I'm so ready for spring

It's so depressing outside. I guess I'm a warm weather person (not that this is a new discovery or anything). I'm gonna gripe today (it's a good day to do that!) This is how I truly feel!

• I'm sick of the snow.
• I'm sick of the sub 30 degree days.
• I'm sick of our house being cold.
• I'm sick of not being able to feel my toes.
• I'm sick of gray skies.
• I'm sick of running on a treadmill.
• I'm sick of looking at my Felt and wanting to be riding her.
• I'm sick of putting 18 layers on and looking like the staypuff marshmallow woman.
• I'm sick of seeing my hubby in sweats and being in sweats myself (although I know it keeps us warm!)
• I'm sick of craving warm hearty meals and caving into big pots of homemade chicken and noodles, beef and noodles and the like.
• I'm sick of the dogs wanted to run and then me putting them out, only to have them cry to come back in because they are so cold.
• It just started snowing again - did I mention that I'm sick of the snow???

Ahhh... I feel better! :) And I know, all of you who read this will say you don't feel bad for me given my upcoming trip, but in the meantime, try to have some sympathy for me! :)

My Gramaryllis

When my grandma passed away last year, Tom and I wanted to have someting really special to remember her by. She was a fabulous gardner - could grow ANYTHING in ANY condition. At her funeral, they joked that she had something no one else had - 2 green thumbs! She was such an awesome lady! When we went to her house after the funeral, Tom found a potted Amaryllis. More than anything, it was a bulb and I didn't know anything about it, but agreed to drive it home from Chicago and see what happened. I was told that Amaryllis bloom usually around Christmas. We took it home, potted it and put it in our sunroom. Before we knew it, there were leaves! We were so excited. By April, it was in full bloom and was gorgeous! We asked Tom's mom (who happens to be a great gardener as well) what we needed to do. She gave us detailed instructions, although we didn't really follow them because we wanted the bulb to be around all year and was shocked that it had bloomed so late. There were leaves on it constantly. Finally in about December, we remembered hearing that it needed to go through a cold cycle to regrow. We put it outside and it froze... solid. I thought for sure that it had died and I was so bummed. We brought it in and about two weeks ago, it started growing again. This time, it's not just leaves - we can see the stem with the flower. Don't you know it... we're gonna get another bloom.

Grandma passed away in March and I think that this Amaryllis is on track to bloom in March. So they aren't supposed to bloom any time other than Christmas. This one's unique, then again - so was Grandma! :) I know she's watching over it for us!

14 Days and Counting...

Well, kind of counting! In 2 weeks I'll be in Tahiti (or just getting on the plane in LA for what it's worth). I'm getting exciting, although still apprehensive about being gone for 15 days! ACK! That's a long time... especially for Tom and I. We're that pathetic couple that everyone is grossed out by because we do everything together. All day, every day we're together so to be apart for so long is going to be hard. I'm starting to get things together for the trip and for him when I'm gone. It's a lot of work. Between leaving the company, making sure that he's fed and happy, and packing in one carry on for 15 days takes a lot of thinking and planning. Luckily I'm anal when it comes to this stuff so I have lists out the yinny started! Hopefully those will be my saving grace for the next two weeks.

Nothing much new this weekend. Did some errands on Saturday, ran 5 miles alone (which rarely happens) and then today we went and saw Juno. It was a great movie and I definitely recommend it if you haven't see it. WE're hoping to get a 10 mile run in tomorrow. Right now it's super windy and rainy, although it's 55 degrees at 9:40 at night. Tomorrow morning I'm sure it'll be cold, snowy and still windy. That's the luck I have. OH, but I did get my North Face jacket that I posted about below and it's awesome! So at least my arms and torso will be warm. As for my face, ears, hands, legs and feet... we'll that's another story!

PS - is anyone else on blogger having problems with spell check, as in it doesn't work anymore or is it just me???

Happy Valentine's Day

I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day - as Tom and I were saying to each other yesterday, it's kind of Hallmark's Black day, but of course the hopeless romanitc in me loves it and secretly hopes that someone wants to be my Valentine! :) Tom never ceases to amaze me which is why I love him. I came down this morning (I had knocked myself out last night late with some good medicine for my cold so I slept in) to a dozen roses, a card and a pack of peanut M&Ms. A good man knows the way to a woman's heart and the fast track to mine is with peanut M&Ms!!! So much for the diet right? It was so sweet of him and it totally made my day. I took a picture of the roses for everyone to be jealous of (hahaha). Yeah, that's my LAZY dog in the backround.

