Early Happy New Year!

I think we're gonna celebrate the east coast new year and go to bed because we're lame...we've been going to bed around 9pm lately and so it's really hard to stay up now. So, we're gonna stay up another half hour since it's 9:30pm here and 11:30pm there on the east coast. So, let me be the first to wish ya'll a happy new year and I hope your resolutions come true for you all! As for me, since I'm already on WW, I'm not allowed to make a resolution to lose weight--hahaha...anyway, love you and happy new years!!! Here's to wishing you all things great in 2008! xoxo

A summary of the holiday travels/at home through pictures

After playing with Carrie and Amanda's cats and putting tshirts on them, I had to get one for Tiger...IT'S SO CUTE!!! The shirt says "I shed when I'm angry".

Christmas Day.
Kyle and me on Christmas Day after we opened presents.
We got a lot of snow on Thursday morning.
That's our front doormat. I finally had to get a broom and brush off our sidewalk.
There's my little baby kitty....I think his tail is between his legs--hahaha...

Us at Andy and Kathy Christmas Eve shindig.
Sitting around the living room.
Eric in the dog collar.
Christmas Day again.
Grandma and Grandpa after they opened their gifts.

All of us cousins went out to Hacienda for dinner one night.
Carrie's cat, Cha-Cha. She looks so happy to be in that outfit.
Cha-Cha must be trying to tell us something...
It's Toast (Aunt Becky and Uncle Ted's cat) with a tshirt that says, "Dear Santa, define naughty"
Joe, Katie, Libby, Alyssa and Amanda getting ready to chow down on food!

Back to Idaho

We got back from our Christmas travels on late Wednesday night/Thursday morning. United Airlines lost my suitcase--somehow it didn't get transferred in Chicago. Luckily, I received it between 1-3am this morning! Moral of the story, don't take United out here or back home especially if it lays over at Chicago O'Hare.

We had a pretty good trip to ATL and Milford. We got to hang out with friends and family and we had a wonderful time! I'll be updating later with some pictures later.

Preparing for Christmas

Today I finally put the lights on the vegetation, or lack thereof. The bushes have no leaves so they're just twigs with roots. Oh well, at least they hold the lights up. We still have yet to pour some fertilizer on the trees in our yard. I wonder when it's too late to do that? Hopefully if we forget, they'll last the harsh Idaho winter temperatures-- :). Kyle just got done playing Christmas carols on the piano in our newly furnished front room! I sang for a little bit.

Yesterday, I got a call from Garfield Elementary school and the principal finally asked if he could interview me on Monday. I'm going to be subbing there anyway Monday-Wednesday. If all goes well, you may be looking at the next Title I tutor at Garfield ES in Boise, ID. Cute name for the school, right? I think so too. For those of you who don't already know what this Title I tutor job means, my job will basically include going to different classrooms and either pulling out a small group of children for individualized help in math or language arts or I'll just aide in the classroom if the teacher needs it. The term Title I for a school means that a certain percentage of the school population gets free/reduced lunch, therefore, some of these students don't get the help they need on subjects in school and the school test scores tend to suffer because of this. It's kind of unfortunate, but that's what allows people like me to get a job when there are no other jobs available (ahem, German positions or lack of ELL endorsements for the moment). Anyways, I think I'm going to like this job because it's the same kind of situation I had at Rowland ES, which I didn't really care for because they expected me to help students learn to read while at the same time try to plan lessons for German. However, this job will just allow me to focus on one thing instead of try to do several things at once for totally different subjects. At least everything I'll be doing will be directed towards either math or language arts. I guess that makes sense. If not, you know what I mean.

It snowed again yesterday and last night. The frustrating thing is that the snow doesn't stay for long! It's kinda annoying. I like a snow that stays for the whole day and even into the next. This is constipated snow. It happens all of the sudden but then it's only barely a light dusting--the fury never really breaks through. Of course, I say that now and then one day, it's all going to break loose and I'll be sorry I even said anything and we'll be worrying about being snowed in by a blizzard. But for now, I just hope I get to see some real snow when we go to Indiana! I wanna be able to play in it and eat some of it (as long as it's not out of a litterbox, right Mom and Dad?)..hahaha. Although, I was able to pick up a small chunk today and eat it, so I guess not all was lost.

