Biggest Loser finale and how I'm the biggest winner!

If you don't want Biggest Loser spoilers, skip this paragraph. Still with me? Ok! Hannah and Olivia, final three with Irene. All of them looked phenomenal and I loved how confident Irene looked! Her whole transformation was really neat. I knew she wouldn't beat Hannah and Olivia though, when I saw them all together. Hannah looked gorgeous and so did Olivia, but Olivia's hair is so short it makes me sad. I was surprised that Olivia beat Hannah. But how neat for them! Hopefully they will all keep the weight off. I was amazed by the at-home contestants this year! Almost all of them really rocked it. Especially Dan and Don, the twins. They had such bad attitudes, we were sure they wouldn't do well at home. But wow, they looked great! Olivia's hair didn't make me as sad as seeing that they are going to have washed up tennis loser ANNA KOURNIKOVA replace Jillian Michaels! So very awful. Especially considering that on the show, Anna K. looked emaciated, not muscular and healthy. I would be so mad if I were Jillian, that I was being replaced by an ex tennis player who was known more for her ability to attract male viewers than her ability to play tennis. Maybe she'll surprise me. But wow, seems like a bad decision!

End Biggest Loser spoilers/talk.

Tonight was the night Brian and I were planning to celebrate our anniversary. My parents were coming over to watch Gage and we were going out, just the two of us! I got some sort of bad health news this afternoon (nothing terrible, just sort of sucky) so when Brian came home early, I was ecstatic! He brought us a little treat, and we took a long walk (4.75 miles) as a family. It was SO nice. Then we got ready for dinner, my parents arrived, and we went to Joe's Crab Shack. We had lots of fun and some great food, and look forward to taking Gage one of these days. We got home to a sleepy, freshly bathed baby (thanks, Mom!) And now said baby is fast asleep.

What a great day, and a great anniversary celebration. Thanks to my mom and dad for watching Gage, and to Brian's dad for taking us out Monday night. Everyone has made our anniversary so special (even if it was last week, haha!) I have such a wonderful, thoughtful husband who supports me through all my ups and downs and makes life beautiful. I can't imagine me without him and I love him so much.

I am feeling like the biggest winner tonight!

Stayin' alive

That's what we're up to. We're all sick, we all still have to work (Brian is going in, motherhood and fatherhood is 24/7, and the mag newsletter is on deadline,) and it has been a trying day.

I've been trying to count my blessings today to avoid getting bogged down.

New Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers album, Unida Cantina, dropped yesterday; we got it today. It's pretty good but a 100% departure from their usual stuff. I'm enjoying it but trying to get used to such a different sound.

I guess that's really all I have for now. Sleep training, Couch to 5k... it's all on hiatus while we focus on rest and recovery. Last night Gage crashed at 8:20 pm, woke back up at 9:00 pm, and partied down til after midnight. We are ALL exhausted.

You take the good with the bad, even when there isn't a whole lot of good

The good news first? Ok here goes. I have a husband and a son who rock, I had a nice lunch with my mom at Angie's, and I did finish the long version of the piece I wrote for Brian's uncle Doyle at Sox Place. Sound good? Alright. The day was a major bummer otherwise.

It started out alright, Gage and I got up at 7:00. He was well rested, and I was fairly sure he'd slept straight through from about 11:30. He took a nice, hour and a half nap at 9:00, and then we got ready to head to my parents' house. While mom and Gage and I were having lunch, Brian IMd me and told me he was headed home sick. I told him I'd see him later. Gage and I went to check the PO box, which is near my parents'. I have this nasty habit of opening stuff I'm curious about right away, and one of the things I opened happened to be a bill for medical services that I had the day after Brian's ex-employer cancelled our insurance, three days prematurely. It was a pretty big chunk of change, bringing our total due from that ONE day to somewhere between $1400 and $1700. Great.

So I go into my parent's house, and looking forward to finishing up the writing for Sox Place, taking it from a whole bunch of handwritten notes to an actual piece of writing in .docx format. I turn Gage over to my mom and dad, and start in on it. I get two pages of really good stuff, and then without warning, my computer restarts to complete some updates. Had I saved the piece I was writing? Of course not. All gone. Excellent.

By the time the computer restarts and I discover that it did indeed eat my work, Gage is tired and fussy and I need to take him home. So no more time to retype all I'd written, all that I was feeling really pleased with. I loaded up the sleepy guy to get him home.

Then Brian's mom and sister came over for a bit to spend some time with Gage. After a few hours of nice visiting, they took off and Brian and I ordered pizza from Blackjack. I went to pick it up, and navigation sent me to the 100% wrong place. After many u-turns, driving around like an idiot for a while, and finally calling for directions, I finally found it. Splendid. After we ate, I decided to weigh Gage on the Ski, then Brian weighed himself. He is only 9 lbs away from his goal. I'm so super proud of him but ... it really depresses me that he's so close and I'm so far away. Our weight loss goals used to be something that we were pushing toward together, but now he's pushing toward his goal and I'm totally stagnant.

I quit Weight Watchers because I lost the motivation to do it. I can't go to the gym because, well, when? I haven't been able to walk or run because of the crappy wind, and I don't have room for a treadmill or anything. I can try to do the Wii games, but I have a limited amount of time while Gage isn't jumping me to do those, like, a 10 minute window while he's chill in his high chair. Is ten minutes even worth it?! I know all that sounds like excuses, I get it. But I'm in a rut and really discouraged. And it is hard because Brian tries to encourage me but I'm hard to encourage when I'm feeling like a big, fat failure. And I am right now. He's got 9 more lbs to lose. I've got forty five more lbs to lose. Ugh.

