Latte's, working out, and why I shouldn't be blogging

I shouldn't be blogging, it's 8:45pm and time for me to go to bed.  But it's also Wednesday and I am committed to doing a weekly update so here goes.  

This week has been a bit empowering.  I got an espresso maker and I am officially obsessed with it.  The reason I got it was because I love latte's, latte's are expensive, and there is a Starbucks in the clinic where I work.  IN the clinic.  Where I work.  A STARBUCKS!!!  

Instead of buying a latte as an occasional treat, I was getting one nearly everyday because THERE IS A STARBUCKS IN THE BUILDING WHERE I WORK.  And I've been working there for nearly four months, so you do the math.  

So now I'm the proud owner of my very own espresso maker, which I have to say is one of the best purchases I've ever made.  It's not only economical (should pay for itself in a month or two), but much healthier than the coffee I used to make with tons of artificial creamer.  Just espresso, soy milk and stevia...boom!  And they are heavenly.

I have also started working out in the mornings.  

At 5:15am.  

Yes, you read that correctly.  

I am getting up at 5:15 in the actual AM, working out, doing my devotions, and then getting ready for work.  It's been amazing!  I'm doing "Beach Body" workouts, "Barre Blend" to be exact.  It's a combination of barre ballet, pilates, yoga, and interval cardio training.  I'm pretty clunky about it so far, but in the spirit of my new commitment to being ok with not being perfect, I'm embracing it and considering it a success.

So that's it.  Short and sweet so I can get to bed relatively on time to get my 8 1/2 hours of sleep in (probably only 8 tonight...but again, ok with not being perfect).  

Oh yea...some examples of me winning this week with food:

He's baaaaaaack!

He's back!  He's back!  "Vince from the blog" is back!  That's what I used to call him when we first met.  We were introduced through a close mutual friend of ours (you know who you are, Kari :)

She showed me something he had written in his blog...and a few months later we went on our first date.  There is a lot more to our story, of course, which I will write about some other day.

On THIS day, I'm so happy he's back.  To blogging, that is.  We both wrote often in our blogs during our first few years together, and I love going back and reading and remembering.  If we hadn't done that, I'm sure there are many things we would have forgotten forever!  Then...well, life continued to happen and we got busier it seemed and we didn't write as much.  Or at all, for quite some time.

I have missed it.  I've missed reading my husband's thoughts and musings, and now that he's writing again (which may or may not have anything to do with my incessant nagging - ok, it has everything to do with my incessant nagging.  And whining.)  I couldn't be happier about it.

This is why I blog, and why I'm SO happy that Vince from the blog is back!
I hope he stays awhile.  Mr. Wonderful's Blog

What I'm asking God for in 2017

I love new beginnings!  It's almost a new year, and you know what that means...a new planner! Have I mentioned I'm getting a new planner? And a new journal too...both filled with crisp, bright white blank pages just waiting for ideas and plans and goals and prayers to make their way from my mind and heart onto paper. I love writing, I love everything about it. I don't mind typing out my thoughts like I do on this blog, but there is something about holding paper in my hands, turning actual pages, and writing out my life and thoughts in my own handwriting on sheets of real paper spread out before me. I find it refreshing and inspiring.  I may have mentioned that my 2017 planner is on it's way (I ended up ordering a different one than the one I had last year and wrote about here).  I'm just a wee bit excited about it.

It's New Year's Eve and as I am sitting on the couch reclining next to my husband, half paying attention to the black & white movie he's watching, I am contemplating the new year.  I'm wondering what 2017 has in store for us and praying that it is mostly good things.  I know that if God allows trials into my life, that He will have a purpose in it, and I pray that I remember that when they come.  Even so, I am asking God to bless this year. For myself, my husband, and our kids.  Here is what I'm asking Him for, for all of us...

Deeper Faith

Unconditional Trust

Complete Surrender.

A new year means a chance to start over.  

Refocus. 

Prioritize.  

And for me, this new year means resurrecting old passions that have gone stale, like writing, playing piano, photography, women's ministry, time with friends, believing for good things.  It is surprising to me that I have let these passions fall by the wayside, but what's even more surprising is that I haven't really even missed them.  But there is an emptiness that remains in their absence that is becoming obvious to me now and I'm beginning to long for them again. Especially the believing for good things.  I've gone kind of numb to that. Not cynical exactly, I just haven't been expecting good things to happen and I don't like that feeling.  That's not who I want to be, and it's certainly not who God wants me to be.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13

So, it's a great time for a new year to happen!  My hope is renewed and I just know that 2017 is going to be a great year because God is good,  my husband started blogging again, and my new planner will be here in a couple weeks! Cha!

