We were going to take the plastic Jesus away, but it kinda helps us understand how Emily thinks about God, what she learns at Sunday school and what things really need to be better explained to her like how Jesus isn’t a toy. I’m hoping I’m not being sacrilegious.

I’ve decided to follow the Informal Matriarchs lead and chillax for August, but I’m going to do it a bit different. I’m starting by not updating my twitter or facebook all the time. As for my blog I think I’m going to blog once in a while, but mostly photoblog unless Em does something really funny. Speaking of funny, I was carrying Avery in the Snugli and pushing Em in the Stroller and a Lady walked by us and said: “Oh, you’re carrying a baby, I just thought you had really big Boobs!” Why you would say that, I don’t know…

I’m pretty sure I’m having Post Partum Depression again after having Avery. I’m sure I did after Emily too, so if I blog about anything I might blog about that. I think blogging about what stuff you are going through is healthy to help you understand yourself and maybe encourage someone else. So if you see me, tell me it ok to relax and just enjoy my girls and my summer without cramming it full of things that need to be done. I’m doing my best not to jump right into everything that I used to do. When I get too busy I get stressed and anxious and I forget to just be. I know I don’t have enough patience for Emily when I’m like that either. The last few days have been alot better. I didn’t think I had time to go to Loon Lake, but I booked it and went anyways, and it was fantastic for me to relax and let go of the day to day stuff. Then when I got home I decided to make a conscious effort to slow my life down and find ways to meet my needs emotionally, spiritually, and physically. So now I start every morning with a shower and take 10 minutes to get my head in the right space before taking care of my tiny tots. I think that’s helping alot! Anyways. AV is waking up and none to happy, so I’d better go get her.

Oh! and I get to meat Prime Minister Stephen Harper next week at a BBQ! Pretty stoked for that!

Goal 1: “I am going to get healthy.” – Rough percentage of goal completed…64%. (I used a calculator) I started the year at 214 pounds….AHHHH. I worked my butt off (Literally) until April. I worked less hard at eating goo in the summer, but Emily and I put some serious miles on the stroller so that worked out ok. The fall wasn’t so good so I hit a plateau. Followed by a rough Christmas season. I’m a sucker for guacamole and chocolate. Today I went to the gym and did a weigh in and although I am up almost 12 pounds…Today I weigh 182 lb. Yay! Total loss of 32 pounds! I’m feeling a bit crappy about the disaster called December, but I’m already working away at it again. I won some battles and lost some. My gym, that I loved, closed. I join a gym I don’t love, but kept going. I won an inches lost competition at my new gym. I ate alot of guacamole. I ate alot of salad. I learned lots, and I haven’t quit yet! I decided I’d rather fight this battle at the low end than the high end of the scale, so There is more work to be done. I am now officially 22 pounds away from my goal weight. So this goal carries over into 08. I think this is a lifelong goal.

Goal 2: “I am going to grow in my relationship with Jesus.” Rough Percentage completed…How do you measure something like that?? I guess the bible says you can measure things by their fruit. There have been alot of good things that have happened this year. I think it was a good year for doing things. Lots of preaching and worship and traveling with crazy youth. I still don’t feel like I’m growing to the place I want to be yet. I think it’s ok to be frustrated with a lack of spiritual growth. I think it causes you to seek to grow. I love the paradox or opposites of not needing to strive to be good enough, but wanting to be at the same time. I think this years goal is going to have to include learning to BE with Jesus not just DO stuff for Him. Confusing yes! Exciting YES!

Goal 3: “I am going to get my house organized.” Rough Percentage of goal completed…75%. I think I did pretty good on this one. The only cardboard boxes in my house are ones that Christmas ornaments came in that are easier to put them away in. I de-cluttered all the rooms in the house. Currently my basement is a disaster because Christmas is only shoved down there. It needs to be tetris-ed back into the shelving units. I got new shelving units and clear bins and did a pretty good job of organizing everything down there. I even had a laundry station there for a while, until “Somebody” decided we needed another table in the office. So overall I think I did a pretty good job. I’ve still got a few ideas up my sleeve that will finish the job off, but we have made huge progress.

SO… overall I think it was a pretty great goal year. I did all that and I have a toddler. Crazy I know. Hopefully by next week I’ll have my new goals up. and we can look forward to another productive year. Cheers!

I cut it close to wearing my crocs out in public today. They are just so darn convenient to slip on if you have a baby/diaper bag/purse/anything in your arms. We’ll see how this goes.

Ok and on to Goals…dun dun dahh.

Goal 1: “Keep fit and have fun” (thank you and Hal Johnson & Joanne Mcloed…dang now I’m going to have the body break song stuck in my head). The last 2 weeks have been somewhat disastrous in the eat good department. I think if it hadn’t been for a series of unplanned exercises Id be…well larger. I had my first real gain since I started in January. Added a nice 5 pounds back on. Grr stupid ice cream. but I’m back to normal life, whatever that is and back to the gym. I got a new scale that is digital and reads to .02 of a pound. Its encouraging because you can tell if you even loose .02. I loathe the scale at the gym its so inaccurate. If you stand on it funny it reads screwy.

Goal 2. Growing in my relationship with God. Being a real god chaser. I just got back from a steady stream of conferences. Sometimes those moments are real thrive and dive things. This year it really felt like a solid upward movement. I had some really awesome words spoken over my life. All really consistent too. The words “adventure” and “artist” kept coming up. All from different people. It was a cool thing for me. I had shelved a few thing to work on other things and so now I’m back in the groove.

