I love free stuffs

I was able to try out a new product again and this one was a hit at home.

I absolutely love the Lemon Nestlé® Pure Life® Splash. 

It has a crisp refreshing flavor that doesn't overpower the taste. I love lemon in my water and this did't taste artificial or fake. You can't  wrong! I favored the Lemon flavor.








The Wild Berry was my daughter's favorite.  My family loves that I get to try out new products. 

Stay at home mom

A lot has changed since my last blog update. Brian and I recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary just two months after our second child
(Derek) was born.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to stay at home with the little dude until January and I am loving every minute of it.
I am working o my masters and trying the whole domestic housewife thing out. (I think I might be liking it a little too much)

Since the world didn't end....

Last January  I set up a list of resolutions and I made it to the May portion of the year and then....yeah.... But even though I stopped starting new habits, I still manged to incorporate a lot of the habits I created into my daily life.

My year longs goals are simple:

1. Start and maintain healthier lifestyle (eat better and be more active)

2. Read/Write daily

3. More family time

I figured what is he harm in trying again so here goes...

January- 30 minutes of exercise a day. So I have this crazy goal of making the chartered roster one day before my derby career is over.If I want to do that I need to build my endurance way up. Plus this is obviously a good way to help my lose some of my fatty fat fatness.

February- No Fast Food February. Our whole family will give up fast food for the entire month. We don't eat out daily, but we do rely on fast food more often then we should and this is a great way to stop and think about what we eat.

March- Drink more water/ No Candy.(This is a two-fer)  The plan is to drink eight glasses of water a day. If, and only if, I do this will I be able to have specialty drinks like coffees/lattes/mochas/chais,ect. I am weak when it comes to candy... So no candy for March.

April- Different meal every week. This may seem similar to February's resolution, but this one will require us to not only eat something different everyday, but we will also need to cook something new (out of one of my 8,000 cook books) once a week. 

May- I must wear a different outfit everyday (including weekends). My closest is still full and I find myself wearing only about 30% of what's in it (this is better than last year's 10%), not still I could use some work. This is a great way to force me to wear some of the clothes  I swore I would and still haven't. 

June- Hand-write 15 letters and send them the old fashioned way. Since I will be spending the majority of June in Moscow, Idaho working on my Masters Degree I figured that would be a perfect chance to write some letters.

July- Pinterest Challenge. I am going to make, bake, attempt or create, 31 of my thousands of Pinterest pins. I need to validate the countless hours I spend on this damn site.

August- A Picture a Day. I always see people doing the 30 day picture challenges and I want to do it too. I love photography and now I get to try it out myself with my new DSLR I got for Christmas.

September- NO HFCS. I will eat only one item a week that contains refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc within the first 5 ingredients (stole this from like Callous Alice).

October- Limit TV to one hour a day. While I don't watch an obscene amount for TV, it does seem to always be on in the background. I want to spend more time with my family and more time on myself and watching TV doesn't help that.

November- Drink more water/ No Candy.(This is a two-fer)  The plan is to drink eight glasses of water a day. If, and only if, I do this will I be able to have specialty drinks like coffees/lattes/mochas/chais,ect. I am weak when it comes to candy.... and Fall is the WORST!!!

December- Still undecided....... (any ideas?) I could try to No video/computer games. No angry birds, words with friends, zombies anything. One month with touching a video game on the Wii, Xbox, computer, phone or wherever else I might find one.

Now all I need to do is remember to maintain my focus and stay motivated.
Good Luck right? ;)

It's time to get my life in order.

I am not weak. I am not lazy. I will always do what is needed of me and more. The problem is that when it comes to taking care of ME I am still really bad at it. I tried back in 2011 to fix this (see my Jan 2011 post) and it went well. I lost about 30 pounds. It was awesome. Now I am up 20 pounds. So I will try again. I know I am the problem.
I make excuses.
I don't eat super great (but way better than I did).
I don't make time.
I don't work out enough.
I can't keep my stress under control.
I put EVERYONE else first.

I want to change that. I have big plans for myself and none of them include being a giant fat ass that gets winded walking up and down stairs.

I want to lose weight for me; so I can be happy with who I am.
I want to be healthy, so I can be around for a long time for my husband, my daughter and my students.
I want to be an athlete.  Roller derby is my passion and if I can't play then I am letting myself and my team down. I want to make it on the Charted Roster and a lethargic, wheezy, fatty is NOT going to do that.
 Most of all I want to be HAPPY!

So maybe, just maybe...this will be the time I get my shit together, and beat this thing.

I Heart Books!

I found this list online a while ago and thought I would take a crack at it.  Plus, I love having an excuse to read.  

I only counted books I have read in their entirety in my tally, so I guess I shouldn't feel that bad. 


 My number is 25 books--I have started a couple of these already and now I guess I must go back and finish.

100 books to read before you die.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
3. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
4. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
 The Bible
 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
5. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
 Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
6. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
7. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
8. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
9. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
10. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
11. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy -
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
12. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
13. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne –
14. Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
15. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
 Dune – Frank Herbert
 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
16. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
17. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
18. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
19. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
20.  Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
 Ulysses – James Joyce
21. The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
 Germinal – Emile Zola
 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
 Possession – AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
22. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
23. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom –
 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
24. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
25. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Seven months in a (rather lenghthy) nutshell.

So, too much has happened these last seven months to not post so here goes...

March- Derby draft attempt  #1

yeah yeah it turns out I was soooooooo not ready

     April- blah work work work work Easter was nice...

 Then there was Prom...

 

















 I also received a free makeover, thanks to one of my students and her nomination!!!


  









Before

After

  

The hair was awesome...the make up on the other hand.....

 

May- Crazy crazy crazy busy... Birthday, derby, Alice's birthday, derby, tattoo, end of the school year...derby

 

 

 My tattoo 

  

2nd Annual Creative Writing Coffeehouse

and more derby...




















and my birthday

 They made me a Zombie Wacker

                                                                         Alice turned 3...

 

 

 

 

June- If I thought May was bad, June was the most exhausting month of my entire existence.

 June 2nd- In honor and memory of  Derek, I donated 10 inches of my hair.

June 10th- Draft attempt #2  I make it.



 As of 6/10 I am officially a Treasure Valley Rollergirl. I claim my name and number and am now able to play derby with some of the MOST amazing women on the planet.
This is also the day I drive up to Moscow, Idaho for a month of classes to get me closer to my Master's degree.















June 16th.
      I was playing roller derby up in Moscow and they allowed my to participate in their Freshmeat Scrimmage, as I was jamming and trying to get through the pack I somehow fell and some other girl(s) landed on my ankle and it went all Rice Crispines on me.

I fractured both sides of my left ankle.

 

 

 I now have 7 screws, a metal plate and 2 pins in my ankle. I was on bed rest for 10 days. No skating for 3 months no full contact for 6. My heart was most definitely broken. But I promised this was not the end for Smack Skellington. :)

     I finished up my course worked, earned one A and one B and went back home.

 A week back home and my Davey kitty had to be put down. He had a disease called fatty liver.

August 6th- Brian and I celebrate 7 years of marriage.

 

                                                                                                                                                            September 6th (not even a full 3 months after the break)

                    I am back on skates.

I am slower,
            weaker,
                 and in no way my best,
                                  but I will get there.



 

This has not been my summer. Last summer was NOT my summer....Maybe next summer??

                             But there is always hope....and things to look forward to...right?

Days Eighteen - Twenty-Three

March 18th - Day Eighteen
Derby Day!!! So once again derby hair. This morning it was snowing though so I wore a beanie. :)


March 19th - Day Nineteen





March 18th- Day Eighteen