So to give back the love (I made Tom a card and bought him some of our beloved Dove Dark chocolates) I decided to make him his favorite breakfast... pancakes. You have to notice my attention to detail though - heart shaped pancakes with heart shapes inside the pancakes! NICE! Actually they looked more like real human hearts than anything, but he appreciated the gesture! Tonight is his truly special gift - a fish dinner. For those of you that know me, this is truly a gift to him! :) I'll settle for my Morningstar Corndog and be content knowing that he's my happy Valentine!

I'm sick...

And just feel blah! I am coming down with a cold and have an ichy throat. I am so tired and wore out. I'm such a baby! :) Oh well. I promised pictures of our Vegas trip. Enjoy!

This is a view of the mountain behind (well actually from the front of Tonia's house). It was really pretty with the blue skies!

Here's the same view with a storm coming in (oh and the winds... UNBELIEVABLE!)

This is the view from our bedroom window looking down the mountain toward the highway.

Spencer, happy as can be. He's such a cutie!

And Em- love those big blue eyes! I have more, but won't bore you with them!!! :)

I love being thrifty!

This past summer I bought Tom a Northface Soft Shell jacket at the Lands End store near my cousin's house. The coat was originally $129.99 and for some reason there was only this one on clearance and it was marked down to $49.99. I snagged it, not knowing how great of a coat it was. Tom loves it and wears it all the time. Says it's the best coat every.

Fast foward to now - I have been looking at them as well, but haven't been able to find it any cheaper than the $129.99 that they retail for. Nowhere. Period. I finally said to Tom last week that I might take some b-day money and treat myself because I don't have a coat that good. He said that we should start looking around online and see if we can find a place that offers a 20% off coupon code, as well as ebates. So I started looking. Well last night I struck gold!!! I found the coat at Zappos.com for $132.99. They offer 12% back on ebates and also do a 110% price match. I like them also because of their free overnight shipping and free return shipping if something doesn't work. Since I knew they would price match, I did some gold ole' Lynch bargin hunting. I ended up finding only one color and on size (which happen to be what I wanted) at a place called Rock Creen on sale for $77.35! So I did my math - Zappos would sell it to me for $71.79 and the 12% cash back is off the original price, meaning another $15.95 back. I got the coat for $55.84!!! I had to have Zappos verify that the store had it in stock and that it was the same one. The lady even tried to convince me to buy it from the other store (I'm sure because they are taking a loss on it by price matching it for me.) I'm so excited... and so thifty.

Here's what it looks like. It's pretty sexy. I'll get it Monday. I'm so excited!

We're back

And what a trip! I'm finally feeling like myself, although even that's a bit of a stretch! We had a good time at Tonia's, but I'll tell you - two 16 months olds are a lot of work and I don't know how Tonia does it!!! We napped every day, were dead tired by about 9pm each night and generally were just wore out! We got some good hiking in - Tonia lives at about 6500 feet so that in itself was a battle. They are covered in snow up there which was really funny. Everyone heard I was going to Vegas and thought that I'd be in the warm weather - far from it! Actually, the strip wasn't very warm either - we spent some time there on Monday. Our flights were canceled both ways and yesterday was the travel day from hell. Our flight left at 12:45am, got into Dallas at 5am, we had a three hour layover, then got home around noon to Columbus. I hadn't slept more than about an hour or so and felt like crap! What a way to spend my b-day! :) But that's alright, we're happy to be home. Plus I slept 12 hours last night and feel a bit better today! Hehehe! I'll post pictures later of the kids and the mountain!


I feel like I've gotten off schedule in terms of diet and working out. We didn't eat bad when we were away (besides the Hummingbird cake Tonia made me for my b-day with cream cheese frosting - yum), but we ate a lot. Every time the kids ate, I felt like we did too. We exercised 3 days by hiking, but I didn't do any weight work outs. The hiking kicked my butt - between the uneven surface of the mountain and the high altitutde, I was working! I came back and was down 0.2 pounds. I didn't hit my goal of losing 5 pounds before going to Tonia's which was very frustrating, but maybe it was a bit of a longshot. I'm not going to lose huge amounts of weight and I just have to accept that - I like food too much! Hehehe. So I'll set a new goal -


I leave for Tahiti in 28 days. In that amount of time, I'd like to finally get down to 144 (that would be my 5 pounds lost). I'm going to get all of my weight workouts in (4 a week) and do at least 6 days of cardio (I'm scheduled for 7 since we are starting our swimming, but I'll account for a lazy day every once in a while.) Since Lent has started (and I grew up Catholic), I'm going to give something up as well - just for old time sake. Hehehe - it'll just be someting that helps me. So I'm going to give up soda. It's a bad habit that I need to kick - I rely on it to get me through my days and it's not worth it. I think these things will help get me to my sailing trip with a good feeling about things!