St. Louis is getting hit with a snowstorm of "historical proportions" according to the news. We got some freezing rain today and they're calling for almost a foot of snow tomorrow. A lot of schools called snow schedules. My center even closed at 12. And now it's closed tomorrow, along with practically the whole city. So I get a snow day for my birthday. Woo hoo!
So here's what's been happening in life for the last two weeks:
1. I read a good book. I didn't even realize it was a Christian fiction book until I saw who the publisher was. Fireflies in December was written by Jennifer Erin Valent and it takes place in Virginia in the 1930s. Jessilyn's family takes in Gemma -- the daughter of their black farm foreman -- after her parents are killed. To them, it's not big deal, but to the town of Calloway, VA, it is a huge deal. Jessie and Gemma have to look hatred in the face and be courageous in their own beliefs. I absolutely fell in love with Jessilyn and Gemma, and couldn't put the book down. I wanted to keep reading and was disappointed when their story came to a close.
2. I lost another 4 pounds. That puts me close to 10 pounds down since the beginning of the year. This totally keeps me motivated to keep on truckin' with watching what I eat and how often I get to the gym. I'm pumped.
3. I filed our taxes. We're getting just shy of a grand and it's all going to pay off 2 more credit cards. This is also keeping me motivated to stay with the "snowball effect." Once those are paid off, we'll be making $150 payments to a card that "only" has about a $400 balance on it. At this rate, we could have a decent chunk taken out of our credit card debt by the end of the year. Woo hoo!!
If you're my friend on Facebook, you know this already, but I wanted to report it here anyway.
On January4, my weigh in was 228 on the nose.
On January 16, my weigh in was 222.6.
Which means I've already lost 5.5 pounds. If there was anything to keep me motivated going to the gym, it was those 4 little numbers.
I'm 1/6 of the way to my goal of 30 pounds and I'm ecstatic.
To be honest, I haven't changed much in my eating habits except that I'm more aware of portion sizes and I'm incorporating a fruit and a veggie at every meal. I'm even trying new veggies, which if you know me you know that that is a BIG step. I am also trying to cut out soda because there was a while there where I was having at least a 32 oz. from the gas station by work every day. In all honesty, I think I've had 32 oz ALL YEAR so far.
Here's a snapshot of my Spark Page, which summarizes my progress for the week.
This morning my friend called and asked if I thought she and her husband were insane or faith filled. I don't want to get into too many details about their situation, but suffice it to say that they have been jumping feet first into God's calling for them. Two years ago they took in two little girls who legally and officially became theirs a year ago, but who felt like theirs long before that. Now they're pursuing international adoption, and K is considering a HUGE leap of faith that would involve taking their children and leaving D behind for about 6 months and going halfway around the world. She wants to know if she's nuts.
Totally.
But not in the I-need-to-be-locked-up-in-a-padded-room-because-I'm-a-danger-to-myself-and-others kind of nuts. It's the kind of nuts that God wants us to be -- nuts about him. Nuts about His plans for us. Nuts about people less fortunate. Nuts about everything He calls us to do.
THAT'S the kind of nuts we need to be.
I'm currently working on a series with our high schoolers about what it means to truly be a follower of Christ. It's not just about the name, about calling yourself a Christian. It's about the relationship you have with Him. It's about realizing His call and answering it. I have no idea what K & D's home faith life is, whether they pray or read the Word or have devotions, but I do know this -- they are followers of Christ.
We had a sermon last year in which our pastor mentions a passage in the Bible where Jesus says, basically, if you have two coats and your neighbor has none, you stole one. My friend C went up to our pastor after the service and said, "When are you going to have a coat drive, then?" And my pastor responded, "whenever you coordinate it." So he did. And we're having another one this year. C is a follower of Christ.
I've had moments when I've felt like a follower of Christ, but do I live as a follower all of the time? It's not my place to determine that. It's about how others -- and, ultimately God -- view me. Am I the living presence of Christ all the time or just on mission trips? Am I showing God's love to the least of these? Am I living my life in a way that serves widows, orphans, oppressed, homeless, hungry, cheated... The list goes on. There are lots of Scripture calling us to do that (James 1:27, Malachi 3:5, and Micah 6:8 are just some).
