Angie Rambles

Today I met up with Lauren Haugh, an online friend who I met at Mommy's Helper Online Community quite a few years ago. Lauren and I live about an hour or two away from each other so we met 1/2 way and enjoyed a yummy lunch at Bahama Breeze . Lauren is the owner of Scrappin WAHM , Mom's Online Retreat and a few other great websites. We had a really good time and are already talking about meeting up again soon most likely with our hubby's the next time. I have met quite a few online friends over the years and it's so much fun to get together and talk business, family, etc. Thanks Lauren for a great day!

I really enjoyed listening to all the recordings of the guest speakers from the Celebrating Women's Day 2008 that was put on by Marie Ynami of Mommy Community . You should head on over and listen too. I even won the Trivia contest. Marie is working on putting together my prize so I look forward to getting that. How fun!

Just wanted to stop in and wish everyone a Happy Easter. Hope your day was special. We stayed home today and relaxed all day. That was nice. My stepson and his girlfriend spent the day with us yesterday and brought me an early b-day cake. We played Pictionary and boogied down to Dance Dance Revolution. I'm exhausted today. What did you do this weekend? Did you have Easter plans?

I learn something new every day. Heather, over at WAHM Consulting News posted steps on how to create a You Tube video and it sounds pretty simple. I will have to test it out sometime using some footage we took with Kev's digital camera. How fun! Do you have any personal or business You Tube Videos? If so, please share.

It's time for Tamara's Weekly Round Up . What did you accomplish? I sorted and cleared out some of my favorites and old emails although I still have a long way to go on that. I was encouraged to do both thanks to challenges over at A Tale of 2 WAHMS . Hope to get more done this week. Did anything not go as expected? Not that I can recall. What was the highlight of your week? The highlight of my week was today when I got to call our travel agent to book our return trip to Jamaica for December. She's looking for good deals as I write this. Did anything exciting happen you did not expect? Hubby bought me some beautiful flowers this week. How was your week? Post the Weekly Round Up on your blog and then hop on over to Tamara's site and comment.

This is my first time participating in Aloha Friday . I have been reading Kailani's blog, An Island Life for a few months now and thought I would join in. Hope you'll play too. If you could take a 10 day vacation with your spouse/significant other (no kids) where would you go? We would go to Jamaica! We have been once and we are booking our return trip this weekend. I'm so excited! Feel free to look at our Jamaican vacation pictures and watch this neat video we had made . This past week the Travel Channel had two great shows to watch, 25 Best Beaches and a show about Jamaica. Both were great.

This is my first time doing Tamara's Weekly Round Up . Thought it would be fun and would help get me blogging more. What did you accomplish this week? This week I worked more on my new weight loss/fitness blog and finally figured out how to keep a post at the top of the blog and add my signature graphic. I am using Wordpress for my new blog and it definitely has a learning curve. Did you tackle any new projects or activities this week? No new projects or activities this week Share two things that did not go as planned. Everything seemed to go as planned except we lost power on Wednesday and all of our DVR recordings were gone so we were bummed about that. What was the biggest joy of the week? The biggest joy of my week every week is spending time with my hubby. We joined a fitness center a month ago and really enjoy that time together.

I entered a contest at Two Moms in a Blog and my name was drawn as the winner . How cool! Jess, from Brodie Girl was prompt in emailing me for my shipping info and the most beautiful bracelet arrived in my mail box yesterday. I really would love to keep it however I am going to give it to a good friend as a birthday gift. I think she will like it a lot. Brodie Girl has much more than this bracelet so you will want to head over and see what cool items they have to offer. I think I'll add the Natural Canvas "Jenny" Handbag to my wish list. Now wouldn't that be a cool bag to take to Jamaica? I think so!

Chrysanthemoms will be going live soon. Right now they are having a contest on their Two Moms In a Blog blog. Brodie Girl is their first sponsor and is giving away a bracelet to the winner. How fun. For this contest, we have to describe ourselves using the letters of their new website name. C-Caring H- Happy R- Reality TV junkie Y- Young-yep I still feel young at 35 LOL S- Sympathetic A- Active N- Nice T- love to Travel H- Honest E- Energetic M- Motivated O- Open-Minded M- Married 11 years S- Sushi lover

Congrats to Relationship Talk Radio on their launch today, Valentine’s Day. I have been looking forward to listening in and I’m glad I did. Today Patrysha and Roy, the hosts, introduced themselves. It was really nice to get to know them. They talked about their vision for the show and explained the meaning of their tag line, “Where Happily Ever After Meets Reality” . I am looking forward to this weekly show, especially since it’s going to be short and sweet. And I just love their header, very cute. I'm most excited about the show because it seems it will focus on the positive aspects of relationships instead of all of the negativity out there in the world today. I'm so lucky to have a great relationship and I think this show will be great for those who may have relationships that need some work. Patrysha and Roy requested that listeners send in ideas of topics they want to hear about, fun, clean marriage jokes, You Tube videos, etc. Kevin and I will probably send in ...

I am entering this contest and would appreciate your vote when polling starts at 5 PM Central on 2/15/08. To me, LOVE IS...spending my life with the most awesome man in the world.

This morning I found a link to a contest over at Money Blogger to win an ipod Nano . I will normally only enter contests that I have to blog about if I like what they have to offer on their blog. And this blog, I do like so far and even signed up for their feed. I found a very helpful post on how to get ideas for new blog posts already so I look forward to digging in a bit more. I would love to win this prize because Kev and I just joined a fitness center and it would come in handy as I'm on the recumbent bike and treadmill. Winner is chosen at random so wish me luck. Happy Monday!

