1-12 Family

What constitutes a family? Can a couple be a family? How about a single person? I guess this could be a complicated question, a person who is the child of someone would be part of that family even when they have grown and left home, even though they no longer live at home they are still part of the family but if they now live alone or as a couple is that their own family? I believe so, I think of Larry and I as a family, even more so when I think of our dog, she is part of our family. My sister in-law who is single has a dog so I think of her as having her own family. In reading Websters definition some folks might not think so.

Websters - Family (their definition goes further but children is the tie)


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/family?s=t

1. a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not:
   "The Traditional Family."
2. a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for:
   "A Single-Parent Family."

I come from a large family, parents and nine siblings, want some fun, try growing up with nine children in a three bedroom two bath house. In her later years my mother said she always thought we were a "close" family, not entirely sure why, some of the siblings were certainly closer to others but overall most of us don't have a lot of interaction with each other and now that both of my parents have passed I would imagine some will drift even further. I guess I will always be part of my siblings family but as time goes on the importance of that family may wane, that might sound sad but I believe that is life, we tend to drift away from those we are not physically near and even more so if we are not tightly connected emotionally. Of course you never know, at some point I could return to Tucson and might become closer to some of them.

Family, can't live with em, can't live without em.

Family - Everyone's Included

Today Larry and I went to Georgetown to square dance with the Sundancers in Sun City. There were enough people there in the beginning for five squares but by the last tip there were only enough people for two squares. In between each square dancing tip Brad play a recording for the round dancers. We had a great time.

Outfits mom and dad wore to the Sundancers Dance.

Round Dancing

Round Dancing

Round Dancing

Round Dancing

1-11 Worry???

Do you worry? I recently attended a Eliza Gilkyson concert and Eliza talked about worrying, she worries about all kinds of things, Larry's mother also seems to worry and I also worry about far more things than I should, most of these worries are probably beyond our control. I think women worry more than men. It's not that I think men don't worry I just think they don't worry about near as much as women, they will gather information, analyze, make a decision and deal with it, whereas we will not only worry about making the decision but even after we make it we will worry about if our decision was right or wrong.

We also tend to worry about what if, what if this happens or that happens, what if the economy crashes, what if climate change is real, what if the car quits, the list can go on forever. Men seldom seem to worry about these things, they might make some statement about an issue and maybe even plan to avoid some issue but they don't really seem to worry much about them. I just came up with something new to worry about, I can now worry about why men don't worry like women do.

Now I know I should not worry, my current motto is Life is Good and in all honesty Life is good. Larry and I have a great life and since finishing the house our biggest decisions normally are what should we do next or where should we go next, these are certainly not decision to fret over. Must concentrate on the following......

1-10 Taking Down Christmas Decorations

Wow! It's time for the dreadful chore of taking down our Christmas decorations. Every year when Christmas comes around Larry helps me get all the Christmas decorations out of storage, which is the attic. Once the Christmas tree is up the excitement starts. I decorate it with all the ornaments I have been given over the years. After the tree is finished the next chore is the other decorations. Our new house is smaller than the old house so this year I had the decorations in multiple rooms. Now that Christmas is over it's time to take all the decorations down and store them away until next year. It took me a couple hours to do this. Once I was finished taking down the Christmas decorations I was surprised how many Christmas decorations I have. While we were putting the decorations in the attic I told Larry. "I'm glad I didn't get any more Christmas decorations this year." He said "I guess if you had you would have to get rid of some of the old ones." Heaven forbid I have to make a decision on what to get rid of. It's hard enough for me to make a decision on anything. Oh well the chore of putting away the Christmas decorations in storage what's next on my to do list?

Decorated Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree at the end

Where the Christmas Tree was.

All of our Christmas Decorations

Storing our Christmas Tree

I'm trying very hard to keep to my goal of getting in shape and eating a piece of fruit a day. Yesterday I worked out on the Wii for an hour and forty-five minutes and had an orange. Today I worked out on the Wii for an hour and had a banana. In the evening we went to see Ray Wylie Hubbard in concert. He is a Texas country songwriter and singer. He did an outstanding performance with storytelling and audience participation.

Ray Wylie Hubbard telling a story.

Ray Wylie playing the harmonica.