I don't know. Maybe this post is just a lot of me rambling, trying to get feelings down on paper, so to speak. But I admire my friend. I admire C. I admire the houseparents at Goshen. I admire the Chapman family who adopted three little girls from China, and have used the tragedy of losing one of them to preach the hope of God even in crisis to them. I admire my former coworker C who is going to propose to his girlfriend soon; they'll get married in September because he doesn't want her 16 month old to remember a time when he wasn't her daddy. I admire the D family who I babysit for; both of the parents are first responders and they only see each other 10 days out of the month.
I leave you with a song by Josh Wilson. I love the words of this song, but now that I have some examples to apply it to, I love it even more.
2 weeks into the new year and here's how things are going:
Weight Loss I have made it to the gym 7 out of the last 14 days -- roughly every other day. I'm so excited for myself, LOL. I have a gym buddy, too. My friend L decided to join Gold's and we go together. I'm not doing a whole lot at the moment, just the elliptical for about half an hour and some sit ups but it's a start and it's getting me in a routine. I'm finding it harder to get myself to go, though, now that youth group has started back up. It was easy to go in the evenings after work but now I have to go straight to church, so that's going to have to be reworked. But L and I go on Sundays after church, I'll go on Mondays on my day off, maybe Tuesdays, and Fridays after work. I think that's how it's going to work. I'm also tracking what I eat. I'm not changing anything drastically just yet -- I want to journal my food and figure out my eating habits and then I'll go from there. Plus, I really want to get in the habit of going to the gym regularly. Getting into one good habit at a time, LOL. I use SparkPeople's app on my Android phone to track my food and exercise in one place. I use Run Keeper Pro to post my workouts to Facebook. I've had maybe a total of 30 oz of soda all year. Still lots of Kool-Aid, but baby steps. I still have had a whole lot more water than I've had in recent months.
Project 365 I've only skipped 2 days. =) You can see a slideshow of my project here. Or visit my Picasa album or Facebook album. They're the same, so don't feel like you're missing something.
I've been at my new center for a whole week now and here are my initial reactions:
1. The only things I miss from my old center are the 2.5 hour naptime (lots of time in which to get things done, but let's face it... 4 year olds don't need to nap for that long) and my kids. Well, some of my kids, LOL. I still keep in touch with a few parents which is really great to know how things have changed there, how the office explained my sudden departure (which apparently is... they didn't), and how the kids are coping.
2. I LOVE SELF SUFFICIENT KIDS. My very first day, one of the girls didn't make it to the bathroom in time and had an accident. And guess what??? She went out into the hall, got her change of clothes and went into the bathroom to change herself. It was wonderful not to have to stop what I was doing to take care of that. They clean up after themselves, they are aware of how many friends are in each center so they know if they can play over there or not, they aren't spilling their milk several times at lunch. I could go on and on and on but I won't.
3. My heart really does belong to the challenging kids. First it was K in my 2's room who stole my heart with her independent, stubborn, sometimes foul mouth ways (she picked up a lot of words from her brother who had some mental health issues). now it's G who is K in a few years, LOL. So stubborn, so independent, so opinionated, and so cuddly. Her personality clashed big time with my coteacher's personality so they are constantly going head to head. I'm trying to be more patient with her, just like K needed more patience, and so far it's working. At least, I think so.
4. I LOVE TEACHING AGAIN. With the 2's I got to teach, like, colors and letters and shapes of course, but I never felt like I did when I was student teaching or the way I do now. I haven't actually taught anything yet because I spent a lot of the week just getting the routine down, but as I watched the activities L does with the kids and watched the gears turning in their heads... I was reminded why I love doing what I do. I love figuring out why a kiddo is struggle with something and trying to find ways to help them understand. I love doing hands on activities with a group that understands (mostly) that "don't touch that" or "don't throw that" means what I said, and that asks questions and has developed a higher level of thinking that they can connect it to other experiences in life.
5. I'm going back to school. I realized this week as we started teaching kids sight words that I love teaching reading. I love finding ways to teach the reading, to connect it to their lives, to help with comprehension and critical thinking, all of it. So in the fall I am returning to school for my reading specialist certification. It means a lot less time on my hands, and more student loans to be taken out, but the end result, I think, will be well worth it both financially and emotionally.
I so glad I love this place, and I really feel like it's where God wants me to be both my regular coteacher and the floater I work with on Fridays are Christians (the floater is actually the daughter of missionaries and was raised in Brazil -- how cool is that???). And while the center isn't a Christian center, I don't feel like I have to stifle who I am and what I believe.
