Murphy: Give a 2 year old a camera and….

Phoebe was insistent, in fact downright demanding that she get to take pictures with daddy’s (my) camera. Here are the “golden nuggets” from her point and shoot fun this morning:

She’s still getting the hang of it. When you’re only a few feet tall, everything is at “knee level.”

Murphy: 4423 Pennies

No. This is not about Sam’s curse jar. It’s about a cool clerk I ran into at a gas station a few days ago.

Some might find it annoying, I thought his approach was different. Each time he rang up someone he announced their total in pennies. So if you had $5.75, he said “That’s 575 pennies.”. The largest was the person who had gas and a candy bar – 5376 pennies.

I like characters. I like standouts. It was nice to see something different in an otherwise totally predictable environment. So I paid my 677 pennies and went on my way.

Who’s your favorite “character”. Click below to comment ! Murphy

Emilie: Going beyond 8 pounds

As of this past week I had lost the 8 pounds I had vowed to lose in September. But I got on the scale over the weekend and saw that I’ve now lost 10 pounds!!
My weight loss plan was a bowl of cereal and banana in the mornings (check the side of your cereal box and realize how SMALL the actual portions are!) and a healthy frozen dinner for lunch. I also bring some really low cal/low fat snacks like cucumbers and tomatoes with an extremely low cal/fat dressing. It was fun going around the store and checking the fat/calorie contents on everything and finding out what I could eat and SHOULDN’T eat! Saturdays were my cheat days. I didn’t cheat as much as I thought I would though. Then I get right back on the horse on Sundays and ate healthy!
I also joined a gym which I think was extremely important to my success. I have done the work out DVDs at home, but they never really dug into fat burning mode. I just burned calories that I had eaten that day so I wasn’t ever losing weight. Also by paying for the gym every month it makes me want to go because I feel like I’m wasting money if I don’t! The gym is so awesome. I get the switch up my cardio almost everyday which keeps my body from getting used to doing the same thing every day. I do weights every other day and also crunches.

What I’ve done may not work for you, but it could be a start! Get a friend or do it alone…..being healthy needs to be a lifestyle, not a fad!

Thanks again for all of your support. I will post pictures of the wedding I’m in ASAP. The wedding isn’t until November 16th )

Inner Peace

Jodi is not the only one working on her inner peace.  I’m doing better being peaceful and letting things roll of my back.

Take for instance this past weekend…Jackson out me through my patience paces.

We were in line at the donut store, waiting our turn to order.  A rather large lady walked passed us to grab a few milks from the cooler and Jackson tapped her on the leg and asked if she had “a baby in there”.  Now, you hear about this embarrassing moment all the time, but it always happens to others: the cute little kid who says something with childlike innocence while mom and dad secretly start to sweat and apologize and sometimes scold the kid for his actions.

Not the case here.  Obviously I did have an internal “oh no” moment, but that’s about as worked up as I got.  This lady was very, very nice about it. She told Jack she wasn’t having a baby, but rather she was “just fat honey” because she liked to eat donuts and such.  A very humorous way to deal with it I thought.  So, I kept listening: Jack would throw out a question and she would answer on a level he could understand.  She did tell Jack her friend had a baby in her stomach and Jack wanted to know why.  The lady said her friend was crazy…we all laughed and that was the end off that…or so I thought.

We made our way to the front, ordered our donuts and sat down to eat.  Shortly, the large lady and her pregnant friend made their way past our table to leave.  She told Jack goodbye and Jack stood up and …gulp…asked if he could feel the pregnant lady’s belly to feel for the baby.  We all chuckled, me nervously, and she let him feel her tummy.  They went on their way and we continued to eat.

Through this whole process I never once felt the need to grab Jack and tell him to hush or to turn around.  Nor did I pull him aside and scold him…all things I’d done in the past to Sammy and Will when they did these things at that age.  Now, I took it for what it was…a typical child question and not the kind of thing I’d want to stop…he needs to be inquisitive at this age.  Being uptight about this kid of thing is just plain silly…let him be a kid and see what happens: no one got hurt, he had his questions answered and no one was embarrassed…whew.

Emilie: I’ve made it!

So I’ve done it!  I’ve lost the 8 lbs I vowed to lose in the month of September!!!!

I can’t believe it did it so quickly.  I had set myself up to be happy for whatever I was able to lose, but this is a great feeling!  Now if I can just keep on this track until the wedding I’m in!  I’ve talked about it some on the show, but my way of losing weight was portioning out a healthy cereal and milk and a banana, then I ate a frozen dinner and some sort of veggie or fruit and then dinner I just ate what I thought was a good portion.  I also exercised 3-4 days a week and this included weights 2 – 3 times a week!  There were many times I would have to make myself drive to the gym because I didn’t feel like going, but nothing was really holding me back from going…SO I WENT!  What a novel idea…

Anyway, have you tried losing weight and you had a different way of losing it?  Let me know by leaving a comment on my blog!

Thanks for all the support!  I couldn’t have done it without you!