Monsoon Storms

Sunday afternoon we had a magnificent monsoon storm. I love the rain so much I look forward to the overcast skies and the lovely sound of rain falling. It makes me so happy.

This is a view out of our front porch door. 

 Zooming out a little further to the street in front of the house. 

This was a major storm. The wind was blowing super hard but I didn't know exactly how hard till on Monday I heard about trees being pulled out of the ground (BIG trees), people having roofing flying off and odd thing flying through the air such as a trampoline. 

The kiddos all love the rain too. Gabby went outside to get a bowl of the rain. I am not sure why but she did. 

 This is out of one of the living room windows at the back yard. It was like we had a lake starting. It was a lot of rain falling. It smelled good and felt wonderful.

Every time it rains I like to go out and at least stand in it and enjoy it for a while. I think everyone should do this, better yet run down the street dancing in the rain and thoroughly enjoying it like you did when you were a kid. 

 Praying for much moisture all over our great country. Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Archery Time

This afternoon Dallas called me and asked what we were doing tonight for dinner? I told him it was Meatless Monday. He laughed a little at me.I said so probably something like toasted cheese sandwiches. He then asked if he could come over. I said of course. It is always great to have the kiddos come home to visit. Dallas' wife Sara was working so he came over for dinner.

It is almost time for archery hunting so there was a plan of him coming over so he and Alan could work on their compound bows. So while I was getting ready they started pulling out all the archery equipment.

 We ended up having toasted cheese sandwiches, creamy potato soup, watermelon and I made the left over dough into Indian Fry Bread for those who wanted dessert. We had a nice visit. I really enjoy sitting around the table with the family sharing new stories, old stories and making more memories. This is what family is all about. I love my family so much and I am so blessed to have wonderful children and husband.
 Hugs, Bobbi Jo

School Year Starting Early

I remember WAY back when I was in school when school didn't start till after Labor Day was over. Over the years and on our third going through high school it seems like each year they go to school earlier and earlier. This year the high school has decided to go to a modified year round school. Not sure what the modified part is but it's okay I just know that school started REALLY early, like last week. Crazy! Anyway this is E'lyse on her first day as a Junior in high school. 

This year E'lyse will be taking EVIT (East Valley Institute of Technology) this will be in the second half of her day. She has a zero hour that starts at 6:30 then she has 3 more classes then travels to EVIT for her training to become a Veterinarian Assistant . She will have 2 years of this. She is excited and a little scared. 

She will do fine with it. I am excited for her to get this education while she is in high school. This is something that she has wanted to do for a good portion of her life so I think it will be great for her.

 Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Ma and Molly

Last week E'lyse had cleaned out clutter from her room and Gabby found her flip camera that we had bought her for Christmas a while back. It still worked! Gabby and I enjoy watching You Tube video vlogs, one of our favorites being the Shaytards. They are such a beautiful family and so funny. Gabby and I have talked about how we should get a flip came and do vlogs. Well this won't happen with me being seen in front of the camera due to I don't like the sound of my voice. Gabby has been having fun making videos with her BFF and her sisters. When we were in Pinetop you could here the girls and Talmage & Naima laughing and having so much fun with this. 

This past week Gabby and Ainsley decided to make a video called Ma and Molly. I haven't see the video I just spotted Gabby running around looking like this.  

Gabby was Ma

 Gabby 

 Gabby and Ainsley as Ma and Molly

These two girls are such characters when they get together.

Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Time and New Things

 It is Monday and almost the end of July. I can hardly believe it. This first half of the year has gone by so fast. Pretty soon the kiddos will be back and school and life will get into the routine of school time. E'lyse's high school has gone to a modified year round school schedule, I Think the Jr. high school might be doing the same thing being that they start on August 8TH.  Today Faith, Gabby and I went shopping for school supplies. We came home and I got to work on the rest of my chores with a little bit of computer time.
  After being gone for 5 days it was nice to be home back in my familiar surroundings although I miss Coco and her family so much. I wish we lived up there so I could be there to help out more. Oh well.
 So we started a couple new things in our home. I didn't come up with the ideas I saw them on a You Tube vlog I follow and I presented it to the family and they agreed that they would be good with it. First thing is Meatless Mondays. Now I have been meatless for a little while now so no biggy to me but I have heard doing this can cut down the groceries a good bit.
 Tonight on the menu is Toasted cheese sandwiches, corn on the cob and fresh cantaloupe and honey due. YUMMY!
 We spend $150 a week. This includes all paper products, cleaning items, toiletries and food this is for 5 of us so not too bad. I do buy a lot of fresh produce too. What do you all spend on groceries? I am curious. I think I can go lower so now I just have to get that down. More working on this.
 The 2ND thing is sugar only on weekends and Monday night for FHE. Alan was not thrilled about this one but he said he wouldn't bring any sweets home or ask anyone make anything. Now remember Alan is diabetic so he shouldn't be eating so much sweets anyway. But the man certainly has a sweet tooth.
 Good news Alan has decided to give up soda. He was drinking 5-7 52oz. Diet Pepsi's a day. That is a lot of soda. When we were visiting Coco last week he asked if I would do him a favor? I said sure, what? He said that he wanted to get off soda but he get's terrible headaches from it so asked if I could work on his neck when the headaches come? Of course I said yes. Not only will it be healthier for him, he will feel better and save money from not stopping to buy a drink every time. So as of today he has been off  Diet Pepsi for 5 days. YEA!!
 Have a great Monday! Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Beautiful Baby, Trip and Fun

