I can’t remember what movie they watched but they both wanted popcorn for dinner—Grauntie Marge had given Katie an ENTIRE BOX of stovetop popcorn so they were super excited about that. So we let them eat popcorn for dinner. What a treat! Katie also enjoyed her new mermaid tail blanket from Gramma Jean!
Santa brought Katie a Frozen Cookie Mix kit so we had to do those IMMEDIATELY. The tiny snowflake pieces were a pain in the butt and they look like a total FAIL but they were delicious.
We set the kids’ phones outside their rooms so they will stay up there until we get up at 7. 🙂 Then they come in and cuddle for a few minutes while mommy wakes up (daddy has already been up for at least an hour). Then it’s downstairs to check out what Santa left… I didn’t take many pictures this year.
A tiara from Grannie and Papa.
A Lego train for under the Christmas tree from Grannie and Papa (complete with all the electronics to make it run!).
Princess shoes from Santa!
Charlie right in the middle of things!
Owen in his MSU hat from Grannie and Papa—we all got one! (It was a very MSU Christmas, which we all loved!)
Katie’s Elsa cape (from Santa!) and wearing her princess shoes!
Trying to get them to sit still with their new hats from Grannie and Papa:
Owen’s favorite gift this morning—a whole box of Pokémon cards! 🙂
Opening their one gift the night before (they both happened to pick a book).
And then some silliness trying to get a picture of them with Santa’s cookies.
We got a box of Christmas presents today. There were a few small things for the kids to open now. They loved their Santa hats…
And the scarf matched Katie’s outfit perfectly!
This is one of the things Marcia bought for me. It was a “clapper”—on clearance with a coupon so it was like $15! And it’s a size 8! What?!
And then this happened. 🙂
My next birthday weekend treat was a massage and facial at Marcia’s spa…I hadn’t had either of these things done since Owen was six months old and Tom got me a half spa day so I was REALLY looking forward to it.
Marcia was such a good sport about me wanting to take pictures of everything. 🙂
Post-massage and post-facial…completely relaxed and pampered. I told Marcia this was NOT a good thing as I was going to want this a bit more often than every six years now. 😆
And lastly, my spa selfies, pre- and post-makeup (getting ready for my official filmed testimonial for Naturally Slim):
First we had lunch at the Neiman Marcus Cafe with her two daughters and the two employees who helped with the Facebook event. I actually introduced them all to the delicious wonder that is Green Goddess salad dressing (it came on two dishes and no one had ever tried it so I asked the waiter to bring a sample; they all loved it) and they let me in on the secret that the little cup the waiter brought was not tea, but chicken stock. Sounds odd, right? But it was DELICIOUS. 🙂 At dessert time we hoped for something chocolate and surprisingly they didn’t have anything! But! The waiter said “Let me see what I can do” and he came back with a huge slice of chocolate cake! (Turns out he got it from another NM cafe on another level.) Then the table sang Happy Birthday to me. 🙂
Then it was off shopping at the mall. I had complimented her daughter Candace on her gorgeous necklace and she said she actually got it at Chicos…so we headed there (I usually get something “big” as a souvenir instead of a tchotchke). So I was looking at all the jewelry and Marcia and her daughter were looking at clothes. I was trying to decide between pieces to just pick one and Marcia offered to hold them for me while I was looking…and I turned around and she was buying all three for me!
What?! I told you she’s awesome.
Then we walked around some more and we ended up at Sundance where Candace tried on a bunch of clothes. The stuff was way too expensive for me, but I tried on a few things for fun (I mean, that’s what you do when you’re out shopping with the girls, right?!). And then they both tried on this coat—which I had noticed and thought was cute but figured there was no way I would be buying it so why tempt myself—but peer pressure got me and I tried it on and it was SUPER cute…and Marcia immediately said “Excellent! I’ll get this for you, too! Happy birthday!” WHAT?! Holy crap. I told her she couldn’t but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I now own this coat. And, actually, all three of us now own that coat!! 🙂
And then it was off to get all our nails done…another birthday treat! I opted for a basic French manicure. I forgot how much I LOVE them…
And then it was off to dinner at Gloria’s Latin Cuisine with Marcia, her daughter, and another coworker/friend! It was delicious, and I enjoyed a strawberry margarita and fish and brisket tacos for my birthday!
