A new challenge

As I was sitting on my lazy behind watching Property Virgins on HGTV a commercial came on promoting a new free weight loss challenge. It's called, The 50 million pound challenge.
The object is for Americans to sign up for free and utilize the free tools included in the challenge and to reach a goal of 50 million pounds lost total.

I'm ready.

So, I signed up. I'm now a team leader as well for Healthy Women of Pasco. Here is the link, https://www.50millionpounds.com/challenge_teams/my_teams.aspx

Y'all check it out. And send me some love. Feel free to join and create teams in your own area.
I think this is a great way to get out of that rut that so many of us find ourselves in.

Don't you hate it when.....

You remember that you were suppose to remember something but you can't remember what it is you were suppose to remember?

This is my dilemma.

Our family, Mike, Kea, My mother and father, my grandmother and Mike's mom went to Red Lobster last night to celebrate Christmas. We had a good time, with the exception of Dad hurting badly and his stomach being uncooperative. He had to take his food home with him. Anyway, we all had a good time, we made it through dinner. Kea was the life of the party. She was so good! She was dressed up in her beautiful brown dress with sea foam green trimming. She looked like a life-size doll. Her little plaid shoes matched the color of her dress. Oh! I think I just remembered what it was I was suppose to remember to write in my blog! Yea!
Anyway, Kea was a little bored, but handling it well as she began mashing her hands in her fish and mashed potatoes. By the end of the meal she was an avid mashed potato sculptor. Up to her elbows. Ha, good times, good times, I say!
Another exciting event took place at the end of the meal as everyone oooed and awed over Kea's creations in her mashed potatoes. She wanted to go wash her hands and on the way back she put her brakes on and began pulling me back towards the bathroom saying, "poddy, mamma, poddy!". As we approached the table she became more insistent, I thought, "what can it hurt, at least she is getting the concept." So, we went back and you won't believe it! My little girl went pee pee on the poddy! And she insisted we go do it.
Now if we could get her to do that at home I think she would be poddy trained.

From here on out it was just the usual.
We drove home.

Mom gave us Christmas stockings filled with goodies and Mike and I took a very tired, but sweet girl home to go to bed.

We are so excited about tomorrow. Not because of presents or food. But, because it's Kea's first acknowledgable Christmas. It has been such a joy so far to hear her talk about baby Jesus being born, and squealing with delight when she sees Christmas tree lights! We swear she must be my sister's daughter because her favorite things to point out are "nomen"(snowmen). Last I remember my sis was a big Snowman fan. She loves Christmas trees! This morning she took off with one of the five presents under the tree. Mike and I are more excited about Christmas this year because of her, I think, than because it's Christmas. It's just amazing to see her grow and learn!

Santa Claus came to our house the other evening. We have not taught Kea about Santa Claus. So, I was a little bit in a panic trying to think of a way to either explain to "him" our views on the season and send him on his way, or how to explain to Kea who and what "he" was. We certainly didn't want to offend a kind deed the neighbors were doing. Especially since these neighbors need us to show them Christ's love. The Lord was with us. I explained to her that Santa Claus had come to visit her and Jesus who was born on Christmas day asks alot of men and women all over the world to help him spread Christmas cheer and sometimes give presents to men, women, and children all over the world. And Jesus had asked this Santa to come and visit her and give her a gift. Thank you Lord for your help. It is important to us that Kea know the Truth of Christmas and not the facade that the world has pushed upon us.

I get to relax today, my home is clean. This is due to the help of a friend and is a blessing. Because today I can sit around and enjoy just being with Kea and watching t.v. or catching up on reading, or other cleaning projects I can't get to because of the everyday stuff.

I'm off and I leave you with a Christmas wish. That your Christmas may be Christ-filled.

Love you, Bea

Business

I'm sitting here at my dining room table eating a bowl of very healthy cereal and drinking a very unhealthy cup of coffee. The sun is streaming in the back windows and through the sliding glass door, warming my head and upper body. I wish my sister were here. We could be sitting here having our devotions and some sister time. I'm missing my sis. I tried to plan a short weekend trip where we could get together and it just be her and I. It didn't work out. So, here I sit, missing her.

Today is probably going to be a busy day. I have to make a cake for Michael's "Office" Christmas party. It's a microwave cake. A box of cake mix, 3 eggs, a 3.9 oz package of pudding mix and ......um....I think that might be it. Then into the micro it goes. I hope it will turn out o.k. Then it's off to take it to him and go check to see if my paycheck(if you want to call 10 hrs in two weeks a paycheck) is available yet. Next paycheck will be for only 8 hrs. That's o.k. though, because only working 2-8 hrs a week gives me lots of time to get other stuff done and spend time with my family. I love it. With this job I feel like I can have my cake and eat it to! No pun intended.

Mike, the baby, and I are being taken to Red Lobster tonight for Christmas. We are celebrating our Christmas tonight with my parents and Mike's mom. I don't think that's fair. But, I'm not going to get into that rant right now.

I gotta go start my day. Merry Christmas to all!

