And The Winner Is...

We have a winner of the Great Weight Loss Race for the month of July. "But we weren't doing it for the month of July," you say. For this particular contestant we will make an exception. And the winner is.....Alan Scherbel. Alan told us he lost 30 pounds in July. In an exclusive interview, Karl asked him, "What's your secret?" In his now famous scratchy voice, he answered, "car wreck." Folks, I think there must be an easier way to lose 30 pounds. Sarah told us that Alan told her he looks like a 6'1" Hannah. All joking aside, we're glad Alan is keeping his spirits up and able to laugh with us a little bit. Our prayers and thoughts are with him and we hope he comes home soon.

Spider Trouble

the front one

The Big One

the small one

The other day we were sitting out on the lawn and I happened to look at the bottom of the deck just in time to see an enormous spider crawling up underneath. Karl looked everywhere for it, but didn't see it. He thought I was exagerrating. A couple of days later I walked out to turn on the sprinkler and there were two spiders building webs around the electrical meter. The "small one" was about the size of a quarter, The big one was about the size of a golf ball. He hid, so the picture doesn't do him justice. Needless to say, I made Karl kill them. Then Amalie pointed a spider out to me on the front of the house. Karl got a great video of it wrapping it's last meal. As you can tell, we didn't know Karl was taping. Where are these huge spiders coming from?

The other day we had a huge wind storm and a fire somewhere in the valley. Here's a picture of our garden after the wind came through (remember how tall our peas used to be?) and a picture of the red sun (of course it doesn't do it justice, but I wanted to share it with you.

Great weight loss race update: Welcome David to the contest. I'm doing ok. I'm really having a problem with those treats and I've only worked out once (I counted playing ghosts in the graveyard with the kids working out - I was running). I gained two pounds and lost 2.7 pounds, so technically I'm down .7 pounds, for today anyway. I hope the rest of you are doing better than I am.

The Great Weight Loss Race Update

OK it's time to officially start the Great Weight Loss Race. Ruth, Holly and I are in. Karl is waiting to see if he wants to join us. Amanda is cheering us on. Since nobody told me exactly what kind of prize they would like I think for this month we will try setting a goal and if you reach it, you get to buy yourself a prize. I'm going to steal Holly's idea and pay myself one dollar every time I work out and for every pound I lose. First, I want to say that I think you are all beautiful just as you are and the reason I started this is simply to be more healthy. I don't want any of us to get discouraged. Set a goal that is not too high, but not too easy either. My goal is to lose 3 pounds this month and keep it off. I'm going to work on exercising and portion control. If I have to deprieve myself of my favorite things, I know I won't do it, but if I can still have a little of my treats I think I can do that. Also, I found a great web site www.50millionpounds.com. The goal is for people in America to lose 50 million pounds. It's free to register and you get meal plans and a weight and activity tracker if you want to use them. I created a team called The Great Weight Loss Race (if anybody can think of a better name, we'll change it). If you decide to join the challenge, please join my team. Let me know how you're doing. Anyone can still join if they want.