It’s been a long time since my last update. No Christmas stories or anything. So I know I won’t do the last few months justice, but I’ll give you a few quick highlights.
We went home to MS for Christmas and we had such a wonderful time. Everyone was able to take time off and spend time together and the “kids” went out for drinks and appetizers one night as well. I even hooked up with a few old high school friends. It was fun to remember those fun days of high school. Where everything was such high drama, but I can realize now how good we had it. Carefree and let's be truthful, stupid.
We played a game of hide and seek with my dad throughout the visit as well. Each time he went up in his plane for a lesson we’d run outside to see if we could catch him flying over. We got lucky and saw him fly over three times. My dad’s pretty cool.
Grandma was a huge hit and hopefully got enough kisses and hugs to last her until next visit. They were extra special b/c they were unsolicited. Paul spoiled the kids rotten and they loved teasing him and giving him a hard time.
Chris and Trish and Jordan are doing well. Jordan played his saxophone for us and he’s really great. I swear that kids going to grow up to be a doctor or something b/c he’s wicked smart and super clever. He’s also just an amazing kid and I wish I got to see him more often.
All three kids had an amazing visit and just last night Caroline reminded me of watching grandpa singing and dancing to Feliz Navidad. That girl has amazing recall, that’s going to come back to bite us – already does, often.
Sam is really now just starting to talk a ton and boy oh boy even when you can’t understand what he is saying you KNOW what he’s saying. I love this quote and it describes this time with Sam perfectly:
“There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.”
Annie Dillard
Loretta is doing very well. She and Caroline actually play together nicely on occasion now. They got a microphone music player for Christmas and we loaded a bunch of their favorite songs on it. All day and night they are playing the Killers, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, etc. It’s pretty funny to watch. Loretta is the entertainer. She can put on a show flipping her hair and dancing along – going all out. But she’s starting to show some shyness and only let’s the family see her moments of grandeur. Caroline is a bit more reserved, but that girl knows every word of every song and if not she repeats it until she does. Caroline is also in love with puzzles right now and can take a brand new one and with no help figure it out all on her own. We may need to graduate to 100 pieces soon.
John is doing well. He’s not exactly thrilled with his career at the moment, but he’s remaining positive and looking towards the future. He remains, as always, handsome and in amazing shape and half the time I think “that’s my hot husband” and the other half I think “he sucks, how does he do it???”.
I can’t complain too much though. I absolutely love my new role at work and while I’m plenty busy I’m not completely bogged down in meetings so I can hit the gym regularly during lunch. I’ve been working out 5-6 times a week and watching my calories and I’m down 11 pounds so far. 11 to go. My hope is to be at my goal weight by my birthday in April, which seems a realistic goal, but I know it will get harder to lose as I get nearer to my ideal weight. I’m hoping to do a couple of events this summer if time allows for training. One is a sprint triathlon I’ve done before, the summer after Loretta was born. It’s a ¼ miles swim, 14 (ish) mile bike and 5k run. It will really depend on getting some bike training in (which takes the most time) and whether or not the race falls during our Cape time. The other event is called The Rugged Maniac. It’s like an army obstacle course event complete with wall climbing, crawling through mud, running on boards over water etc.
My other potentially exciting piece of news is I’m looking into LASIK eye surgery. It’s something I’ve wanted for years and years and it finally seems like a reasonable way to spend some hard earned money. Up until now there was always so much work needed around the house, cars, credit cards, vacation costs, etc. that I felt guilty spending so much money on just me when it could fund something for the entire family, but I think I’m getting past that and beginning to realize I deserve this too. Anyway, no guarantee I’ll be a candidate, but here’s hoping.
I guess I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures over the last few months. Love to all!
