sorry you have a cold.....and little guy too.....

Hey Pretty friend of mine....who leaves a smile on my face every time she says hello! You are such a great friend and you really know how to get me feeling better. I think that you are right about saying good things in my head about myself. It would be nice if I had someone in my life that said it to me you know but thats where you come in and Boom......Nice things are said. You are a great friend and person and very pretty too my love.....

So the rest of the day was fine....I had a ton of shit to do for the portfolio and newsletters for work and my case load is low so I have to get paper pushing done....You know. It stinks.

I am glad to see that you are not off and away from your family. You belong at home when Jeffery is not. lol. But at least this was Caleb will be almost two by then and that will be really good huh. Older the better for your trip I am thinking.

K I ate okay for the rest of today. I did of course have pizza for dinner and that was not all that good but I took most of the stupid cheese off. THe thing that I need to do is go to the gym. I get so mad. I think that I am going to start taking clothes with me and when ever I am driving from visit to visit try to fit in any time at the gym that I can. Grr.

Did you ever get a chance to look at the website with the weight watcher crap?

Ok girlie..

Love ya

Way to go

Crys,

Hey girlie, I am so proud of you for doing so well with the weight watcher thing! You are doing so well! Keep up the good work. Just remember that if you fall off the wagon, there is always your next meal, next day, and next week. It is just once.

You DO NOT look bad in any of your pictures, I think you look thin and beautiful! It is just self-perception that's all. You may want to consider doing positive self affirmations to help rebuild your self esteem. You are a beautiful woman with many beautiful features: your eyes, your hips, your hair, your smile, I could go on and on.

I had to go to El Paso today to take Caleb to the Dr. He has the common cold, nothing that requires an antibiotic. He has graciously passed it to me. So, to say the least I am beat.

I have not done perfect on my eating, but I could be doing worse. I will be back on the wagon tomorrow. I will say that I did not eat at a fast food restaurant today, I ate Denny's french toast this morning and a lite lunch from Applebees this afternoon. I could have done Sonic and Whataburger, but didn't.

I hate to keep this so short, but I also have a discussion question waiting for me for school.

Oh, really fast I will not be going to the academy come April, the FBI rejected my prints again, so I had them done via ink and sent them off for the April class. So, we shall see if I go in April. I see it as an omen, Jeff was going to be out of town at the same time as I, and I was not comfortable with that at all. This way I will be home with the kids, and we will get to celebrate our anniversary together as well.

Oh, and I bet you CAN get your portfolio done BEFORE your birthday.

Love you bunches, and miss you lots.

Jenn

one more thought

hey girl one more thing by the way this is part two of today. Last year we posted 358 times WOW! Lets try to get over 400 this year. lol. WIth the rate I am going you better getting typing. I will get better.

I always feel like SOMEBODY WATCHING ME>>>!

SO this is what I look like right now at 159 pounds at home and whatever 160.6 that weight watchers thinks that I am. I think that I should just go there and put photos because maybe that might scare me into having to make a change because you can see if I did not. What do you think? I am sure that you think that I am nuts but there is something to be said that someone somewhere might be looking at our blog and there for they might say wow she really is losing weight or wow this heffer is not getting it right. lol. I think that will shake me up a bit. So that was me last night. Trying to take a nice picture of myself and then I realized that in all and I mean all of my cell phone pics I look really bad. Is that just me? GOd I hope not.

ANyway today I did really good with my eating so far of course last night I fell off the deep end and ate like shit. I made this really good pasta with Cheese and veggies and I had no business making it but you know what I did and it was heavenly so at night when I was all alone in my room I got hungry and what do you think I went down to get you got it macaroni.....so bad so bad.....

Today was good though and I know I am not going to have lost any weight this week at weight watchers between the stupid thing I did last night and the friggin night bird and I went to the movies yeah really bad.

Guess what on Feb 16th I am taking bird to see breaking benjamins and three days grace at the casino. I think it will be so much fun! I hope I lose 5 more pounds by then lol. It is so hard to think of any of these pounds as loses too because I was 153 when you came down and I cant start really losing again before I am below that. Or that is what it feels like anyway.

I sent out my grad school application! I am on a mission mission mission with the portfolio! I am going to say that the thing will be done before my birthday. WE will see if I can do that and when I say before I mean signed sealed and delivered and out of this house off of this chair for good. I feel like the whole thing for school is really in gods hands whatever he wants for me will be with that and I guess I have to have that attitude with this too! I have no idea what I will do with myself when both of these huge tasks are done with in my life. Hey did you ever go away? Are you still at home. I am the worse friend in the world.

WEll my condo is coming out so good. I am going to go there tonight and take pics because this is nuts you need to see them. I will take pictures of everything tonight for sure and post it here.

I love you always and will always be here for you even though it sure as hell seems like I fell off the planet. You will never be replaced....

Muah

hey Jenn...Miss you....

So I am doing good with weight watchers. I blasted threw all my extra points this week and probally more because I took Darren to the movies and we ate candy and nachos. Not good but oh I am not sure if it will hurt me as long as I do good for the rest of the week you know. I hope you are doing well too. I wrote my letter to southern and I am just fine tuning it now. So if you get a chance read it over.

How are you? I miss you.

Things are crazy right now but tommorrow I plan to send out all this SCSU stuff and then its moving on to the portfolio. Once that is down I will feel so much better.

Love you chicke....

let me know what you think....