On Wednesday morning we made our way up north to visit with Coco and her family to help out with their new baby and spend time with them. 

We went to the hospital first thing when we got up there. 

This is Miss Kylia Danielle Lucas. Isn't she just perfect? I think so! 

 This is me holding Kylia. My face is not being shown due to the redness in my eyes and nose from crying. She is just the sweetest little girl.

Aunt E'lyse holding Kylia

Aunt Faith

and Aunt Gabby.

Coco and Kylia were released in the after noon. Coco said she was glad to be home. I think she dislikes hospitals as much as I do. 

Kylia with her mommy

While there the kiddos were having a blast playing outside but Naima started coughing and having some breathing issues so she had to have a breathing treatment. She looks so cute when she holds her mask growing like a dinosaur 

Aunt Gabby holding Kylia 

On Saturday morning since Kyle was off work to help Coco out with the kiddos and we tend to wake up early we decided to go for a ride. We say a bunch of elk. These are just 2 of them that I was able to get pictures of. They are WAY back in the center of the picture.

 Elk are so beautiful

 Gabby trying to ride a skateboard.

 Her is the beautiful Mommy Coco with Kylia. We went out to enjoy the weather and watch the kiddos playing in the front yard. 

Gabby, Naima, Talmage and E'lyse playing ball. Faith found a book that just sucked her in she didn't do a lot of playing outside.

 They had so much fun

I gave Naima & Talmage brownies. Naima ate off the sprinkles then decided to turn hers into play dough. She sat there for a good half hour playing with the chocolate lump of fun

I got Talmage and Naima a coloring book with stickers. Talmage decided it would be fun to wear them on his face. He is such a silly little man.

Kylia seems to enjoying having her hand up at her face like this or on the side. She is more beautiful in person than even in these pictures. 

Naima up close , such a happy little girl

Mommy flower according to Naima

 Pretty flowers in front of the front porch. They smell good and look so pretty

This morning when I woke up the girls to get up and get ready to leave. They spent a lot of time laughing, playing, making videos and just enjoying each other. It was a beautiful sound to hear all the laughter in these three beautiful girls. 

Faith, E'lyse in front and Gabby

This was probably one of the funnest times of going up to visit in Pinetop for our girls. They got to do a lot of fun things that they wanted to. We went for walks, they played, ate and enjoyed being there. 

Hugs, Bobbi  Jo

Garden

My garden at this time is not huge. We have another raised bed that we will be getting ready for the fall but for now I just wanted to share with you some pictures of my garden. 

These are my 3 tomato plants. They aren't put directly in the garden bed this year I am trying an experiment that my friendly garden guy at A & P Nursery told me about. So far so good.  

 This is my artichoke plant. I have never grown one before. When I transplanted it I thought it wasn't going to make it.  

This is before: 

And this is now: 

 Now the raised planter bed we have Swiss chard, stevia, going into the next area is English cucumber, cantaloupe 

 Green peppers, pumpkins, Japanese pumpkins (Kabocha), loofah (seeds from a blogger friend in Australia)

 Next area Sun flower, pumpkins, spaghetti squash, summer squash 

 This is my little garden. 

I have been watering the garden by hand each day but since we are going away and I have put much love and care into my garden I didn't want it to die. It is so hot that it doesn't take long for plants to croak in this heat. Alan hooked up a clock and the pvc piping and has the garden being watered for me now. SWEET! 

Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Photo Bomb And Hair-Do's

Gabby came in the room the other night to show me her new hair-do. E'lyse has been experimenting with chalking hair. I got my camera and E'lyse came in and photo bombed Gabby's photo.  