My New Year's resolution to lose 30 pounds is a typical one. A lot of people resolve to lose weight to be healthier, to lose "baby weight," whatever... I've resolved to lose weight several times over the last few years and I did manage to shed about 20 pounds before my wedding.
Here's a photo of me in my junior year of high school. I weighed approximately 175. This was the year that I did marching band in the fall and swimming in the spring, probably the most active I've EVER been. (Not the greatest photo because it was taken at camp and it was taken on film -- yeah, way back in the middle ages of photography, LOL.)
Now, I have no desire to be *that* skinny again because I honestly feel like I looked, well, GROSS that small. My goal weight is around 195. It is probably still more than I SHOULD weigh, but it's about 30 pounds less than I weigh now, so it's a good start.
Anyway, the reason I want to lose weight isn't entirely to look better, feel better, and be healthier -- though those are all good reasons. The real reason is that I want to start my family.
(Beware: this post might be heading into "TMI" territory.)
No, I'm not pregnant and no, we're not trying. However, it's probably going to take a while for that to happen. My cycles have always been weird. I was regular in that I knew exactly when my period would be, but that was the irregular part -- it was every three months, AND it would last 2-3 weeks and be incredibly heavy (like, going through a super plus every hour and a half). Talk about annoying, frustrating, and just plain gross. My OBGYN at the time didn't seem to think much of it, and she put me on birth control to regulate my cycles. It was wonderful. I went from 3-week long periods to three-DAY long periods. but nothing was addressing the CAUSE of the irregularity.
When I married J, I switched health insurance and had to switch both my OBGYN and my GP. In my FIRST visit with my new OBGYN, he pinpointed what I had thought was wrong with me. He referred me for a blood test, which confirmed the idea. I have PCOS.
PCOS stands for "Polycystic Ovary Syndrome." You can read about here, here, and here, but basically I have a higher level of testosterone than an average women, which leads to a hormone imbalance which leads to a few issues, most apparent is the cysts on one or both ovaries. They aren't cancerous and they don't affect my health at all except for the fact that it impedes ovulation.
Another issue it causes is glucose intolerance. This could mean diabetes or it could mean hyper/hypo-glycemia. I'm at a higher risk of high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which in turn increases my risk for heart attack, stroke, etc. All my cholesterol levels and stuff checked out okay when my GP referred my for MORE blood tests shortly after the diagnosis (except my Vitamin D levels... more milk drinking for me, I guess!) and I'll get it tested every 5 years. I'm not too concerned about that issue because I'm not, like, morbidly obese or whatever.
My biggest concern is the fertility issue. It's not IMPOSSIBLE for me to get pregnant, but it will be tough -- I don't ovulate regularly (if at all... I tried temping but didn't stick with it long enough to figure it out) which obviously makes conception fairly tricky since that's half of the equation. However, in my info quest shortly after I was diagnosed, I read a lot about women who have lost weight and had success conceiving on their own. Not a significant amount of weight -- just 15-20 pounds made the difference.
So that's my motivation. J and I agreed to be married 2 years before really considering starting our family. That date is coming up in March and I know that we aren't ready. But I would like to reexamine it next March, on our 3rd anniversary. Hopefully by then we'll be thousands of dollars out of debt, I'll be 30 pounds lighter, and we'll both be ready to start a new chapter in our lives.
I had heard about this previously and always thought, "That would be neat to do...." then would promptly forget about it. A girl on the STLWed board, Chrissy, posted that she would be doing this and I figured since it was Dec. 30 there was no way I would forget about it this time. So I set up a Picasa album for it and have a slideshow for it set up on the tab above. I'm not going to inundate you with a new post and picture everyday, so check ^^^^^^^^^^^^ up there if you're interested.
I'm doing well so far and I hope that this is something fun I can look back on. I had a really cool photo for yesterday from ice skating with the youth group, but I accidentally deleted it off of my card, so yesterday's photo was more entertaining than "look what I did" but oh well.
You may recognize one or two from last year but here's my list:
1. Pay off three more credit cards this year.
2. Lose at least 26 pounds to get back down to below 200 pounds. (Yes, I really do weigh that much and yes, I am embarrassed to admit that on the internet.)
3. Read 5 books on youth ministry/faith.
4. Do "A Year in Photos." (See a later post dedicated to this.)
I think I'll end it there. 4 seems like a good number, especially with how ambitious a couple of them are.
Hope you all had a WONDERFUL New Year's. May God bless you in 2011!