Some days are better than others, and I know that. I also know that things could be much, much worse. It has just been a day wrought with unfortunate surprises and wrong turns and obvious displays of my failings. Tomorrow will be another day.

Happy April Fools' Day, and don't worry-the joke's on me. *sigh.* See you tomorrow for what will hopefully be a more upbeat post.

Oh how I love my life

Despite the sleeplessness, despite the struggles, despite it all... I love this life that I've been given. I love this path I've been placed upon. I love being Brian's wife, I love being Gage's mother, and I even love our little tiny apartment! It's just so nice to finally start our life in Colorado. It seems like a brand new beginning.

I don't have any other news of import, just feeling grateful for this life I've been given.

I'm finally adjusting to Gage's new haircut though, so that's nice. I have thought it was cute since Sunday, when it got cut, but I've been having trouble bidding goodbye to his adorable crazy baby hair. I'm finally at that point where I think I can be happy about how good his hair looks without mourning the baby hair look.

Ah, Mid-February...

When my thoughts turn to love! NO, not because of Valentine's day. We really don't celebrate it. But because, around this time nine years ago, I happened to get pretty close to an awesome guy named Brian.

We met at work as I was being given a tour by my new boss, who was showing me around the parts department. I was single, twenty, and had decided to stop dating for a while. But because I was twenty, I still approached all circumstances with a critical eye to the male population in the room... "is there anyone here I would ever go out with?" And the workplace was no exception. Because what would work be for, other than finding me a guy to spend time with? Oh, the brilliant work ethic of a 20 year old girl. Anyway. When I met Brian in the parts department, I thought to myself, "huh, that parts guy is the ONLY guy in this whole dealership I'd consider going out with!" You can guess I was pretty full of myself in those days, obviously not taking into consideration if a guy would want to date ME.

Not too long after my grand tour, I was hanging out at the service desk with my co-worker Jean (who was awesome. She was my manager down the line at another dealership and we kind of fell out, but she was awesome and I would love to get back in touch with her.) Brian, the date-able guy from parts, came up to talk to us. Jean said, "Oh, that's Brian. You won't like him. He's an a-hole." I said, full of 20 year old bravado, and myself, "It's cool. He won't be an a-hole to me, 'cause if he is I'll kick his butt." Of course I didn't say butt, but ya know. Poor Brian. He was trying to come up there to talk to me because he thought I had beautiful, uh, eyes.

He said, "I'm not an a-hole! Hey, I heard you have some cool tattoos. Can I see 'em?" That's not exactly what he said, but it's close. It was more smooth than that, and at that moment, I thought, uh-oh... dating hiatus may come to an end. Over the next few weeks, we spent an inordinate amount of time together, with Brian leaving in the midst of conversations if I did, and with me wandering around parts making moony eyes at him. We pretended no one else could see what was going on, but everyone surely could. My mom could definitely tell. Once when I talked to her, and she asked what I was doing, and I casually said, "Oh, ya know, hanging out with that guy from work, Brian." She said, "Is he your boyfriend, or what?" Defensive, I said, "No! We're just good friends!" She commented on the obvious nature of our friendship, when everytime she talked to me I was hanging out with Brian.

Brian's favorite part of this story is when he tried to kiss me for the first time. We used to always hug goodbye, then talk some more, then hug some more, then talk some more, and then finally one of us would leave. We were going through this ritual when I noticed Brian leaning in. I thought, oh, how nice, another hug! It was late January/early February in Colorado, and COLD. So hugs are nice! I pulled him in close and put my head on his shoulder... realizing waaaay too late that he wasn't trying to hug me. Oh, no. He was going in for a kiss. Needless to say, he got out of there pretty quick and I felt like SUCH a loser. I really did have feelings for him then, and would have loved the kiss, but I blew it. The following night when we got together, I laid one on him, and told him I was sorry about missing his the night before. And pretty much from that point, we were together... although we still thought no one at work knew, and everyone did. Except the weirdo detail guy, who kept asking me out.

So, that has been around nine years ago. NINE years! That's about a third of my life. The BEST third of my life by far. We've shared ups and downs, good times and bad, two dogs, the death of one of those dogs, the loss of family, sickness and health, richer and poorer (although I can't quite pinpoint the richer), and the birth and life of our amazing son together. Twenty year old me definitely couldn't have seen this coming when she threatened to kick his butt, but Brian has been the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I know now that God gave him to me, for me, just as He gave me to Brian, for Brian. And how amazing a gift Brian is! He is a wonderful husband and an amazing father. It never ceases to warm my heart when I watch Brian with Gage. He is a hard worker and tireless provider for our little band of three. He does what needs to be done so I can stay home with our son and for that I will never cease being thankful. He turned around my wayward ways of spending and "forgetting" to pay my bills and helped me rebuild my credit. He made me want to be the person he saw in me.

The day we got married 3.5 years ago was one of the happiest of my life, when we said our vows and promised to love each other forever. I'd have done that even without those vows, but they meant everything to me.

I love you with all my heart, soul, and being, Brian. I am so blessed to not only have you as my husband, but as the father of our sweet little son. I can't imagine life without you, and I wouldn't want to. Happy nine year anniversary, whatever date it actually is.