Monday, August 1, 2011

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Email between my husband and I at work today: 
 
Me:      Sweet!! J J J J J
 
BTW Pandora Radio is saving my sanity!!
 
HIM:             Hahahha.. it’s good stuff.. the only thing that stinks is that when the servers get full, you lose the connection abruptly.
 
Just wait.. you’ll be be-bopping along and you’ll realize you can’t hear any music.
And you’ll be like:
 
How long have I been without music?
 
 
ME:      Shut your mouth  ;)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Sydney and Tala!

Heather riding

Emily's first ride

Kameron's first ride!

Nora and I were cuddling on the hammock when I snapped this picture. What a sweet, devilish girl I have!! I love her!

A storm brewing over two outbuildings at the ranch where I board Tala

Nora loves to play at the park. She is growing up so quickly!!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Cuddle time with mommy on Tala

I love the lines and angles in this picture!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Nora

My seven dollar garage sale bargain

Zoom zoom zoom

This is our decorations for the fourth!

Beautiful summer sunset over Wyoming roads

This is my dad. Can you tell he is a big hit at birthday parties?

Firefighter Nora!

Nora in her new hat and gloves from Down Under

I thought this was such a pretty picture. I love the texture that the window screen puts on it!

A Room with a View!

This is just one little part of Tala's new pasture.  She has great trees, a river, geese and even a duck.  She can socialize with horses over the fence but she has all this to herself.   It is probably about one and a half acres!
I have so much to do in one little day.  This weekend, my goal is to get the living room cleaned and organized from top to bottom.  I am all stocked up on cleaning supplies and I want everything from the ceiling, to the walls to the carpets cleaned and smelling good! J  Oh and I also have to take a test for my Finance class!  No sweat, right? LOL
 
I also want to spend time with Nora and maybe do a fun craft project or something!
 

Friday, June 3, 2011

Long Time- No See!

I must be the world's worst blogger!  Life gets in the way and this is what is dropped!

Hmm- so what has changed recently?  Alot!

First, I finally got my tonsils removed and I am on the last dregs of medical leave recovering from that.  It honestly was not as bad as I had been led to believe it would be.  Sure there was pain- but NOTHING compared to the agony of the last strep infection I had.  The doctor said it was a "very good thing" that I had my tonsils removed as they were "completly colonized by bacteria." Yuck.  So long tonsils.  You are not missed!  My voice has finally returned to normal.  For a long time it felt like I was talking through goop in the back of my throat. 

One interesting thing that has happened as a direct result of surgery- my taste buds have changed!! For the most part things are okay and pretty normal.  But I can no longer handle food colorings, preservatives and other such chemicals in my food.  I can taste them.   They taste like battery acid coading my tongue and sometimes if it is bad enough- it makes my mouth feel numb.  No thank you.  Recovery Jello was just not worth it!

Another good thing has happened since the recovery- I have lost 9 pounds so far in about 3 weeks.  I am hoping this is the start of a weightloss snow ball.  I am really ready to be rid of my extra baggage.  I want to lose between 40-50 pounds.  50 pounds would bring me back to my highschool "fighting" (soccer playing) weight so I know that might be a bit harder to achieve, but I am shooting for losing weight before a couple of weddings we are going to be attending this fall!  So I really need to stay ontop of myself and watch what I eat before then.  I am also going to be increasing my activity level and trying to really push myself when I want to sit on the couch and veg.

Another change that we have gone through is moving our horse from our old boarding facility to a new one.  The new one is about 25 miles away which is the only negative.  However the positives by far outweigh that one draw back.  She now has a two acre pasture all to herself with a fresh mountain stream running through it.  We have 20,000 acres to ride in and the barn manager is awesome.  Her previous barn did not have much in the way of riding trails during 75% of the year and by the time you could use the islands in the middle of the river to ride on, it was hunting season and the owner invited a lot of people to hunt over there.  No thanks!  I would prefer that my horse doesn't get shot!  Plus I just had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach which I listened to this time.  Last time I did not listen to it, Tala had to spend almost a week at the equine hospital with life threatening pneumonia.  Anyway- about a week after I moved Tala up to the new barn, we started getting torrential rains.  We have had intense flooding through  the entire region- including her old barn!

Life has been chugging along.  Nora has completed her first year of preschool.  We are now entering into summer session as of Monday and it looks to be a great line up!  The kids are even going to build their own homemade rocket!  Yes I said a rocket!  They are all going to be buying a rocket kit and launching the rockets at school.  I didn't get to do that until High School!! 

My graduation from college should be December 2012.  I will be graduating with my degree in Business Management- Accounting.  Then I will most likely be taking classes for another semester which is "CPA Prep"  Eeek.  Yes!  I am going to sit for the CPA exam and am completely terrified.  All I have ever heard is how hard they are!  But once I can become a licensed CPA things will be looking a lot better for us.

We have been really working hard on getting back on track financially and have been making some pretty good progress this year.  DH's student loans are compltely paid.  And we are going to be tackling my debt sometime soon.  We are going to need to get a new or very gently used car or something sometime soon.  We need more fuel economy.  I budget $100 every two weeks for the two vehicles and soon I am going to have to increase that if something doesn't give.  I think I am just being stubborn because I don't want to adjust the budget but really if I am being honest I need to budget more like $150 every two weeks for gas.  If we could get a car that only needed one fill up a month then we would have paid for the increase in insurance and some of the car payment right there.

So overall the family is doing good.  We are on the path to a healthier lifestyle since I can't tolerate processed food- not that we ate much of it anyway- and will be working towards becoming 100% organic as quickly as possible.  I am networking with local food sources to try to get as much of our food as locally as possible- including meat and eggs.  It's amazing the resources that you unconver once you start digging!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Spring and New Beginnings

Spring is finally trying to arrive in Eastern Montana.  I am so grateful.  We have a couple more days of predicted snow still in the forecast, but it is the type of snow that falls and melts away in a couple of days.  It has been a long, cold winter with bitter windchills and very dark days.  I am looking forward to growing a vegetable garden and spring sunshine.

I stayed home from work today with a nasty chest cold.  I am in training for a new (to me) division at work so I feel very bad about missing some of this valuable training time but I also don't want to spread my germs around too much either.  But I think I am on the mend.  I just need a few days of rest for this to be all behind me.

There is a lot of worry in the world right now and it is so easy to get wrapped up in what could be or what might be.  Oddly, I find myself in a very peaceful place.  I feel God is providing in our life.  I am going back to full time at work which will really help out our family finances, and we are getting our debt paid off slowly but surely.  We are trying to both fix the past and prepare for the future.

Nora has grown up so much!  We are preparing for her 4th birthday!  I can hardly believe it!  She is learning so much at her Preschool and I am so proud of her.

More Later!  I have laundry to do!

My Beautiful Nora Girl

Nora's Musings