Who likes black licorice

I told a children's story in church today and started by asking who liked black licorice. A few of the children did and I handed out some black jelly beans to those who wanted them and proceeded to eat some myself and told how I loved licorice ice cream and asked the children if any of them had ever had it and none had but when I asked the adults many hands went up. Anyway the gist of the story was how black licorice makes your mouth black and disgusting and how saying things that aren't nice is like having a black mouth that isn't very nice to see. Then I gave several scriptures from Proverbs about how important what you say is.

Well, after church I was the most popular person around and many of the adults came asking for black jelly beans and telling me about how they also enjoyed licorice ice cream at the Country Boy Dairy. I found it quite enjoyable having everyone sharing their story. It was a very bonding moment and I realized even more how wonderful my church family is.

Getting off the night shift and being more involved with Community Services and other things has really brought me much closer to my fellow church members. I finally feel like I belong :)

My life's a merry-go-round

Since Ava Skye arrived my life has been a whirlwind. All I've been doing is driving to see her and coming back to work a few days and leaving again. She is so wonderful and it is hard for me knowing that I will not be there for so much of her growing up. I am so envious of grandmothers who live in the same place as their grandchildren. But I will make the best of it and who knows maybe someday I can move there. Here's some pictures of my sweet little Skye.

I'm a Grandma!

This morning at 3:05 a.m., Ava Skye Tanner came into the world! She is beautiful!!(even though I have only seen pictures of her, I am leaving tomorrow morning to see her in person). Amy was totally amazing with a 3 hour labor, start to finish! She was only in the hospital about 10 minutes before she delivered. I still can't believe it! Just totally amazing, amazing, amazing!!!! I just can't wait to hold my own little granddaugher in my arms. She weighed 8#4 0z., 21 inches long, and looks like she has almost auburn hair. She is so adorable!

Ladies Night Out

I went to my first "Ladies Night Out" at church last night. This event started about a year ago and it is a women's prayer group, attended mostly by the younger women in the church(and outside the church). It is held the first Thursday of the month so many times my work schedule interfered with me going, but the few times that I could attend I either chickened out or let Curt distract me into doing something else like go to a movie or something.
But last night, Curt was at work and I decided to attend. As you can probably tell, going to this is very intimidating to me because I have never felt I really "fit in" with this group. I couldn't have been more wrong! It was so uplifting and I felt so blessed by attending. I really think God had a hand in this because there was only 3 other women there, Jodi, Chrystal, and Carla. And they have to be the most open and loving people around. They made me feel very welcome and free to share what God has done in my life, which I felt they really appreciated as it pertained to trials they were having in their own lives. I know that not all the meetings will be so small and intimate but I will definately attend when I can. There is no greater blessing than lifting others up in prayer.

After the lemonade diet

Well, I stopped the lemonade diet after Saturday. We went down to see Curt's folks in Aberdeen yesterday and I thought it would be too hard to continue it. Besides I was ready to eat some solid food. I did try and limit it to mostly fruits and vegetables though.
But anyway, I did lose 4 pounds in 4 days. Most of which I suppose will come back after I start eating food again. But all the time I was on it I had really good energy and alertness. I could exercise and not feel exhausted and worked Thursday night and felt more awake than most nights when I'm drinking caffeine. So I am going to stay off caffeine and I have replaced my morning cup of coffee with tea now, which may take some getting used to.
One thing that the diet did not do is cleanse my colon. Even drinking the saline flush at night, it did not produce results. But I never felt bloated or uncomfortable.
All in all it was a good experience. I realized that I do indeed have will power and am determined to use that will power to just continue on with a healthy lifestyle and hopefully continued weight loss.

The Lemonade Master Cleanse Diet

Angela told me about this diet and I really had no intension of trying it but after feeling bloated and uncomfortable after eating all the time I thought maybe I would give it a try. So on Wednesday I started drinking my lemonade mixture of freshed squeezed lemons, pure maple syrup and cayenne pepper. It really tastes quite good. I cheated a couple times on Weds. and ate an apple and a banana. But Thursday I did really well. I even took a 5 mile walk with my friend Julie on Weds. and Thurs. I had to work Thurs. night and instead of drinking the lemonade mix I took a 46 oz. bottle of V-8 fusion + tea and drank that all night. Surprisingly, I was more awake last night than I have been drinking caffeine. And I haven't had any since Monday. Today I am really wanting something to eat but I am trying to be strong. My plan is to keep on it until I have to go back to work on Tues. I am surprised at the amount of energy that I have without eating anything solid for the last three days. But what I don't get is the colon cleansing part because even though I did the "saline flush"(which is drinking a liter of salt water) I had no results. But I am going to try it again before I go to bed and hopefully have results in the morning. I am going to weight myself tomorrow morning also and see if I have lost any weight. I better have or I am stopping this.

My "Hairball" Experience

I don't know if any of you have heard of "Hairball" but if you like the big hair bands of the 80's, you would have loved this show. In this group I think they have 2 guys that take turns doing the lead vocals and the lead guitarist, bass guitar and drummer are always the same. But the lead singers take turns impersonating the lead singers of different groups and Curt tells me that they do a really great job of impersonating them, even down to their movements and everything. But since I was not into rock and roll in the 80's I was not familiar with these bands. But for $15 we got to see Kiss, VanHalen, Prince, Queen, Def Leperd, Alice Cooper, and Poison. Now there may have been more but Curt had to work at 6 a.m. so we left around 11pm. They really do put on quite a show with pyrotechnics, fog, confetti and all. Lots of the crowd dressed up with wigs and 80's attire. It was an experience.

Cole's First Soccer Game

Sunday I went to Cole's first soccer game. They have teams for every age group and he is in the 4-5 year olds. They only had one practice before this game so none of them really knew what they are doing but they were so cute running around out their with their coaches trying to help them get it to the right goal. Cole made the goal in this first picture. Of course Jordyn had to have her picture taken too. They are such cute kids! I plan on making it to as many games as I can. Hopefully the weather will warm up so they don't have to freeze out there.

Curt's Birthday Adventure

When I asked Curt what he wanted to do for his birthday I thought it would be our usual going out to eat. Well, going out to eat we did but not in Jamestown. We ended up driving all the way up to International Falls, MN. Not that they had some super steakhouse or anything but because I got to get another stamp in my NP Passport for Voyageurs National Park. It was a lot of driving but Minnesota is always beautiful, unfortunately it was a little early for the fall folage but nice none the less. We decided no fast food restaurants so we ate locally. If you ever go to Park Rapids, check out the Good Life cafe. They serve organic food and the cranberry and walnut salad was scrumptious. Curt had the reuben sandwich which was yummy also. But the best was the coffee creme brule, to die for!

The LasVegas Strip

My favorite experience on the Strip was the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel. I took several videos of different ones but unfortunately can't put them on here. They were beautiful. The conservatory at the Bellagio was also amazing. We did a quick trip through a few of the hotels and only saw the outside of most of most of them but they are something else. LasVegas is certainly a place that everyone should experience at least once because it is hard to explain and pictures don't do it justice.

2010 Star Trek Convention

For Curt's 50th birthday I told him we would go to the Star Trek convention in LasVegas. It was quite an experience and I will let the pictures speak for themselves. You know what they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words."