And, We're Done

Whew, that was a long freaking month!! It rained so much, making it difficult to really get moving going. We finally finished and now, of course, it's sunny and beautiful. That's okay, at least we're out of that place once and for all. We still have a ton of unpacking and sorting to do here at the new place. Which reminds me, I guess I better get back to it. All my love to my family & friends...
Starla

Moving, Part Two

Well, two more weeks until we are supposed to be out of the house. We really lucked out and found a house within three days of our landlord's notice. It's still a four bedroom house, although it is smaller in actual size. We started moving in over this last weekend, and we have most of our furniture over here now. We have so much crap, though, I don't know what we're going to do with it all -- we'll have to go through everything and decide what goes to storage and what gets tossed. So, anyway, the new house is small, but cute. It's close to Alex's high school and not too far away from the twins' middle school. It turns out the house is only about six houses down from Lindsay (Alex's girlfriend), which is convenient when you consider how much time we spent driving her home. And it's a little bit closer to the office where I work as well, so that's great. Um, yeah, I guess that's about all there is for now... :-)

Moving

Well, as you probably know, we have been very anxious to get out of this hole that some might call a house. Leaks, faulty wiring, broken appliances, a landlord who never fixes anything, it's all had us really wishing we could just find a new place and move. The only thing that has kept us from looking for a place is that Cingular Wireless bought out AT&T last year and we were just waiting until the reorganization completed so we knew whether Dave would be relocated or whether he even still has a job after it's completed. That still has not happened yet. It's still up in the air.

However, our landlord has decided to renovate this house and sell it or something, so he gave us a 30-day notice to vacate. What a jerk, gosh I cannot stand him. Anyway, we are having to move very soon. We have been looking for the last couple of days, and I have looked at three houses for rent so far. All of them are smaller than this one, and about the same in age I'd guess (built-in painted-white cabinetry must have been all the rage back in the day). I just hope we can stay in the same area and something works out soon so we can just put this place behind us. Although I really feel like this is "home," I think ultimately we'll be happier & better off living in a different house, no matter how much smaller.

Weight Loss Results

Okay, so we started a low-carb diet in August of 2003. I don't know if I ever posted our results. Dave lost about 30 pounds within the first three months. At that point, he plateaued and didn't lose much more. I lost about 12 pounds in the first two weeks, plateaued, and then lost another 12 pounds within the next four months. I lost 24 pounds total. I went from 144 pounds down to 120 pounds. I kept it off until just after Thanksgiving & Christmas 2004, around which time I gained about 5 pounds back. So, now I'm trying to get back on the low-carb diet to lose the weight I found. :-)

Dave found out he has high cholesterol last summer, so he has had to eat low fat, low cholesterol food. He usually eats nonfat, and he isn't really worrying about carbs. After all, what could he eat - cardboard? LOL... Anyway, I don't think he has lost weight from that, though, but he hasn't been back to the doctor yet to find out about his cholesterol yet. I hope it's going down.

I'm wishing all of you the best in health and happiness!! Love, Starla

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year. I know it's been quite some time since I have updated my blog, but it's been a busy time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, trying to figure out summer vacation for this year, plus I've been working many hours overtime.

Chris stayed with us for Thanksgiving, and he helped his dad cook the turkey - we had it deep-fried, which may not be healthy, but it's much quicker than traditional and it is so juicy and flavorful. Chris also made the best sweet potato dish I've ever had - it was a Bobby Flay recipe from The Food Network. I tried a baked cranberry sauce recipe with bourbon (also a Bobby Flay recipe), and it was excellent. I also made the usual bourbon smashed sweet potatoes, (a Rachel Ray recipe) which are pretty good as well, plus I made an Alton Brown recipe, chipotle smashed sweet potatoes, this year for the first time. Those were delicious as well. I've decided you can never have too many sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner -- or for Christmas dinner either, as we made the same dishes then too. The kids stayed with us through Christmas Eve, then their mother picked them up early Christmas morning for the rest of their school vacation, so we had our Christmas on Christmas Eve.

As for summer vaction, we are thinking either camping for a few days again or heading to Disneyland for a change this summer. I haven't decided yet, I'm trying to find a way to make a trip for five to Disneyland as inexpensive as possible but still fun. If we choose camping again, I only want to go for a few days, because it can get quite expensive, plus very tiring. :-)

NOW to the overtime at work: we had someone quit a few weeks ago without notice (that I am aware of), and so we've been left shorthanded. In addition, two people were scheduled for vacation at the same time, and so we were left REALLY shorthanded then. So I've been working ten to twelve hour days at work doing someone else's job while trying to keep up on at least parts of my regular job. Very stressful right now, but we'll see how things go.

I guess that is the gist of it. I am looking forward to summer when school is out and we can go on vacation and take a couple of trips and visit all my family. I'm really looking forward to seeing Valerie and getting to meet the new baby after he is born. :-)