Will it stop?

Over and over again this happens. Mike has a talk with his employers at the Dade City Ford dealership, and things go well for awhile. They treat him with respect and he works hard for them. Then it happens. They begin demanding higher expectations. They begin putting more and more work on him. 15-30 minutes before time for Mike to get off work they will bring a vehicle back that requires 2 or more hours of detailing and expect him to get it done in the next 15 minutes before he leaves. The same car they knew needed detailing earlier in the day and they could have brought it back before then and it would have been done and sitting there for them already. It's like they play mind games with him. Because he is so quiet and he doesn't respond to them when they are crawling all over him, they think he's stupid. Or ignorant. Or whatever they think. Poor guy, it hurts my heart to see him come home nearly every night looking haggard and downtrodden. He constantly feels he can't do anything right.
Even God doesn't put more on his children then they can handle. And the "bosses" at the dealership certainly are NOT gods last time I checked. They don't do his job and yet they expect him to comply to their demands simply because they are asking him to. They don't ever take the time to go back there and work with him to see what his job actually consists of. They sit in their air conditioned/heated offices and "oversee" the work with a critical and demanding eye. Never rewarding or giving out any positive encouragement to the detailers when a job is done well. They ALWAYS come up with something wrong with a newly detailed vehicle. Expecting miracles from some of the wrecks that come back there for Mike to clean. The worst of the worst. Mike has even found rats in vehicles they were so nasty! And yet, the salesman and managers bring them to Mike and he digs there beauty back up and revives the dead. Not once do these same people come back and say he did a good job. It's always, you could have done better. My opinion. They are all on a high testostorone trip and don't seem to be able to get back down to the real world. God complexes of the highest degree. Thinking just because they wear a button up shirt and tie then they are better than the lowly grease/dirt monkeys back there in the mudholes. I pray one day they will have to switch roles. I know one day these same men are going to find themselves gravelling for a job of any kind and end up working in some dirty, hot, detail department, with the cold wind and rain blowing in their faces as they try and wipe freezing water off of a newly washed vehicle with ice cold frozen fingers numb from the exposure of the cold. This will come. Maybe not soon, but it will come.

Will it stop.

Getting Ready

The Christmas Spirit is making it's rounds. It's taken a little bit longer with me to be possessed. But, it's slowly sinking in.

Today, Michael came home from work and we went to Big Lot's and bought a smallish tree(about 5ft) for G-G(great-grandma to Kea). I should say, I did. Mike sat in the car with his friend from church and Kea.
I then began imagining a tree. Not a perfect, Macy's window worthy tree, just a nice simple, but elegant one. Trying to conj our up images of Grandma's tree from when I was a little girl, I began picking out ornaments and tinsel, and the most demanded tree item for Grandma, garland. 50ft of it. Gold and Silver. The "balls" if you could call them that, were spiked. They were like little round starburst type shapes. They had spikes sticking out all over them. They were very modern, which for some reason made me think of Grandma. She was never one to follow the flow. She liked what she liked. And I thought she would like those spikey Christmas balls. So we threw a jingle bell wreath, some fake snow(which I forgot to use now that I think of it), and to Grandmother's "house"(apartment) we went with sleigh bells jingling and all that jazz.

The Edwinola, where Grandma lives, is decked out with Christmas lights. Beyond what I would have ever imagined a retirement community such as this doing. It is nearly too much. You can see the glow of it out here in the middle of the country!
I watched as my little girls gaze beheld the glory of the sparkle and glitz and saw the reflection of those lights in her sweet eyes. She was so excited and kept yelling "Christmas tree Yights"(no I didn't misspell that's how she says that word). She ran to her G-G's room and knocked on the door then did her little routine of hiding against the wall to jump out at G-G when she answers the door.
Once inside, these two little elves went to work. Unpacking and unwrapping and untangling the goodies.
We began the decorating, the tree is pre-lit(God please bless whomever invented the prelit tree!) so all was needed was the final touches of our starbursts and garland. Kea helped and was so elated to be the one putting decorations on one of her beloved trees that she so enthusiastically points out everywhere we go.
Stepping back and watching G-G's face as she took it all in was wonderful. She sat so proudly, so excited about having Christmas decorations up.
We left G-G's tired but in a good way. So much done, and still so much to do. We are now looking forward to putting up our own tree in our home. I just can't put into words the joy I'm feeling as I watch my little girl take in the wonderment of this precious Holiday. I am praising my Heavenly Father for giving His only Son to us. Not only as an atonement for our sins, but also a reason to celebrate each year a glorious occurrence.
This year Kea seems to understand a little more. She isn't quite there yet but she's getting it. You can see the wheels inside her head turning and thinking and processing it all. I can't wait until she is old enough to understand how to give back. Next year we are going to "adopt" a child off the Angel Tree Project. I'm so curious to see how Kea will do. She already demonstrates compassion and a kind heart. I pray God will use those gifts to reach others for Him, through her.

So the Christmas Spirit is spreading, don't let life get you so busy you can't let it consume you.