Go Me! Go Me!

Woohoo!! I am celebrating over here!! I got an award and won a contest today!!

I received this award from Ronda at Ronda's Rants and I am so honored!! I have eyed this little beauty on other blogs and have never received it myself!! Now she's mine!!! All mine!!! Thank you so much Ronda!!! I am going to nominate 5 people for it who have award winning blogs!!!

1. Dawn at Dawn's Diversions - Dawn and I have a lot in common (just start with our names and you'll see what I mean) and I learned about the PRIZE I just won from her blog, so her blog deserves my latest award too!!

2. Renie at Renie Burghardt's World - I love reading Renie's blog and seeing the beautiful pictures of her grandchildren!

3. Frizzy at Heaven's Gift - Frizzy has a great blog and always shares pictures of her beautiful daughter and the fun they have!

4. Tracy at The Journey - this blog is very uplifting and wonderful to read! Also, lots of great pictures!

5. Ronnica at Tale of a Kansas Girl - I really enjoy this blog and the deep thinking that goes into many of her posts. It challenges me to think!

And next, I won an awesome prize in a contest from Christine at Mommy Madness today!!! Yay!!! I am so excited to have won something!! Thank you, thank you, thank you Christine!!! My grandson, Landen, will LOVE the webkin!!!! I will share the rest with my sweet little niece, Daphne!

I had a long day at work today, then had my social work supervision group until 6pm. I am worn out!! I saw all the kids I had scheduled today and also held the first Why Try group with my 8th graders on my own. My co-worker is leading 2 other groups with me, but I wanted to try some others on my own. Only 3 kids showed up today, so it may end up being a small group, but that is fine with me. I am not great at keeping control over large groups of kids, so thank God I'm not a teacher, but I do ok with the small groups. Today, the kids just introduced themselves and we talked about what "Why Try" means. They all 3 said they were excited to come back next week, so that's something. I can't say that our other groups were real happy about coming, but hopefully now that they know what it's about, they'll want to come. We gave them candy at the end, so if nothing else, they can come for the candy!

We ended up going to lunch at Kevin's Seafood Restaurant instead of Hilltop yesterday since it was less crowded. I had a ribeye and some veggies and stuck to my diet! We both did good today too, so hopefully we'll lose some more weight this week. I had a low carb Slim Fast for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and oddly enough, I wanted a bacon & cheese omelet when I got home tonight. Several people asked for the low-carb meatloaf recipe that I found:

Low-carb Meatloaf:
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef (or try 1/2 ground beef and 1/2 ground pork)
1 cup pork rind crumbs
1 egg 1/3 cup tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons parsley
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
** I added a mixture of tomato sauce, splenda, & worchester sauce to the top

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients (except the mixture I added at the end). Shape into a firm oval loaf in shallow baking pan. Bake for 50 minutes. Add mixture to the tope and bake for 10 more minutes. Makes 6 servings - 2.5 carbs per serving (not counting my mixture on top.). There will be a lot of fat after it is cooked. You can drain it off or let the meatloaf sit and soak it up. It is drier if you drain it off.

Cameron would normally go back to his dad's after school today for a week, but his dad is out of town and will pick him up tomorrow after school. It ended up that today was Cameron's first driving day of driver's ed, so he was gone from 3 - 6 and drove to Hammond, which is a town about 45 minutes from here!! He was nervous before he went, but afterwards he said it was easy and that he enjoyed it. I'm glad someone else is brave enough to take first time drivers out in cars! Yikes!

The river is finally opened again since the hurricanes. We haven't seen boats on the river in weeks, so it was nice to see some out this weekend. The water is still nasty looking, but it's gone back down to normal levels and hopefully, life as usual will resume before we know it.