Still in the Zone (yeay!)

I have been on the Zone for a week now! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this diet! For some reason it just works for me and makes sense. This morning I had a lovely breakfast of a 2-egg omelet with cheddar cheese, red bell peppers, tomatoes and spinach; canadian bacon; cantaloupe and red grapes. SO yummy! And I won't be hungry until lunch time when I have a yummy taco salad waiting.

I am finding that I have a ton more energy than I used to have and many fewer food cravings. I have lost 4.5 pounds this week, but know most of that was probably water weight. I'm hoping to start doing 30 minutes on the elliptical 2-3 times a week starting this week. I'm also planning to continue my stretches and exercises for my back so I don't strain it again.

We have gone on family walks around the block a few times this week. It's hard with a toddler and an invalid - it's not really exercise, per se. LOL. But it does get us moving and out together doing something besides watch television.

The Deac and I also started organizing the basement this weekend. This is something we have needed to do since we moved into the house 6 years ago, but always feel overwhelmed by all the clutter we've managed to accumulate through our lives. Getting more organized will really help us both feel better and I'm hoping we can get to the point that we can finish the basement and make it useable space so that the girls can each have their own bedroom upstairs before they go off to college. That's my goal.

I've decided to not take Russian this year. I feel stretched way too thin with all that has gone on this summer and need to take some time to get my life in order. There will be time for more Russian in years to come. In the meantime, I have a basic knowledge of the language now and can practice by reading Russian books and newspapers. I still want to know the language better, but this year need to have some flexibility in my schedule and life. Besides, I really need to devote some quality time to studying for the Certified Health Physicist exam I will be taking next summer.

We signed Emmelia up for soccer in the fall. She is really excited about it, particularly since she'll (hopefully!) be on the same team as her friend R. (the same one in the following layout). So she'll have violin lessons and soccer, and for all that I will need to be able to play with my work schedule a bit. Next year Maura will be starting activities so it might just get worse from here, but I've always felt that one reason I work is so that I can provide for activities like this for my kids. I just don't want to end up over-scheduling them. I think sticking with one music activity and one sports activity is reasonable.






I haven't had a lot of time for scrapping lately, but did manage to put together this layout this week. It is a "scraplift" of a layout I saw on e-scapeandscrap and uses my friend Ginger's "Rain" and "Blush" kits. It's not your traditional princess layout, but I think the colors work well together and with the outfits the girls are wearing in the photo. Ginger's kits just have the richest, most saturated colors. I made the border on the right using Ginger's "Princess Doodle" kit. This week, when my computer started running a little slowly, I took a look at the folder that contains all the digi-scrapping kits and freebies I've downloaded. The folder was over 9 GB! GIGA-bytes! Holy smokes! So I'm devoting a little time now to reducing the size of all the papers in the kits from 12-inches by 12-inches to 8-inches by 8-inches. This is saving a ton of disk space and I never scrap in the larger size anyway. Once I get that done I'm sure I'll have a bug to scrap again.