I baked today. I baked some stuff for friends and neighbors. I made a "shortcut" baklava and a chocolate dipped cookie (which is REALLY rich and just about made me sick to my stomach because of it) but let's hope the others like them. The baklava was tasty, however. I'll have to make it again definitely. I think the reason I almost got sick to my stomach was that it has been awhile since I've eaten anything that rich in chocolate. Of course, I've never really liked chocolate upon chocolate--it's just too much to handle for me. But, I haven't had that in awhile and my stomach was rebelling. Sweet overload! Maybe it's a good thing I couldn't handle those cookies--it means I won't be making more in the future and therefore, won't be eating them which will help me in my WW efforts, right? Right....I'll probably just compensate by making other stuff---no, no, no...gotta think positive! Anyway, my grand total of weight lost as of today's meeting is about 16lbs. It's going down now very slowly because I think I've hit a plateau. It just means I need to stick to the rules even more and be sure to record all the extras that I eat and try especially hard not to go over my bonus allowance points. I guess I could try to make it a goal NOT to USE all of the allowance points. Maybe I only use like 15 of them instead of all 35. I'm doing the core plan (eat all veggies, fruits, lean meats, whole grain rice/pasta until satisfied without having to count points) and this plan makes it seem easier, but at the same time, you have to be careful that you record what you ate IF it's not on that food list. Bread is NOT a core food--which is a little hard. I guess you could compare this plan to the Atkin's diet in a way, except you can eat the bread but you MUST record it or else the points will get away from you. Okay, that's enough WW babble. It's time for bed now. Must sleep. Sleep tight, ya'll!

The Campbell home is finally decorated for Christmas!

Our new Christmas wreath before I added a little something to it.
Our new Christmas wreath after I added white poinsettia flowers to it. It's all pretty and extra sparkly now.

Look familiar, Dad? I learned it from your workshop!
We got our chairs! I also set up our tree and put the extra poinsettia branches within the tree (also what Dad taught those sorority ladies).
Our dining table with a new tablecloth.
I put net lights on the bushes and wrapped colored lights around the porch rails.

Well, we finally got our house decorated. I did most of it yesterday and all of the decorations will hopefully keep for a couple of years if I pack it right.

Oh, and Dad, there's a shot of what our front landscaping looks like.

Kitty's Christmas Clothes

So, I bought Tiger an outfit at Petsmart and I thought it was the most adorable outfit ever! I just had to get it for him. Here are the pictures of him modeling his Santa clothes. You'll also see some of them are blurry because he's flipping around trying to get his legs and arms to slip out. He actually escaped once and then I put it back on him.

My trip to the ATL

Okay, so I know I haven't posted any pictures up yet of Seattle and of the ATL trip but I PROMISE I will get them up ASAP (hopefully by tomorrow evening). I also have some really adorable pictures of Tiger in his Santa outfit. I will just say that when I put it on him this morning, he was paralyzed and just fell to the ground as if his legs were no longer working....you'll see the pictures. I'm just gonna assume that he collapsed from sheer joy from wearing the sickeningly cute and sweet getup.

I loved my trip back to GA. I loved seeing everyone and thanks to everyone for the very nice compliments on the hair/weightloss/appearance. I've been working really hard! I will write more tomorrow while I'm posting pictures--we gotta go to bed at a normal time tonight since I didn't get into Boise until about 12:30am (mtn time; 2:30am eastern). ICK! *g'night, ya'll*

Impromptu trip to Seattle

Some interesting landscape we passed by on the way back to the hotel.
The famous Pike Farmer's Market in Seattle.

There's a good view of Mt. Rainier--taken from my camera (and Kyle said his was better--see later picture of Rainier further down the entry).
Again, another picture of Rainier from my camera.
We decided to sit inside the Needle because out on the ledge was oh so cold and windy!
Get a load of the Christmas decor inside the Needle.
We got a nice little old lady to take our picture together.

This was before the roads got really snowy and messy. We couldn't get any pictures of the way over to Seattle because it was dark. We saw a pretty lake/body of water on the way home and the clouds are pretty ominous looking.
This was the type of weather we got on the way back home.

Our hotel was just located about 0.3 miles from the Space Needle.
Just before we went up in the Space Needle.
View from the Space Needle. Mt. Rainier is located just behind those tall buildings, although you can't really see it--we needed a professional camera in order to really get a good quality view of Rainier.
The very first Starbucks located in the Pike Market. The coffee tastes the same though.
Seattle nightscape.

