Greggy left this morning for 2.5 days (sad face).  I know it's not long but I'm not used to being alone in the evenings or during night feedings.  I like making supper and having him come home and eat with us.  I like chillin in the evenings when the kids are in bed and having adult conversations.  I like having him next to me when I sleep. 

So even though it's a short time I decided to pack it full of things to do so it will go by faster.

1. I painted my nails yellow....not sure how I feel about it.
2. I am going out for supper with my parents and then for coffee with my community group.
3. I volunteered to supervise Liam's preschool out trip tomorrow in the park.  I'll tote Elliot along and hope he behaves.
4. I'm going to run around town collecting pledges for my Pro-Life run on Saturday.
5. I'm going to clean the church.
6. I'm going to squeeze in a 4 mile practice run for my race while my dad watches the boys.
7. I hope to watch some girly movie or show that Greg would not want to sit through.
8. pluck eyebrows....desperately. 
9. tackle laundry. again.


Besides that I will keep on tracking my calories like a crazy lady, because hey, it works.  I managed to lose the gained pound and then another pound.  This morning I was 170.0...tomorrow baby, tomorrow.

Maybe when my husbs returns I can be a freshly groomed and polished lade thinner than when he left. 

Case of the Moundays

1. I spent 11 hours this weekend painting the bathrooms at the church and my back is killing me.  I can`t even lift my arms in the shower to wash my hair.  I don`t mean to complain and I love helping out at the church, but our `spring cleaning`event really did me in.

2. Despite 11 hours of painting, calorie counting, swimming twice and feeling hungry a lot I still somehow GAINED a pound.  Not sure why, the math doesn`t make any sense.  Calories in and calories out.  But alas the pound is there now...for two days in a row.

3. I have my first race in 5 days and I have had no practice runs in a whole week.  I`m not ready for it, I`m nervous for it and I`m feeling sluggish.  But today I will get out and do 10K to know that I`m capable and ready to get it done.  I`m quite sure my grumpy Monday is directly related to lack of butt moving but I still somehow can`t seem to get back into the swing of it.

4. Can I please take a moment to discuss how horrible Telus customer service is.  They don`t know what they`re doing or how to fix anything.  So they are sending a guy out to fix it, but my house is a disaster so basically they set me up to clean my house.  shame on them.

5. Summer is right around the corner and I still feel too chub to wear the cute summer clothes I had dreamed of.  Little sun dresses, cute hats, shorts that don`t look like they are for men, tank tops without 2 layers of them to hide muffin tops...you know, things that look cute on thin people.

6. now my computer is doing that weird thing where every time you want to make a question mark it just makes a É .  I`m so computer dumb that the only way I know how to fix it is to turn off the computer and start it again.  Feeling fat and dumb really sucks.  So with that I`ll sign off for Monday and hope to report a better mode post run.

Community Group

 This summer marks our 2 year anniversary of hosting a community group at our home.  We have a few of the original members still in our group, but along the way some have moved away or grown into other groups or even started other groups.  We, as a church, decided in the summer of 2010 to start meeting together in smaller groups in people's homes as a means of forstering community and living out what the Bible says about being united together and sharing life together.  We began as one big group that met in our back yard, but we quickly out grew that and apointed other leaders in our church to open their homes and lead groups there.  Greg and I struggled at first with the idea of cleaning and preparing a study every 7 days.  We began to feel tired on community group days and found ourselves quickly skimming the chapter of the book we were working in hopes of leading a good study.  But it didn't take long for us to realize that the group is not about perfection or apearances, but it's about caring for one another in a real and genuine way.  Sometimes we don't get a chance to scrub the bathroom or pick up all the toys before peeps show up, but as long as we make some coffee and pray together, we're golden. 

We quickly fell into a groove of choosing a study that includes a DVD component, which takes the pressure off us to think of questions or evoke conversations.  With the pre-written questions we can easily all share our experiences or thoughts and learn together. 

We just finished the 'Prodigal God' series by Timothy Keller (epic) and decided to have a big meal together on our last day of that series as kind of symbolic of the big feast the father had when his lost son returned.  So of course, that meant bacon and steak...right? 

