Busy weekend!

Wow what a jam packed weekend we had. We started off with thanksgiving. I knew I should not have blogged about the Turkey Trott because as it turned out both me and my friend who I was running with came down with severe colds and were not able to run. Well I suppose I could have run anyway but I would have totally wore myself out and I had allot going on and no time to be any more sick then I already was. So we went to our friends house for a large gathering with so much great food. Our contribution was a deep fried turkey, home made apple pie (times 3) chocolate chip cookie bars, and sweet and sour meat balls. It was so good. Right after dinner we all whipped open the black Friday ads and started mapping out our route. We came down with a master plan and by then it was already 3:3pm. I had a photoshoot scheduled for 5pm, so I had to go home and get my stuff ready. I was shooting a family reunion and it was the only day the whole family would be on the island together. It went surprisingly well. There were 15 people and 7 of them were young children. I was really dreading it but I actually got some great shots. So I tried to get to bed early Thursday night but of course I could not fall asleep. Before you knew it my alarm was waking me up at 4AM! I jumped out of bed, threw my hair in a ponytail and drove to pick up the rest of the girls. Our first stop was Circuit City. We arrived to a line over a mile long, so we decided to divide and conquer. I dropped two girls off at CC and I went on to Toys r'us. Luckily there I ran into my next door neighbor and was able to cut in line. However when we got closer to the door I decided I should follow someone out to their car so I could grab there cart. Well by the time I got back my friends were already inside and the security guard would not let me through. I was so mad and frustrated. I fought with the lady for 30 minutes and finally she gave up and let me go threw. I am sure she just wanted to shut me up, but hey what ever it takes. So when I got into the craziness, everything I wanted was already sold out. So I just said forget it and left. My friends had the same sort of bad luck at Circuit City. The thing that sucks about black Friday in Hawaii is that for the most part there is only one of every store so everyone is at the same place. Not only do you have the people that live here, but the people who are vacationing here, plus all the surrounding islands come to our island to shop. So can you say too much competition. Anyway from there we went to Best buy, where I got some games for the kids, and a few movies. After that we headed to Lowes and I got a ceiling fan and some cute little storage bins. I got new runners for me and Ben at sports Authority, some toys at Kmart, and then headed to Costco where I picked up 5 2GB compact flash cards for my camera and more toys, and all the food for Londyn's B-day party! From Costco I went home unloaded everything and was at Ashley Furniture by noon. They have recently shut down here and were opening the doors at noon for and everything must go liquidation sale. My friend got a new leather couch and love seat and I got a tall bar table with two more bar stools which match the 4 that I already have. I got an awesome vase to go on that table with some flowers, a picture frame and a large plate stand all for $200. We were there for like 5 hours and we kept dealing with this one guy. He took a few hundred dollars off my friends couch set and threw in the two $125 bar stools for free. He so wanted us! jk! So this brings us to 8pm Friday night. Remember we started at 4am. That is one full day of shopping. I was exaughsted by the time I got home and was sound asleep by 9:30pm. At 4:30 am pop went my eyes and I was up for the day. I could not for the life of me fall back asleep so I got up, read some blogs, cleaned my house, got everything ready for Londyn's party had a shower and once everyone else trickled out of there rooms we got ready and left by 9am for Londyn's beach birthday party.
It was the perfect day at the beach. W e could not have asked for better weather. All our friends were able to make it and we had a great day! Here are some pics!













We got home about 6pm, unpacked ALL her new toys and cleaned out the play room so we could make some more room for them. I was in bed early again after a fun filled day. Sunday morning I had an all day Photoshop workshop and the University of Hawaii. It was from 9-4 and it was a great class. I learned so much new stuff, and really got a better understanding of photoshop. From there I had to drive directly to church for our very first launch service. It went great and I was amazed at how many people were there when I pulled into the parking lot. It was such a blessing to see all of our hard work and planning and God's will pay off. After the service we went out to eat at Chili's came home got the kids to bed and crashed ourselves. What a weekend. I don't think I sat down once. Now it is Monday the kids are back in school, aside from Addison who is at home with a fever. Oh did I mention that through all of this all of our kids have run a three day fever. Luckily there are no other symptoms, and all of our friends have already had it so we did not have to worry about spreading germs.

I have two more photo shoots booked for this week, and last night I got a call from a couple wanting to fly me to the Big Island to take their wedding pictures next Wednesday. How exciting! Ben says I am so international now! Well happy Monday! Oh by the way I am sure you have all heard but they are calling today Cyber Monday and if you go to cybermonday.com all the online stores a re running there own sort of black friday special and are having free shipping as well. Go check it out if you still have Christmas shopping to do!

