Eeek! I forgot the graduation.

Uhhh, I forgot to post about the girls' graduation in June. A few days before the Disneyland surprise trip we had a  ceremony at our church for the kids who were being promoted or graduating from high school. I had four of our girls participating.

Kiley and August were being promoted from 8th grade to high school and Emily and Julia were graduating from Kindergarten.

Is that the school bell, again?

Julia, Kiley, August and Emily

We started back to school, yesterday, the 10th. I still can't wrap my mind around starting school so early, but I don't get to choose. Fortunately for us homeschoolers it doesn't make too much of a difference. We can do school anywhere.

I stayed up very late the night before making four of the girls a schultuete for their first day.  My husband's mother is from Germany and I want to incorporate some of that culture into my children's lives. I had more elaborate plans for these originally, but my procrastination wouldn't allow for that. There really are some amazing ones out there on the internet. The girls were thrilled with them, so that makes me happy. Traditionally, in Germany, the schultueten are given to 6-year-old children starting first grade, but I had to make them for the older girls as well, since they had never had one. 

My mother-in-law on her first day of school. Isn't she just darling? 

All set up for the morning surprise.

First day of 9th Grade

Kiley's first day of high school

Julia's first day of first grade

Emily's first day of first grade

August's first day of high school

Juila and Emily, holding their first day of Kindergarten photo. They've grown so much!

Opening the goodies

Who could resist?

Big fat loser

A post about weight loss, because that's never been done before (insert sarcasm). I don't want to be all cliche-ish and stuff, but I figure if I put it out there, in writing, on the interwebs, it just may keep me motivated.

I've known for some time now that I need to get it together and change some of my eating habits. We rarely eat any processed foods. Fast food is not a frequent meal here. And, over the last two years I've slowly switched us over to organic foods; we are about 90% organic. Still, the weight just keeps piling on. I really was eating too much and not exercising enough. The two final nails in the coffin for me were #1 Seeing the pictures of me at Disneyland. Yikes! and #2 My wedding ring no longer fits, and I have to wear this silly fake one. Adam calls it the fwedding ring. Ha!

I have done my share of ridiculous crash fad diets and all that jazz. They don't work. I did a lot of reading and decided that I'm just going to gradually add small changes that I know I can do indefinitely. If I don't just dive into it full speed ahead, I may just stick with it. The first things were, using my treadmill for just a short 10 minutes each day; lowering my calorie intake to 1200 a day; and no sugar. I added an app to my phone, My Fitness Pal. It tracks my calorie intake and exercise for the day. It has a huge database and almost everything you eat is in it. If you can't find what you ate, and it has a bar code, the app will scan the bar code and pull all of the nutritional information in.

The first few days I was a little hungry. I searched for things to do to help with that. I started squeezing lemons in my water and that really helped curb my appetite. This really is the first time I've ever done any kind of "diet" and actually see results. It really just seems way too easy. The weight just keeps coming off.

My stats:

MY GOAL: 130 pounds

July 1: 180 pounds. (yeah, I know, totally embarrassing)

August 1: 169 pounds 11 POUNDS LOST! yeah!

This was the picture that made me so upset. We'll call this the, "Before Picture"

Start: 180 pounds

I will try and get a new picture up here soon. I need one of my kids to take it for me. I have already went down a size and my belly looks a lot smaller, I think this is due to not eating sugar. 

I love surprises

At the end of June our three older girls went to the Independent Fundamental Baptist, National Youth Conference for four days. They went with our Pastor, his wife and and about 10 other kids from our church. They had been working on collecting recycling and fundraising through car-washes so they could have enough money to all go.

Adam and I took this opportunity to plan a very secret, very last minute trip to Disneyland for the two little girls. They had never been before, all the older girls have gone several times. It's really expensive and we knew we wouldn't be able to afford to take all of the kids. We discussed it beforehand with the older girls and they unanimously agreed that they would not be upset if we went without them and they were excited for  the little girls to go.

We had to fib a little to keep our surprise a surprise. We left very early, about 2am, to drive the six hours to Anaheim. I had secretly packed all of our suitcases and packed them in the car without them knowing. We woke them and said we had to get up really early and drive a couple of hours so that Daddy could be first in line for a huge sale at a barbecue store. Adam's been figuring out an outdoor kitchen to build so they didn't question it. We arrived in Anaheim around 7:30am and then had to go pick up our tickets. The girls still thought he was going to this barbecue store. We asked them if they would rather just stay in a hotel and swim in their pool rather than drive all that way back home. They were so happy.

We arrived at the hotel and changed our clothes and informed the girls we had to go for a walk to get something to eat and check out another barbecue store before we could swim. We began the 1/2 mile walk to Disneyland. As we were walking in they noticed all of the buses with Disney characters on them. Emily, said, "This looks like Disney on Ice". Adam asked, "Do you know where you are?", they both said "no". I prompted them to go ask a lady that worked there where they were. They both walked up and said, "Excuse me, were are we?" The lady answered, "You don't know where you are? This is Disneyland for princesses like you.".

The look on their faces was priceless. They were in shock. They kept hugging us and saying, thank you all day long. They were all smiles all day. It was a lot of fun. We spent two days at the park and drove back home the 3rd day.