I was getting my underclothing ( My whitie tighties) on this morning and there walks in my 6 year old! She says to me; " WOW Mom, I can see your belly button!" I laughed so hard it hurt. I had to look! She's right, I have a belly button! Im so blessed to have my girls

Thanks for that shot in the arm. there are days i feel like a reject twice over. Been married twice and both failed. I wonder what i did wrong. Donna

I sent you a private emaiil... Donna

Laurie, thank you for the welcome! (I'm wearing my halloween costume, but I'm still Lithia). So far my progress towards surgery is at the "hurry up and wait" stage. I'm feeling pessimistic that I'll be approved for surgery... the insurance company might ask me to go on a TWO-YEAR supervised diet. (worst case scenario), or ...? Who knows. My non-WLS goal is to lose 10% of what I weighed on the day of my surgery consultation by the first of January. That means I need to lose 22 more pounds, and have already lost 11 lbs. (I've lost 29 since July 1st). Luckily (?) for me I have been highly preoccupied by my "real" life. I'm up for a teaching award and had to spend the last week getting my classroom cleaned up, and preparing a special lesson to be observed. The foundation giving the award chose the day before fall vacation (yesterday) to visit me, interview me, and observe me teaching, so it could have been difficult, but I have good kids, so it went well. I'll find out in NOvember if I'm a finalist. Later in the day I learned that one of my students was hospitalized, so I've spent the weekend worried and disturbed by her fate. They speak spanish (thank goodness I served a spanish speaking mission, I can communicate well with them), so I couldn't get as many medical details as I would have liked, since medical words aren't in my vocabulary. ~Lithia

Yep, I think we've met here on the Mormonism Forum. I've been around OH almost 6 years, too and am almost 3 years out from my Duodenal Switch surgery. My surgeon is really conservative, giving really long common channels to eliminate the side effects caused by this malabsorptive procedure, so I never got to my goal, but I did get close. But I'm healthier and my joints are much happier, lol! I've lived all my life in the San Gabriel Valley area just east of downtown Los Angeles. I do love Camarillo ... hubby and I like that area for getaway weekends, but now that he's in the Bishopric ... that doesn't happen too often. Wow ... didya hear? Henry B Eyring is the 2nd counselor in the First Presidency of the Church! I was thinking ... maybe we could all ask the others who've joined the Mormonism forum to be our "friend" ... there is a list here somewhere. I'd like to see our board more active ... I know that I don't feel comfortable on my state board ... it seems they are always planning the next get together that includes people getting drunk and taking silly pictures of themselves. They've also been less than kind because I had a different surgery than most and I was told I'm not welcome to post to their "what did you eat today" threads because it's unsettling to the others. (DSers don't dump, so we can have sugar and fat because only about 20% of fats are absorbed by DSers****ep getting nasty PMs because I can eat cookies and the like (they forget my priorities are protein, water and vits, first before goodies) *sigh* Laurie