3 years ago...my my what 3 years brings

This is me 3 years ago....Was I happy? Yup....was I ecstatic? Probsly not...Did I love me? Yup....was I in love with me? nope....(the saving grace and really awesome thing was that Michael gave and had unconditional love to me, was in love no matter what size I was...he loved me for me and for that I know we are soul mates, best friends, lovers, and connected by some higher power) Did I keep busy and was active...YUP....Did I get my burn on ....? NOPE! DO I NOW? HELL TO THE YA! I SOOO DOOO DO DO! am I IN LOVE AND AS HAPPY A ALL HECK! YA BABY! I can say that this date 3 years ago as well as April 30th 08 are like a rebirth to me. On April 30th went to the first appmnt. with the nutritionist and MADE A PACT I WILL DO THIS...so from 4/30 to 9/29...9/30 I lost 40 lbs...ate better exercised did it all right...so from 340lns to 300 lbs there was still MORE to loose...taking on task and staying on task from 9/29/08 to NOW 9/29/11 I can say I am down 185LBS...I LOST a freaking grown man! loosin 185lns and being a normal 155 to me is like SUNSHINE IN A RAINSTORM! The feeling is over the top. This day makes me reflect and see how fah I have come and how I WILL STAY THE NEW REBORN ME FOR A LONG LONG TIME> I didn't do it alone that is for sure..I have so many to thank...I feel like I am on stage with an OSCAR lol lol the Oscar of life, a healthy happy new me life. The past month I have been exercising with a couple of women/exercising them to educated and help them get on a healthy track and it has made me happy and so useful in my own self, I have decided to go and get my certificate to be legit. Having a handful of people help lead me in that direction is great. I have gotten to see several avenues I can take and will soon make the choice of HOW I will go about this new endeavor. If you know me well enough I do not say stuff and then have no follow through. If I state something I DO! even at a larger weight I DO...I have always had the notion...don't state something if you are not gonna do it or follow through with it. SO I state right now that this is a route that I am looking into and will DO, it is a matter of making the right choice of road to take that makes most sense for me at this stage of the game. I am in this to WIN this....Hell I won .....what the heck...I AM WINNING! and I don't say that like the crazy Charlie S did I say that with total clarity! I AM PUMPED ...pumped to wake up every morn and BE ME! DO DO DO DO DO !!!!!!!!!!!! DOn't stop...DO! Love u! xoxoxoxoxoxo

oh well.......fix what's not broken

I guess FB was lookin to give more work to the employees. They have to do all this redesign stuff and then have everyone complain about it. So why not just keep it the way it was? No idea....even when several friends post about a topic like the SOX ...then a feed says all who wrote about the SOX>.....the FB gang must be havin the ultimate big brother fest over there in cyber land. Well we don't pay, we use it we DEAL!

things ya miss.....keepin busy!

