise. I've been walking like crazy and doing tons of Pilates, which I really love. Today I tried on some old dresses, and every one of them fit, and a few of them were too big! I fit perfectly into my "little black dress," the dress I wore for my senior recital in college. (Yeah, that was 1995. I'm hoping little black dresses never go out of style.)

Brian found out yesterday that he has high cholesterol. It's not REALLY high, in fact, it's considered borderline high - but his LDL and HDL are flipped. So we'll be eating extra healthy to get those numbers fixed.

I've done pretty much nothing all day today - except weigh myself and try on some dresses from my closet. I feel lazy - the weather is rainy and cloudy and dark. I think I'll go do some Pilates and then take a shower. Tonight we're going to some friends' house to play games.

what's the deal?

OK, I'm about to stop watching Idol. Seriously! What's the deal? Sanjaya should have gone home AGES ago!!!! :-( It's starting to really make me mad. I mean, he's not even in the bottom three! UGH!

Brian says that Howard Stern is encouraging people to "vote for the worst," the worst being, of course, Sanjaya. That just makes me so mad! But I know he does it just to rile up people like me!

Anyway, I've had the same top three from the beginning. (Like since the very first auditions, even before Hollywood.) Usually I start changing my mind about people by now, but I haven't done that this year. Here are my top three:

Melinda
Lakisha
Blake

There are several others that I like, but those are my top three, with Melinda being my #1 pick.

I would love to stay around and discuss more, but I've gotta jump in the shower before my piano students get here! More to come.

happy birthday, brian!

Today is the 33rd birthday of my sweet love, the light of my life - Brian. I went out this morning and got donuts for him to bring in to work (and I had one, of course. First donut I've had in over a year!) B, I hope you have an awesome day!

It's also my wonderful friend Sera's birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SERA! I hope you have a fabulous day, too!

I have lots of fun news to report! First of all, it was a year ago today that I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. I never imagined this was where I'd be a year from then, and I'm so thankful I'm much healthier and happier. And I feel a TON better! :-D

A couple of weekends ago, we went to Ft. Myers and spent some time with Nan and Pops. Their birthdays are a week apart, so we celebrated them while we were there:



They were both 83 this month! Don't they look great?!

And my most favorite news of all: WE BOOKED A CRUISE YESTERDAY!!!! Wooooooo! We're going on a Caribbean cruise at the end of April. We've been planning this cruise for awhile, and we were gonna go for our anniversary in October. But then our wonderful friends, Jason and Alicia, called and said they were going to be in our part of the country (they live in California), and so we decided that we should ALL go on the cruise together! We are so BEYOND excited. Jason and Alicia lived near us in New York, and Jason and Brian worked together. We hung out with them quite a bit - we share a love of cats and cards, among other things! They moved to California about the same time we moved to Florida, so we haven't seen them since the summer of 2005. So we are VERY excited about this vacation!

We're going to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and Nassau. Brian and I are trying to decide what fun things we want to do at each stop. So if any of you readers (as if there ARE very many readers of this blog!) have been to any of these places and have recommendations, email me! We'd love some input. We are so so so excited!

OK, well I'm going to have to go walk off that donut. Plus we're having company for dinner tomorrow night, so I need to clean up a little bit. And Sam is BEGGING for attention. Everyone have a wonderful day, and I'll try not to wait so long in between posts! See ya!

lylas, jen

I was sitting at my scrap desk on Sunday afternoon, working on this layout:



...when I received the news that Jenni's father-in-law had passed away. He was diagnosed with cancer around Christmastime, and he had been very sick. Brian and I were so sorry to hear this sad news. Eric and Jen, we're praying for you guys and we love you.

for some reason...

...I think it's absolutely hilarious to jump out and scare Brian as he comes in from work. :-) A few weeks ago, I stood inside our tiny pantry and scared the crap out of him! And for some reason, after I do it, I just dissolve into laughter! I mean, I think it's funny, but after I've scared him, it's just the funniest thing in the world! I did it tonight, but he came around the corner looking for me because Max was staring at me. Max gave me away! =^..^=

Well, this past weekend was busy busy busy, again. On Saturday I went to the Scrapbook Expo at the Orlando Convention Center. I went with my friend Tiffany (her husband works with Brian) and while we were there, we met up with Christy, a girl I know from online at Lifetime Moments. Christy lives in Tampa and is just the most adorable. We only got to hang out with Christy for about an hour, though. But Tiff and I had a ton of fun and probably spent too much money! I'll have to take a picture of my stash and post it.

