COLD WEATHER, COLD STONE

Today I was at the hospital with the kids getting their echocardiograms and stress test for medical clearance for the show. A special hi going out to all our fans at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital especially the blood drawing department that has our article copied and is handing it out to people. HI! Right after the hospital we went to my mother and father's pool. Yes, MTV picked the coldest day to shoot a pool scene. We jumped in the pool and just about had a stroke. I made a comment that we should race each other to get warm. I was kidding but Brian the associate producer wasn't. We raced and played games for a while. Then I taught Cynthia how to do a back dive off the diving board. I told her if she learned how to do the back dive I would take her to Cold Stone Creamery in Torrington. Shhh don't tell her but we were already planning on going there tonight. When we came back home we bleached Cindy's hair. Her hair is now the color of mine, blond. Hey, gram this is now two times you got your wish of Cindy having blond hair. MTV didn't want her to dye her hair any color because then they can edit the filming and put in all together and not worry what sequence the hair color was in. Then we all got interviewed again about the same things we get interviewed about every day. Repeat, Repeat. They ask us the same questions but different ways every day. I guess they will edit the tapes and find the best day, with the best answers, with us in our best outfit. LOL. After dinner we went to Cold Stone. It took us over a hour to get the approval to film in there. Of course once we got the approval we walked in and the owner was saying, Welcome to Cold Stone Creamery. No one has ever welcomed us before. Did you know if you tip them the employees sing? Once they started singing people were tipping them left and right. We had our favorite employee, Joe, waiting on us. I told you Joe, we were going to be famous. Maybe you will be now too. If anyone was planning on coming to our Tag Sale tomorrow, it is cancelled. That is another story in itself. MTV has something big tomorrow they tell us. We will see . . . . . . . Bonnie

THE KLUMPS

Today started off with MTV coming to my work with my daughter, Cynthia. They taped both of us telling one of my co-workers, Debbie, about our goal. What is our goal? The goal is for three of us to lose 30 pounds by Sept. 15th and hopefully get Chris Jr. off of sugar. This is going to be hard but even if we don't reach our goal we will be healther and weight a lot less. Next they took Cynthia to meet a friend she hasn't seen in a couple of months and tell him about her goal. Then they taped me making baked mac & cheese. The mac & cheese recipe goes back to my aunt, Janice. It is not your basic mac & cheese recipe. I have never had mac & cheese better than this. My aunt thinks this recipe came from her grandmother. My aunt use to make this for me when I was a kid and I absolutly loved it. When I had kids I started mading it for them. This is there all time favorite meal. I alway make 2 lbs. of it so the kids can have left overs for the next night. Aunt Janice, I am going to make this dish famous. MTV taped me making this same dish in the green light taping. Aren't I get so technical saying green light. That means when they come to film/shoot you for a couple of days before they make a decision if this is the episode they want to shoot full time. While making the mac & cheese I had to talk into the camara and tell every ingredient and every step I was doing. I like had my own cooking show. NO MTV, I do not want a cooking show. I hate to cook. When it was done cooking we went to my parents house and met with them and my sister and her family. The first thing that came to mind about this dinner situation was it truely was like watching Eddie Murphy in "The Klumps" except we are a different colored skin. No we weren't passing gas but we were all talking at the same time, making fun of each other and ourselves. One of the directors had to tell us to talk one at a time. We did calm down and got serious. One thing the four of us learned and now my sister and parents learned is it is hard work being on film. Every one thinks it is easy. You have to repeat yourself a lot or re-word what you just said because they may not have heard you or didn't have the right angle. Somethings we are walking in or driving in places 2 or 3 times over and over. Tomorrow the kids are off to finish up the rest of their medical tests so we can start the fitness part. It is 10:15pm and I am whipped. I think we are going to look forward to our vacation in a week and a half to just sleep. Bonnie

The Night Off

7 pm and Gena just left. She spent the afternoon with Cindy just filming her doing every day things like walking around with Baby. We went to our TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meeting that I am the leader of. My chapter is the oldest one in CT. I only joined in September but the women there have been a good source of inspiration. I hope I am doing the same for them. Some of the members didn't feel right being tape so they choose to sit this meeting out. Hope they weren't too mad about me bringing MTV. I told them last week I had a guest speaker. My mom even came to the meeting. She always says she is going to come but never has until tonight. Nice to see you Mom. Before MTV taped anything Gena explained who she was and had everyone sign releases so the women got to choose to stay or not. Sorry to the two members who chose to sit out. Brian spent the day with Chris Sr. and Chris Jr. at work. Brian loved going to Chris Sr.'s work. Chris took him around on the payloader moving junk cars. He interviewed Chris' uncle, Jeff, and cousin, Brandon. Tomorrow the TV crew meets the whole family. Bonnie

11 pm

9pm and the MTV producers are here. We got to meet the two producers that will be working with us all summer, Gena and Brian. They are both young and sassy like us. This should be a good match for our family. They came tonight instead of tomorrow morning to meet us because we are all busy in the morning and they wanted to meet us as a family. We had to eat dinner together at 9pm while they were filming. After two hours of filming and Chris Sr. getting interviewed they have left for the night. The producers are staying in a hotel in Waterbury. I e-mailed them some other options for bed & breakfasts/hotels/inns in the Litchfield/Torrington area. They will be back tomorrow morning to see Cindy and then off to everybody elses work. Tomorrow is another day. Bonnie

Prior to MTV Coming

What were we doing prior to MTV coming? We were all getting physicals, stress tests, and echocardiograms. No, we are not sick. Maybe we are not physical fit but our insides are healthy. We have done a lot of things before we got to this point with MTV. The first thing was Cindy auditioned at her school. She had a 30 minute video taped interview with a girl named Lauren. Lauren liked Cindy and said, "I am going to push for you to get this." Oh, by the way is your family as outgoing and funny as you. YES. Could they afford to lose weight and get healthy. YES, except for my brother, Chris. Forward a few weeks and Rebecca, from casting called Cindy while she was on vacation in Florida. They needed pictures of the whole family and our house. Well, mom, dad, and Chris Jr. took pictures of the house and the three of them. They sent pictures of Cindy they had on the digital camara. A couple of days later Rebecca called again and said they wanted to send a producer out to do a green light at our house in TWO DAYS. She was really pushing for us too. O.K., two days away. Cindy got home from vacation later that night and we wrote up a exact schedule of what we would be doing Friday and Saturday. Justin, a producer came Friday morning bright and early. He miked Cindy up and off to school he went with her. They had a great day filming at Cindy's high school. The green light was filled with us eating every imaginable fattening food we ever eat. It was fun but tiring. We were all interviewed for two days straight. Then the waiting began. They said we would hear something between 2 to 4 weeks. On Thursday of the fifth week we got an e-mail from Rebecca, to call her when we got a chance. She said that she is always the one having to call people and tell them they didn't get the show, but not this time. WE MADE IT. That was a couple of weeks ago. O.K., don't tell anyone MTV says. Oh, can we tell our immediate family like the grandparents and great-grandparents. Yes. So we did. Bonnie

Two Days Before MTV Comes

06/18/07 Hello Family and Friends, We thought we would take you on our journey with getting fit as a family. Today is Monday and the official word is MTV is coming Wed. morning. All we really know is that we will be meeting two producers Wed. morning, Gina and Brian. The taping will begin. MTV likes to keep us in the dark about everything. Everything is a surprise. Bonnie