it's now midnight and for some reason i can't sleep so here i am. just got done reading blogs. funny stories trace. is this the same damian that also likes to wear meat on his face? :) you know how sometimes you know something, but have a hard time saying it to others, but then you hear something or read something and you think, "yes! that's what i wanted to say!" that's how justin's quote on mary's blog was tonight. "i praise the lord in my strength and worship him in my weakness." very cool. i'm realizing that's how my parenting classes are. i read all this awesome wisdom and when i go to try and share it with these girls it comes out all crazy and choppy. so i think i'm just going to have to plagaerize (sp?) and memorize lines from the book. i was just reading a parenting book if anyone was wondering where the tangent came from

this weekend was a great time with the family until the end. we went up to columbus for the ohio st vs michagin game and also thanksgiving with my fam. the game was very nice of course with the victory over mich and the meal was incredible as ever. so saturday night we are sitting around playing phase 10 and laughing a lot as usual when about midnight my brother starts complaining about his stomach hurting and we make fun of him for eating too much cheese dip. and then about an hour later he's still complaining and next thing we know he's in the bathroom throwing up. oh poor guy we think...he must have eaten way too much. so the next day my parents had some errands to run and when they get back my mom looks awful and says she's not feeling good and next thing we know she's throwing up. 'ut oh' we all think. but the rest of us seem to feel fine so we don't think much of it. so ryan and i pack up and are heading back to lexingon sunday night when i start to get a mild stomach ache. i figured i was just freaking myself out so i made ryan distract me, but an hour later there i was on the side of the freeway and you can only guess what i was doing. so we stayed in cincinnati that night and after getting up a couple of times during the night i felt better but fluish the next day. i called my family and found out that my sister and brother's fiance had woken up in the middle of the night with the same thing. it's still a mystery because we can't figure out if it was the stomach flu or food poisoning. and neither ryan nor my dad got anything either. it was kind of surreal like a movie. we were all dropping like flies! :) but today i woke up feeling perfectly fine. so that's good at least. plus i told ryan i was the lucky one, because i got to binge and purge guilt free! :)

i hope u did ok thru that trace. i tried to make it as G-rated as possible. tomorrow i am getting a babysitter for hannah and i am taking the girls at the nile out for lunch and then we are going to see finding neverland. that should be a fun time! i'm working there all week which is fun for me, but hannah hates it there so this will be a good break for both of us.

have a happy thanksgiving everyone and beware of the greenbean casserole!

hey Mare..please blog about any info you learn on fitness and nutrition. i've been wanting to look into it myself, so i'll let you do all the dirty work and just give me the run down. you can be my blog cliff notes! :)

that is interesting what you said about the 5 hour thing because ryan has discovered that when he eats breakfast he gets hungry about 3 hours later where as before when he didn't eat breakfast he wouldn't be hungry until lunch time which he realized was because his body was just shut down and his metabolism was too. and he too has heard of an interesting study done that looked at 5 types of women. women who eat 5 small meals a day but not exercise, some who eat the normal 3 meals a day and do cardio, some who eat normal and do weights only, and some who eat small meals and combine weight and cardio. of course the one who ate small meals and did both cardio and weight lost the most the fastest, but surprisingly was the ones who didn't exercise but ate 5 small meals lost the second most weight the fastest. (i think there's some pretty bad grammer in that paragraph, but there you have it nonetheless) pretty interesting eh? it's definitely working for ryan who has lost over 15 lbs in just 2 1/2 weeks. how sickening. for 6 days i'm giving up pop and any processed food and let me tell you it's been so hard! but it seems to be paying off because i've lost 4 lbs this week so far.

well my brief recap on my blog that didn't get posted is that God is good and I recommend reading Victory over darkness by Neil T. Anderson. It's just a good reminder of who we are in Christ and that we are a work in progress and as long as we can see that we have improved in the fruit of the Spirit every year even though we may not be where we want to be then we are doing good and on the right path. it was very freeing for me.

i've also been getting up at 6:30am every weekday morning (minus a few days where my mind got the best of me) to work out and spend my quiet time with God. It's been so refreshing and just what i needed. i hope i can keep it up. the verse i found in romans that keeps me going is 'Offer your bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord - this is your spiritual act of worship'.

oh and i talked about how cute and sweet Hannah is. And i know i'm biased, but she sure seems pretty smart to me. tonight in the bath tub she recognized and said the letters D, F, I, and T. i was impressed at least.

today where i work (The Nile) one of the girls had her baby 6 weeks early. And the baby was still 5lb 12oz which is pretty big especially considering the mother is tiny. they are both doing fine and will come back to the Nile on Friday. i am going to be working there all next week there which will be interesting, especially since hannah doesn't like it there very much. but now it will be even more so with a new baby. i can't wait to see her! i'm a little nervous though because parenting is such a passion of mine and this girl can barely take care of herself let alone a baby and has already mentioned that this is her baby and she's going to parent the way she wants to. so this will definitely be a good test for me. but even more so for her, because she doesn't know what she's getting into! :)

well i better get some stuff done before the weekend comes. we are going up to columbus for an early thanksgiving and to watch the osu vs michagin game. the game means nothing to osu other than stopping mich from winning the big 10. it should be a good time. oh one funny random thing that i saw today in the mall parking lot was this old man who risked his life to pick up a quarter in the middle of the traffic lane. it just struck me as funny and i thought, 'he must be from the depression era' when he finally picked it up after nearly missing getting hit with a car he looked at it as if he just find the hope diamond. pretty amusing i thought.

have a great weekend everyone!

well that stinks..i just posted this long blog about hannah and some good God stuff and it didn't post! i don't have time to type it again though. :( but everyone have a good week!