On the way home, Marcia said (paraphrasing) “I was going to get you dessert and have them sing happy birthday, but they get crazy with it so I changed my mind.” See? LOVE HER.
Grannie Lin and Papa sent these anniversary/birthday PJs—just in time! Love them!
He finished his Summer Slide stuff a few days early (280 second grade workbook pages, ~700 pages of reading, and 70 pages of handwriting practice!) so guess who’s starting his Lego reward right now?
Overall it was more of a fight than I thought it would be—he’s a typical kid who never wanted to spend the 20-30 measly minutes a day to do what he needed to do, so when it compounded and he’d have to work for 2-3 hours to catch up he became a hot whiny mess. And this was even after I put the Lego reward on display! The only time he got really excited about “doing homework” was this week when he saw how close he was to the end.
But, he now knows how to do 3-digit addition and subtraction (along with lots of other stuff) and his handwriting is MILES ahead of where it was. We still need to work on reading comprehension and composing sentences, but overall, he did a great job! YAY OWEN!
Once again this year, Owen decided to have his birthday party at the community pool with Costco pizzas and cake (which I forgot to get a picture of)! The trade off is that many of his friends are away on vacations…but even though we had a small turnout and it was about 110°, everyone had fun!
After his party, one of his friends came back to spend a few hours. They had fun playing Xbox and then building Legos.
After he left, Owen opened his gifts and was COMPLETELY GEEKED to get some Ninjago Legos, a bunch of Pokemon cards, a Nerf bow and arrow, a Star Wars board game, and $15 cash. This was my favorite card he got:
And it didn’t take long before Owen and Katie had their noses buried in Pokemon cards.
I liked mine so much I hunted down a pair in her size. She was SO excited to get a package…and even more excited to see what they were. She wanted to put them on immediately but I made her wait until after dinner. And then I put mine on, too.
“I love being twins!”
It was fairly difficult with lots of the same color pieces but we managed to do it over three different sessions. We wanted Katie to be in the picture, too, but she was being a poop for some reason I can’t remember and she was off pouting to the side.
When the kids saw these driftwood lobsters at Marshall’s, they said we had to get them for Gramma Jean! So we have them to her for an early birthday present!
Decorating the box so we didn’t need to wrap it.
I was tired of him borrowing my Survivor buffs so I bought him a plain black version of his own.
Grannie gave Katie one of the books they read while we were there and Grannie had Katie write her name in the front of it. 🙂
Katie’s party was on July 13, but I forgot to get the pictures off my big camera—whoops! I’ll move this post to the right date later.
Once again, we had a gathering/pizza party at the Ramada pool!
I was kicking the ball back into the pool…and kicked my shoe right off! I watched it land on the side of the pool…and tumble right in. 🙂
The cake design Katie picked out!
And then back at Gramma Jean’s to open presents!
And she had to put on one of her new dresses!
Grandma Jean bought a swing for the kids and wanted to put it up somewhere in the yard. Unfortunately, there aren’t any good tree branches for it to attach to but we winged it.
Katie was the only one able to swing on it—Grandma Jean and I were going to except it was a little too low and Owen tried but wasn’t serious about it and kept “falling” off.
So the swing wasn’t a huge success…as a swing…but Gramma saw the positive and said “At least I bought them a frisbee on a rope!” 🙂
Marcia Upson, President of Naturally Slim, that is. 🙂
During our previous conversations, she had told me to keep her updated on my progress…so this morning I emailed her my one-year update. I thought she might email me back in a few days, so imagine my surprise when she called me to congratulate me!!
