With all the other stuff in my life, I selfishly have been wanting to find a similar program that only takes 30 minutes a day or so instead. With the kids and all, I just don’t have the time. Plus, I refuse to get up at 4:30am like Rachel to do the videos. Rachel is pretty enough to miss some beauty sleep, but I just can’t afford to lose any more.

So I checked out:

• Insanity: The Ultimate Cardio Workout and Fitness DVD Program

• TURBO JAM DVD by Beachbody

• And, the free, Cross Fit (which by the way has a really cool kids program as well Cross Fit Kids)

The first two are offered by the same company that puts out P90X, which is nice since we enjoy P90X. The last one seems a little military-like to be honest, but could be adapted to work as well.

Then, as I sat in my house staring at the filthy state that it has become something occurred to me. A new program. A free exercise video. I like to call it: Clean Your House, Jack*ss!

The principles of the program are simple and you are free to use them without charge:

• First, get off the couch and clean your house. Simplicity at it’s finest
• Second, while cleaning repeat, “Scrub the floors, Cinderella! Clean the floors, Cinderella!”
• Third, appreciate that you are killing many birds with one stone: (1) you aren’t wasting money on another video that is only going to be collecting dust in six months, (2) your house will free of previously described dust, and (3) you appreciate that cleaning your house is actually pretty darn hard work and looks a lot like many of the exercises on the other 3 exercise videos sitting on the shelf.

I think the idea is foolproof.  Come on! Join me and together we can change the world! Save time… Save money… And, clean your house. If you commit today, I’ll even throw in a second money-saving, waist-shrinking idea: Mow your yard, Dumb*ss!

See, when we first bought our sailboat we had visions of anchoring and letting the kids swim and splash about in the lake, camping overnight on the boat, and cooking burgers on the water while watching the sun go down. But, honestly, the closest we ever got to any of these adventures was camping on the boat while sitting in our slip.

After meeting some new folks at the marina, we learned of a great swimming hole on the lake. So… off we went. First, we anchored successfully and then swam. The kids jumped off the boat countless times while Dylan floated on Tyler the Turtle. Good times…

After some good swimming, we sailed back to the marina at sunset. Not too shabby…

We really enjoyed our last trailer (Jayco 23B), but the set up on it was more than we were up for so we looked for simplicity. The 26BH allows us to pull into our camp site attach the water hose and electricity and start camping. Whew…

The 23B was much bigger on the inside so we had to make some trade-offs in that department, but not having to fold out the beds and make them every time we went camping was worth it. Plus, we have real ducted air conditioning now. Woohoo!

The kids have bunk beds now and are enjoying them so far, but the tent is still their favorite. And, Mom and Dad have a real bed. We’ve only had the trailer a couple of weeks and have already taken it out twice. On the horizon is a trip to Galveston and Destin, FL. Gotta get some sand in it, ya know.

All the Kelleys are doing great and enjoying life. Catching up what everyone is up to was great!

As a bonus, we were able to celebrate Rachel’s Dad’s 60th birthday together.

These little black soldier flies – or more specifically their grubs – can break down food scraps in just days! Right now I’m adding a large salad bowl of scraps each day to these little guys and they are eating it all!

The BioPod houses the little guys and makes life a little easier for me. Before my BioPod, I built a house for my little friends and it worked pretty well, but I wasn’t able to catch them when they would make a run for it. See, these little dudes are much like humans. Once they hit puberty, they sneak out of the house to procreate. It is at this time – much like the father of a teenager – that I want to catch ‘em.

Why?

Well… I feed them to my chickens. The little grubs make a perfect protein for the chickens. Besides, at this stage of their life they are ready to morph into a fly, mate, and die. Then, their short little life cycle is compete. As for me, I let some escape to sow their royal oats and keep the life cycle going. And, others become chicken food.

I love these little guys so much I’m thinking of letting my worm factory go completely. The black soldier fly composts so much faster and easier – not to mention my chickens love ‘em. Sorry worms. It was a good run.

Learn more about the black soldier fly at Black Soldier Fly Blog and Wikipedia.

Sorry for not posting more, but honestly there isn’t a whole lot going on ’round here.