Random Ramblings on a snowy night

My breakfast everyday this week so far- Arizona green tomatoes courtesy of my Mom. Thanks Mom!



I did 3 miles on the treadmill today! My goal this week is 8 miles. I have 3 more to go between tomorrow and Friday!

Genna and I had fun at lunch watching all the birds. We pulled our chairs right up by the window and ate with our bird books on our laps.



After school, the kids and I stopped by here. The boys had to talk with a local artist for a Webelo badge. We spent about an hour with Amy. She showed us how she creates her art and spent a lot of time talking to the boys about how one might go about pursuing a career in art. It was so fascinating. I could have sat and listened to her for hours, had Genna not been extremely clingy and wanting to be held the whole time. My back was aching by the time we left. But we all left feeling very inspired. Connor spent an hour in his room sketching states. He decided he was going to draw the outline of all 50. He started with Texas, of course.

It's actually been snowing for most of the day. It was kind of nice, we had a "snow night"- Troy and Jameson got to stay home since they cancelled church. We didn't have to rush through dinner. We had time to clean up the kitchen and get showers in before American Idol started.

It's almost midnight and I haven't put my pajamas on yet. I still have on my new shirt that I got for $2.49 yesterday. What do you think? Is it cute and fun or does it just make you wonder if I am expecting?



I spent the rest of my day working on the pages I had prepped. I have 4 more to do tomorrow. Here's what I got done:
(You can click on the picture to make it bigger. Sorry I am so lazy about scanning and stitching these 2 page layouts!)

When I finish those layouts and get my office cleaned up- I am a messy scrapbooker, I want to make something for this. Heaven knows, I have enough vintage pillowcases!

Some is better than nothing

Ok, I am really hoping that this post makes sense. Genna was up a lot last night with a high fever and despite my sweet husband getting the boys off to school for my this morning, I am still feeling a little fuzzy.

But I am excited to participate in the Lazy Organizer's Smart Habit Saturday. I, of course, have huge plans for this year. I really like what Lara said about setting smaller goals that will help form habits. I am usually always gung ho in January. I grew up setting goals and we traditionally held a FHE about goal setting every year- just like we do now with our kids. One of my biggest challenges for myself is to make sure I keep going past summer vacation, past holidays, sicknesses, and all those things that throw “normal” day to day life a little out of whack.

So, one way I hope will ensure that I can follow through on my plans for the year is to set monthly goals right now. Each month will focus on a different area. I won't be burned out on organizing in February because I am not focusing on it until April. January’s focus is on Physical Fitness. That's not to say I won't have small challenges for myself in other areas.

I stopped working out last June and haven’t picked up an exercise DVD until this week. Well, and once I went on vacation and lived it up, it was really hard to back to eating right. After all Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas were coming. Unforunately, I am not one of those people who can eat whatever they want without paying a price.

I am finally at the point where I am disgusted with the price I paid to eat whatever I wanted. I really want my good fitness goals to be lifelong habits. I want to get to January next year feeling really great about my efforts. So I am really trying to make do-able goals so they become habits. I am also going to put into place a plan to combat the bumps that come with different routine changes.

So the habits I am working on this week:
I will drink at least 64oz. of water a day
I will exercise 3 times(I’ve already done 2)
I will not eat after dinner

In a lot of areas in my life, I am an all or nothing kind of a person. I hate to scrapbook unless I have every single item I own around me. I like to clean the whole house at once or it just doesn’t feel done to me. In the past I have done South Beach and other versions where I completely give up sugar and processed carbs. I am trying to change my thinking to be that some is better than nothing. Normally at this time of year I would have expected to be a picture of fitness perfection. This week I decided it was ok to just do my 15 minute Walk Away the Pounds DVD. Like I said, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I was working on a big scout training thing today- so it would have been so easy to just not exercise today. I read once that you should exercise first thing in the morning or late at night-at a point where you haven’t eaten for 3 hours. The new me today said, it was maybe not going to physically be optimum for me to workout at 2:30 pm, but it was going to be helpful for the working out every weekday habit that I would like to work up to.

Next week in addition to the things I am doing this week, I will try and make healthier eating choices and add one more day of exercise.

Is this going to get me to my weight loss goal as quickly as other methods? Probably not, but I truly hope that I will develop life long habits of eating healthy and exercising.

Wow, I sure have rambled a lot and I apologize. I was even going to talk about some little things I decided to do in other areas that will be my main focus in months to come, but I’ll save those for another day.