A declaration of sorts...

Ok, it's time for a change.  A change on the blog, which will hopefully be reflective of the changes going on in me.

I have been struggling for sometime about whether or not I should even have a blog anymore (gasp!).  I like it, and at times I love it (goodness knows I love me a good ramble), but to be honest it can be a time sucker. A priority mixer-upper.  And an easy way to enjoy focusing on myself...me...what I think, what I feel, what I want.  I can get lost writing, and also reading lots of other people's blogs about what they think, what they feel, what they want.  Blah blah blah.  And before I know it I have spent an hour or three of what could have been special time with someone, staring at a screen.

God has been teaching me tons about my priorities, not just having them right (which I believe I do) but if I truly value something as a priority in my life, then what I do with my time needs to reflect that.  It just doesn't make sense for me to be crying out to God for more time with my children and my husband (which I have been doing since before Nick was born), and then wasting some of the time I do have with them on insignificant things.  I don't mean to say that doing things like writing or reading or anything else that we enjoy is insignificant..it's a necessary part of a healthy, balanced life.  But what I am learning is that I need to be "on purpose" about how I choose to spend my time.

So.

I am reading this book "52 Things Kids Need From a Mom", and in it one of the suggestions the author gives is to write a family blog.  A place for a mom to write her heart to her family.  Yep.  That's something I can do on purpose!  Since I already have a blog, rather than creating a new one I can transform this one into a "living scrapbook" of sorts, a book of letters that they can read anytime, anywhere, forever.  Things that I want them to know and remember, and even comment on if they want to.  So, thus the reason for the blog change.  I will be writing more often, and alot of my writing will be to my kids rather than to an audience, or even to myself.  I don't mind at all if my bloggy friends read and comment and share what you think right along with our family (in fact, I love that!) And I of course couldn't stop rambling and occasionally ranting if my life depended on it.

So, if I am going to continue do this blog thing, it's going to mean something.  It's going to be something that I can give to my family, not something that takes away from them.  

Hey kids, let's go!  Let's see where this new adventure in staying connected and sharing our lives takes us :)

Vince thinks they're ugly but I don't care....doo-dah, doo-dah

Vince thinks they're ugly but I don't care....oh-a-doo-dah-day.

They are my new shoes, and they make me happy. 

They especially make my feet happy.  I have had plantar fasciitis on and off for prolly 14 years (which may or may not coincide with the number of years that I have been overweight).  If you are not familiar, plantar fascitis is when you injure the tissues in your heel and it takes forever to heal.  Runners get it alot, and coincidently so do people who buy a cheap pair of clogs that do not have enough cushion or arch support, but you wear them everyday anyway and ignore the developing heel pain because you love them so much until one day you wake up and can't walk.

I have tried many types of shoes and inserts over the years, with varying degrees of success and price, and I can honestly say that these shoes are the most comfortable shoes I have ever owned.  Seriously.  They are like  "Shape-ups" by Sketchers, but are supposedly just as good for about 1/3 of the price.  (My dad in me just did a little happy dance over that - he loves a good deal, and so do I.)  They have curved heels, which takes the pressure off your heel, and also apparantly give your legs a work out as you walk in them.  Bonus.  Sounds like a gimick, I know, but the reviews all say that they work.  I don't care about that so much as the comfort.  They are like walking on big cushy clouds.  The only downside is that because the heel is so curvy there is a slight rocking motion and if I lose my balance I may just tip right over backwards like a weeble. 

I was on a shopping excursion with my sister in law, Donna, today and might I say we had a marvelous time!  We spent a significant amout of time at one of my favorite stores in downtown Winona...Hearts Desire, where we sampled various dip mixes and drooled over the cute snowmen (ok, maybe that was just me).  Then we got beverages and sat and talked at Blooming Grounds, the best little coffee shop evah.  I got an orange-mango-guava green tea smoothie, which if you are looking for something cold and icey and fruity,  is THE bomb. 

Then we spent way too long at Shopko, where I did my usual...picking out things I want and/or need, then after walking around the store for another hour or so I begin to have buyers guilt and put things back before I buy them.  Hey, at least buyer's guilt is better than buyer's remorse, right?  I should have gotten that jacket, tho. 

