Happy New Year! We had a very low key New Year's Eve....went out to eat an early dinner with Dan's brother and his wife and were home by nine and slept through the ball dropping, fireworks and all the hoopla of ringing in the new year. God are we OLD! Anyways, we are among the other millions who are resolving to get organized and save money this year, not to mention lose weight! So far I have lost 40 lbs. on the Weight Watcher's program and Dan joined right before Christmas and has lost almost 5 pounds....even through the holidays! As our leader told us, "the program works if you work the program". I still have 40 pounds to go so I'm hoping to reach my goal weight by the end of the year...a pound a week, give or take for 51 more weeks and I should be there by October but we'll see! If I keep going on 5 day scrapbooking retreats where we eat and drink to excess I may not! lol! It's the same old thing for me....so if anyone has ANY ideas please let me know.....I'm fine with breakfast, and lunch and by three or four o'clock I start to want to eat something SATISFYING, not carrots or an apple but chips and salsa, or peanut butter on ANYTHING, including a spoon. Then dinner comes around and my family has horrendous eating habits so no one eats the same thing....so I hate dinnertime....I dread it every day. Dan and I are happy eating a grilled chicken breast and salad and/or baked potato with salsa but that doesn't work for the kids. So I'm stressed every day to figure out how to get through the dinner hour. And this is not to mention the fact that while Meghan is on semester break both kids work schedules at Weggies vary every week so we have to work through who is going to be home for dinner and whether we have to take and/or pick Danny up from work depending on whether I need the car or not. But at least we have one less obstacle at dinnertime by having Dan home every night as well as the weekends. I know it may sound insignificant but with all the overtime he worked for the last three years he wasn't home a lot of nights and weekends so we ate meals at different times which was another scheduling issue. So if anyone has any miraculous ideas that will solve my dinner problems feel free to send them my way. Keep in mind that Danny has been a picky eater since birth and we have been forced to pick our battles so we opted not to battle his food issues and now he eats NO vegetables at all and only eats an apple if we pracically shove it down his throat lol. His diet consists of (and i'm not kidding) pizza, wings, steak, hot dogs, tacos with only the shell and meat, bagels, some cereal, chicken strips coated with crushed corn flakes and home made pepperoni bread. No pasta unless we force it and serve it plain with butter; no potatoes, no rice. Yup, and Meghan is just as picky....but she'll eat lettuce with croutons and ranch dressing and doesn't eat red meat unless it's a hamburger (which Danny won't eat). She eats pasta, rice, potatoes. Uh huh; are you getting the picture? So we end up making Danny something different than what we eat because otherwise we'd all weigh 300 pounds and Meghan isn't home that much so we work through the meals on a day to day basis. And then.....I want to eat everything in the house before bed....something sweet of course; so I try to stick to a Weight Watcher's Chocolate Cookies and Cream bar which are scrumptous....and only 2 pts each. But today I have these unbelievably decadant oreo cheesecake balls that I was supposed to take to Laurie's house last night. A two day headache kept me home with "the balls" which are now calling my name every two minutes to eat them....no joke; it's loud too! I know I'm venting but I'm pretty fed up if you couldn't tell. Thanks for listening (if you even read this far in my rant)! Now we're faced with taking down all of the Christmas decorations, which I also hate, and organizing our dreadful basement. We decided to deal with the basement one hour at a time on the weekends so we don't get overwhelmed. It isn't a lot of time but it forces us to really use the 60 minutes effectively. At this rate we'll probably be done by the time we need to get the Christmas decorations out again next Thanksgiving! Not to mention a very messy scrapbook room that I'm sitting in at this moment which is calling my name and making me very anxious. I just can't get it right. I have way too much stuff but I can't part with any of it and always want more. So this is another organizing challenge ahead of me that I keep putting off......HELP! Where's Mission Organization, Clean House, or any of those hundred or so organizing shows on TV when you need them? So what gets me through all of this? I'm not kidding; this child....he's such a joy I can't think of any words that describe how I feel about this little boy. His disposition is so sweet and even though he is starting to get into everything and trying to pull everything apart (like his father did when he was young I guess, and now he's a mechanic!) I love every minute with him. I took these last Tuesday when I was babysitting. How could you be in a bad mood when you face this smile every time he sees you? For now, hoping you have a quick January; and we're on the countdown to Spring (and 11 wks til our next retreat Sweatshoppers!)