As a little girl I wrote a letter to Santa that was posted in the New Haven Register amidst all the other children that wrote in. The letters spoke of goodies and toys that children dreamed of at night, all but my own. In my letter I asked Santa to help my mom with money and give my toys to the children that were poor and had none. My mother saved that newspaper and was so proud of the clear differences between mine and all the others. Even as a young child I saw the world and its inequalities. I looked to make changes for those who I could help and give to those who did not have. One person that needed my help greatly was my mother herself. My mother had epilepsy and bipolar disorder. The symptoms of my mother’s illnesses were under control however several times a year she would have “spells”. I learned to care for my younger siblings and to ask for help from those adults in my life that I trusted. I would never forget how important those adults were to me. The counselors and social workers that I knew at school could listen to the challenges I faced at home and supported me when I cried. Patsy, Susan, and Ann my counselors that helped me saw that I wanted to make something of myself. I started taking classes in high school that furthered my knowledge of the helping professions. I took psychology, multiculturalism, sociology, and child development and through these courses I realized I belonged in the helping field.

The years after high school were very busy for me. I had a child at a young age and struggled to keep our family out of poverty. I still maintained the ownership over my mother’s well being. Counting her pills and attending Doctors visits were part of my everyday life. I was asked several times if what I was studying in school was medicine due to the fact that my knowledge of my mother’s plan of care was so precise. I see these tasks in my young life as preparing me for case management. I learned the details of my mother’s care and maintained it quite well but the medications took their toll on my mother’s health and shortly after I graduated from Southern Connecticut State University my mother passed away in her sleep. I do not remember much after her death but that it hurt more than I could have ever imagined a person could hurt. I did not think that I could ever move on in my life for I’d lost someone that was part of the fiber of my being. At my mother’s funeral I sat in front getting hugs and kisses from people saying they were “sorry for my loss” and “knew that God had a plan”. In their words I felt no ease from the pain. My eyes were dry with the loss of tears from the days that just past and my knees were weak. Then I saw them. Patsy, Ann, and Susan were there. It had been years since I last saw them and here they were for me again. I sat with them and felt their love as they held my hand in silence. I turned to my grandmother and told her “These are the women that made me who I am, who helped me finish school and get to grow into the woman I am”. I remember as Patsy hugged me she said to me “the only one you have to thank is yourself for you did it all yourself.” I can remember the importance of them being there for me that day. The fact that these women were there affirmed for me that you can have people in your life that are there to support you when you are facing challenges that do not want anything back in return.

It took a few years for me to see it but the truth is that I am aware that this is a place I have come to in my life because of my hard work and determination. I have recovered from the loss of my mother and focused on myself and my family. I was not afraid to seek help in my healing and grief. One steady place for me to be supported has been my occupation. I work with a team of professionals that have guided me and taught me so much. As my abilities have strengthened my career has blossomed and I am helping families in need. In my position at Kidsteps Birth to three, I focus on education within families with a child showing a delay in any developmental area. My role in an Early Intervention Associate is not limited to just the education of the child but rather the wellbeing of the family. I help families gain access to the system and what can help them maintain their basic needs. I have filled out welfare forms with clients whom cannot read them on their own or reach out and ask for help when they were in abusive situations. Working with social workers within the home has helped me to learn what it is like to use what I have studied in classrooms out in the field. I hope to become a resource someday to others as they look to assist their clients. I want nothing more than to further my education so that I can make a dent in the world and help someone else. I know that I cannot fix it all but if I can project the gentle caring that my counselors did for me onto others in need then that will be enough. In my pursuit of my Masters in Social work I hope to learn strong strategies of intervention, the manner in which the social service system works and how to help clients obtain services to meet their needs. I would like to study cultural differences, behavioral patterns, and the hardships that different races and classes of people deal with. Learning about the differences in cultures can help me to intervene with these families who are in crisis while respecting their cultural beliefs. I want my children to look at me and see the importance of education and pursuing your dreams. My dream is to be in my own office with a client in tears who needs direction and helping that client find their way out and into the life they can have as those in my life have done for me. The rewards that I get from helping those in need are intrinsic and have no monetary number. I recently transitioned a family into the public school system and as I left her house for the last time she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said to me that I need to push forward and go on with my education. She said that she “looks at me with her child and sees the interaction not as work but as an Art”. I am looking to fine tune my artistic ability.

part 2

hey read the other one first k?

She went back to sleep so I will take this moment to talk a bit more with you rather than work on what I should work on grr. I am gonna tell you the code to the weight watchers thing so you can look at it. The user name is the first par of my email address ending with the 4 and then add a 9 to that. Got it? And the password is my daughters full first name.

I hope you can get that down and then take the time to use the site for reciepts and what have you. It seems like a good tool but very similar to spark people. I think that if you join weight watchers soon it would be nice to work together but even if you didnt we always have it here!

Anyway. Tommorrow I have a date lined up with bird! We are going to the movies! And I am bringing fat free popcorn I dont care what they say! It will be hidden. lol. We are going to see the chipmunks and Heather is babysitting so we are going for sure!

Gab says bless you too! It is so cute that they are both doing that. She is funny she will say it over and over until you say thank you just to make sure you heard it. Her favorite thing to do lately is play with playdough. She loves it. She likes it when we read to her too but I feel bad we dont do it as often as we should. I read to darren ALL the time when he was little. But Gab is more a mover and a shaker than bird and so she is more into that type of stuff. She can walk up and down the stairs a thousand times by herself but I dont let her and she can run so fast that I have to run to catch her. I sware she is so light because of all the running that she does!

Yesterday I went to the Dr and I am doing well. My heart is healthy thank god. Gab is up now so I am going to go tend to her and get going to my grams you know she hates waiting for me and it is almost 4 already.

TALk to you laters.

C