Is my Mii fit or fat?

A month or so ago, our dear friend Carlos blessed us with Wii Fit!!!
We were so excited and the kiddos started playing it every spare minute.
(one of them who doesn't have any extra on him, lost 6 pounds!)

We really think it's fun. It's a great way to do home school p.e. and all without leaving the house! Whoo-hoo!


I think this must have been an optical illusion or something, but the kids were just sure that since my hubby and I hadn't played it often enough,
our Miis were gaining weight.
So, everyday I would have to hear about how my Mii looked fatter!
Oh, good grief! Talk about incentive!-I don't think that really happens... Does it?
Well, I am trying to play it more often. No one has mentioned my that my Mii looks thinner though, so I don't think that's a reality. I lost three pounds which was fun.
It says that I'm not overweight but that I would be healthier if I lost 9 pounds. Now, wouldn't that be nice...

Running really gets your heart rate up. And I think it's annoying when that guy you are supposed to follow keeps looking back at you if you slow down, like 'what happened to you?!' So, that makes me want to keep up. I haven't had any of the other games really get my heart rate going yet but then I haven't explored or unlocked very many things yet either. Do you have a favorite game?

What I've decided Wii Fit does best, is give you exercise in HUMILITY! Ugh!


Here's why:

~It says that I have the balancing skills of a 55 year old! (there's an ego booster since I am no where near age 55!)

~My Mii is constantly hanging her head in shame when I ski! Good thing my hubby has never taken me skiing!

~It reminded me today to watch out for afternoon SNACKS just after I'd pigged out on spiced walnuts, which are one of my favorite things to make at Christmastime. Was that a coincidence???

~And to top it off, my hula hooping skills had my children howling with laughter and video taping me against my wishes.
They showed it to my hubby at dinner, who did more laughing...


So, my afternoon snack plan for tomorrow will be humble pie (aka Wii Fit) instead of the spiced walnuts....
But I'm not hula hooping again unless I'm the only one home! ; )
~Becky

More praise...

Guess what?!
Another amazing thing happened for the sweater hat ministry! (Hats of Hope)
If you don't know what I'm talking about you can check this post and then this post.

This was amazing!!!
I was at my hubby's company's Christmas party chatting with some ladies and one of them started sharing with us about her mom who has Alzheimer's disease.
She is in a home care facility now and this woman needs to clean out her house. It will be quite the undertaking because she said her mom has not thrown anything away in 60 years or so...
She told us how the house is so full of stuff that is hardly room to walk.
And then she said
"The YARN!!! You would not believe how much yarn my mother has. She would buy it and then forget she'd bought it and then buy some more."

~My eyes were popping out, I'm sure because just the day before that, I had been praying about our group's need for LOTS and lots of yarn!

Then she started describing HOW MUCH yarn and I was really blown away.
Tons of 50 gallon trash bags full of new yarn!!!!!!!!!

~This is where I waved my hand and said "I'll take it! I'm starting a ministry to make sweater hats for missionaries." And everyone just looked at me.
It was wild.
What a God thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She wanted to know where I would keep all that yarn and I drew a blank because I have a small house and my two attics are full...but guess what? When I told my friend who is hosting our group about the 'yarn miracle' she said she has plenty of storage space. And I decided that is yet another miracle. (or at least it seems like it if your house is small and you've always been storage challenged. LOL!)

I imagine that her yarn is the regular kind, and we need the thick kind, but if HE obviously must have sent us this, so there's got to be a way that it can work. We can probably just put two strands together....or maybe three strands.

So, that's the latest news and it was exciting!

~Becky

Merry Christmas!

