Things We've Learned Lately

Throughout life we're constantly learning new things, whether by trial, by error, or perhaps by just plain ignorance or innocence. Here are a few life lessons we've been enrolled in lately:

• Wearing shoes can give you blisters. Not wearing shoes can give you blisters. Bicycle seats were not made with comfort in mind. Scooters are impossible to ride unless maybe you have thighs like a speed skater. Enough blisters make calluses, then the uncomfortable becomes endurable.


• Always take a pair of ear plugs and a cell phone with you when you go on your kid's classroom field trip.


• Opening doors and windows for a cross breeze when it gets hot helps save on cooling costs.


• Flies, hornets, and bees come out of hibernation when it gets hot. Shut all windows and doors.


• Dry erase markers and white out DO NOT wash out of clothing or off your child's face very easily. If you use a permanent marker to label clothing, it will come off in the wash. Use white out to mark your clothing.


• Never leave Super Glue next to your mouse pad when there's a 2 year old in the house.


• Hard work and dedication really do pay off. However, don't OVERDO it! You'll pay for it instead of it paying you.


• Just because it's rainy and cold one day, don't suspect it won't be 95 degress the next day.


• Always call the hardware store FIRST before making 5 different trips to learn that they "just recently stopped carrying that item."


• Spending is most definately related to how much money you have. The less money you have, the more you feel the need to buy stuff.


• Weeds will always grow faster, get taller, and be more endurable than other plants. We should all stop fighting the system and find beauty in weeds.


• We don't know how the pioneers did it!!

Survived with success

Hi all

Well we survived last week with a full house. Gaye's nephew got married last saturday and we opened up the Brady Inn to recieve all of the out of towners. We ended up housing an additional 11 people with occasional visits from 2 others. The wedding luncheon was at Chuck O Rama. All you can eat buffets aren't exactly the best place to hang out when one is trying to lose weight. On top of that they had nothing but cheese cake at the reception and we ended up getting there without having had our dinner. Talk about temptation.

So not only did we make it through the week sanity intact but we also saw success in our effort to lose weight. Gaye and I both were able to lose 3.5 lbs. I was quite worried, after a big loss last week for both of us, all the chaos, temptation and a back injury to boot, that we would be disappointed at the scale but we were both pleasantly surprised.

Now we just have to keep strong and continue the process. I am now able to walk without pain so we are now walking to church on sunday and I do 4 miles walking the kids to school. 2 in the morning and 2 when they come home at 3:00pm. Gaye is a real trooper she does the treadmill and stationary bike for 1 to 1.5 hours each morning and does the 2 mile morning walk to school with us.

Hope all is well on your end of life. Leave us a comment and let us know.

A Full House

Grandma Johnson arrived yesterday. We picked her up from the airport around 4:00 and got back just in time for Ken to pick her up to take her down to Provo for Jessica's (the fiance of Justin, my nephew) endowment session. Meanwhile, I changed quickly and barely made it in time to the Jordan River temple for Ashton (Jon's nephew). Samantha went with me too and did baptisms for the dead with her cousins while we went through the session. Jon was unable to make it because his back is still hurting him tremendously.

After I got home Jon said he chatted with Nate (another nephew) and he and my sister Katherine were suppose to show up today. Plus, the other day my brother David and his wife Lisa called to say they were coming up for Justing's wedding and wondered if the "Brady Inn" was available.

So, we're gearing up for a house full. We love it though. It's great having family around. Sounds like it will be a quick trip for pretty much everyone.

I hope everyone brings something for all seasons. It's a bit cool here today, yesterday was windy, but they say it's suppose to be hot and sunny this weekend. We'll see.

Surviving Week 1

Jon and Gaye have survived their first week of "Shapin' Up". On the whole we'd say we were pretty successful.

The Good Stuff...
We cut back on our eating, especially Jon. I think at every meal he put back half of what he took and didn't have seconds. Plus, we completed an hour to three hours of exercise a day so we're thinking we must have burned anywhere from 300 to who knows how many calories a day. In addition to that, we started playing racquetball again, which is fun, but we quickly learned how out of shape we really are. We weighed in this weekend and Gaye knocked off 15% of the weight she wants to lose to reach her goal while Jon, doubling Gaye's weight loss, erased 11% of his weight towards his goal. It would be great if we could keep that up every week and be at goal by the end of the summer, but we also know the first week can show greater than usual results, so unfortunately, it will probably we a bit later than summer's end before we reveal the "New and Improved" us.