I had also mentioned my time almost being up on NS Town and she said she’d make sure that I still have access. 🙂 Not that I participate there a lot, but I do like to update my thread. 🙂
And then we just chatted for a bit about my success and her loving my updates and that she appreciates the emails since she doesn’t always get to respond on Facebook (technology isn’t her strong suit). And she thanked me again for my video testimonial and I told her that I’d actually just checked out my video testimonial page in NS Town and saw it had something like 1250 views—and I didn’t think much of it…until I checked the other testimonials and saw they all only had like ~160 views. (What?! That blows my mind. How can that even be?! Even with all the people I know there, how can it have so many views? I don’t think the YouTube video has that many views!)
So then she reiterated how much she appreciated the video and said if I ever needed anything…or if I ever wanted to watch the videos again…to just let her know. Wait. What? Yes! YES!! I said “Now that you mention it, I’d LOVE to watch them again. I’ve been maintaining for about two months now and I just can’t seem to get going to lose the last bit.” So she’s hooking me up with the videos again. I’m gobsmacked. And now I’ll have NO reason to be unsuccessful other than my own self. And I’ll take notes this time!!
And then I told her that I had just actually watched the week 10 videos again (that they loaded when I installed the new iOS app) so I had just watched her video on weight loss rewards (for motivation she suggests rewards at different levels—maybe a small treat every 2# with bigger rewards for bigger goals). I told her that I had my new wardrobe so my final reward would be flying to Texas to meet her! She got really excited about that and said they’d pick me up at the airport, we’d go out, and I’d spend the night at her house! WOOHOO! (Of course I’d want to try and see other local peeps, too, but that info will come later!)
So…YAY!! What a completely awesome surprise!!
Owen got Gravity Maze from Gramma Jean (for Christmas, maybe?—how can I not remember?) and we actually finally pulled it out tonight. He was really quite good at it…while it was easy. 🙂 When he finally got stumped on card #8 (still in the easy section) he got a little grouchy and we had to put it away. But, I was still very impressed at how well he did.
So, as you know, our wedding rings no longer fit. The rings seen here are my mom and dad’s wedding rings from 1970. I’ve had them since (mom, do you remember?) college, maybe? She thought I’d like to have them and she was right…I love them.
Of course I tried hers on over the years but there was never a chance of it fitting. For years now, I’ve actually worn them both on a chain because they fit perfectly inside one another.
But tonight I looked at them and thought “Maybe I should try it on. It’s been awhile.” And it fit perfectly. So I gave Tom my dad’s ring…and it, too, fit perfectly.
That’s fate, folks.❤️
I’m sure we’ll both get our rings resized eventually, but for now, this works. And makes me all smiley. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I decided to keep the Le Tote pants! And I wanted to find shoes to go with them so I wore them again today to go shoe shopping!
I had asked my friends for assistance in picking the style shoe, so was consequently on the hunt for ballet flats. I was unsure because I didn’t think any of them had any support—and I need the support for my back!—and I’m at the age where comfort outranks fashion. But fortunately I found six pair to decide between—then narrowed it down to four:
Then two ($60 Born and $40 Life Stride on clearance):
I really wanted the Born because they were buttery soft and very comfy (and came highly recommended)…but the others were almost as comfy and a slightly truer black. And $20 cheaper. 🙂
Katie loves trying on shoes so she was helping! (In a new dress from Grannie Lin!)
And the final selection!
So my trip was a double success—I found the style shoes I set out to find AND I came home with only that one pair!
I was trying to get the new backpack Papa and Grannie bought her but didn’t quite get it.
Grannie brought Katie two new suits—of course she had to wear one to swimming tonight!
We just made our best pizza yet!
Goat cheese with rosemary and garlic infused oil*, caramelized onions, flank steak, and fresh mozzarella. I mixed too much oil into the goat cheese so it seeped out in the oven and started to smoke on the stone…but the bonus side effect was actually a crispier, fried crust! It was our best pizza yet!
* We were gifted a bottle of goat cheese that was marinated in rosemary and roasted garlic oil. After the amazingly delicious goat cheese was gone, we used the oil mixed with our own (Costco) goat cheese to make a paste for the pizza.
Aunt Sheryl always brings gifts for the kids. Today they got Easter baskets and toys—Owen got a Lego set which he had to put together immediately! 🙂