Fourteen years ago, we met an older gentleman, who would eventually become a very dear friend of ours. He let us know right away, that he was an atheist....
Over the years God intertwined our hearts, lives and families together in a really remarkable way.
This week we heard the wonderful news that this man surrendered his life to the Lord Jesus Christ in a nearby church!!!
We saw him today and we were blessed to hug his neck and hear his story. WOW!!!!
God is awesome!
Many people 'plant' and many people 'water' and God does bring 'the increase' so don't stop praying for those who need Him!
What a glorious Christmas! This one will always be special to me for this very reason.
Hallelujah!
~Becky

Christmas photo project

We were given one of those digital photo frames recently and we've really enjoyed it.

We put our vacation pictures to CA on it and then we put our Disney pics on it...

Then we had a GREAT idea!

We decided to do a photo theme!

~Christmas through the years!

So, last night, Zach and I took on this project which took about 3 hours. We found as many Christmas photos from past Christmases as we could. The last several years were all in the computer and those were easy to access but the years before the digital camera were another story. Thanks to the wonders of the scanner we were able to get all the past Christmases on it too.

Years were we didn't have children yet (boring!!!)

Years where my hubby and I were much thinner. (LOL)

(and one of us had more hair) ; )

The baby years and the kiddos' first Christmases! Too cute!

The toddler years, where we had child proof trees on table tops...

Years where relatives came to see us and years where it was just us...

Years of spending every Christmas Eve with the V Family, which we still do...

And the presents! I love the pictures with the sea of wrapping paper and the happy little faces. ~No sea of wrapping paper for us this year since half our kiddos are growing up and saving for big items, they asked for money. (boo-hoo!) The end of an era!

And the trees! Oh mercy, have we had some ugly trees over the years. Not all, of course. Some have been gorgeous! I remember one that we got carried away trimming ...

We ended up needing to wire a couple branches back in!!! AHH!

So, after lots of lugging of albums and re-gluing photos back into their scrapbooks, we did it!

And I think it was worth it!

In fact, I know it is...

I got so into watching the photos coming up this morning as I was cooking that I accidentally made egg salad instead of deviled eggs!!!

I was too into looking at how the kids have changed and how my hair looked better last Christmas (LOL) and when I went to fill up the eggs whites..there weren't any since I had mashed the whole kit and caboodle! Too funny! So, all that to say, it was worth it!

My family doesn't think Christmas dinner would be complete without deviled eggs, so back to the kitchen I go! I'd better not watch it this time!

Merry Christmas and may our Great God bless you and yours!

~Becky

Gingerbread mansions

Originally posted on 12/9/07
~We are getting together again this year. I'll let you know if we build or blow up anything! LOL! : )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This past weekend we had the H Family over, which is always great fun. This year we all decorated our own dessert. I made the lollipop cookies that we had at Joy's polka dot birthday party.
~This turned out to be really easy and not very messy.
~Nothing like what we did together last year!

Here's the story:
The H Family are quite an experienced gingerbread making family and they used to do the whole thing from scratch. (lots of work!) This intrigued my hubby who wanted to try an easier version that both our families could do together.
I found this in Martha's magazine and it seemed simple and fun. Ya know, no baking involved. whoo-hoo!


Well, Martha calls these "cottages." It's funny now, to see the word "cottage." Because I didn't notice that last year on the directions and when our two families got together, "Cottages" were NOT what anybody had in mind. I wish I would have known that they were thinking of gingerbread mansions!
And let's just say that graham crackers and frosting did not hold this thing together...

But more on that later.

First of all, it wasn't like our BOYS were all that into the idea of even making gingerbread houses. But the H Family changed their mind about this being a girly endeavor because they said that after New Year's they take their gingerbread houses outside and

BLOW THEM UP!

How cool is that!? They do it with b-b guns and bottle rockets. Now,that was something that our boys could get into, and so that is how we got them to build them in the first place. : )

Carlos came over that night too and he kept joking under his breath about how 'gay' it was to build gingerbread houses. But the funny part was, that once we got him started building one, he was TOTALLY into it.

It was hilarious.

He wasn't going to have a "cottage" or anything small. It was going to be the biggest and the best. It became one testosterone charged event...at least in the living room where he was. : )

The kids had the best time and they literally sat at the kitchen table and created for two solid hours.

