LIfe in the fast lane

Mason's been home for a week and a half now and we've been having a great time together! When Mason got home from water survival training we had a great weekend. The ENJJPT Around the World party was on the 7th. All the NATO nations have food and beverages from their country. Mason really liked these meatballs and peanut sauce from the Netherlands, and I of course couldn't get enough of the delicious Italian food.

Last week, Mason took me to Olive Garden for an early birthday/Valentine's Day dinner. We figured going out on a Thursday would be better than going out on a Saturday night, more or less Valentine's Day. Mason will be gone for my birthday, so we had a great time. To top it all off Mason surprised me with a new i-pod, mine broke, AND he made a delicious chocolate cake (although I think that was to curb his chocolate craving.) I must say Mason was pretty cute baking/decorating a cake.

Despite all the amazingly yummy food in the last few weeks, Mason and I have been working REALLY hard towards our losing weight efforts. We've been very strict about going to the gym at least 5x a week, for at least an hour, and doing our ab routine everyday. It's really hard somedays, but I'm proud of both of us for sticking with it.

Mason leaves on Thursday morning for land survival. We talked to a friend today who just got back and said it wasn't too bad, except that there's so much snow in Washington right now, that they had to hike 60 degree banks up a mountain in snow shoes. Mason will write lots when he gets back, but for now, he'll do some parachute training and academics the first week. The second week they will spend in the field doing most of the training and when they return they go into POW and resistance training. Don't worry, they're only allowed to break one finger...

Meanwhile, my time at school is flying by. On Friday, we had a Valentine's Day party and the kids were hyped! We tried to make it a healthy breakfast, but parents brought lots of cupcakes and sugar. It made me glad that we only had a half day of school. We have state testing coming up in three weeks, which I'm not looking forward to, but I'm hoping that my kids are feeling more prepared. I'm really excited because next week, as a combined lesson we're going to play "Are you Smarter than a 5th grader" with our 3rd-5th graders. It's going to be lots of fun (hopefully.)

The weather here has been very up and down. One day it's 80 and the next it's 30. We're not quite sure if we should put our winter clothes away yet, but the days where is is nice and warm makes us really enjoy the outdoors. On a negative note, they cut down the beautiful tree in our backyard, but on the sameday my daffodils bloomed. A nice little sign from above.