HOWDY HEY

Yesterday we had it all planned out to go over to Lynchland for the opening of Kevin's LDS mission call. Well, it never came in the mail, so we made tentative plans for next Wednesday. Some time in the afternoon we all got a group text from Tyler's mom saying she had a golden ticket, aka the call had come in the mail. Because nobody was expecting it, the only time everyone could be there was 10:30 PM. Tyler got home from work shortly after I got out of the shower from a 24 Hour Fitness workout with Sydney. We made our way over to the house and soon it was revealed: Louisville, Kentucky July 10th. This guy is going to be awesome!

WINNING A DAY

Do you ever follow a favorite lifestyle blog and see once in a while that they have a giveaway to one super awesome reader? I always enter, but I never win… well up until I was in California. I follow a blog called The House That Lars Built and saw a couple of weeks ago that she was giving away this sweet little book. It is one line a day for five years (she explains it better than me on her blog). I love everything about it, from the mint color and gold detailing, its tiny little size and basically the whole idea of one line a day to sum up that day for the next five years. I got the email from her while I was in California asking for my mailing address and today it finally came! I can't wait to get started (I'll probably start it on my birthday because I will be twenty-five and then it will finish on my 30th birthday—whoa; mind blown).

SCOUTIN' GIRLS

A couple of weeks ago Tyler told me that he had caved and bought Girl Scout Cookies from his boss' daughters—a lot of cookies. Today he walked in with a giant Girl Scout box of eight colorful cookie boxes. Oh man oh man! I told him he had to save me some for this summer when I will hopefully be off this diet. Once he was home we went on to watch The Taste with Stephanie—that show is so good.

WEIGH-IN RESULTS: -6 lbs. Can you believe it!? I killed it this week, for I now weigh 184 pounds. I think it was mostly because I cheated for so long during my trip and then got super strict and shocked my body into getting serious… yeah let's go with that.

FLASHY

Check out this kitchen! I called up my bestie, Stephanie, to see if I could meet her at her new place. She just barely got the key this weekend and I am all sorts of excited for her. She currently lives in her parents' old house; they have moved to Oregon a bit ago and, at the time, they had missionaries waiting to return. They are all home now and the parents are selling the house, thus the new place. She has some pretty sweet amenities. This basement apartment is only two years old, so it has all of the state-of-the-art features. One of them is this kitchen: tin backsplash, granite countertops and dark wood cabinets—makes me want to eat my cereal here and feel like a queen while doing it. I declare all future awesome parties (yeah, because we have so many) to take place at this place.

PARDON ME

Poor Jade—we realized yesterday she hasn't been fed in three weeks instead of her usual two. You could tell she was pretty hungry because she started bobbing her head in a getting-ready-to-bite fashion toward Tyler's hand as he was taking her out of her cage. He had to spray her with water like a naughty kitty while he transported her to her feeding bucket. I was trying to get a video of her snatching up her dinner since there are no known records of this in the Lynchland archives. As I moved my phone into position I pushed record right as she lunged for her dinner and latched onto my finger instead of her mouse meal. I yelped, cried, called her a bad name and looked down to see five beads of blood on my right index finger. The adrenaline was incredible—it was basically a cat scratch on the scale of pain, but my heart was racing and I was still trying to process the events that had transpired. She eventually got the mouse and we now have two videos to log away: Jade eating a mouse and Jade eating me.

CRUMBLED

I am trying so hard to do better on my diet; I'm finding it hard to stay consistent without cheating each week. I came across a blog some time ago that had some great Ideal Protein recipes. Every time I try one out it always looks better than it tastes and then leads to me cheating after only a week of being strong. Today I tried a waffle made out of one of the crispy cereal packets with two egg whites, 1/8 cup of water, a dash of cinnamon and a splash of vanilla. We forgot to spray the iron, but it turned out to be the crispiest, sweetest waffle I have ever tasted. Today, a new dish was born; hopefully this will keep me away from sweets that much longer.

SPONGE BRAIN

I'm not sure if you know this, but my husband is a Spongebob fanatic. I mean, a real, true fanatic. So when he notices that there are macaroni and cheese boxes with Spongebob 'collect them all' cards on the back of them, by George he's going to collect them all. Unfortunately, tonight Tyler came home from school with the mother of all headaches. Fortunately, he has a cool wife that will make him macaroni and cheese whose box contains the very last collectible card. Poor guy laid in the dark waiting for the pain medicine to kick in, but don't worry, nothing some Spongebob mac couldn't cure. But for reals, it was probably the ibuprofen, even though he swears it was the mac and cheese.