I was up till midnight last night with Ethan in the Urgent Care. He was doing handstands in his room and hit his knee on Matthews nightstand and needless to say, he ripped right through all the layers that make the skin, down to the knee cap. All the fatty tissue was popping out and it was gaping wide. It looked like something off of the discovery chanel about people who come into the ER and it warns of graphic footage. Seriously, it was quite the sight. Ethan was a trooper and Matthew was, as always, a great helper and put the kids to bed while I took Ethan to Urgent Care(paul being out of town luckily missed the drama). He stayed home from school today and can't bend his knee too much or risk pulling the sutures out. Unfortunately, it is right over the knee cap where his leg bends and the doctor said we would need to be real careful not pull the sutures out. This should be fun!

Paige came home from school today and announced to me:
"Mom, I have good news!"
"What?" I responded thinking something really cool happened at school...
"My friends birthday is tomorrow and I am going to get a cupcake!"

I love that getting a cupcake constitutes as "Good News". I wish the news was as cheery and simple as that.

Saturday I ran in a Marine Corp Ultimate Challenge Obstacle course. It was 4.2 miles and had 30 obstacles that you had to maneuver through and let me tell you, I have NEVER been so muddy and dirty in all of my life. It was super hard and very challenging. You ran it in teams of 4 and I ran with 4 ladies from church. I felt such a sense of accomplishment when I was done! I will post pictures when I get to it.

I painted the built-in shoe shelves that Paul made and put up in our closet and have a long list of things I need to get done around the house. It seems like it just keeps piling up and I just can't stand it anymore! I need to do spring cleaning even though it is fall!

The kids are all good. Paul is good. Life is good!

So I am not going to do the Biggest Loser. The General Manager of the my gym was super excited to do it but said he needed to clear it through special events. The next day he said that they were thinking it would be cool to do it with all the Gold's Gyms in the area at one time but he agreed with me that it would be better to do it with just our gym so they could see the competition and it would be more personal and motivating. The day AFTER that he told me that they are going to start it in January and do it city wide because they thought it was such a good idea. I have no doubt that he failed to mention that it was my idea or that doing it within just one gym would be more personal and I feel bring about better results. It is going to be just too big now for people to think they have a chance at winning. Ah well...I don't know why they didn't come up with doing it sooner on their own. That is how life is but the thing is, I stole it from the TV show which starts up again TONIGHT!!! I can't wait to watch it(after the kids' open house. Super excited!

We took the kids fishing for family night at a friends house tonight. We didn't really catch anything but the kids had fun running around tossing out their lines. I spent a good many hours cleaning the house on Saturday, especially working on the kids' rooms. Paul took them swimming so that I could actually get something done. Paul's back was not broken, thank goodness. He has a bulging disk and so he goes to the chiropractor twice a week. The kids are doing good at school. I do have to say that although Paige's teacher seems nice, I have decided that I need to send her a note about Paige's lunch. She is very picky. There are only a few things I can send in her lunch that are healthy that she will eat. One of them is soup. Apparently her teacher doesn't like to open it because it takes away from her eating time. Paige has told me several times what her teacher says and one day last week said she would open it in a minute and never did so Paige didn't eat! I was so mad! She told me she was too afraid to ask her teacher again because she gets mad. I decided on Friday to give it one more shot and Paige came home and informed me that her teacher said it was the last day she was opening it. I guess I am going to send her a note tomorrow. If she doesn't eat soup all that leaves is chips, cookies, beef jerky, dry cereal and meal replacement bars...

Well, I have to get up bright and early as usual so I am off to bed. I do have pictures of fishing and will hopefully get them posted this week.

I finished reading "Sunday at Tiffany's" by James Patterson which I absolutely LOVED. It was a super good book. I also finished, last weekend, "The Flirt" by Kathleen Tessaro. There was some good parts and not so good parts. I didn't really like how it ended. It felt rushed and incomplete but I really liked how it portrayed the loneliness of "The Flirts" even though it seemed they led a glamorous life. Not one of my favorites over-all though. I am now reading "The Spare Wife" and I am not sure if I am going to like it or not, I will let you know.

I am starting the Biggest Loser again but now instead of it being just for my clients I talked to the GM of the gym and he is going to let me do it for the whole gym. It should be fun. It starts Sept 19 and will end Dec 19. Hopefully it will help people from gaining the typical 10 pounds between Halloween and New Years! I am excited. I decided not to do weekly weight-ins but every two weeks so it is not taking up all my Fridays. I am hoping some of the other trainers will help me out. I will find out tomorrow when I ask them.

In other news, Paul's dad is tolerating chemo pretty good and seems to be feeling much better. He has had 2 treatments so far and has 3 more months of it left. He is in very good spirits, GO DAD!!!

Paul had an MRI on his back this weekend because an x-ray from the chiropractor showed what looked like a fracture or something. I guess we will find out what that is all about soon. Hopefully something fixable so that he won't have any more back pain.

