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!