Happy Birthday! New music and personal training goal

Well hello there!  Today is a big day for me and my oldest son.  He is 16!!  I’ve loved every minute of planning fun surprises for him!  Last night a friend of his organized a surprise party.  I thought he knew, but really he didn’t!  We went to dinner with family while everyone showed up and then they all surprised him when we came home.  He has great friends!  THEN, this morning on his REAL birthday a few friends in our neighborhood came by in the morning to wake him up and take him to breakfast!  Hee hee!  Another surprise!  We went and made him an official driver too!  My heart is full of the greatest love when I think of becoming a mother for the first time.  I love all my kids equally, but that time with the first will always be dear to my heart.  My world revolved around him.  Here are a few pics. from the past and TODAY!!  Happy Birthday my sweet boy!!

I’m tired today from staying up till midnight last night and then waking up to workout at the track at 6 a.m.  Our numbers were tiny today but I still loved working out outside in the morning hours.  I’m super sore from my leg workout yesterday!  I need to work legs more!  This weekend will be a leg burner as well since I’m running RAGNAR Friday and Saturday!!  We each have 3 legs and my total mileage is about 19 miles.  We’ll see how I do.  I haven’t really trained, but do I ever really stop??

Lately, several people have been wanting some nutrition and exercise advice.  I’ve told them I’m off duty till August!  Mostly because I want to organize my training.  I want to create a training manual for beginners, intermediate, and advanced programs.  I also want to put together a recipe book.  New goal!  Finish these projects in JULY!!!  I love what I do and helping people see results and I think this will make it even easier for them to lose weight.  Now I just need to set aside an hour or two every day to accomplish it!!

I’m going to end with a few favorite songs for the day!!  The first one is my son’s favorite song right now.  He plays it multiple times every day.  The second one is a band I learned about from the teenage girls at church!  And the third is a new Maroon 5 song that I love.  Have a wonderful day!  Lift heavy and SMILE always!!  (: (: (:

 

 

Merry Happy Birthday Christmas!

Last night as we set the last Christmas presents out and cleaned the house up I felt a huge relaxing relief lifted from me.  The past few weeks of a constant schedule and lists and lists of things to get done were finally over!!!!  Naturally on this beautiful Christmas day I took the most BLESSED nap!!!  We had a wonderful Christmas!  OH how much I love seeing the kids so happy Christmas morning!

I need to back up just a little bit.  I have a few pictures from the last several days to post!  5 days ago I celebrated my 4-0 birthday!  It was one of the best days of my life (: I’m getting over a cold and it was still buggin me on my birthday.  So, being the 40 year old that I am, I could barely stay awake that night with my friends!  We celebrated all day long.  I feel so loved and grateful to so many people in my life.  Here are a few pics starting with the early morning run in night!

A beautiful run after a snowfall!

My friend and I with the whopper cake she made me!

Best friends always!

We had lunch with lots of friends in the day and then we went out with the husbands to dinner and played games and ate cake and laughed and played till I started to fall asleep at 10:00! (:  I love my friends.

The next night my husband and I went to one of my favorite concert traditions of the season.  The Piano Guys!!!  I love every minute of it!  They are amazing and truly gifted with a talent from on High!

Piano Guys

The next night, we had a Christmas party at my parents that involved FOOD yet again, the nativity story, and cookie decorating!

Lastly, I haven’t posted a Sunday outfit for awhile!  I loved my beautiful black birthday dress and new shoes that I’d been anticipating for quite some time!!  I feel like I should be going to a dance or something in this snowy one!

Christmas eve was spent with family.  We saw my favorite movie FROZEN again and had lunch at my sister’s house.  That night I hosted dinner with my husband’s family.  We sang carols and read the Christmas stories!  No wonder I had to crash today!  And the holiday is just beginning too!  Tomorrow morning we head to Heber to snowmobile and sled with our dear dear friends.

I am blessed beyond measure.  Have a beautiful Christmas day with loved ones.  Life will get fit again.  January always comes next!

Homey touches

WELL…I’m a year older today and we’re all still alive and now the days are starting to get lighter and longer every day!!!  Lots of things to be happy about!  I had a wonderful birthday!  I feel overwhelmed with thankfulness for my friends and family!  What would I do without them?  Here are several pictures of the day.

Our 3rd annual birthday run.  Rain, snow, wind, cold, or shine (hardly) we run on my birthday!

My friend party.  They are the BEST!!

I thought I’d give an update on the progress of the house.  I finally decided on our colors.

Slate-Restoration Hardware

Palladian blue-Benjamin Moore

Swiss Coffee-Benjamin Moore

Here is a small sample of what our cabinets and flooring will look like.

Construction pictures!!

future kitchen

New stairs!

We’re thinking of flooring ideas for the entryway and a section of our great room.  I’ve been so pleased with the tile and carpet in our current home that I want the same thing for our new home.  The entryway will be chocolate brown travertine tile like this:

And the carpet we will use is LEE’S.  I will never buy anything else.  I looked online and they sell it at Carpet One.  We’ve had the carpet in our upstairs now for 11 years and it looks better than any other carpet in the house and it’s in a very high traffic area.  IT IS THE BEST CARPET EVER!!

Someday…I love this living room.  I think we want to do something similar to our fireplace.  Our living and dining room have tons of windows with trees outside that I LOVE!!  Lots of work to do!  For my workout today I even helped out a little!  I moved about 25 boxes of food storage to the new house!

It’s a great adventure and will be so beautiful very soon!!  Warmest, Happiest, holiday wishes!

Books and Birthdays

O.K.  I took a little bit of time off and with the start of Thanksgiving Week I wanted to write a little.  It is such a BEAUTIFUL SUNNY day today I can hardly stand it!  I LOVE LOVE the SUN…especially on NOVEMBER 19th!!

Today I have to confess another ADDICTION of mine and a crazy TALENT.  In a few weeks I need to pack up my whole house of 11 years and I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t done much.  So today I looked at one of my many bookshelves in the house and decided to weed out the books.  I’m a little sentimental when it comes to books.  We probably have well over 500 books in our house.  I will always cave in a bookstore and a chocolate store!  I enjoyed picking up each book and remembering the memories.  Many of them were books that I had when I was a kid, some of them had words written in them as gifts from Grandparents, and many more were the books I read to my little ones over and over again.  I’m afraid my “to get rid of” bin is not even half full!  They will just have to come with me!

Next, a good friend of mine had a birthday this weekend and I started thinking a little about birthdays and dates.  I was talking with some people about how I can remember the birthdays of all my childhood friends.  I know all my nieces and nephews birthdays and many more.  I thought that was normal, but most people act really surprised when I tell them that.  Weird, I should have done better in history classes you’d think!  We had a GREAT birthday lunch today.  BEST FRIENDS!

I’ll figure out a way to blog now and again.  I want to change things up a bit and add and take away a few things.  I’ll get it together one of these days.  I was motivated by a high school friend of mine who came to me for advice on how to lose 10 pounds.  Of course I have to write up several things about that!