Goal 3. Get organized in 2007. My oh-so-thoughtful-in-law’s got me these awesome hangers and shelving units. They have revolutionized my closet space. Its awesome. We switched from the drawer system to the hanger system and I’m loving it. Its working out rather well. Morgan and I are even sharing(miracle) one dresser for sox and skivvies too. Its super. Next we have to work on the basement because Morgan was being helpful while I was away and reorganized stuff into the walkway. Thanks hunny.

Ok…Game plan. I’m going to leave my goal update until later today or tomorrow. That way I can talk about fun stuff and Emily. Ok blue forty two…hut hut hike!

Firstly my gorgeous little daughter has a new gorgeous little boy to bully. His name is Issac Gordon and he was born last week to one of my bestest buddies. Go see his picture cause he is adorable. And click this pic too. Way to go Leah!

I was only gone a couple of days this weekend, but Emily learned like three new words while I was gone AND decided it was ok to wear hats. Yay my mom! So now she can also say hat, hot and out(because she is always being told “get out of there turkey”). I wonder what new ones she’ll learn this week. I think Ill have to update the Emily Page and put in an Emictionary.

While we were in Kelowna we got Emily a baby doll. At the beach last week she loved playing with Jada’s baby doll. She loves it. Its so cute cause she walks around holding it and hugging it and giving it huge kisses (something she is now very good at). We also got her a couple of hats and books and a bunch of new bigger non-plastic melt-in-the-dryer bibs.

I’m doing a “Croc-xperiment”. I got a pair of rip-off brad crocs. Those sandals everyone and their cat are wearing.( I looked, but I couldn’t find a picture of a cat in crocs sandals). So my experiment is to see if they are as comfy as everyone says they are. Or to find out if there is any reason to be wearing them in public. We say this lady walking down a hill in Kelowna wearing Crocs and walking with 2 hiking poles. Like was she hiking to Alaska or what? It was weird. So far I’m finding them fairly comfortable. I also got a pair of .33cent flip flops or thongs (as we always called them). so Ill trade back and forth and let you know the conclusion. My hypothesis is that both pairs of sandals will be equally comfortable and that I will end up wearing my crocs out in public by accident.

Well I have oodles more to blog, but I’ll get to that. Slow and steady wins the race.

We are working on a video for Youth and Church. I’m loving all the stuff we have so far. Its awesome. Ill try to put it up as soon as possible. Anyways. I’m zonked from a long weekend without much sleep so Im gonna go get a coffee and chill out.

Oh yeah and we got given a new hugemongous awesome HD LCD flat screen T.V. YAYAYAY!!! Just in time for the season finale of Heroes. Which rocked by the way.

We had the first of our Encounter nights tonight. It went really well. There was a good number of people, both Christians and Non’s. We talked about sin. Sin is bad. I showed this clip. and I talked about my talk at camp using a diaper for my illustration. The bad news is really Bad. The good news is really good. I love that.*Emily is singing herself to sleep and its so cute*Anyways. I like talking about sin because Its really easy for people to cover it up and pretend we are all good and nice. I love talking about sin because I love talking about Gods love for us and his grace. It is such a wonderful thing. Definitely not to be taken for granted. Here is the actual audio of what I said.

Might drop in on the Puddle city tomorrow. Got some stuff ta get and my mom wants to go too. I have to see if the movie gets done before I can decide to go. Thats kind of a priority.

*sigh* I have finished the week in which I could have possibly let every one down. I think I made it through unscathed. I think I only let one person down. It sucked really bad but it was something I had to do. I’m not looking forward to ever doing that again.

I’m looking forward to today. We don’t have a really busy day planned. I’m meeting with one of my youth after school and then a worship practice and thats it. I’m hoping the weather stays good because we haven’t really been able to walk with Emily much in the last week. We really wanted to go walk around Sepa Lake, but that was a no go due to rain. Silly rain.

We have this new problem in our house. His name is Morgan and the problem is the discovery of non-electronic items on eBay. Previously it was just really expensive thing Morgan would look at on eBay and that would keep him from buying all of it. I’ve really let go of bidding on kids stuff for a while. My dad bought some cowboy boots on eBay and Morgan realized there might be other cool stuff he could buy. The problem being that Morgan has expensive taste even in used clothes. Oh well I guess it could be worse…He could collect ashtrays.

Emily and I went for a really really long walk. It didn’t start out as a long walk, but it ended up that way. We were going to do the big loop around town. It takes about 45 minutes normally. We made it all the way around the loop and were headed past Save On when I realized that Emily had turfed her hat out of the stroller. AHH. That hat cost me 1 penny on Ebay + S&H. How could she be so careless and throw her hat out of the buggy. Ok well I wasn’t actually mad at all. I laughed and we turned around and backtracked. I probably wouldn’t have cared, but I really like the darn little hat. Its so stinkin cute. We finally found the hat most of the way back to where we started. Haha. silly Emily.

Well tomorrow is hop back on the health wagon. no more pop and pizza. Needless to say it was a rough couple of weeks. Ill find out the damage tomorrow at the gym. I’m even going earlier than normal tomorrow because Morgan has a dentist appt. and Thats the only time I can go. I’m not really looking forward to stepping on the scale tomorrow. I’m supposed to do a weigh in too. This is the first time Ive been nervous about a weigh in. the last few were so fun because Id practically melted the weight off. I’m pretty sure I’m still at a loss for this month, but it cant be that much. I’m still in the process of writing some new realistic goals for myself. Well see how it goes, but theres no way I’m going back up. Down down down!