 E'lyse (well all of my girls are addicted to Pinterest). You know it's like fantasy football for girls. E'lyse found this cute hair-do on it. Gabby likes to have her hair done in different styles so she was the perfect candidate for it. That and she has long hair.

This is from the top of it

 And the back. I think it is really pretty. It is called "The Crown" . Now just how appropriate is that for my blog? 

Tomorrow morning we get to go up to Pinetop and see our new grand daughter. I am so excited to see her, Coco and the family. Dallas & his wife Sara will be coming over and watching over the home while we are gone. 

When I come back be prepared to be bombarded by sweet grand baby photos galore. I get to see all three of our grand babies and I am so thrilled. Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Welcome Sweet Little Blessing

Today Monday, July 16Th 2012 at 1:53 pm Kylia Danielle Lucas was born. She came into the world at 7 lbs. even and 20 1/4 inches long. She has her Mommies beautiful shaped lips.

Our oldest child Coco gave birth to her, this is her 3Rd child. We are so excited to go up to go up and meet this sweet little blessing in person. 

This was the picture that came to me from Kyle, Coco's husband , right after she was born.

She is so precious and has Coco's lips

Coco requested that there be a picture taken of them together after she was born.

Coco, Kylia and Kyle

Coco said that she was doing well. Her legs were numb and she was a little unstable so she didn't have a chance to hold Kylia . She and baby are doing well.

What a head of hair this beautiful little girl has, just like her Mommies was. 

So happy and blessed to see their sweet family growing. 

Hugs, Bobbi Jo

Changing My Mind

I believe it was at the beginning of the year sometime that I decided I wasn't going to concentrate so much on the numbers of the scale. Well, I changed my mind. I have been eating lacoto-ovo-vegan (close to the 80/10/10 program) , cut out salt, cut out soda and eating about 85% to 90% raw foods for I think it is almost 3 weeks now. The salt a little less than that but still I am not seeing major results. Now mind you I am not pushing myself with my workout just eating healthy. I have decided I need to get things moving along here. Now here is my plan next week I will incorporate more walking, light weights and activity into my days.  We are going up to Pinetop to meet our new grand daughter that will be born on Monday the 16Th. Coco is having a C-section on Monday and Kyle will be with her till Wednesday when she comes home from the hospital being that Alan couldn't get off the entire week will will go up Wednesday and be there to help out with her other kiddos and of course enjoy time with her and the new little blessing. I figured I can take the kiddos on walks, play outside and go to the park to play. 

Dallas and Sara are going to come over and house sit for us so  we don't have to worry about the animals & my garden. 

 My plan then for the following week when we get back is to start out a major workout program. I would love to start to run again. I use to run when I was in Junior High and High School. I was training for my first marathon when I found out I was pregnant with Coco and I haven't ran seriously since then. I use to really enjoy running so I am going to do the "Couch to 5-K" program, some weight training and squeeze more activity into my days.
 You might ask "Why haven't you just started this week? " Knowing that we are going to Pinetop and trying to help out Coco as much as possible I didn't think I would have time to go running therefore I decided to wait till the following week. The date of that is 23Rd.
I have also set a goal to lose 35 pounds by the end of December. This is where the change in mind of the scale comes in. I have been staying steady but I am not happy with the weight I am. I am tired of feeling out of place, not being able to feel cute in the clothes that I like or even buy them where they would fit. I am sorry they do not make cute clothes for girls that are in the above average size range.
 I will not share my weight with you that is just too much for me to do. I will say that I am currently wearing a size 16 -18 blouse, I could wear a little smaller but I don't like my rolls of fat showing and my arms are huge that most of the smaller sizes are too uncomfortable.
 I wear a size 16 pants, I can't believe I am posting this! My thighs are huge. I use to be a power lifter in Jr.high and High school mostly specializing in squats and dead lifts. These both build up the thigh muscles and therefore I will never have little, skinny thighs but I can have tone ones. My waist has always been way smaller than the pants I have to get for my thighs but that is okay.
 So this is my plan as of now. I am still eating clean, low fat and mostly raw food.
Soon E'lyse and Faith will be back in school and we will be back to a regular routine so I now things will get a little better. Summers are a killer for me with the no regular schedule and the heat.
 I am not positive what I want my weight to be down to but I think the 35 will give me a big boost. I will be back to the weight I was before I started massage school and I felt so much better and I wasn't even eating all that great at the time.
 Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions or encouragement I would love to hear from you. Hugs, Bobbi  Jo

Independence Day

Now that I am way behind on getting this post finished and published. I found the above picture on MomThinking.org. I think it is a great picture.

