It's been a while...

Well, it's been a while since I last posted. Back in mid April we went to the FMCI conference. Since then I have barely had time to breath much less post. So I guess I will do a brief recap of what has been going on.

Shagga Bear and I have been doing the South Beach Diet for a few weeks now. It is low carb like Atkins but it is lower fat also. At first I was actually quite grumpy about having to give up my sugar and breads. After all, this diet thing was Shagga's idea, not mine! But now that I have made it past the card withdraws I am really feeling better and I have lost about 8 pounds. Most of my pants are comfortable to wear again! (Mama Lilly pointed out that I am not the only one going through carb detox.)

Abby has started using the potty on a regular basis! I am so proud of my big girl! You will probably hear more about this from Shagga Bear in a little bit. This has been a struggle for Shagga and me. And every one and their cousin was giving us advise on how to make it work! Uggg! Well, Abby finally decided she was ready.

Spring has finally arrived in the frozen north! I wanted to take the mower into the shop to get a tune-up for the new season. It also had a single lever that controlled the height of the mower that was no longer holding in place. As my mower guy was working on it the lever complete broke off. It turns out that the lever is a one piece assembly with much of the back end and it was going to end up costing us about half the price of new mower to get this one fixed. So we just went ahead and got a new one. Here is a pic of my new piece of power equipment.

As you can see, by the time we got the mower we were in desperate need. The first time I used it was probably the only time I will actually be excited about mowing! It really does work nicely.

The week before I went to beg my next-door neighbor for his mower but he was not home. So I went to the next neighbor down and asked if I could use his little push mower. He insisted that I use his riding mower. I acted like the push mower would be fine but when he offered the riding mower a second time I did not let it go. I think that was the fastest our yard has ever been done. :-)

This Wednesday I started tilling up our garden. We bought a used tiller at a garage sale last year and it worked well for us. I took it out of our garage this year and at first it would not start. I was about to give up when on my last pull of the rip cord it started! The only problem now was that the rip cord detached from the tiller and flew out in my hand. But it was running! I started heading for the garden thinking I would till as long as it would run. I got about ten steps when it died. :-( So, I went and got my tool box and re-attached the rip cord so I could start it again. So after about 45 minutes getting it started I actually started tilling the garden. I got about a third of it tilled. I hope the get the rest done in the next few days.

Well, I think that is probably enough for my update on life. Hopefully it will not be so long till my next post!