So, yesterday we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do. Kyle felt like doing something or going somewhere. Finally, we decided to go traveling. We decided we'd either go to Portland or Seattle and since we thought of the Space Needle, we decided to go to Seattle. I had previously planned to go with Prithvi to the gym dance class at 4:30 and I didn't want to just cancel on her at the last minute, so we didn't leave for Seattle until about 6:40pm--and it takes about 7.5 hours to get there!! You do the math. We pulled into the hotel about 1:30am (pacific time). On our way there, we saw so much snow in the mountains in Oregon and in Washington. It was beautiful, except we couldn't see much but what we did see was pretty amazing. Neither of us are used to seeing this much snow (or any snow at all) in November! It got pretty dangerous though while we were in our last few legs of our travel. There was dense fog and it was tough to see the road in front of us! I was a little stressed while Kyle was driving because at night, it's even scarier--anything can jump out of the woods into the road! Plus, it always feels like we're going faster than we really are. We were both worn out by the time we finally reached the hotel and we checked in and pretty much went straight to bed at about 2am.

We woke up this morning about 8am (pt) and ate our free breakfast and then got ready for the day. We walked to the Space Needle, which was only about 1/3 of a mile away from where we were staying. It's really not as pretty as you would think. It was opened at the World's Fair in 1962 and it was originally painted in (get these color names): Astronaut white, Orbital olive, Galaxy gold, and Reentry red. However, a member of royalty (I forgot his name) said he didn't like the colors because it reminded him of a bridge he'd seen. So, the colors were just changed to gold and white. The elevator we rode up to the top in reminded me of that golden capsule elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the old school one with Gene Wilder--I LOVE THAT MOVIE)! The elevator shot up at a whopping 10 mph and then we were at the top of the world! Unfortunately, I didn't bring the camera cords to upload the pictures with so I'll add them when I get a chance once we get home, so stay tuned. Anyway, we got up to the top and we could see Mt. Rainier!!! I had always read in school about this infamous mountain but now I could actually see it! I was excited and it was just covered in all this snow! It looked so majestic. Kyle overheard a lady say that you can only see this mountain 1/3 of the year and so it was so nice to be able to see it this time. It was so windy and cold at the top of the Needle and it was kinda hard for me to be out there--it kinda made me dizzy to be out there at the very top while it was so windy. Whenever I'm that high up in the air, I always imagine that the wind is going to get so strong that it'll make me fall over or drop something from the top---even just writing about this makes me almost dizzy! There's a rotating restaurant in the Needle and I thought about possibly going there to eat, but it's probably just really overpriced food and who knows if it's even good! Oh well. We spent probably about 30 minutes up there and then decided to go back down to earth.

We went back to the hotel and we got into the car because one of Kyle's college buddies who graduated a couple of years ago is now working at Microsoft. We wanted to go visit him for a little bit. We toured the campus of Microsoft and went into the visitor center and the company store. After that, we ate lunch in one of the many cafeterias. The food was really good! I had a nice, big salad and a cup of fruit salad. The fruit was so fresh tasting and that's pretty rare for some cafeterias. Usually the grapes are really mushy and the pineapple is kinda dried up but noooo, not this fruit salad! We ate and visited awhile and then finally Herman (Kyle's friend) said he had to get back to work but not without a little more of a tour. We went driving around the campus and lo and behold! you know those little blue and green people that MSN messenger uses? There were 2 huge cardboard cut-outs of them displayed on the corner of one of the streets. Herman took a picture of Kyle and me posing with the two figures. After the driving tour, we dropped Herman back at his building and we headed back to the hotel.

We got out of the car and walked to the Pike Place Farmer's Market. It was so cool! One big farmer's market selling so many different things but not limited to: fresh veggies, fruit, fish, crab legs, crafts, tshirts, different types of ethnic foods (you could smell all sorts of spices floating around), coffee, and your token junk that you'd only buy in the heat of the moment and then end up throwing it away a year later or less. Because it's Seattle, we were there at the market for about 30 minutes and it started to drizzle/rain. We went into the original Starbuck's and ordered a drink. Then after the coffee, I convinced Kyle that we should buy a triangle of baklava and share it. It was heavenly! I loved every nibble I took! *sigh* I'm gonna have to try and make it some day. I think I might have the recipe in my Weightwatchers cookbook. Anyway, after baklava, we decided it was time to go back to the hotel because the rain was becoming a little more steady. We high-tailed it back and warmed back up in our room. Herman said he'd take us to a good restaurant when he got off of work so now we're just waiting for him to get off of work.