After I dropped Tiffany off at her house (we stayed almost till the end of the Expo), I rushed to church for rehearsal. It was a really fun rehearsal and the guy who used to play piano with us was there, so he stayed after rehearsal and showed me a few jazz chord voicings that I wanted to know. So I got home really late. And we got up early of course, headed to church, did the rehearsal/sound check/service, then had lunch with our guitarist & drummer, then went to my cousin's for a little while, and then back to church for more rehearsals. It was revival weekend and we combined with the musicians from the first service for Sunday night's service. It was really fun and I thought pretty much everything went well.

Needless to say, Monday I was exhausted! Tuesday I went to Winter Haven for vocal rehearsal, and then I went shopping. Again. I went shopping last week too, but haven't blogged about it yet! Anyway, over the last week, I've gotten 3 pairs of capris, 2 skirts, 2 pairs of shorts, 2 tops, and one pair of shoes. I think I'm just about done shopping for awhile - I could still use a few more tops, though. :-) I love shopping now that I can fit into stuff! By the way, it looks like I'm down another size! I can't even believe it.

Well, it's about time for me to get dinner. It's almost done - Dream Dinners Orange Mongolian Beef with rice and veggies. I'm starved!

dresses, sunshine, and love

Well, I had a post all fixed the other day, but then the browser crashed on me and I didn't feel like typing it all back out again! In it I had described our Valentine's Day dinner at Bistro de Paris at Epcot. It was delicious! Here are some pics of us:



Our weather has been getting warmer and warmer, tomorrow and Saturday it will be in the 80s, and I'm finally getting a little tan again since I'm walking several times a week again. I really really want to get these last 20 pounds off. It would be a shame to get this close to my goal and not make it! Plus, I want to get into single-digit sizes, and I'm not that far off!

Speaking of clothes, I went shopping today after I got my hair done. I've been looking for a dress or two, and I finally got lucky at Ann Taylor Loft! Here are the dresses I bought:





I know, I know, lots of brown - but apparently brown is big for spring. Good thing I look decent in it! I had fun shopping, which is still a shock to me. Although today it reminded me that I REALLY want to get rid of the extra 20 pounds I'm still carrying around!

Tomorrow we're headed to Animal Kingdom for the day. We're meeting Brian's friends Glenn and Lorie (Glenn was the best man at our wedding) and some other friends. For dinner, we made reservations for just the two of us at the Sci-Fi Cafe, which is probably our new favorite cool dining spot. It will be a fun day.

Sunday, we'll have church and then Sunday evening, the whole band and praise team and spouses are coming up to our neck of the woods to attend a service at Northland Church, and then they're all coming over to our house for dinner! So I've been cleaning. I'm making my wonderful friend Sera's Tortellini Soup. Yum! OK, gotta go dust.

Oh! I almost forgot! I've mentioned before that we have a clear glass shower in our master bath. Since it's CLEAR glass, you can see every bit of soap scum. Well, I finally figured out how to get it off. A DRYER SHEET! I took a NEW dryer sheet and wet it and scrubbed the door - it rinsed beautifully! I was amazed. Just another tip from me - your favorite lazy, short-cut-finding house cleaner. :-)

playing catch-up

Well, has this blog been boring or what??!! It seems like 40 years since I blogged! Christmas and New Year's came and went with barely a post from me, let alone a picture! So I thought I'd take a little bit of time and try to catch up a little.

Let's see. A few weeks ago, my friends Julie and Rob came to Orlando for Children's Pastors Conference. I used to work with them at Brentwood-Benson (Provident) Music and it was so great to see them! They came last January too. No, they're not a couple. They are just the ones from work who come and man the BB booth at the conference. The week they came was extremely busy, but we met them for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (Downtown Disney) late on Saturday night. Here is a pic of us:



And for fun, let's compare it to a pic of us from January 2006:



Um, yeah. Check out my 5 chins in that second pic. Are you tired of me talking about my weight loss? Do you want another update? hahahaha! I actually haven't officially weighed myself since October. My home scale says I haven't lost or gained, so that's good, but more importantly, my clothes tell me that I haven't gained. I'm back into the exercise and healthy eating full-force now. I'm easing myself into some Yoga - it's kicking my butt so far! But I can see that I'm going to really enjoy it, if I can ever endure it for more than 10 minutes!!