My hubby ended up making a couple of trips to P*blix because we discovered that store brand graham crackers would crumble and that only the name brand ones worked. And our whole house looked like a bakery exploded in it. : )

Then Carlos, who was determined to win our little contest (which we'd roped our neighbor into judging) sent Zachary to the shed to get

the DRY WALL MUD

Oh mercy! I decided not to worry that I had powdered sugar everywhere and might be about to have dry wall mud on top of all that! ~But, he didn't spill a drop!

With that dry wall mud, he and Zach built their cute, huge mega church:

But we all disqualified them from our contest, since theirs was no longer EDIBLE. : )

Aren't these cute?

I promptly sprayed them all with RAID (after the contest- which I guess made them inedible too) because we live in the insect capital of the United States, and I could just picture having ants and roaches on them before morning.

After New Year's, we had a 'blowing up event' but that doggone Raid had made them too soggy. (my bad) So, all the b-b's just sunk inside the houses and did not give my boys the thrills that they'd expected. The bottle rockets didn't even dent them.

So, if you ever make gingerbread cottages/houses/mansions

and plan to blow them up afterwards,

don't spray them with Raid. And be really careful with the dry wall mud! ; )
~Becky

Disney for Dad's B. day

We have some dear friends who gave us Disney tickets again this year. They are a company perk they have blessed us with for 3 years now. It's so amazing!!!!!!

We like to save the tickets to use in December because we LOVE the Christmas lights displays! We like to go on my hubby's birthday since he is given that day off of work and it's a school day so the crowds are not as large.

~ Let me tell you, it was pretty crowded for a school day and the economy was looking alive and well!

We chose to go to MGM again (now known as Hollywood Studios) because we had such a blast last year.We also did our theme park "economy style" thing again. It's like a game. We go and try to spend as little as possible. This year we spent $12.00 to park and $15.00 for ice-cream bars...and that was it.

Last year we celebrated my hubby's b. day by having milkshakes in the the Sci-Fi Cafe. When the kids asked "Are we going to go to that restaurant that shows the WEIRD black and white movies again?!" We knew we didn't need to repeat that experience. : ) (Sci-Fi wasn't their thing. lol!)

We brought lots of snacks in. (I had little bags labeled "morning snacks" and "dinnertime snacks." I had such fun packing and labeling them because I'm weird like that!) : )

When we left the park to have our picnic lunch in the car, they didn't stamp our hands or time us. -Last year they gave us 20 minutes to get back into the park. This was a lot more relaxing and fun. It felt oh-so-good to sit awhile!

After the park closed, we headed off for the Golden Arches...

Our econo-style saves us at least $120.00 on food. Whoo-hoo!

Anyway, here's some fun pictures. We invited Carlos, my hubby's best friend.

As you can see, he's tons of fun ....

and makes us all laugh!

The 4-D Toy Story ride was awesome! You get to shoot moving targets!

We all love Tower of Terror. Nathan has us riding it on video. He unlike me, doesn't feel the need to hold on for dear life on that ride and so he could tape it with his Flip video. It's funny to watch. All you hear are grown men screaming...(I guess they drowned out all the women screaming,.....of which I am always one!) We also love the Rock-n-Roll roller coaster. Great fun!

If we did have to pay our way in the park, then we would feel like the Fantasmic Show was totally worth the price of the tickets!

It's a must see!

And our favorite part is the Million Dancing Lights display and singing carols while walking down the streets with fake snow falling on our heads. Its so Christmasy! And fake snow is as good as it gets here! : )

Merry Christmas!

~Becky

LOL!

This gave me a laugh when I woke up in the morning!

Apparently, my hubby had the sniffles last night and we are out of Kleenex.

He says I have "a very creative and resourseful husband." LOL!

But, I don't think this arrangement goes well with our decor so it will have to go! ; )

~Becky