Ray Wylie and his drummer Todd Schneider

1-9 Working on IT

A couple of days ago I mentioned I was going to get back in shape and that the last time I did this I had used the online tool My Fitness Pal to help me. An interesting part of this tool is it makes no recommendations on diet or exercise, it is totally up to you, you can eat anything you want. My diet has never been the best, left on my own I would probably survive on chocolate and diet soda's but fortunately my concise (and Larry) keep me from doing this. While my normal diet is not the worst (we try to avoid prepared foods and we seldom go out to eat) it could certainly be better. I have decided that at least for a bit I need to eat better. Off to the grocery, came home with fresh fruit, some vegetables, really nice salmon and tilapia burgers and a few other nice things to eat. In the seafood aisle our local HEB has these fresh salmon burgers and tilapia burgers, cook these on the grill and they are scrumptious. I am really not much of a fruit eater, most weeks Larry picks up some type of fruit and most weeks he eats it, I might share a banana with him, I am going to try and do better, I will do my very best to eat an entire piece of fruit, maybe one per day, OK let's be honest maybe not quite that often. So yesterday I ate better than normal and I worked out on the Wii for 1.5 hours it was way too cold to go outside and walk.

Salmon Burgers

Salmon on left, beef on right

Delicious

1-8 Glue Dots

A bit different post today. Have you ever heard of Glue Dots?

Glue Dots are small dots of glue that you remove from a sheet of wax type paper and place them between two items that you wish to glue together. I first tried these when I was looking for a temporary way to glue a poodle applique on a pink skirt. We were having a 50's themed square dance and I wanted a poodle skirt but I thought I might like to wear the skirt some other time without the poodle, Glue Dots to the rescue. Now if you choose to use these be careful which one you buy, they have removable dots and permanent dots, by using a bunch of the removable dots I was able to attach the poodle, dance the night away and then remove the poodle, worked great. You can find these at Michael's and sometimes at Dollar Tree, Michael's has a large variety and Dollar Tree may only have one type. Larry has used the permanent ones on a couple of projects around the house and really likes them.

Careful With These

My Poodle

Lots of Poodles

1-7 Getting Back In Shape

OK, OK. I know no more excuses, no more putting it off. It's time to get back in shape. I really need to loss 20 pounds. I have everything at my fingertips. I have Flo who loves to go on walks. I have a Wii Fit that has programs to workout to, I even have a couple programs for the Wii, they are Gold's Gym Cardio Workout and Just Dance 3. I have a husband that is very supportive. Two years ago I went on a diet and lost 43 pounds. I use the Internet program called My Fitness Pal. If you haven't heard of it it's great. It's a program where you're on a 1200 calorie diet. You enter everything you eat into the program. If the food item is in the database (and almost everything is) it will enter the calorie count, amount of fat, amount of protein and the amount of carbs that food has into your file. I know it probably sounds like 1200 calories are not enough but you can earn more calories by entering all the exercise you do and how long you do it. Like walking the dog, housework, cooking, etc. When you enter your exercise in the database it will enter how much calories you earned. It sounds like a lot of work but it really is easy and it works. While using My Fitness Pal you can get moral support by asking other My Fitness Pal members to be your friend. I stopped tracking my calories and I put on 20 pounds so today I decided I needed to get back on track. The holidays are over and Shirley (Larry's mom) has gone back to Tucson, I don't have any excuses. Today I earned 594 calories by walking with Larry for an hour, working out on the Wii Fit for a half hour and square dancing for an hour. So today I could eat 1794 calories of food. If you don't eat the full amount it's OK because it helps you lose faster. At the end of the day you click on a button and it will tell you if you keep up the way you're going you will be a certain weight in five weeks. I highly recommend My Fitness Pal.

I think Larry's trying to make me into a seamstress. We bought a pair of pants the other day and they were a little small. Today he looked at them and asked if I could take out the darts. So off I go ripping out the darts. I think I neglected to say I really hate sewing because I spend most of the time ripping the stitching out.  After taking the darts out and sewing the band up the pants now fit.

In the evening we went to Georgetown to dance with Shirts 'n' Skirts. There were enough people there for five squares. We had a super time.

Belton Lake

Water Plant on Belton Lake

Working on my sewing project.

Pinning the waist band.

Getting ready to sew the waist band.

Line Dancing at the Shirts 'n' Skirts Dance

The outfits Larry and I wore to the square dance.

    

1-6 Saying Good-bye to Shirley

Saying Good-bye to Shirley. Today Larry and I drove Shirley to the Waco Regional Airport for her flight back to Tucson. We enjoyed having her for the ten days she was with us.  The rest of our day was very relaxing. In the afternoon I took Flo for a walk around the neighborhood where she saw her friend Velcro who paid a lot of attention to her. After dinner we watched Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs and a couple of episodes of Suits. Life Is Good!

Did you know that in our past we loved to ride motorcycles, a picture from the past.