Call me crazy!

Tomorrow I am going to be doing something I never imagined I would do. I Alyssa Turner am going to run the Turkey trot at 6am. It is just under a half marathon...10 miles. The only reason I am doing it is because I figured it out and I would burn enough calories during that day to each pretty much what ever I want!!! Seconds on pie? Oh sure why not. That is if I even make it to Thanksgiving dinner. I will probably collapse half way through and someone will have to come resuscitate me. Hopefully someone hot! JK Ben! So anyway I will let you know how that goes and if I am still alive to tell about it tomorrow

This week at the gym I did a salsa aerobics class. It was super fun but boy do I suck. I dance like a white girl with two left feet. I stood next to the one and only guy who just happened to be a little overweight just to make me look better. It worked somewhat but I still looked pretty pathetic. After that I did a dancer workout class. Mostly pleas and a bunch of butt pain. I hate it and love it so much! Today I met with my trainer and she worked me hard on abs legs and arms. Geesh think you could miss a spot there? I have not stepped on the scale yet because when I do I want to see serious results, but I do feel allot tighter and not so flabby.

Not much else new around here. Camryn has been sick all week with 103 fever. I pray she gets better and no one else gets it because we have Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Londyn's Birthday Party , and our church launch service this weekend. Busy much!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you bloggers!

I don't want to grow up:(

One week from today my little baby is going to be one!


This is so incredibly sad to me. She can not be 1 year already. I just gave birth yesterday, or at least it feels like yesterday. On the other hand I love love love this age! She is the cutest thing ever and her smile is so contagious. She still is not walking but does cruise around the furniture. She repeats words that you say like Saturday, except more like sa-da-da! She has taken up a new love for talking on the phone. She waves bye, and blows kisses, and claps her hands at almost everything she does. She is so cute I almost can't stand it. Most other people agree because no one can ever walk by without commenting on her beautiful blue eyes and toe head blonde hair. The other day we were eating at a restaurant in Waikiki and several groups of Japanese tourists came by and they literally stopped in their tracks screaming. I thought Michael Jackson was in our midst or something but they were getting giddy over Londyn. They all had to touch her and take pictures with her. It was so funny. Can't say I blame them though this girl screams cuteness, but why do they have to grow up so fast? Why can't we enjoy all these stages just a little bit longer? Why do my kids age but I do not? Ha just thought I would throw that one in there. While we are on the topics if anyone has any ideas for a 1 year old b-day present let me know. I know we have been here three times before but that is just it, we have everything already. So any new neat ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Well I have to give a shout out to my new best friend, the Swiffer sweep and vac! This thing is a must have for hard wood floors! I love it. You know when you sweep up dust bunnies and they just fly away and relocate...well not anymore. This thing has a little vacuum on front to suck up all the dirt and dust and then follows with a little cloth to catch any leftovers. I am telling you it is amazing. Best $28 dollars I ever spent. Oh yeah and you do not even need to buy batteries because it has a wall charger! Put it on your Christmas list, or better yet just go out and buy it!!!

So the gym is going well. I have gone 4 days in a row this week and I am sore in places I did not even know could be sore. At least it feels like it is working when you feel like this. Today I am going to give my weary muscles a break and just do water aerobics. Any time you can work out and not sweat is good! I am proud of myself for sticking to it, I do still need to work on the eating part. I do real great until I am with my husband and we go out to eat or he whips me up a caramel apple martini. How do I pass that up?? So far I am gaining weight but that is good because that means I am gaining muscle and muscle helps burn fat faster. Unfortunately I have Thanks Giving coming up so that is not going to help. But working out 2 hours a day 4 times a week has got to be better then what I was doing before which was nothing!

Well I am off to the gym hope you all have a great weekend!

Count down to the new me!

