Happy New Year 2011!

What are your New Year Resolutions? 

Joe and Michelle's Goals for 2011

1.   Daily scripture study

2.   Daily family prayer

3.   Weekly family home evening
4.   Attend the temple once a month together

5.   Plan, cook and eat healthy meals

6.   Exercise 3-4 times a week

7.   Train for a half-marathon (April 2011)

8.   Go on a weekly date

9.   Keep a weekly budget

10. Vacation in South America

After a little coaxing, Joe and Michelle let me post their goals since I liked them so much! Thank you Joe and Michelle for sharing.

Please post your New Year Resolutions so we can help encourage you this year to meet your goals.

Christmas Bulb Mirror?

Favorite Christmas Photos from Anne McDonald
Latrobe, Pennsylvania

Here are a few special pictures from Christmas.  The first is my 9 month old great niece Rylee. The other two are my dog Ricky.  He likes to open his own gifts!  It was snowing Christmas morning and he was watching the snow!

Let's Have Galaxies of Fun!

Do you have any new ideas or subjects you would like to cover this year? What about some ways to have fun and be crazy like Elma suggested?

Is anyone interested in sharing their favorite 2010 Christmas photo? I'd love to see a precious memory from your Christmas so I'm sure others would too. If you are interested please send your photo, name and any comments you would like to make about your memory to wonkthedonk@gmail.com

I love this photo of Oscar checking out his new Christmas car and Jenny hanging from the banister. So cute!

I Love Comments!

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I'm looking forward to interacting with you all on the blog. Feel free to give suggestions and invite your friends.  Let's have a fun and productive 2011.

"The Wii Fitters"

Starting in January my exercise goal is 30 minutes, 4 times a week. My daughter, Sarah, who is a nurse told me that I will just maintain when exercising 3 times a week and I will improve when exercising 4 times a week.

I'll be using the Wii Fit when I can, but when traveling I will be doing other exercise. What are your exercise goals going to be for the year 2011? Please leave a comment if you are setting a goal for exercise and want to be accountable to "The Wii Fitters" every week.

"An Apple a Day Bunch"

The past month I have been horrible about eating whatever I want. My weight is almost back to where it was when I started my healthy eating last January. I'm not giving up though. I've decided that it could be worse. I could be 10 or 20 pounds heavier than last January. 

Laura M. has started a no sugar, no pop diet blog that starts on January 1st so I just signed up to follow and participate. My goal right now is to go until Valentine's Day without eating sugar or drinking soda pop. Thanks Laura!

Click Here to join us if you are interested. 

My daughter Michelle is already cooking low fat meals at home for herself and Joe, so Wayne and I are going to join them. She has made meal plans to follow. Tonight we had delicious lean enchiladas, zucchini and yellow squash vegetables, apples, etc. for dinner. I'm going to stay on her dinner meal schedule while we're home and see how that goes. She is using "Dana's Cookbook, Cooking Lean - Not Extreme!" for her guideline. Dana's book is not a diet book but has 550 favorite meals and recipes that promote excellent health and ideal weight with cholesterol, diabetes and weight-loss guidelines. 

Michelle just finished making us all a snack. It's a delicious creamy vegetable soup from Mary Jolley's cookbook "The Green Diet." I mentioned her cookbook on my post written March 15, 2010 if you would like to learn more.

Come join "An Apple a Day Bunch" with us for the year 2011. Please post a comment to let us know that you are participating so we can support each other. What are your plans and goals for healthy eating this year? You can choose your own program and goals. I'd still like to report to you once a week but you can decide how often you want to report to the group.

Are there any success stories out there from last year's "An Apple a Day Bunch?" We'd love to hear them to give us motivation and hope.

"Wonky's Book Worms"

In January we will start reading the book of Isaiah. Who is going to begin or continue reading with us? If we read 2 chapters every day or 14 chapters a week, we should be able to finish reading the Old and New Testament by the end of 2011.