The Real Life Guidance report, Balancing Work and Family was a quick and easy read. I have a hard time managing my time, I'm always going in so many directions (and I don't even have kids at home) and this report gave me tips and suggestions on a variety of ways to balance things. I'm off to implement a few of Aurelia's suggestions. I would highly recommend this report and all of her other Real Life Guidance reports. If you need personalized help, you might want to take advantage of Aurelia's wonderful coaching. I have personally benefited from her coaching (and even have met her in person). If you decide to purchase any of the reports or coaching services be sure to come back and leave me a message with your thoughts.

Last week when we had a pretty good snow storm, I was out and about and the roads where I was had not been plowed yet and I paid dearly for that but luckily it was only me involved. It didn't turn out to be my day, I was running late, got stuck at a train for 15 minutes and then got a green light however a firetruck and ambulance were coming towards me so I had to wait yet again. Then I went to turn left on to the main road and slid across the entire road slamming my right front tire into the curb, really hard. It was so loud that it scared the pants off me LOL Anyway, it started running funny, my steering wheel was shaking, my tire was wobbling and well, I had to drive on it for another few days until Kev could get to the tire. I hit the curb so hard that my tire rim went all the way into the tire. Luckily we found a tire and rim at the junkyard for under $40. That was all good but I still had the loud drumming/rubbing sound. Went to the car dealer early this morning and wa...

Do you listen to Mom's Morning Show ? If not, you should! It's a daily show that starts at 10:30 AM Eastern. Today kicked off the new Crock Pot Club and it was so much fun. Many of those who listen to the show know that I don't cook. Kevin (my hubby) is the pro and pretty much does all the cooking. But today I took part in their 1st Crock Pot Club and made a meal LIVE with Mom's Morning Show. It was a blast. I had my laptop in the kitchen to watch the chat room as I was putting together the meal and was on the call in line as well. I have to say it was a blast and dinner turned out pretty good. You can keep up with the Mom's Morning Show show notes here Here are some pictures of the finished product! The house smelled awesome today. Special thanks goes to Sandra Jensen of Family Foodies who made it possible for me to cook this meal with ease.

Over at 5 Minutes for Mom they have a contest going to win an MP3 player from Best Buy . This would definitely be a fun prize to win. You should go check it out and enter yourself. They have a picture of this cool gadget on their blog too. Oh and Best Buy is giving away a pair of headphones to the winner too. Nice!

I was tagged by Tishia to play along with this meme. Thanks for picking me, Tish! Here we go: 4 jobs I have had: Pet store Pet Store (a 2nd one) Front Desk Supervisor for Marriott Courtyard Certified Daycare Teacher 2's and Kindergarten 4 Films I Could Watch Over and Over Again: Grease Stepmom Die Hard (any of them) Gone in 60 Seconds 4 Places I Have Lived: Maryland Virginia (quite a few places throughout Northern VA) Illinois 4 Favorite TV Shows: Big Brother Amazing Race Numbers CSI 4 Favorite Foods: Chinese Spaghetti Pizza Sushi Websites I Visit Everyday: Google Reader GoodSearch.com (I use this in place of searching Google because the ISSA Trust foundation benefits from all searches. The ISSA family owns our favorite Couples resorts in Jamaica.) WAHM.com MommysHelperCommunity.com 4 Places I Want To Be: Jamaica Jamaica on the beach in Jamaica snorkeling in Jamaica 4 Favorite Colors: Green Purple Teal Brown 4 Names I Love but would/could not use for my own children: Millie Po...

Workout Mommy is having a neat contest. You have a chance to win a Brita faucet-mount filter and reusable FilterForGood bottle. I'm heading over to enter now, how about you? This comes at the perfect time as you will see in my post below. Happy Sunday!

Today was the most exciting day. We spent a few hours at Gurnee Mills Mall here in the Chicago suburbs because I had heard about The Biggest Loser Show and MSN's Million Pound Match Up and their tour. A town close to us was the first on the tour. How cool! It was a whirlwind day really. We met Kae, Amy and Marty, contestants from The Biggest Loser Show. They were so easy to talk to and lots of fun. We took pictures (see below) and the staff there also took a picture which we should get back in 24-72 hours. A great experience to be able to talk to Kae, Amy and Marty. I was also given The Biggest Loser Fitness Program Book , the new Biggest Loser workout, Power Sculpt , magnets and even water bottles. THEN if that wasn't enough, we had the staff come up to us and ask for a possible TV interview which of course we were happy to do. WOW They are not sure if we will be chosen as one of the interviews but we didn't see too many other interviews the few hours we were th...

I was tagged by Tamara to do a meme. I am very new to doing these and hopefully will do it correctly LOL Rules: 1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you. 2. Post these rules on your blog. 3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself 4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. 5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog 7 Random Things About Me: 1) I'm a 35 year old step mom of two, 26 and 24. Hubby is 10 years older than me. 2) I'm horrible at math 3) I am addicted to Reality TV 4) I love to have my feet rubbed 5) I have been spit on by an alpaca 6) I gave up drinking soda and eating Oreos in 2005 7) Toilet paper roll has to be over not under (I see I'm not the only one. My friend Tishia is the same way HA HA) Now I know I'm supposed to tag seven others however I have noticed that a ton of people have completed this meme so I don't know who to tag. I'll...