Ah, Idol is back on. I don't enjoy the preliminary auditions as much now as I used to. We've seen it all before. People who live in their own little world come out of the woodwork and make fools of themselves, blah blah. I'm ready for Hollywood week and the top however many they're going to pick this year. More Idol chat to come, for sure.

Brian and I have been busy little bees every weekend in January and so far in February, and it looks like it's not going to let up until March. Whew! But at least we've been having fun! Last Saturday we went to Tampa for a matinee showing of the Broadway show "Monty Python's Spamalot." Let me just say, it was hilarious. This was Brian's birthday present, even though his birthday isn't till the end of March. But I saw last fall that Spamalot was coming to Tampa, and we bought tickets the day they went on sale in October - and we got orchestra seats! It was a great time and we laughed our heads off!

As we were walking from our car to the Performing Arts Center, we saw this:



As we came around the truck, we saw that they were giving out free samples of Spam! Of course, Brian couldn't pass up the chance to try some Spam:



That Spam was gross, it smelled VERY bad! Brian ate a few bites, but he couldn't stomach too much of it. Yuck! At any rate, the show was excellent and hilarious, and we would highly recommend it.

I've been busy with the band at church, too - we've been doing gigs other than church and it's been a lot of fun! Someday I'll figure out how to put some music on here.

I've been scrapping a ton! Scrapfest is still going on at Lifetime Moments, and we all know how much I love that! Here are some of my favorites I've done during Scrapfest:






I think that's about all I have to tell you about right now. Oh, except for that my best-friend-since-we-were-born, Jenni, finally got to meet Joey McIntyre, with whom she has been obsessed since she was like 12, when he was in New Kids on the Block. Here's the proof of their meeting:



Heehee. Hope everyone is having a great year so far. We're busy tomorrow, but at least Brian and I get to spend some time together! Yay! So I'm off to bed. Good night!

we're ok

I don't know if what's happening around here has been on national news, but Central Florida was hit last night and this morning with some devastating tornadoes. But we're okay - Brian said he woke up to some lightning and wind, but I slept through the whole thing. Apparently, one touched down in our little city, too.

I know I've been really bad about updating! I have lots to share! But I've been so busy, and still am - maybe I can write more later.

laundry

I'm so happy about laundry right now! I know that sounds insane, but let me tell you why.

Florida is famous for mildew. I know, I used to be all hung up on the bugs, but now that they are under control, I've just about had it with the mildew. Seriously, if it would ever get below like 75 degrees it would help!!!! Our shower smells like mildew all the time, but we've finally figured out that it grows on the bottom of the drain. So if we take the drain off and clean the underside of it every few days, we're good. HOWEVER - our washer has been having a mildew smell and it's been making me very upset.

For those of you who don't know, I have a VERY sensitive sense of smell. I'm seriously like a super-smeller or something. It's not good when I walk in the door and immediately smell mildew. I've cleaned and cleaned the washer, run empty loads with bleach, and done everything I can figure to do.

So I researched it online. I eventually found my way to this website called SmellyWasher.com. It was nice to know that I was not the only one dealing with mildew in their washer, and I was certainly not the only one from Florida dealing with it! Long story short, when you use liquid detergent and liquid fabric softener, the wax in them builds up on the components of your washer, and over time, fungus grows. Ick! I immediately ordered their Purewasher product and followed the instructions for running it through 3 empty loads, letting one of the loads with water sit overnight. Each time I had to add hot water once the washer finished filling, because the fungus is supposedly the worst at the high water line.

Well, guess what! Now my washer is clean, it looks beautiful, smells normal, and my clothes are getting cleaner than ever! By the way, I immediately switched back to fabric softener sheets and POWDER detergent! It has made all the difference in the world, and I'm a happy girl. Sometimes it doesn't take much! :-P

Pretty good for my first post of the new year, huh? That just goes to show that we're not up to much. I'm back to walking every single day (I had slacked off a bit during the holidays) and feeling better than ever. I've been cooking a TON and each day I find myself excited to cook dinner! We've been eating vegetables like crazy. I've been scrapping some, counting points for Scrapfest (see previous post), and just trying to be happy. That's all I've got to say right now!