Blackberries & Grapes

We have berries! We planted blackberries & grapes last year and this year the blackberries are starting to bare fruit! Yay! I'm so excited! No grapes yet though.

BLACKBERRIES











































GRAPES

Girl's Night In

I had a great time last night with my friends. We played Pokeno. It's like Bingo but with a deck of cards. Everyone takes turns calling and then there is Black Out. The hostess provides a gift that no one can take away. After Black Out, we play one more round to steal gifts. You can go home with one thing, everything or nothing! It's really fun. My friend Christine hosted this time and then was all this deliciously tempting food and I felt so bad that I didn't have any of it. I'm try to be good and stay on this diet but, it's really hard. I have lost 55 pounds so far but, it's not easy. I only have 49 more pounds to go until I hit my goal of 150 pounds. Woo Hoo! I dropped the girls off at Nicholas' baseball game. Nicholas told me that he got a hit and made it to second base. I'm sorry I had to miss it but, I sure had fun with my Peeps!

Family Pictures

We had our pictures taken at church for the directory by Olan Mills and we ordered a few extras. Enjoy!

Bop Bop Boppin' Around

I have no new material so, I am just copying and pasting from my weight loss blog to the family blog today. Haha!
Today I went to Target to look for Hayley, Madison & Jake's b-day gifts and to Michael's for a cake box & card board. That's right folks! I'm making their cake this year. It's so hard not to lick that bowl. Hold me back! I'm going to attempt to make a rainbow (tie dye) cake. We'll see how it goes. When I got home I oiled the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms. They look so clean and shiny now! I also vacuumed. So, I was just bop bop boppin' around trying to get some things done for the party on Sunday. I still need to clean the bathrooms. Always a fun chore. *roll eyes*.

Betties For Boobies

Today, hundreds of other bloggers are participating in a HUGE Breast Cancer Blogging Event! I am encouraging you to take a moment out of your day and donate $5 or $10 to Jacqueline Reitz, a Breast Cancer 3 Day walker. Jackie is a friend of mine and a fellow blogger based out of Dallas, and she's on the 3day team "Betties for Boobies". The hope is to get over 300 blogs, only time will tell how many have participated. Be sure to check out the www.bettiesforboobies.com blog for more information.

If just ONE of the readers from each of the 300 blogs takes a moment and donates $10, that will raise over $3,000.00 in the fight against Breast Cancer. WOW! So please help. Let's make this an enormous success! Check out Jackie's fund raising page at http://www.the3day.org/goto/jackier and make a donation. Best of all, it's totally tax deductible! Totals will be posted on the team's blog tomorrow...You'll be able to see what an impact we were all able to make!

Here is Jackie's personal story.

My name is Jackie Reitz. I'm 25 years old and I have 2 kids. Lily is 2 and Brendan is 5. My primary job aside from being a mother is as a photographer for Sixpence Weddings based out of Denton, Tx. I love to craft in all ways. I enjoy refinishing furniture, sewing, re-purposing clothing, and more. I blog about my crafts at www.thefabricfloozie.com, though that has fallen by the wayside lately as illness has struck our house recently in the form of RSV for Lily and Strep for Myself.
My passion in finding a cure for Breast Cancer began when I was 22 years old. I was 4 months pregnant with Lily when my OB found a large lump in my left breast. Since I was pregnant, there was little they could do more than an ultra sound and biopsy. The ultrasound showed us that the mass was a dense, fibrous tumor... not the cyst they'd hoped for. A core-needle biopsy showed us that the tumor was "likely benign" but that we would need to keep an eye on it every 6-12 months forever, or until it went away on it's own, which they sometimes do. While we are still watching it, I had to endure many difficulties through this journey. Including being denied for health insurance because of a tumor that "could become" Breast Cancer. And being turned away for a mammogram because I was "too young" to have breast cancer. By the way, this is a horrible myth. I've learned that not only is Breast Cancer on the rise in young women, but Breast Cancer in women under 30 is typically more aggressive than ANY other range of Breast Cancer and, more often than not, will result in death. I pushed forward, knowing that I didn't have just myself to fight for any more. I had my daughter and my son. They need a Mom, and their Mom needs them. So while I came out of my experience healthy and with a great plan for the future, I know that most women my age who find tumors in their breasts aren't so lucky. I will walk or crew EVERY YEAR that I am physically able to until they find a cure.

Before & After Pictures

Before: 244 Pounds





















































After: 199 Pounds



















190 Pounds

Easter 2010