I challened Izzy and my sister to a 7 day step challenge.. the one with the least amount of steps sends the other one a 10.00 gift card. First, I had also asked my sister but she can't join in the fun due to school. However, another fitbit friend wanted to join but it's a little different for her.
She gets quite a few more steps in than us due to having an active job. So she challenged us to come within 35k of her total or we set our facebook profiles to a a flamingo. If we come in with less than 35k she sends us a ten dollar gift card.

We just started today so hopefully this will be a fun challenge to motivate all three of us. I need something to keep me moving.

Tomorrow, my dog, Charlie, is having surgery due to his dog attack. The skin has died so that has to be delt with.

I heard from Alex today. He said he wanted to talk and to call when I could talk.

He wanted to tell me that he was promoted to an manager at the McDonald's he works for!!! So he will be training soon. Isn't that exciting!!

Bad news of the day is that I walked my dogs shortly before work and a pit bull make it's way under the fence and attacked my smallest dog. He managed to get the dog away from me and some neighbors helped separate them so my dog survived the attack but need emergency care to be fixed up.

Alex spent a couple days with us for his brother's birthday! He has come home for a few days a few times since he moved out. I enjoy the short visits and it's always nice to see him. However, a couple things do bother me a bit.

I almost always have to get him and pick him up and eat the cost of the gas.. the getting loss factor is / was more of an issue of the money but also sometimes a time thing. I bought myself a gps because I don't want a fear factor of getting lost keeping me from seeing Alex when he is less than an hour away.

The other issue is that Alex never comes with any money to spend. It kind of limits us to what we can or can't do if he can't pay his own way to say the movies or out to dinner. I am talking so broke he doesn't have money for a soda. We really don't buy Stephen soda so buying Alex soda for our house could cause some trouble.

I did ask him the day I was getting him to bring a few bucks to chip in for dinner cause we were going out. He said he would try but mentioned he had been broke. He brought ten bucks and I felt bad and gave him half of it back and later on left him a few bucks so in reality I didn't keep any of his money.

This is an issue we don't know how to handle. Do we say when you come make sure you bring some cash ect? I told my husband I thought of telling Alex that he my husband said that Alex just might not have any spare cash really to bring.. he pays rent where he stays. I would never want my son to think he can't visit based on the inabilty to have a few bucks in his pocket. But depending on what I might or might not want to suggest it could cause a damper on paying for him.

In most cases, if I have it to spare I would pay anyways.. It's how my Mother treats me to dinner ect and even paid for me when we were on vacation together but the difference was I did offer and oould pay for myself.

This situation has really got me thinking about how I should proceed with gift giving ect.. so many times my heart tells me to send Izzy's Mom flowers for Mother's day or send Izzy a little something just for the hell of it. For the record, I haven't actually sent Izzy's Mom flowers and only once sent Izzy a gift other than Christmas and her birthday. But that fact that I am considering sending to them makes me really have to do some serious thinking.

If I have spare money I should be considering the needs of my sons! I hope that doesn't sound bad but I should look deeply and see if there is anything my kids need and go from there. I been throwing around of the idea of just out of the blue sending Alex a few bucks.

It's not that I don't want to give Izzy a little extra gift once in a great while or even reach out to her Mom but I do think maybe I should at times help Alex out.

I just don't know if that would insult Alex to suddenly get a surprise with money or keep him poor because I am filling a need he isn't. But then again... i don't see myself sending a lot of money or all that often.

Secret Daughter.. a must read

The book that caught my attention is called Secret daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

It's an adoption book which is typical of quite a few books that I seek out to read but I didn't seek this out. I just found it at church on the book exchange table.

What is ironic about this book and it's something that you don't see often is that it's showing life after adoption from three different angles.

The birthparents.. mostly the birthmother who lives in India.

The adoptee who was born in India but left at an orphange by her birthparent. This move literly saved her life. There is no if ands or butts. This child would have died..

The adoptive parents.. the father happened to be born in India and came to America to go to school and fell in love with an American girl and they decided to live their life in the States.

I won't give anymore details of this book so if anyone should want to read it the story isn't ruined.

It is a fiction story but it was an awesome book.

Great book

I came across an adoption related book without looking for it. Truth is that I haven't searched out a lot of adoption related topics lately. I am not sure if that's cause I am working hard at fitness and recently got a pet aquatic turtle and been loving it.

I will try to blog about the book tomorrow. Finally I have an topic to go on. So we shall see if I can get my thoughts down and give the book justice it's due.

Still alive....

I am still alive! I just haven't been in the mood to write. Maybe it's cause I don't have a lot to say these days. Reunion wise I think things are as good ad they are going to get from with the miles between Izzy and myself.

My husband went from working from home (babysitting our granddaughter), taking care of my son and our house. He now has to part time jobs that add up to over 40 hours on a normal week and always seems to work the extra hours when he is home. We have come to a new agreement with our fiances and the last major issue in our life has been resolved.

I am still working on weight loss. I hope to be finished with it one day. It's been a long road to get where I am at. It's not been super easy or super hard. It does get old. The weight loss comments from others comes in waves. I will hear nothing about it for a few weeks and then they start again.. Right now they seem to be starting again.. even was told to quit losing weight today.

Hopefully, I will get back into blogging soon. I do miss it. Maybe.. i need some topic suggestions or questions.. so feel free to leave me a comment.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Izzy Grandfather on her Mother's side as died. So as a reseult she is flying into town. He was 77 years old. She said he was a heavy smoker and this is the same with my father.. so with any luck mine will live to be nearly 80 years of age.

I have no idea if I should even try to see Izzy while she is here visiting. I think at this point I might just let her ask to see me if that's what she wants. It's not that I don't want to see her I know this visit might be a little different than most.

I am debating on sending a card or flowers to Izzy and or her family.. We shall see what I decide in the next day or so. I feel like Izzy's Mom is becoming a little more used to me exsisting in Izzy's life. I only say that cause she "likes" some of my comments.. so that's all I have to go by.

Sorry.. I haven't been blogging.. I just havent been in the mood. I been still working on counting calories and working out.

I have entered a weight loss competition so we will see how that ends in six weeks. I don't expect to win but it is motivating me to keep working out thru this horrible winter. I will post pictures soon.