Hailey's birthday was Sunday, July 16. We had a family dinner at the Pete house. Jaden and Hailey each made a small birthday cake. Then on Monday evening it was a surprise, for Hailey that their famly, us and McIntyres all had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Ashley and Hailey did some shopping that day and Hailey got her ears pierced. Here are some cute pics of beautiful Hailey and a few party pics. The first collage is older pics... or maybe "younger" pics- lol.
My sewing room is the smallest bedroom upstairs. It had the same carpet as the stairway and the rest of the upstairs, with the exception of the bathrooms. The carpet is actually in pretty good shape, they had put it in about 9 mos before we moved in. It is starting to bother me though. It is kind of a short shag and a brown tweed color. It was especially a problem in my sewing room with pins and thread in there. 😏😕I probably would have liked something a little more fun and artsy, like large vinyl tile squares, but it was simpler to just get some more of the LVP that Daniel put in downstairs. I already had three boxes of it left over and I ordered 9 more. (So now it matches Ron's bathroom upstairs and the entire downstairs.) Ron and I moved all of "my stuff" out of there in one afternoon. Everything went in our bedroom, the extra bedroom, and the TV room. Daniel spent three days taking out carpet and putting the new floor and baseboards in, then one day to caulk and touch up. It is much better now, without the carpet. I have before pics, during pics, and after pics. I also had a friend come and put in a new light fixture. It made sense to do that while my sewing table was out of the room. (I also had him put the same fixture in our dining room over the table. They both work out great.)
We have never spent very much money on Fireworks. We have friends that spend tons of money on those and do a huge show each year. In the neighborhood where we live, fireworks are allowed... in fact all of San Antonio allows fireworks. (Except in severe drought situations) I am sure that we will have neighbors out in the street in front of our house doing those on Tuesday evening. Christiansens must have watched a fireworks show on Friday night or last night. Al posted a few pics. The best one was of Eden's face. Here is the pure essence of Fireworks.
I sometimes feel like I am being selfish with my life in this "season". I sometimes feel like I should be doing more outside of home and for other people, but then I realized that this is my time to get myself into a "somewhat fit" life and also to lose some weight that I have accumulated. 😕😏I mentioned in another post that I have been trying to walk 5 days a week, since last September. I expected that to have some impact on my weight, but it didn't. A couple of weeks ago I saw that Weight Watchers was having a special promotion to join for $10 a month for a year. I decided to join that. I knew a few small things about it, but not very much. By joining I have access to an app on my phone that lets me track what I eat, how I sleep, how much water I drink and my exercise. The program is based on point values for food and limits the number of points for each day... without limiting the food choices. Even though I thought I was previously on a rather healthy diet, there are definitely foods that need to be limited for me. A few of these are shortening, butter, rice, nuts, cereal, snack bars, French fries, my favorite popcorn etc. I am fortunate that I like oatmeal, eggs, almond milk, cooked vegetables, salad, yogurt, chicken and water. In the first week, I lost 5 lbs. I could tell that was water retention and swelling in my feet and ankles. I have my ankles back. 😉That might have been the result of drinking more water. The second week I lost another pound. The hardest part so far has been tracking the food items. Even though it is pretty easy to scan bar codes on food or to scan the nutritional facts on food, it is still time consuming to do that tracking and then to decide what I am eating for each meal. I only track the foods that have points, not the zero-point foods. (Some people track everything). One of my successes was going to Canes Chicken and only eating 3 pieces of chicken and coleslaw. I ate the hamburger and French fries at Whataburger though... that just meant that my other food for that day was pretty limited. I am planning on eating a hotdog and apple pie for dinner today... but since it is fast Sunday, I will have plenty of points for dinner. The food tracking makes me really think about what and how much I am eating of certain foods. I am also following a couple of Weight Watchers Face Book pages to give me tips, recipes and suggestions for limiting food. I expect my weight loss to be slow but steady. We will see how I am doing by August for our trip to CA.
We live with a couple of funny creatures. 😸😺 Pretend like the first picture is a cat instead of a dog. The caption on it applies very well to our cats. "Let me in, I need to go back out again"- lol The other pictures I have gathered up since the first of the year. The orange cat is Kitty and the gray cat is Gracie. (or Gray C). Since Ron and I almost every evening watch TV between 7-10pm... the cats know that is lap time. Especially Kitty, she loves sitting on my lap, or sitting right next to me on the sofa. Gracie has a habit of sleeping right next to me most of the night, on my side of the bed. I probably shouldn't show you the pics of Gracie on the dinner table- haha. We have no idea why she would rest her chin on the drink glass. Gracie spends most of the day, near Ron, trying to sit on his computer, like she did when she was little, but now she covers the entire thing. The last cartoon especially applies to Gracie... she wants to be close to us... but not very excited about being touched. 😉
Ron and Jaden helped Audrey coach a soccer team that Mason and Noah played on. They were called the Panthers. Their shirts were a bright neon lime green. The spring soccer season was plagued by lots of rain. Several games were canceled or postponed. The season was originally scheduled to end the middle of May, but the last tournament day ended up on the 10th of June. Unfortunately... or maybe fortunately... they lost their first game that day. (Later in the afternoon it was almost 100 degrees that day). On the next Saturday, June17, Audrey scheduled a team party for lunch. She did an amazing job giving out awards to the players and building up their confidence. Here is the team picture that we took that day.
Brown Baby Bird is still in Homestead Handcrafts, but I moved to a new space last week. My previous space wasn't very wide and had three sides. The corners were wasted space and I had items in baskets on the floor, that were in front of other items. Two weeks ago, when I was there to restock and take down a sale sign, I realized that there was a double endcap space available. It is only $10 a month more than what I was spending. (Although, sales have been super slow for a couple of months, making enough for rent is tough.) Anyway... here are a few pics of the new space. I am not totally happy with it, but it will do for now. I can work on it some more as I go. I forgot to take some more baskets to put items in. The top part where my signs are really needs some more cute decor. And my paper pendants aren't working very well, but they had a splash of color. I love the white shelves and they fit in the space perfectly.
We plan to have a quiet 4th of July... I doubt if the neighbors will do that though 😝 There is a ward breakfast at 8 am. Not sure if we will attend that or not. We are having dinner with the Petes Sunday evening, the 2nd. We told them that could be our July 4th celebration with them... they probably have better things/friends to do on Tuesday. For Sunday dinner, I am taking hotdogs, coleslaw, and apple pie. I don't know if I will plan anything fancy for Tuesday, for us or not. (I will do another post about my new eating plan... I need to stick to that- lol). We are pretty good with "stay-home-boring" around here. A few pics of my patriotic decorations.
