ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

Baby Stephen Dean Albert was born last week, the 11th child born on Andy's side of the family. Older sister Althea isn't yet 2 years old yet (the cute blonde in the pic below) and was #9. #12 is on his/her way in just a few months. I stick to my guess that we'll end up with 15 kids total.

I think all of us are busy in different ways but the way we choose to spend our time fascinates me. This is how I chose to spend my time today.

7:15 - wake up and get in shower
7:30 - get Blake up and dressed
7:45 - go downstairs and pack lunch/snacks for the day, get roast cooking in slow cooker, get Blake off to bus stop
7:55 - drive to work
8:15-5:15 - work. Various tasks included researching ticketing tools to sell tickets online, finding a new freelancer to replace one that dropped out of a project, reviewing development of a few sites and spent the lunch hour listening to a coworker discuss learning how to raise chickens so he could teach people in an African village how to do it.
5:35 - get home and get dinner on table. Payton had already unplugged the slow cooker and baked some biscuits so it was ready to put on the table.
5:45 - eat dinner
6:15 - clean up dishes, put birthday card in the mail, get dressed for gym
6:45 - gym with a stop by Bob and Nicki's to drop off car seat to use when Blake is with them on Friday
8:00 - shower
8:15 - order pictures of kids from recent photo shoots
8:30 - Rock Band 2 with the whole fam
9:15 - handle work issue
9:45 - Blake in bed
9:45 - emails/IMs with friends, blog posting, read blogs, work on report for work
11:00 - flat iron hair

Came across these horses while running an errand during my lunch hour. Found out later that they are rehearsing for the inauguration next week. Can't. Wait.

• We're both 5'6"
  
• We have curly hair
  
• We both love Gayle, Barack Obama and The Color Purple
  
• We are capable of gaining weight very, very easily

She's much better at weight gaining than I am (I am not 200 pounds) but gaining 10 pounds in the last 14 weeks is a pretty amazing accomplishment!

I used to let myself gain 20 pounds before reigning it back in so I consider it progress to stop at 10. I headed to the gym tonight for a workout and have been eating healthier. I will be working out 3 times a week from now on.

Usually, I like to have a goal in mind to keep me motivated but I've found that once I meet that goal, I just quit everything and revert back. Instead, this time, I just want to be comfortable again. I want my clothes to fit well and I want to feel good about myself. I felt great 10 pounds ago and need to get back there. There are a lot of things that Oprah has that I wish I had but this weight struggle is not one of them!

These are my favorites from the link I posted recently.

I'm not a fan of textured backgrounds but this one is pretty cute. Probably because it was one of the first ones taken so he was in a better mood.


I like this one but can't decide if he looks like a midget with a regular-sized torso and small legs?


My mom can't believe I'm going to order this picture. Not only do I like it, it might be my favorite. I don't really like studio pictures in general but this actually kind of captures him (I'm not trying to be funny even though it sounds snarky saying that). This is Blake. Full of attitude and cute while doing it. Can you see his eyelashes?


I like how Payton's red sweater pops against the white background and Blake's neutral colored shirt. She's very photogenic I think but my mom reminds me that she wouldn't take photos for the first few years of her life. Photographer actually told me once "I've never seen a child like this!" Yeah, I've heard that a lot in the past 14 years for different reasons about both kids.