I have been sick though.  Got the stomach bug that everyone else seems to have or have had already.

Kids were with us this weekend but we didn't really do much.  Just some things around the house.  T was ill on Thursday and Friday so that was half of us who didn't want to be too far from the WC.  Though on Sunday I "taught" T a little bit on my old violin - she's been asking for so long to play so I agreed as long as she was going to take it seriously.  I had that violin since I was 10... it's a little bit big for her and hard for her to hold.  Give her another year or so... and see if she's still interested... she swears now she REALLY wants to play.  I'm not so sure...

P was a little doll.  So sweet.  I love how he hugs and kisses me all the time.  Even though he can be a real pain in the butt he just KNOWS how to melt our hearts.

That's it pretty much. 

The weekend:  Actually it was ok +.  Though we went to the Latin festival yesterday and it rained absolute buckets on us so we had to abort that journey fairly quickly.

T wrote us a note and gave it to us on Saturday evening.  It was the sweetest thing ever.  Man do I love that little girl! She wrote it in Dutch of course, but here is the translation:
     Dear Papa and *****,
     I love you both so very much.
     As much as a rocket that goes 1000 times around the world. 
     Sometimes I miss you a little but then I just think about you.
     Because I have never before seen such a loving Papa and Stepmother before!

Then she drew a little heart with "I love You" (in English, I taught her that :) ) and a pretty rose by it.  Sweet, huh?

The clean up went fairly well without too many incidents.  Of course P has to make it harder on himself.  Constantly getting in trouble, not listening, arguing... but these things never last long.  It's not like he's horrible  or something.  He's just a feisty 5 year old kid!

After we took the kids home, we went home ourselves and after a while sat down together to watch a movie.  Have you ever heard of Everything is Illuminated? Great film.  Really great!  R got the tip from someone at work so he downloaded it about 6 months ago and promptly forgot about it.

Speaking about R and work... a very unfortunate accident has happened with one of R's Colleagues... Mark, who is only about 24 years old was in an auto accident this weekend.  He's in a coma, has brain damage, a collapsed lung and multiple fractures.  Now I don't know this guy, except from what R tells me, and on the one hand he sounds like a young know-it-all kind of guy in one of his first jobs, so he annoys the older ones a lot.  So I've conferred with Ron what an idiot or jerk this guy is, but only in talking about work!  I feel SO BAD that this kid has had this accident... he's so young!  Just because he's a cocky young colleague doesn't mean we wished something like THIS to happen.  Unbelievable.  I wonder sometimes about God's reasoning.

Not to make light of the above subject (I can't, but I really am stumped for words about the situation at the moment;  I'm not trying to be insensitive), the last thing I want to mention FOOD over the weekend.  Well.  Let's just say it wasn't very good.  It wasn't hugely bad, but it was just off.  Like most weekends.

I'm about to kiss wine drinking good-bye though... I'm getting more and more convinced it's screwing things up for me.

The plan was to have a salad, at least, in the middle of the afternoon, but I was so busy at work I had NO TIME to even do this.  I had way too many coffees, not enough water... it was just an off day.

Around 5pm my boss came in with chips for us and he brought me a diet coke.  Shortly after that he brought me a glass of rosé (yes, we have a drink at the office sometimes on a Friday, it's "normal" in Europe I guess) - you see, around 4:30 I had this thought come into my head that I'd left my lights on all day (I have a 1990 Mini - they don't come with a warning bell if you leave your lights on);  right after he finally got me to call the ANWB (emergency service) he gave me the glass of wine.  I guess he figured I needed it.

The ANWB came and jumped my car and then I went to get petrol, since I knew I needed to do that already this morning.  I made it to the petrol station, tanked up (19 litres!  My tank only holds 20 so I was pretty empty!), got my credit card out to pay... nothing... blocked.  Got my account pass out to pay... no balance... got my visa out to pay...nothing.  How embarrassing (I told you I was broke).  So I filled out the necessary paperwork, used my last 5,50 to buy cigarrettes and a coke (can you blame me) and went home.  Didn't have keys to the house, but no biggie, I waited for R and the kids to get home from the supermarket and made a few phone calls I'd been wanting to make.

So, it wasn't the best of days, it wasn't the worst either. R didn't feel like cooking... we ordered out again (not really smart when you don't have a lot of money but, whatever) - lasagne.  I ate the whole thing.  I was pretty starving (I did have a stroopwaffle as well before that).  We drank wine in the evening.  I'm pretty sure drinking wine doesn't help weight loss efforts.  I did however drink around 2 to 2½ litres of water while drinking wine, just to make sure I could flush some toxins out.

On the scale this morning... 100 gr down from last week.  It's pretty pathetic.  However, today I'm just going to try to focus on the fact that it is a loss and that's what I'm aiming for, right?

This is typical though.  I have been the same weight pretty much since last November or so.  I remember doing this, and actually going back to Weight Watchers... the lowest I got was 99.8 KG.  Is it the wine?  It is really bad choices?  Is it portion control?  Is it lack of exercise?  Is it my medication???  I don't know.

I can not give up.  That's all I know.  I just can not.

In non-body/weight/food crap news...

We have the kids this weekend!  Yay!  I love how they come and kiss and hug me and want to tell me things - that they are truly excited to see me.  I am truly excited to see them too.  It does put a damper on social life of course... a friend of mine had a housewarming party last night... all this time I thought it was going to be today.  I figured, she's a stepmom too and has her stepson much more often than we have the kids, we could just take them with us and the kids could get to know her son and play and the adults could, uh, play as well :)  Anyway, I screwed up the date, so I/we couldn't go.  Party started at 9 and kids had to be in bed by then.  Besides, when you only have the kids 4 days a month you don't really arrange a babysitter then, you know?  Not cool. 

So today we are going to do more clearing out.  We want to sell the flat, I obviously need to sell as many things as possible (furniture mostly, maybe clothes, cd's, books) and we are going to clear out, throw away and/or pack up what we can put in storage.  Can't say I'm mega excited about it, but it needs to be done.

Tomorrow we are meeting friends in Amersfoort, for Dias Latinos Festival! Yay!  My friends are from the states, I met her actually through another message board, her husband got a two year deal over here and so we try to get together occassionally.  They have a 2 year old daughter that is truly edible! I'm really looking forward to a day out with them!

For now I must go take some aspirin for this headache. Wine again?