Thank you so much for participating with us this year and motivating Wayne and I to keep reading. I'm afraid we would have given up reading together a long time ago if we weren't accountable to you each week for finishing our assigned reading.

Please leave a comment under this post so we know you are going to be participating with "Wonky's Book Worms" this year.

Grandson or Granddaughter?

Sarah is expecting a girl in May. Maybe she'll be born on my birthday? For sure we'll have the same birth stone - an emerald. Amy's baby girl will probably be a couple months older than Sarah's baby girl. We're really excited! They haven't decided on any names yet. What do you think they should name their babies? 

Christmas Fun!!!

Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!!!

Last Minute Shopping

Today we were doing some last minute shopping and saw Tammy at Shopko who was also out shopping with her daughter. I remember Tammy when she was a cute little neighbor girl that lived down the street where her mom is still living. It was fun to see you again Tammy and thank you for participating on the blog. She mentioned that she is doing Wii Fit too.

Noah and I had fun putting the road track together and playing cars today.

Yesterday afternoon Jay called to let us know that he and Merrill arrived home safely. Jay left our car at Ikea when he went shopping with his family, so went down and picked up the car last night. Better go do some last minute wrapping for the grandchildren. Tomorrow night we're having our family party and tonight our home teachers are visiting.

Christmas Show in Ada, OK

Thought you might enjoy watching the end of the Christmas show in Ada, Oklahoma.

After traveling on the bus all night and catching up on some sleep during the day, I decided to stay at the hotel and repack our suitcases so they would be under the 50 pound limit. It looks like I missed a great show!

We arrived home last night at about 8:30 p.m. after traveling all day. My parents were so wonderful to pick us up at the airport and it was fun to see them. When we arrived home, Jeff, Amy, Jacob, Maia, Jenny, Lizzy, Joe and Michelle were waiting our arrival. What fun we had catching up on everything, coloring pictures of princesses and a lot more.

Darling Drawings by Wendy

 These picture cards are so cute that I had to share them. Isn't Wendy talented? Thank you so much!

The Thinker

On our way to Ada, Oklahoma we stopped at the hotel in Springfield so Ross could pick up his car before driving on to Ada.  Ross is going to drive home to Idaho from Ada and is really excited to see his family. Donna and Connie are so nice to drive our car to Ada for us today so we could sleep on the bus last night. Thank you Donna and Connie sooooooo much!

The bus driver is going to drop Wayne and me off at the airport on their drive back to Springfield tomorrow morning. Jay and Merrill are going to drive our car back to Utah for us. Thank you Merrill and Jay for that wonderful Christmas gift. Almost everyone in our family will be at our home when we arrive tomorrow night. I can't wait to see everyone and give them a big hug and kiss. We haven't been home since August so this will be a special Christmas treat!

Wayne is anxiously waiting for 7:00 pm when The Brothers are meeting someone from the theater in the lobby of the hotel to drive them over for their last show.  I'm sure it will be a great show because it's their finale show for 2010.

Passing Time

At 8:00 am we were on the bus ready to roll. At around 1:30 pm we arrived in St. Charles, Missouri. A friend was waiting in their car for us to arrive. He was watching everyone unload what they would need for the day so John could go to a hotel to sleep for our all night drive to Ada, Oklahoma.

Lunch was waiting in the Green room for us to enjoy. 

Merrill didn't get quite enough for lunch so they served dinner at 5:00 pm. He hopes Mary doesn't see what he is eating. Jay hopes that Kandilyn does. 

The 2 year old theater is beautiful and all gussied up for the holidays.

I met Peter Bezemes of the Bezemes Family Theater and his long time friend Carolyn Strauss, fashion designer, when wandering around the lobby taking photos. 

After dinner Merrill got a creative urge and decided to draw some portraits of each band member.

The show starts in exactly one hour so we've had way too much time on our hands today. These goof balls are now rolling around in chairs throwing apples around like balls. Time to get ready everyone!

Merrill's updated portraits of The Dream Team

Merrill's ready to go on!

Click Here to see the Carolyn Strauss collections.