Let me start out with...Ryan has ALWAYS like his mama been a morning person. He hits the ground runnin' when he wakes...wakes up with a pleasant attitude and has an extremely organized way to the start of his day. This mama likes that. In the morning also a lot like me he talks and talks...LOL know "I" know how it feels! lol lol He makes funnies and it puts a smile :D on my face with a lil of an eye roll too. That kid! So the thing I must say I do not miss about the mornings is Sir Grumps a lot coming out of his room with grumbles coming from his expression. LMAO! I miss his face, I miss seeing him everyday but he is a semi-bear. I know there is worse...some people are just plain old grumps...he is a semi-grump until he takes a shower. Michael not on Ry and my level of excellence of peppiness but still has a semi-good attitude when he wakes. I so wonder how Jessie, Stephen's friend for HS and now WIT roommate wakes. LOL If it is like Ry then S will just not be to fond a that! He would make his way to get some juice in the am and say to Ry FREAK! just b/c he was happy in the am. I can tell Ry misses that attention from his big bro despite it being negative attention. It was a morning routine that is just how it went! He would look at Bailey and mumble and then head to his room. I so miss the mornings with all 4 of us, 5 if ya count Bailey. I miss Stephen's wit at dinner time...oh how ironic he is going to WIT! hahahaha now that was wit witout intention~ lol....We text and talk every so often and when we chat for a lil bit I tell him just how much BAILEY misses him! I am gonna take B to his dorm room for a visit and he says "HELL NO!" I ask Ry have u talked with your bro at all? He says no...then he tells me something and I say you haven't talked to him how do you know this? He will say text and computer...SO literal this generation with the talking. I swear fone talkin these days really doesn't exist! It is all about the texting and IM'in on the comp! I always seem to keep busy but these days I have been makin it a point to be way more busy to fill in the time. I must say ....less laundry, less food when shopping, less dishes, less keeping the outside light on for him to come home is getting tolerable. WOW I was on the phone with my friend Teresa when I was food shopping and said I can not believe just how much less food I am getting since he is at school. I still went to the areas of the things I get for only S and I had to not get them. That was a bit weird..even things that I would have if Ashley was over here. Nope not getting those thing either. I got a text from her yesterday out of the blue and we were cracking up about her teacher and the teachers husband who mind you was MY EX HS BF! Unlike when S was away working in NH in Moultonborough she did not whine about how she misses him and blah blah blah LMAO! It was a fun upbeat text fest and it made me miss her being here ALL THE TIME a lil bit. So as I go off to ~KEEP BUSY~ I think of how differnt the am would of been with S here. I must say I miss him and Ry leaving for school and Michael and I having start our day time alone time! ut hey in a few years I will be crying more tears that my youngest baby is off and we will have so much alone time we may not know what to do with all of it! Maybe take up a hobby of extreme exercise blast the fat body sculpting HHAHHAHAHAHA hhhhhh aaaaaaa...or just up and move to HAWAII! yay baby HAWAII! xoxoxo Have a great day and SUnshine Stephie says//////the rays of sun come from with in...let your sun shine bright!

this and that!

A little of this and that was what I had when I got home from canning for a cause. A little salad a little cheese, some garden fresh tomatoes (DELISH I MIGHT ADD) sliced cukes....garden also....then I felt like after I needed to pick from not really eating today. I picked at some grapes, then at strawberries.granola..a few raisins, carrot sticks, a prune and dark chocolate....I felt like a grazer! at least it was good foods! Bailey was so excited when he got home to see his mama. :D love the pup reaction....Yesterday was more busy canning than today...every $ counts so it is worth all the time and effort b/c the $ helps fund much needed research towards drugs for finding a cure.
Get to make some bears and smiles tomorrow at the bear barn :D

Stories of inspiration and Hope!!!!!

Collecting today for a cause went very well. The stories we got to hear were so nice and hopeful. Don't get me wrong we heard some sad ones to and said with heavy hearts THAT IS WHY WE WALK AND FIGHT FOR A CURE! The last time Michael and I canned together on a median at a traffic light in Salem near SSC now SSU! He in his pink construction hard hat and vest (courtesy of Josie and Gene)and I in my HOPE attire. We did not get to converse with the traffic that came and went in seconds but today Caitlin and I had the pleasure to chat it up with people who felt the need to share and thank us for what we do. We so o not do it by any means for the thanks we do it because WE NEED TO FIND A CURE FOR ALL CANCERS! Money and research has come a long long way but we need to go so far to the point of a wall and that wall that we hit is A CURE! Seeing that in my lifetime will be miraculous! A GOAL of sorts for many I know and love. We did very well for the day and will be back there tomorrow...:D Funny I never knew the NH liquor stores sold only wine and hard stuff, no beer...I bet if they sold the beer we would of had a TON of foot traffic not that it wasn't steady. So off to get some zzz's to replenish my energy to be Sunshine Stephie and flash the pearly whites with a great BIG smile...I swear a smile may just make ones day...:D Smile because you never know what someone may be going through and that one lil smile may just help make them a little less put off...AND you're never fully dressed without a smile...in the words of ANNIE! :D ya don't wanna go out there half nakie now do ya?????

mail that is not a bill or junk mail

such a special thing to come upon unexpected mail that is sweet and fun! But bills so have to come...I guess lol I got 2 unexpected mailing today YAY!