Our 4Th was different. Usually we will either go up north to Pinetop to enjoy the cool and small town feel of the 4Th or we have a cookout, watch fire works & do our own fireworks. We have been invited to a cookout with family but we really wanted to get a major project taken care of and didn't know how long it would take.

Alan knew he would have this day off work if he chose to so we have been planning the big garage clean up. The garage has been a bit of a mess since Alan had started the major mechanical jobs on our vehicles back at the end of March. It like so many places when things aren't put back when done being used, ended up multiplying  more and more. In the morning Alan wanted to finish putting the rocks in our front landscaping before it got too hot out. So I got busy on my own things inside and then went out to the garage to face the beast. This is what it looked like from coming out into the garage.

SUPER SCARY!  

This is from the front of the house looking into the garage. AHHHHHHHHHHH! 

It seriously was making me sick and get anxious every time I walked out into it.

 I worked on my stuff for less than 15 minutes and got it back into place. So I waited for Alan to get done and ready for my help. 

It took him a little longer to go through, sort and put things back into place. He also had to hang up a cupboard and reorganize our work bench that is in the very back of the tandem garage. 

On Tuesday I went through the refrigerators and freezers and cleared out all the old prepackaged food that was left in them. I cleared out any outdated food too. When I was waiting for Alan I took all the food out of the refrigerator/ freezer in the garage and moved it out to the driveway area and scrubbed it all out. Inside and out was sparkling white again. Then dried it out and moved it back in. I worked around the house throughout the day on other projects. Checking in and helping Alan in between. 

Improvement......yes. Still a lot of sorting and getting rid of things but definitely and improvement. We have items that need taken to their owners such as the mattress and a few boxes that are Dallas's. But it looks much better now.

This is the view from the front of the garage looking in. 

At least now I can walk out without feeling sick to my stomach. 

By the time we were done with this it was around 5. Alan was pretty sore from the landscaping and garage work. I ended up giving him a massage as our neighbors were setting off fire crackers that kept scaring me. Alan then went and got pizza for our dinner. The girls were all asked by friends to go hang out with them or cookouts so they were gone. Alan and I had a restful night watched a movie, ate pizza and enjoyed the time together. I did miss seeing the fireworks but I was tired from all that had gotten accomplished. 

Hugs, Bobbi Jo 

Part 2 and Giving Up

 Life has gone by so fast this past month. I can't believe that my last post was on June 7Th. With kiddos being out of school time has just flown by. I was sick for a little over a week, had my Birthday and now we are into July. 

 Do you remember my last post Why Not Just Eat It? Well this is the 2nd part to that post. I have been doing nutritional research and trying to figure out what my body needs, wants and what I am willing to do. In the reading I have done I found that another reason it is great to juice is that the body doesn't have to do so much work to break down the food for digestion. We as a people do not masticate (love this word) or chew   our food as much as we need to,  therefor it is a lot more work for our bodies to break down the food for elimination. 

 Now on to my new goals I have set. The day after my Birthday June 28Th I decided I was going to become a lacto-ovo-vegan. Meaning I will still consume some dairy like small amounts of cheese and maybe still egg whites but not much. I also decided to start eating about 85% to 90% raw foods. My body doesn't seem to like the meat products too much and I feel awful afterwards. The raw foods really make me feel better, I have more energy and don't feel as sluggish after a meal.

 My new goal for the month of July is to give up this:

Saturday I was giving a massage to a new client and friend Megan who was telling me about her running and that she gave up sugar 12 weeks ago. This inspired me to make this move now so thank you Megan! 

 I do have high blood pressure so I have to take medication for this (it is a very low dose) but still is something that if I don't take it I swell up like a blow fish if I eat too much salt. 

 This is a major weakness of mine. Hi I am Bobbi Jo Nichols and I am a salt addict. (HI BOBBI JO)

No I am not making fun of people in AA . My point is food can be an addiction for some people and for me there are certain foods that fall into that category.

Before I know it school will be starting again for my girls so we are planning a couple little get a ways. One of the soonest ones will be when Coco has her baby. I am so excited to meet this sweet little girl, Kylia .

 Then we are planing a camping trip soon after that. 

It has been a good summer so far and just now getting a little too hot for me and my liking. 

Well it is Sunday evening and it has been a good day. We attended church, came home, had lunch and a long discussion as a family. Now we are all just enjoying our evening. 

I'll check in a little later this week.

 Hugs, Bobbi Jo