Speaking of jackets, I have lost mine.  Both my winter one and my spring/fall one.  It's the weirdest thing.  So if I have been to your house in the last 6 months, and you have either a white, black & burgandy Columbia jacket, or a long navy jacket with a hood and a hole in the right pocket hanging in your closet and you have no idea where in the world it came from, please let me know as they are mine and I am cold.

I love to journal, and I've decided I'm going to be turning a corner with my blog.  I plan on getting a little more personal.  A little more descriptive. A little more rambly and possibly a little more boring...but hopefully not.  I am not focusing on entertaining anyone (althought that quite likely will happen as I write more about our crazy life), but rather, I want to documenting memories.  In writing or in pictures, I want to be able to look back and read this and remember the day to day stuff that makes life what it is...a journey.  OH!  Have you ever noticed that journal and journey are nearly the same word?

See what happens?

This is what happens when I wait a week to blog. I try to think of ways to catch up and then I wonder 'where do I start?' because so much has happened in our lives since my last post and then I wonder 'should I just summarize things?' and then I think 'no, that isn't very much fun' but then I realize 'I don't have the time to type out everything that's happened in a whole week!' AAAK!

So I just sit here. And ramble on in long run on sentences :)

I look at my blog as a kind of real-time scrapbook slash journal. I don't tell alot of people about it because I don't want to be like "hey! look at me! I am really self-important and I write about myself everyday and you should really be interested in finding out more about ME!" (Toby Keith, anyone?)

There are two reasons that I have a blog. I like to write, and I want to remember. The cute things the kids do and say everyday...the special moments...the things God reveals to me...the fun times and even the challenging times that we have as a family. They are precious and fleeting and if I don't put them somewhere (they are not safe floating around in my brain) they may be forgotten. I do have real scrapbooks, but I am way behind and by the time I get the pictures printed and scrapped I will have forgotten alot of the little details surrounding the pictures. And this way I can share what's going on in our lives with everyone now, who would normally have to wait for a phone call or the annual christmas letter to know!

And there is also another very important reason that I blog...I love connection. I crave it. Connection and relationship is such a vital part of my life that if I go too long without it I start to feel an emptiness. So, this is a way for me to stay connected ~ to share our lives and a bit of my heart with those that I don't talk to or see everyday.

Check back tomorrow for some pictures of our weekend shenanigans...

Deep thoughts....

"If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness."
I love that......it's one of my favorite "Deep Thoughts" quotes - remember those from old SNL days?? Those usually cynical, generally stupid quips on life....too funny. If you try to make any sense out of them at all your brain will hurt and it ruins the funniness, so you just have to listen, laugh, and let it go.

My only purpose in writing today is to earn my blog counter. You see, when I have 7 blog entries I will qualify to have this counter thingy attached to my blog that tells me how many "hits" I get and what cities the viewers are from - how cool is THAT?! I hope this doesn't deter anyone from visiting, as I won't be able to know who you are or email you any spam or anything. It's just fun to know, "Oh, I see someone from Zimbabwe has viewed my blog!"

"To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad."
- Sorry, I couldn't resist =)

~ A new day has come ~

Here I am, starting a new blog.....fitting, since I am in the midst of embarking on a new chapter in my life! A new day has come for me...one filled with hope, contentment, exhilaration, and above all - love. An incredible, amazing, dream come true kind of love that blows away all of my expectations. It's been a long wait, but worth every moment.

Through this blog (which Vince so graciously created for me with his plethora of techy knowledge - he's like my own personal "geek squad"!) I am excited to be sharing about my experiences, insights and observations (however wacky they may be) along my life's journey. So, welcome - and I hope you enjoy your flight!~A New Day Has Come~
Celine Dion

"I was waiting for so long
For a miracle to come
Everyone told me to be strong
Hold on and don't shed a tear
Through the darkness and good times
I knew I'd make it through
And the world thought I had it all
But I was waiting for you...

I see a light in the sky
Oh, it's almost blinding me
I can't believe I've been touched
By an angel with love
Let the rain come down and wash away my tears
Let it fill my soul and drown my fears
Let it shatter the walls for a new sun
A new day has come.

Where it was dark now there's light
Where there was pain now there's joy
Where there was weakness, I found my strength
All in the eyes of a boy."