Discipline

As usual, life is crazy and I forget to update this thing. There's nothing much new in our lives. We're wrapping up RIOT for the year and for whatever reason I decided that we shouldn't have downtime this summer so Chris and I offered to lead a Financial Peace University class this summer at our church. I'm excited to share the knowledge, I just know it would have been good to have some downtime. Oh well, you can't make an impact if you're just relaxing, right?

Speaking of relaxing, I've got Chris inspired to join me in P90X this summer.

I've started the program twice, but never quite finished it. The biggest frustration for me? Lack of discipline.

I want to make that time everyday to work on my spiritual health and physical health. I want to read my Bible (getting better at that) and spend time in prayer. Every day.

I want to eat better so I can not only feel better and play more, but also so that I can inspire my dad, so that he'll commit to succeed in his own weight battles.

I know, I know I don't have much weight to lose. And I don't. I'm a healthy weight, but I can safely shed a few pounds (about 10) and still be very healthy.

It's a fitness plan. I don't want to just lose weight, I want my body to be fit, to be toned, to not limit me when I want to try new things. I want to keep up with my middle schoolers when we're outside running. I want to feel as beautiful as Chris already sees me. I want to climb Wall 8 at Geneva and not have to have my belayer pull me up...

Anywho, Chris has done his best to support me when I try to do P90X, but unfortunately, I just love spending time with him so when he stays up late to watch tv, I stay up even though I need to go to bed so I can work out or spend time in the Word. He likes to make me martinis and margaritas, even though I know it's not in the fitness plan... So how do I get him to stop being a stumbling block?

Ask him to join me.

You may be thinking, isn't Chris a landscaper? Won't he be too exhausted to work out?

Yes, it's true. If we tried to work out every day once Chris gets home, it won't work. The plan? Get up at 4am every day.

It's a commitment. I know it can work. A guy I know made it work. And his 0-30-60 day photos were the extra motivation Chris needed to commit.

I've set up the calendar so we'll start May 16. This way I can wrap up the running schedule I'm currently in, plus give us some time to get a few things done before we start...

So there you have it. I've structured the summer as a big test of commitment and discipline. Which made me appreciate even more one of David's most recent posts:

For Round 2, I wanted to be different. I wanted to be weird, crazy, completely committed, no hollow victory this time. Sure there are times when I want to give in. You can skip this move, you could just eat some of that. It wouldn't be that bad. Get behind me Satan! But really, temptation is temptation. Now I am not saying you are sinning if you don't go crazy and see if you can get absolutely ripped. What I am saying is, if you make that commitment, it is a one time thing. You never have to go back and recommit. You are going to workout for an hour a day, six days a week, for 90 days. You will eat only things that fit into your day and fulfill your macro needs. Making that choice once and for all, you remove the thought of breaking your own covenant. Decide, COMMIT, succeed. You can do it.

Pray for me this summer as I strengthen my discipline.

What's New?

Oh, I should try updating this thing once in awhile.

As I posted last week, my past few weeks have been consumed by working on building a website for Chris' company. I really enjoyed putting it together. Maybe eventually I'll go back to school and get some more official learning in that area... At the very least, I may be open to freelancing for small sites.

Now that things have calmed down with that, all of the other things I've put off have surfaced:

• getting taxes done
• making an end-of-the-year video for youth group
• sewing a quilt for church that they gave me back in October
• painting rooms in the house
• updating the budget (well, this is a monthly thing...)
• working out (woohoo! started this up again today!)
• Discovery Toys parties

This list could keep going.

So, I'm trying to tackle a little bit at a time.

Today I began what I shall call "Crazy Hour Mondays." Our company is gaining a larger customer following on the West Coast, so we need to start having customer service available in the evenings for them. For the next two months I'll be covering Mondays... So my hours will be 11am until 8pm. I'm wrapping up my first evening as we speak, hoping the phone won't ring in the next 10 minutes.

In addition to Crazy Hour Mondays, I'm also trying out some different "normal" hours for myself. I want to try working 7am to 4pm the rest of the week. I'm hoping this will help me to make time to exercise after work, before Chris gets home. Let's see how I do with the early mornings...

Sorry I don't have any cute, fun pictures to post. I don't carry a camera around with me and I don't ever think stuff I'm doing at home is worthy of pictures. But I should just take some anyway. I'll try to do that.

Website

I have not been on here in a long time.

I do not have pictures to update with.

Actually, most of my free time in the past couple of weeks have been upping my skills and html and css and putting together a sweet new site for the company Chris works for.

Check it out:

Blue Ridge Landscaping

Winter Camp

This past weekend we took our youth group kids to Camp Geneva for Winter Camp.

I think it's safe to say we all had a fantastic time. The weather was cold, but we all bundled up well and got lots of walking in.

Check out some of our pictures!

Now I've got a full week ahead of me, meetings for three nights this week, dog-sitting starting on Wednesday and hopefully a fairly open weekend to get a few things done.

Oops.

Wow. My last post was much too long ago.

Sorry I don't have pictures at the moment. I'm on my lunch break at work with about 7 minutes left, so I'll have to make this quick...

November and December were jammed pack. There was very little breathing room. But we enjoyed time with our middle schoolers, we enjoyed time with family. We didn't really have time for just Chris and myself, but we survived.

January has been MUCH calmer. There is a little more breathing room, so I've started up some fitness training again. I have plans in my mind of how to build a nice home gym in the basement that will include a bouldering wall (Chris and I purchased the pieces to put up a bouldering wall back when we were still dating, so I'm excited to finally have a good idea of where to actually build it). Meanwhile, I work out among boxes with a tiny TV that my parents no longer needed.

In other news, we finally bought a flat screen tv. Chris is pretty happy with it, I can't get over how big it is compared to our old one (which wasn't that old, just big and clunky since it was right before flat screens). Not sure what to do with the old tv at this point - I don't think we can get much money for it and I think a cheaper flatscreen would serve better in my dream home gym... Anyone interested? Here's some info I gleaned from one of my older posts (prices negotiable at this point):

Samsung TV
($250 for TV, $100 for stand, $50 for HD Antenna)
I belive it's this model: TX-P2670WH 26-inch wide Premier Series DynaFlat HDTV w/ Built-In Tuner

In the world of our youth group, we've started memorizing the Shema. I'm excited to start having that as part of our way to transition into lessons or prayer time. We also have a winter retreat at Camp Geneva this weekend. Should be fun!

What else, what else... I've signed us up for this year's Apple Cider Century (I was bummed last year for not going, so I set aside a little of the Christmas bonus so we could go this year). Chris and I had a good time when we went before and would love to invite some friends to join us this year. Let me know if you're interested in coming with us! If I can drum up a little bit more extra cash, I might also sign us up for the River Bank Run again.

Okay, lunch break is over so that's all I've got for now!