I was on veggie duties so I wrapped asparagus, peppers and onions in bacon and roasted it to delicious perfection.  The maple flavors in the bacon were super good with the veggies and I was proud of making something that tasted good.  If you know me, you know I'm not great at cooking and I'm really not great at making things up on my own. 

 Again, messy house but still ready to be filled with laughter and friendship.

 The night was truly made by these massive steaks that Greggy grilled to perfection.  SO good and SO huge.

 A delightful pot luck of salad chips, potato salad, drinks and the rest made for a perfect taste combo.

 enjoyed by all...

 Especially Brad who ate at least 2 steaks .no problem...

And since summer is coming and some more students are moving home or friends are off to work at camps, we will shift again into a different group, grow again and hopefully challenge one another again.  This summer we hope to incorporate some acts of service and practical workings of our faith into our group.  I can't wait!

My Fitness Pal

 Alright, it's time to introduce you to my secret numbers and my secret weapon.  I do this for two reasons; the first being that with greater honesty will hopefully come greater accountability and weight loss success, and the second being that I recently came across this blog where this awesome woman is killing it weight loss and is super candid about it all.  I was inspired.

So on February 28th I got this free app called MyFitnessPal and started tracking my food and weight.  I entered my beginning weight, my goal weight and my fitness level (which I actually left at sedentary) and it spat out my magic number of allotted calories...1400.  I was very vigilant and tracked everything that went in my mouth.  As you can see by the first photo, the first 10 pounds came off in no time, but things have definitiely slowed down as of late.  Once I lost the first 10 pounds the app told me to recalculate my numbers and then lowered my allotted calories to 1220 per day, which is figuring for a 1.5 pound loss per week. 

The crazy thing is that it works.  As the weight was coming off, I was feeling empowered to keep going and was pretty strict about my calories.  Greg even joined and got the app and we spent a few months scanning barcodes and adding up our food before we ate every meal.  For each meal you click "add" and then search for whatever you are going to eat/drink.  Once you add something once, it remembers it so it's easy once you establish a big database of your regular foods.  It will even give you totals for each day or week of your nutritional intake, fat intake, vitamin intake...etc. 

When I started this, my eyes were quickly opened (as I have blogged about before) to the actual caloric and nutritional value of things I regularly consume.  My regular Starbucks iced vanilla latte can eat up as much as 300 of my daily calories.  Some apple juice is easily 100 and forget about popping a piece of cheese in my mouth, 80 calories thank you very much.  But just as my eyes were opened, my stomach was shrunk.  It was hard but it only really took a few days of feeling hungry to shrink my stomach.  Eventually I didn't even want to eat like I used to and I was more easily satisfied. 

So below is what the weigh in screen looks like. When you record your weight it continues your graph.  As you can see, the fateful day I stepped on my mom's digital scale (Feb.28, 2012) and was dumbfounded that I weighed 189 pounds was when I decided to start this...and purchase a battery for my digital scale.  Today I'm 171.2, although I have been this weight for a few weeks now and need to get my butt back in gear.  My goal weight is 155 and my 'halleluiah goal weight' is 145, which is what I weighed when I got married. 

 The next screen is where you add your food and tally up your calories.  It's all nice an green when you have calories remaining, but when you eat too much, the numbers turn red and it tells you "if every day were like today, in 5 weeks you would weigh ____".  That usually just makes me really mad because I already ate too much and I don't care what I would weigh then, I just want to eat my cookie in peace."

So there it is, my little handy helper that I greatly credit for my so far success of 18 pounds gone.  And now that my digits are out there I hope to share the rest of my journey with you in an honest way. 

Greg's 30!

 A few weeks ago my husby turned the big 3.0. and I'm glad to say I think I pulled off a good party.  I had been thinking about this party for a long time.  My original plan a few years ago was to save and take him on a surprise trip to Vegas, just the two of us.  But as the time got closer I didn't have enough money and I knew we would have a tiny new baby so that was out of the question.  So instead I just planned a party with a slight 1982 theme and invited some close friends to join us in celebrating.  Being in ministry means you're pretty much always on a budget, so I worked hard to pull it off for cheap. 

 We rented a room in Greg's sister's church and got a sweet discount because we know them and because we pastor at another church, and this town ain't that big so they sort of knew us.