I feel like an idiot for not thinking of this sooner, but it just hit me yesterday that I am down to one kid not in school and I can join a gym! You see in Texas I belonged to a gym and I loved it. I would meet my friends there every day and the best part was they had free child care included in my membership. So when I cam to Hawaii I looked into joining a gym but at the time I was homeschooling and the child care was extra on top of membership. For 4 kids it worked out to $12 a workout to go to the gym. On top of my membership that became pretty pricey! So I cut my loses and purchased a treadmill to collect dust in my garage. It is the perfect place to hang my laundry! Well yesterday it dawned on my that now I would only have to pay child care for one. I could join the gym right next to Corben's preschool, and go there every day right after I dropped him off, work out for a couple hours and then hang out for a bit before it was time to pick him up. Conveniently there is a Ross next door to the gym so I always have a place to brows (and buy) while waiting to pick Corben up. Funny how things just work out! So today was my first meeting with my personal trainer. We mostly talked and went over meal plans and measurements and what not. I almost fell off my chair when she told me my body fat was at 30%. Can we say GROSS! I need to loose about 12 pounds to get it down to 25% which would be a good percentage for me. So its on! I am waging a war against my fat and I plan to win! After my meeting with the trainer I did 5 minutes on the stairs, 30 on the elliptical, and 15 on the treadmill. I would have done more but it was time to pick up Londyn. They have a two hour max on the child care. I cannot wait to get a few months down the road and start seeing some great results. Oh and get this my trainer said I actually need to be eating more! Yeah! I ma usually so busy running around all day that I often skip meals and then make some bad choices when grabbing snacks. I try not to eat anything past 7pm and then I usually skip breakfast b/c of lack of time. So from 7pm to noon the next day my body gets no food and goes into starvation mode. So I have to try and train myself to eat small portions every few hours. Not going to be easy but if I can make it a priority maybe I can break some of my bad eating habits. I also need to start drinking more water, I just never think of it. SO I am going to have to strap a water bottle to me and remind myself to drink. Anyway I am excited to start living healthy again. I am even more excited to get into ALL my clothes. I will have a whole new wardrobe and not have to spend a dime. Won't that make my husband happy. Well of course once I reach my goal I am going to have to buy some celebration outfits. Hey I deserve it! So I am setting my goal at 15 pounds and I will let you know when I reach it. Maybe I'll even get myself a pair of those skinny jeans! NOT!!!!!!!!!

5 seconds of fame!

Are you sitting down for this one, because this news is big! In fact it is so big that most of you already know because I had to call everyone in person! Last Thursday my husband and I got to be extras on the show LOST! As I am sure you know it is all filmed on the island. My husband and I are always keeping our eye out to run into one of the cast members when ever we are out and about. I guess we did one better and got ourselves on the show. One of the mom's at my girls school had her baby play baby Aaron in a couple of the episodes. Well the casting director called her and told her they needed white people to play a flashback scene to England. So she gave me the casting directors number and I of course called right away. She said she was looking for adults so I told her myself and my husband would be interested. So she had me email a picture to her and she called me the next morning and asked if we could work on Thursday! Heck ya we can! SO we arranged child care for everyone and got on the set at 8:30 Thursday morning. We had to meet at this parking lot downtown that was full of trailers and what not. Not exactly ritzy or anything. We got signed in and then sat in the breakfast tent waiting to find out what to do next. Over an hour later they called us back to wardrobe and got us all in to character. From there we went to hair and makeup, and then we sat in the breakfast tent for another hour. It was pouring down rain outside so apparently that was slowing down production a little, however it worked well because it always rains in England. Soon after that they loaded us up in vans and brought us over to the set they would be shooting at. It was a little English pub down town. We were basically going to be the people in the background at the bar while they were shooting the scene. The flashback scene was for Ian. You may know him as Desmond on the show but after rubbing noses with him all day we are on a first name basis. Just kidding. Yes we did get to hang with him for most of the day, and he ate lunch with the rest of us and what not, but he is very quite and to himself and I had to pretend to not act star struck the whole time, so I just sort of ignored him in order to not make a fool out of myself. Now lets just say if the scene would have been with Mathew Fox they would have had to keep yelling cut as I was dry humping his leg every time he walked by. So the cool thing is once you have been an extra they will keep calling you back for more episode. Some of the people there had been on up to 6 times. However since finding out about being an extra we have been paying more attention to the extras while watching Lost and have noticed that they usually blur out the background. You can tell there are people there but you cannot tell who they are. But gosh darn it when you see that blur that blur will be me! It was cool just being there and getting to see how everything worked behind the scenes. For example we ended up shooting until 1:30am and in the end there is probably about 5-10 minutes of actual footage that will be in the episode. It is crazy all the attention to detail, and everything they do. I was bummed out that we were not aloud to bring cameras. So this is my 5 seconds of fame, and hopefully I will be able to do it again in the future. I will let you know when it is about to air but this week is the season finally, and they are taking a few months off before they air the second half of season three so it will not be until January or so. Email me your address if you want me to send you an autographed picture! JK!

Halloween Fun

As you can see the kids made out well!