I think that is all the latest and greatest...

I am a fairly easy-to-get along with neighbor, I think. There are a few things that really bug me though. I think one of my biggest pet peeves is when our neighbors allow their dogs to poop in our yard and then don't clean up after them. I was out mowing the lawn today and came across no less then 7 piles of dog poop in our yard...which I would understand if we had dogs...but we don't. Not even a cute bundle of fluff. We have none, zero, zilch, nada, nothing. I decided(which is not normal for me to be this forward) to send a little message to them. I rarely see them. It will be 2 or 3 months before I see them. I got a shovel and scoop all the poop out of our yard and put it in a neat pile in their yard. It was a pretty good size pile and I am fairly certain it will be noticed. I didn't just chuck it over there because I thought that it might be too rude but I did put it over in pile neatly by their driveway. I hope that they kind of get the picture. It definitely isn't a natural looking pile of poop. No dog would poop that way but there you have it. Hopefully in the future I will not have to worry about the kids coming in with poop on their shoes from playing in the yard, or running it over with the lawnmower or better yet smelling it.

Was that too forward of me?? I never see them to try and ask them politely to clean up after their dogs. Was it rude? I did do it neatly so it will be no trouble for them to scoop and dispose of it properly. Maybe I should just put a sign in my yard that says that it is a no pooping zone and any offenses will be punished or fined. Would that be rude too???

We have a Sears Kenmore dishwasher that is just barely over a year old. There was a one year warranty on it(per the builder). Well, can you believe that it is broken?? Already??? Of course. The part is cheaply made but costs, for parts and labor, $200 to fix and replace. It literally makes me sick that American corporations are all about making millions of dollars and that the executives who run these companies spend atrocious amounts of money on ridiculously expensive food, hotels, and travel(1st class, is that necessary??) that are written off as business expenses while us peon consumers pay for cheaply made products that are over priced so they can get rich.

Being that Paul worked for Ford, he learned a lot about warranties. It is how many companies make their money. Ford knows approximately how long parts will last. And of course they last as long as the warranty lasts or just past the warranty. I have no doubt other companies know the same thing about the life of their parts. The repair man started going on about getting the extended warranty and I said "you want me to buy an extended warranty on the piece of crap that cost $500 and should run fabulously for at least 5 years??? I said I am going to send in a complaint to consumer reports about the product.

And you know what else?? It irks me that so many companies are going "foreign" for the cheap labor(but of course they say that they do it to keep product cost down well why don't they keep their spending down on stupid, unnecessarily extravagant stuff) They send it foreign so that they can make even more money off the product. There are so many un-employed people in America that need jobs. Not only would it would really boost the economy to get these plants back in America and filled with American workers and it would greatly decrease the increasing amounts of money spent on Welfare programs of the government. Of course these executives would argue that it will just raise the price of the product but if these executives would just consider maybe cutting their pay a little(maybe somewhere under the $500,00 mark) and cut back on having to stay in the best hotels, eat the best foods and travel in the most expensive way it might balance out those costs.

Now I understand that companies have to make profits and that people(executives) need to be paid based off of experience and what they do for the company but does that mean that products have to be cheaply made or that the executives have to be paid outrageous amounts of money(like a bonuses of $75,000 -$100,000 or more) and be able to spend outrageous amounts of money on ridiculous extravagance at the expense of the company, which really boils down to us paying for it due to the fact that we apparently need to buy a dishwasher once a year or purchase the extended warranty??? Because you know, that as soon as you buy the extended warranty on something, nothing ever goes wrong with it. And what ever happened to "Quality is number 1" Products and appliances used to last 10-20 years and now you are lucky to get them to last past a year. That is completely sad and pathetic. Maybe if everyone wasn't so caught up in clothes, electronics, vehicles and vacations that they can't afford they wouldn't be plotting and planning how to make things even cheaper but costs us the same as before or more so they can make that much more money for themselves. I don't see things getting cheaper even though they are more cheaply made, inflation seems to be soaring at a ridiculous rate each year. Is it necessary for a person to go out to eat and spend $800 dollars on one meal...for two or three people????? Or buy shoes that cost $1200??? Or stay in a hotel that is $1700 a night???? What is wrong with people!!!!! Selfish, overindulged, extravagant psychos.

And can I just add since I am ranting and raving that the repair man wreaks of smoke and I am in the other room and can totally smell the obnoxious stench emanating from him all the way in here???

Now that I have had my say I feel better now.....................not really. It unfortunately still doesn't change the way things are.

We had a fantastic weekend. Of course I brought my camera, but forgot to use it... We went to Atlanta to see my brother Aaron and his family. We went to my niece's cross country race in which she did fantastic. Got 7 th place out of about 30 runners. She is in 9th grade and everyone is amazed. We went swimming, played tennis and croquet and volleyball and ate fabulous food and watched movies and of course, as with every visit there, we began to wish we lived there!!! We had a great time and the cousins played really great together.

Now back to the routine!