As for the home, we managed to accomplish a few smaller items around the house. Not as much as we'd have liked to, but I think we checked off close to a third of what was on the list. Of course the list continues to grow so.....

The Not So Good Stuff....
Although the week was overall great, it's not to say we didn't have a couple setbacks. Gaye was just getting over a few blisters from trying to exercise the previous week, but did okay exercising despite the blisters. However, Sunday we decided to walk to church to save gas and be healthy and Gaye and Samantha learned that walking to church in heels is not the most comfortable way to get anywhere. Thinking they'd be smart, they removed their shoes for the return home, but Gaye, not having run around outdoors barefoot for eons, added several new big, nasty blisters to the balls of her feet. She'd have been much better off keeping her shoes on. So the rest of the day she limped around and now has hopes for a speedy recovery. Guess it's just the bike for the next couple of days.

As for Jon, he's been having an ache in his back the past several weeks and it's been aggravated by the exercise. Today he played racquetball and is now at the point that he's done for the day. We're hoping it's just the day and not the week.

The house projects have run into some delays due to the fact that neither Home Depot or Lowes seem to carry what we need. Does that mean we don't have to fix them if the store doesn't carry them?? Must be (Yeah, right).

Our Smilin' Scout

Last night we attended a Scout Court of Honor for Ben. They incorporated a Hobby/Talent Fair, where Benjamin displayed several items he made in addition to books from his favorite book series. They also had a photo competition. To the right here is Benjamin's contribution. He was convinced he wouldn't even place, however, he ended up walking home with the 1st place ribbon!

Great job, Ben!

Ben also received 3 merit badges (Art, Graphic Arts, and Citizenship in the Nation)...and after only 3 months in scouts. Ben is real excited about Boy Scouts and says he plans to keep up earning at least 3 merit badges each quarter (Court of Honor). Lots of work ahead, but we know Ben can do it.

Shapin' Up to Ship Out

Jon and I have made a commitment to get in shape and get things done around our home. Our goal is to reach and maintain our ideal goal weight as well as complete projects around the house we've been putting off. To celebrate our sucess we're going on a cruise; basically shapin' up to ship out. Our time frame/goal date:

~Start date, June 1, 2008. ~End date, June 1, 2009.

Although Jon and I had plans on getting ourselves back on track in the health department, having the Jeffrey's come visit us this weekend really helped get the ball rolling. While they were here they challenged us to a weightloss/fitness competition with the incentive of a cruise at the end (not like they have much to lose, but it's nice having others rooting for you and helping you along.) We've even got the kids in on this with an added incentive to go to Disneyland if we meet our goals and they accomplish a goal of their own (like keeping their room clean for a month, or something like that). One way they will help us is when we ask them to do something we could do ourselves, they either need to respond with "Maybe you should 'cruise' on over there yourself to get it," or "We'd rather go to Disneyland." We've also committed for the next month not to watch TV unless we're exercising.

In addition to putting off getting ourselves in shape, we've been putting off (for too long) getting our home in shape. Therefore, we're also setting a goal to accomplish at least one home improvement project a week (some little, some big). To help us in this effort and to make us more accountable, we've added a list of Home Improvement items to the side of this blog to track our progress. Check in to watch our progress.

So, here we are at day 4. We just got done trying to kill ourselves by doing over an hour of excersice (that's over 300 calories each, maybe 400). Amazingly, we survived, so we'll have to try it again this afternoon....

Wish us luck on our new adventure. If not luck, wish us strength.

What's up for the first of June

Okay. We're off to a great start. At this rate we should have at least 4 postings by Christmas.

So for the quick list of What's Happening we have:
~ Samantha finishing her last day of 7th grade tomorrow.
~ Ben, Dani, and Deanna are on break for one more week (then they're back for 3 1/2 weeks before a 3 1/2 week summer break).
~ I think we're finally getting nice weather.
~ The most honorable Jeffrey family joined us for the weekend.
~ Grandma Johnson's coming out next week for another grandson's wedding.
~ We still have no landscaping in our yard.
~ Our front sidewalk got removed this morning.
~ Jon and Gaye have decided to get rid of a good percentage of themselves.

I've got to go torture myself on the tredmill and I'm not looking forward to it, but I will post again soon.

Gaye