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.

Halloween Comes Early to the Scherbel House

I don't know if my kids think I'll give them candy if they dress up or what, but it seems like they always want to put on a costume. Josef scared Quincey pretty bad with that one.

Karl read my previous blog and told me where the camera was so here are the garden pictures as promised. Last year we got nothing. so this year I decided to plant two seeds in every hole. Well now we have two plants in every hole. As you can see, our peas are doing incredibly well. They are taller than the corn, they are even taller than I am! (I rotated the pictures like Holly said, but they still showed up like this. Sorry, I know it's hard to get the full effect sideways.)

Our squash and zucchini plants are growing like mad too. When they are all full grown, we'll be having squash three meals a day. For some reason our plants are growing half a squash before the flowers even open.

My favorite, by far, has been the pumpkins. They are taking over the whole garden. We have several pumpkin bumps, but only one pumpkin flower. Like the other squash plants, we're growing the fruit before the flower even opens. I took the first picture the other day and the second one today, you can see how fast they are growing. You can also see that Karl has been doing somw weeding.










We also have a yellow pear tomato plant that our friends gave us. We planted it by the peas and we weren't sure it would survive, but it's doing great.


Our cucumber plants were so small (you can see that they are dwarved by the squash plants )that we kind of gave up on them, but even they have flowers.

Ah the joys of gardening.

The Great Weight Loss Race and the Garden

I was so inspired by Holly's pics of their garden that I ambitiously went out and took beautiful pictures of our garden to post. Then I promptly lost our camera. It's somewhere around here... So when I find it, I'll show you some great pics of our gsrden.

After four kids, I am slightly overweight. I've been trying to lose it, but I go up and down and we all know I really like my treats. So I decided I need some motivation. I thought maybe those of us who could stand to lose a little weight could get together and have a contest. My purpose is not to exclude or embarrass anyone, it's just to have a little fun and give each other some support and encouragement. I figured we could use the percent of total weight lost as a basis for who wins (for example if you are 200lbs and you lose 20lbs - you've lost 10 percent of your total body weight.) That way it could be fair for those who only have a little to lose and those who have more to lose and no one has to reveal their actual weight. We could run this a number of ways. 1. We all put in a set amount of money and at the end of the month whoever has lost the highest percent gets all the money. 2. We could take turns buying a prize for the winner each month. or 3. We just give each other encouragement and support and the honor of winning (instead of a prize). Another way we could run this is for everyone to set a one month goal and whoever reaches their goal wins (it could be everyone) and buys themselves a prize. Anyway, anyone is welcome to join us. Please let me know by July 31st if you want to join in and which way you want to run it. We'll start on August 1st and go for one month. The way with the highest number of votes will win. For you lucky folks who don't need to lose any weight or even luckier folks who need to gain weight, we could still use your encouragement and support. (and if you gained a hundred pounds and looked terrible it would help too.) See you on the scales.

Slackers

Sorry it's been so long since we've blogged. I'd like to say we've been busy, but the truth is I've just been enjoying the summer. It's been an adjustment having Josef home again instead of in school. In fact, I've never had all four of them home all day until now. Josef has been a great help, he'll always play with Quincey and sometimes he even makes lunch for all of us. He's also been a great tease and can get all three kids screaming at once. We've been having a lot of fun this summer. The last week of June the kids and I went to Utah while Karl went on his high adventure. We went to Chuck E. Cheeses and the zoo. Zoey was terrified of Chuck E. Cheese. She took one look and ran screaming, "Mom I want to go home to my yellow house." It took awhile to calm her down. The zoo was really fun also and the kids loved seeing all their cousins. Quincey also got a haircut right before we left for Utah. Karl took one cut and I started bawling, "It's too much." He is much more comfortable though. This week we're heading to Camp New Fork to go camping. We'll let you know how it goes.

Blood, Haircuts, and Tears

Yesterday, I decided I needed to get my haircut and I just couldn't wait. So I decided to save time and money and ask Karl to do it. He did and he did a pretty good job. It's a little shorter than I wanted, but its even and it will grow back (I hope). This morning, Zoey (who has been asking me to cut her hair for about a week)

took one look at my hair and would not give up pestering me for a haircut. Finally, I agreed. Here are the results. Amalie liked Zoey's hair so much that she wanted her hair cut too. Karl would have jumped at this chance, but I wasn't sure I could do it. I didn't really want to cut her hair. I'm not exactly sure why that is because I'm the one who has to comb it and fix it and I didn't have any worries about cutting Zoey's hair. I called Karl to tell him about Zoey's hair and that Amalie wanted a hair cut. While he was trying to convince me that i should cut Amalie's hair, Amalie made the decision for me. She took a big chunk of hair and cut it off. I started crying, but calmed down enough to start cutting. I told her I would make all of her hair even with her cut (up tp her chin), then she started crying because she didn't want it that short. We finally settled for about shoulder length with one spot up to her chin (there was nothing I could do about that). It looks pretty cute, but I cut off all her curls so she's either going to be really curl when she has a bath or really straight. I'll keep you posted.