Hey y'all!  Well, I am a California girl again.  I returned to my roots and moved to southern California, where I was born and lived the firt 3rd of my life.  My husband and kiddos are with me and we are trying to get settled down here in Lancaster which is in the high desert. It is hot here.  Usually over 100 degrees most every day, at least it has been the whole time I've lived here which has been since April 2009.  I'm sooooo happy to be away from DMV and the Oregon rain.  It hasn't rained the whole time i've been down here and I hear that it averages rain about 7 days a year.  LOVE THAT!  On mornings lately it's been cool, like in the mid 60's which to me now is freezing and i have to bundle up with a blanket!  If it's below 90 degrees we consider it a cool day.  I was miserable in the heat for the first week but I climitized really fast and now the over 100 degree days don't even make me bat an eye.  The kids are settling in nicely to their new school.  I had no clue how easy Oregon schools were until we enrolled the kids down here.  They have hugely higher standards here and the kids have mountains of homework every night, even Keirsten in only 2nd grade!  But they are catching on fast and making new friends as well.

Neither Jimi nor i are working currently but we are job hunting with a vengence.  He is going to school to become a nurse and is loving it.  I had to drop out of interior design school but am anxious to get back in after we move into our new house (renting, not buying unfortunately) and get unpacked and settled.  I love being at home and doing the whole stay at home full time mommy thing. I wish we could afford for me to do it forever!! It makes me so much happier than any regular job ever could. Making lunches, helping with homework, playing taxicab, doing housework, planning dinners, etc etc etc is all so rewarding to me right now at this point in my life. I used to be so driven that I couldn't stand to be at home. I'd get way too bored, but now I am a lot more laid back and I am finding this "job" very fulfilling and I am surprising myself at how good I am at it! LOL The only problem is that we have a lot of stress because we don't have a steady income. ugh. But at least we have a loving marriage and two wonderful, beautiful, healthy children. I am flat broke but still very blessed.

As you can see, my weight loss has been doing even better down here than in Oregon where I had plataued. (I think I spelled that wrong. And I don't know what is up with the font change. Sorry about that!)  I've now lost 106 pounds and am only 9 pounds away from my previously thought of as unreachable goal! I am psyched about it.      The doctors told me I wouldn't get below 160.  I said I'd be happy at 150 but my pipedream was the 129 because that would officially make me thinner than I'd ever been in my life including my best looking days of high school at 130! LOL  Yet here I am, only 9 pounds away from my unrealalistic goal of 129 that my docs said was impossible!!  I am so proud of myself and love the way I look, other than needing to muscle tone up a bit.  The smallest size I ever wore in high school was a 7 other than this one pair of jean shorts that were a 5 but they fit bigger.  Therefore, my size goal was a 7 and I think I wanted to be a medium because that was the smallest I'd ever worn.  When I had my surgery I was wearing a size 24 and in tops I wore between extra-large to 2x.  Now I wear nothing larger than a small other than a couple of mediums that fit smaller and the biggest bottoms are a size 6! I even have some clothing that I wear at size 3-5!!!  I have much less joint pain due to the lesser weight being carried on my hip, have much more energy, have no periods and am experiencing light surgically enduced menopause, have been cured of almost every illness on the list above, including the mental ones which are vastly improved since the physical problems were solved, and am very happy with my life and the choices I have made.

I eat completely normally now and no one would ever know I've had the bypass unless I tell them.  I still eat a lot less than the Average Joanie, but it's a healthy amount and is typically around 5.5 ounces which is perfectly on track from where you're supposed to be once in the maintanencephase like i'm in.  At one point a couple months ago I was up to 6.5 ounces and i got scared so i reeled it back in and payed closer attention to what I was eating and now i'm back to 5.5 ounces.  yay!

At the beginning of this month I had some horrible kidney stones again and had to be hospitalized for a full 7 days.  Then they did some MRI's and biopsies because they found a large mass in my right kidney.  That was scary but hopefully it's going to shrink on it's own and no longer be a problem.  Man oh man was that a painful week though!  They also told me I have gurd.  But I just have to continue taking prolesec for that which I was already taking anyway so no biggie there.  Let's see, what else has been going on...

 Oh yeah duh... My dad died April 22, 2009 a week after i moved to Cali so that was super hard.  I flew to Oregon the day he died and spent his last few hours with him, holding his hand as he went to sleep for the final time.  So now i've lost both my parents and am officially an orphan before I turned 30 years old.  I did turn 30 on June 20, 2009 and had a small outing with my hubby and 2 closest friends Amy and Christine.  It was really fun and Jimi and I had the best time together at dinner, then kareokee then alone time at the hotel.  It was fun.  Oh yeah, I flew back to Oregon for my birthday and then when I flew back Jimi came with us.  He had been staying in Oregon until then which was hard on all of us to be apart for 2 months.  We are all 4 of us very happy to be back under the same roof again!  The best part about living back down here in Cali is that ALL of my family is here in the same town.  It rocks.  And though I left my 2 cloest in age sisters in Oregon, whom I rarely got to hang out with, I have another sister and brother down here too so that's been awesome.  I hadn't seen my oldest sister since i was 9 years old and have only seen my brother about 6 times or so since i was 9 so it's been wonderful getting to know them again and have a good relationship with them and their families!  I even got a neice out of the deal! Megan is my one and only neice and though she is going to be 20 on christmas eve, I had never met her until this summer. So anyway, the fam is doing well.

Well, I have lots to get done today so I'll sign off now. Just wanted to give an update on the goings on of Jenna and my journey!  :-)  Take care everyone!! 

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