We head back to Idaho tomorrow and we'll probably get back hom in the late afternoon/early evening time...just in time for me to wash what I took to Seattle and repack it for my trip to ATL on Wednesday. I have to get up really early on Wednesday morning at about 4:40am so I can catch my 7am flight. I'll get into town at about 3:22pm (et). Can't wait! Oh and like I said earlier in the post, I'll try and upload the pictures from this trip when we get home tomorrow evening. Til then, hope you have a great evening! :)

Happy Thanksgiving! (a day late)

Well, wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving--even though I'm a day late, but you're probably still eating the food, right? So, it's okay to be a little late. So, did anyone take part in "Black Friday" today? I actually had never really put in the effort to get up REALLY early but today was the day. I got up when Kyle got up and when he left at about 5:45am, I left also and headed to the mall. I thought it was gonna be a huge mistake because the lines of cars entering the mall area was backed up really far.

Actually it wasn't so bad. I found a parking space and JCPenney wasn't that badly crowded at 6:00am. I found a couple of things that I had been wanting (clotheswise) and ended up being able to buy it in a size smaller! The pants were main thing that I was able to downsize! I had been wearing a size 14-16 in pants and now I can fit in a 12 comfortably so far! That probably depends on the cut of the pant too because we all know that some things fit better than others depending on brand and apparently color sometimes. I got 2 sweaters from IZOD (pink and blue). I wanted a green, but they didn't have one in my size in that color. I left Penney's and went to Borders and bought Kyle a movie he'd been thinking about watching (it was on sale for a good low price so I figured if he ended up not liking it, it wasn't like I spent $15-20 on it). I left the mall and got back home around 7:15 and went back to sleep--HA!

But then I went back out because I needed a pair of khaki pants/trousers/slacks (however you want to call them). My good ones that I already had got ink on them and I was bummed, but I think it turned out for the best since I ended up getting an even BETTER pair at Kohl's! There wasn't much parking at Kohl's today. It was more crowded and the lines stretched all the way to the back of the store. I started to wonder if it was a mistake going there but it turned out that I got some good stuff--I even got a nice dress up sweater blouse for the wedding I'm attending! It's a blouse that I never would've thought about buying in the past because of being so self-conscious about my tummy but it really looks good on me! I bought a nice dressy black purse and my khaki pants. I also bought Kyle some more boxer shorts because the ones he has now have holes in them--it's time for new underwear, Kyle!! I would've bought him a nice sweater and nice slacks but he said he wants to be there when we get him clothes. He has to approve. :) *Sigh* I just wish I could have that extra $5,000 that Stacy and Clinton give you to buy just clothes on that show, "What not to Wear"! There's just so many things I could buy and want to buy! Especially since I have been learning some stuff from their show about what to look for in pants and jeans and blouses. I know...I have to think realistically...not everyone can be that fortunate!

Well, the last thing that Kyle said to me before I left to go shopping was, "Don't spend too much money!" In my opinion, I didn't spend too much, but we'll see. BUT I got stuff that can be worn with different things and I also bought him some stuff that I knew I could buy without him being there. I think I spent around..hmmm...around $170 today. I hope he doesn't think that's too much because I really like the stuff I bought, and he even said that he didn't require much new clothing so can I make up the difference on me? Especially since I'm gonna need more clothes in a smaller size and I'm gonna have to start bagging up stuff that I'm not gonna wear anymore!

Last night I made our Thanksgiving dinner. I made a honey-glazed ham, sweet potatoes, greenbean casserole and a pumpkin pie. The recipes for the side dishes are as follows:

Sweet Potatoes:
4 yams (or you can use the canned stuff, which is way easier)
3/4c. non-fat coconut milk (or lite)
1tbsp butter
Mix all together (after mashing the yams and heat them in the microwave)

Cornbread dressing:
1 lb. sausage (hot or mild)
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
5 cups dry, day old bread cubed
5 cups crumbled cornbead
2 tsp. rubbed sage
1 tsp. marjoram
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2-3 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp. butter or margarine

Cook sausage in a large skilled until brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Saute' onion and celery in remaining sausage drippings until tender. Combine sausage, sauteed vegetables, bread cubes, cornbread, sage, marjoram and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Blend well and moisten with chicken broth, Place in a greased 13X9 baking dish and dot with butter. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Uncover and baked for 10 more minutes or until golden brown.
(recipe compliments of Mom)

Greenbean casserole:
You can find it on the side of French's Fried Onions.

Pumpkin Pie:
Well, it's store bought. I got it for free.

I was so proud of myself for making that dinner. It really did look like a Thanksgiving dinner! We ate by candlelight for that little romantic touch just cause I wanted to. :) Anyway, I guess that's about it for now.