Thursday, December 10, 2009

Thank you, YMCA!

Thanks to my frequent visits to the fitness center of our local YMCA, I managed to shovel our front sidewalk, 2 private sidewalks, front steps and our driveway. I must give credit to our mystery neighbor who gave me a HUGE leg up by snowblowing most of those areas, giving me only about 1/3 as much snow as I might otherwise have had to shovel. The packed down areas on the driveway and the mounds of packed snow from the snowplows gave me some grief, but those back exercises I've been doing really paid off!

Did I mention I did this all during naptime and, miraculously, the kids are still sleeping. One cup of coffee later, I'm nearly thawed out (the temp is in the single digits). Oh yeah, and dinner is staying warm in the crockpot - butternut squash soup - easily made thanks to my new Cuisinart 11 cup food processor! (Thanks Mom, Dad and Mark) It was a birthday/Christmas present that I've wanted for over 4 years now, but was always scared off by the price tag.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Feelin' Blessed

As many of you might already know, Mark has recently become a "MacHEAD" (to quote a documentary I just dorkily watched). :) Anyway, the point of that is that I have inherited his Dell laptop and as a result I am able to write this post from my kitchen counter inbetween reheating leftovers for dinner. Yes, it's one of those nights. Iain is kneeling on a 2-step ladder by the counter while absent-mindedly eating a rice cake and playing with the top of one of my water bottles. Lydia just woke up from her nap and started crying. I guess this will be a short post.

For those of you with a YMCA in close proximity, I thought I'd share how much I love the Y!!! We are eligible for a discount which, combined with our Health Insurance discount means that if both Mark and I go 12 times a month, we pay a whopping $8 a month for our family. Yes, $8. Now, in reality, Mark doesn't go, but that's still just $28 a month for our family...and did I mention free childcare for up to 2 hours a day? Yep. Free. Wow.

If I'm not in stellar shape by my next birthday, I have NO excuse. ...don't quote me. ;)

Ok, hungry baby calls.