 The biggest item price wise was the cake but I was not about to try and come up with something as cool or tasty as this on my own.  Greg loves carrot cake and I do not make good carrot cake, and I do not make nice icing.  I was super impressed with how the bakery went above and beyond with the 80's theme.  There was a tape, and a pacman on the other side of this and it was sooo good.

 I had asked a couple of Greg's closest and long time friends to say a few words about Greg and I myself gave a toast to how awesome he is.  I figured it's always nice to hear how great you are...coming from someone else.

 For pretty cheap I scored some poster board in neon colors and some pipe cleaners and made a big wall decoration PacMan and ghosts.  I also made a JeapoGreg game where our guests could win 80's pins as prizes for guessing the right answers.

 My table centerpieces were these neon Dollar Store baskets which I decorated with stickers to say '30' and '1982' and stuffed with candy reminiscent of the 80's.  That was a hit since who doesn't like sitting at a party stuffing their face with Pop Rocks?!

 Lastly, I asked Greg's parents for pictures of Greg as a kid/baby and added some of my own to make a giant '30' in pictures.  This was a fun feature that evoked a lot of laughter and discussion.  But because I"m nice I didn't choose anything too embarrassing.

Happy Birthday, Greggy!  Love you lots and hope you had a great party!

Running Success, Bible Reading Mess

Yup, I'm still alive.  I really hoped to document more of this year than I find myself doing, but it just seems to be flying by so fast and every week fills up with meetings, parties, yard sales, road trips and church events.  Today we have a friend over who is finishing our baseboards in our renovated basement, plus I'm supposed to go clean the church soon and get all my yard sale things washed up and priced for our early morning sale tomorrow.  Thanks to ridiculous property taxes we are trying to come up with some creative ways to make money to pay it all off.  But deep down I dislike yard sales because they are so much work, then you get looky-loos and people who want to argue about paying 75 cents for your stuff because they think that is too much money? Ug.  Oh well, at least it's supposed to be nice out and we can hopefully sell a lot of our old stuff and make a chuck of change.

On the running front (which I'll mention first since I'm not sucking in this area), I've been excited to break new personal records and feel good about my progress.  Some of my personal goals to beat have been, running 2 miles without stopping, (check), running 5 miles (check), running 10 minutes and walking one for the duration of my 5 miles (check), breaking my 5 mile distance (check), and doing some 10 minute miles (check).  Each new goal that I make and break feels really awesome and although the first few months of this were really hard and felt like they could potentially cause death, they have paid off and I'm finally reaping some good benefits!  I've also found a great 10K race in town here that supports Pro-Life and I'm so stoked to be running it for a great cause.  It will be my first official race and so far the support from my family and friends with pledges and encouragement has been a true blessing. 

For a while I was frustrated that no matter how far or fast I was running, there was always someone doing better than me.  A friend or acquaintance who could run 8 miles in just over an hour, or friends who would post on facebook how they made it out for a "quick 6 miles" made me jealous.  But I'm slowly realizing that I only need to compete with myself and I should be proud of the fact that I can run 6 miles because only 4 months ago I couldn't run 2 minutes in a row.

On the Read The Bible In A Year front (which I'm mentioning secondly on purpose), I've been seriously struggling.  And by struggling I mean, not doing.  I began to fall behind sadly when I was wrapped up in The Hunger Games and it's been down hill from there.  I read all of Joshua in 2 days to try and catch up and I felt like I didn't retain it or enjoy it.  The program has been making my devotions feel like failures and the few minutes I get in a day to read scripture feels like homework I'm catching up.  I missed reading The New Testament and exploring Jesus who came and abolished the law anyways.  Reading days and days of the Law was seeming disheartening.  I understand some of those Bible plans now where you read some old and some new testament every day.  So my new plan is to slowly catch up while at the same time reading a New Testament book slowly and with purpose.  I'm starting in 1 Peter at the suggestion of my hubby and already feel rejuvenated.  It sucks to have failed at this so soon, especially since I seem to be on track with my other goals but I'm just being honest.  It wasn't going well. 

So there's another catch-up blog post... hope to one day write something insightful or thought provoking.