Sent to me by a cherished long time friend who so "gets it" like I do...she is 4 years into the college thing...

Thanks Michelle for all the years we have chated and been on the same page with our parenting out look! Luv ya girl!

Editor’s note: Every year at the end of August, parents send their kids off to college. It’s exciting and liberating, but it’s a big change, too. Especially for parents.

When this column was first published in August 2006, we received letters and e-mails that said, “This is how I feel.’’ Since then, every August we are asked to rerun it. So here it is, dedicated to all those parents whose kids are just days away from being college freshmen.

I wasn’t wrong about their leaving. My husband kept telling me I was. That it wasn’t the end of the world when first one child, then another, and then the last packed their bags and left for college.

But it was the end of something. “Can you pick me up, Mom?’’ “What’s for dinner?’’ “What do you think?’’

I was the sun and they were the planets. And there was life on those planets, whirling, nonstop plans and parties and friends coming and going, and ideas and dreams and the phone ringing and doors slamming.

And I got to beam down on them. To watch. To glow.

And then they were gone, one after the other.

“They’ll be back,’’ my husband said. And he was right. They came back. But he was wrong, too, because they came back for intervals, not for always, not planets anymore, making their predictable orbits, but unpredictable, like shooting stars.

Always is what you miss. Always knowing where they are. At school. At play practice. At a ballgame. At a friend’s. Always looking at the clock midday and anticipating the door opening, the sigh, the smile, the laugh, the shrug. “How was school?’’ answered for years in too much detail. “And then he said … and then I said to him… .’’ Then hardly answered at all.

Always knowing his friends.

Her favorite show.

What he had for breakfast.

What she wore to school.

What he thinks.

How she feels.

My friend Beth’s twin girls left for Roger Williams yesterday. They are her fourth and fifth children. She’s been down this road three times before. You’d think it would get easier.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without them,’’ she has said every day for months.

And I have said nothing, because, really, what is there to say?

A chapter ends. Another chapter begins. One door closes and another door opens. The best thing a parent can give their child is wings. I read all these things when my children left home and thought then what I think now: What do these words mean?

Eighteen years isn’t a chapter in anyone’s life. It’s a whole book, and that book is ending and what comes next is connected to, but different from, everything that has gone before.

Before was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Before was feeding and changing and teaching and comforting and guiding and disciplining, everything hands-on. Now?

Now the kids are young adults and on their own and the parents are on the periphery, and it’s not just a chapter change. It’s a sea change.

As for a door closing? Would that you could close a door and forget for even a minute your children and your love for them and your fear for them, too. And would that they occupied just a single room in your head.

But they’re in every room in your head and in your heart.

As for the wings analogy? It’s sweet. But children are not birds. Parents don’t let them go and build another nest and have all new offspring next year.

Saying goodbye to your children and their childhood is much harder than all the pithy sayings make it seem. Because that’s what going to college is. It’s goodbye.

It’s not a death. And it’s not a tragedy.

But it’s not nothing, either.

To grow a child, a body changes. It needs more sleep. It rejects food it used to like. It expands and it adapts.

To let go of a child, a body changes, too. It sighs and it cries and it feels weightless and heavy at the same time.

The drive home alone without them is the worst. And the first few days. But then it gets better. The kids call, come home, bring their friends, and fill the house with their energy again.

Life does go on.

“Can you give me a ride to the mall?’’ “Mom, make him stop!’’ I don’t miss this part of parenting, playing chauffeur and referee. But I miss them, still, all these years later, the children they were, at the dinner table, beside me on the couch, talking on the phone,

September Chill is in the air

Did I wake up and turn the calender to September ALREADY!???? WOW those summah months flew! Not only did the days fly by but the weather got less and less warm. The song time after time for some reason is playing in my head....go figure. Hope you all have a great day. I am sure like yesterday it will warm up a bit from this 63* wake up temp. Enjoy the sunshine that is shinin'! All my good vibes sending out there....xo <3 Sunshine Stephie! xoxoxox