Beach Bound!!

Hi kids! Warm weather is coming!!!!! YAY!! (And, I'm going to the beach--even more yay!!!!)

My mom's birthday is Thursday, so I'm heading down to Ocean this weekend to celebrate. Unfortunately, Brian can't go because he has a hockey game Friday night and didn't want to drive down Saturday morning to turn back around Sunday to come home. Because Fridays are my work-from-home day, I'm going to head down to Ocean right after work on Thursday and then work down there on Friday. Having a flexible work schedule is quite possibly the greatest thing in the history of the world.

The baby doggie is going to stay with Brian...

I am really excited about the weekend. Callie and Clay want to go to Clawson's on Friday night for peel-and-eat shrimp and mom wants some other type of yummy seafood on Saturday night. And I've packed up my NS breakfasts, lunches, and desserts to have for the meals that we eat at home. Since mom and dad are also doing NS, I know that it will be easy to stay on the plan.

Speaking of NS, everything is continuing to rock and roll. As of this morning, I've lost 15.8 lbs. My first mini-goal was to get down to a nice round number by March 1st (a loss of 14.4 lbs.), which I did! My next goal is to have lost a total of 30 lbs. by April 15, which seems doable, based on my past rate and progress. If that happens, my BMI will go from the "obese" range to just "overweight." Yay, for small victories! ;-) It's interesting how your brain works--when you're not doing anything, you never want to think about any of this, but, when you are being healthy, it's even more fuel to the fire for motivation. I really get excited each morning when I go to my scale. It's like an early morning adventure!!! The progress just continues to fuel the motivation.

This is going to sound so corny, but I am just so incredibly motivated and happy about life right now! Since right after we got married, we've been really on top of all our finances to have a plan to pay down all our debt and get rid of it ASAP. We've pretty much stayed on target since the summer of 2006--we had a ton of stuff paid off right before we bought our house, but after we moved in, we did spend some money on house things. Well, I'm so excited because by the end of May, we will only have some no-interest-accruing debt (save the mortgage) that we will be finishing paying off (house furniture and a computer). And by the end of October, we will only owe money on our mortgage!! I'm sure that at some point soon we will need new cars--ours are getting older, but we want to hang on to what we have for as long as possible because having no car payment is phenomenal. It's just so exciting to be in complete control. YAY PROGRESS!

And, finally, our last exciting news is that Callie and Clay are adopting 2 kitty cats!!!!! And they will be getting them tomorrow!! I cannot wait to meet them!!!! They are brother and sister and SO CUTE. So, please meet:

Bama

and

Kidd-Brewer (Brewer for short)


Those are the planned names for now, but there is a chance they could change, but I doubt it. For those of you who don't know, Clay is a HUGE Alabama fan--hence the name of the girl kitty (Bama)--and Kidd-Brewer is the name of App's football stadium. They also liked "App," but Callie was scared that she'd end up calling one of the cats "Appy," which is a big no-no for App fans. I cannot WAIT to meet them. SO CUTE!! :-D

So that's pretty much our story for now. Yay!