Fiona (bottom) realizes she’s not alone!
Kitty surprise
zzzzzzzzzzzzz…
It’s been a long day but it hasn’t been that busy. Odd how that works.
I woke up pretty late, exercised, and ate breakfast. Hubby moved his desk to the other side of the living room now that we don’t have the entertainment center taking up one wall. I spent some time this morning cleaning up all the cat hair that accumulated behind where hubby’s desk was. When you don’t move the furniture around for three years, there’s a lot of cat hair to be vacuumed.
This afternoon, hubby and I took some books back to the library. On the way back, we stopped by a couple geocaches. We located four and couldn’t find two. By that time, it was four o’clock and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. After making homemade tortillas and guacamole, we sat down to some yummy burritos.
That was our day! I was ready for bed at six, but knew that I’d be up again in the middle of the night, wide awake. Not sure what’s going on with my sleeping schedule. If I actually get a response to the resumes I’m sending out, have an interview, and get chosen from several hundred other applicants (all real hurdles to overcome), I’m going to have a hard time adjusting to normal working hours.
That’s it. It was a good day, just tiring.
Sunday Exercise Roundup
Sunday
Week 6, Day 1 of the One Hundred Push ups program. Whew! That’s a ton of push ups and the total is still going up!
Running – We walked over to Walmart today (just under a mile). I tried running part of the way back but my legs felt pretty heavy today. Tomorrow is the start of Week 2 for my running program. I hope my legs feel better tomorrow!
Monday
Week 4, Day 1 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program. I feel like I’m going backwards! Since I had such a hard time last week, I decided to back off and work on building up my core some more. This morning was still difficult even though I backed down to week 4. I really hope it gets easier…
Running – Week 2, Day 1 of the Couch to 5K program. We don’t have a stop watch, timer, or any watches with working batteries so we’re guessing on the intervals! Today was 5 sets of about 2 minutes running each, followed by 50 minutes of walking. Hubby was using his cell phone (hour and minute display only) and would start us as the minute changed. Then he would have us run until 2 minutes later. Of course, he told me this after our workout was complete. No wonder I felt like I was dying. 🙂
Tuesday
Week 6, Day 2 of the 100 push up program. Only one more day and then the final test!
Wednesday
Week 4, Day 2 of the sit up program. Another really hard day. I don’t know why this is so hard.
Running – Week 2, Day 2. Another day of 5 sets of 2 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking between. It’s hard, but I finish strong.
Thursday
Week 6, Day 3 of push ups. Last workout before the final test! I’m really excited to see if I can do 100 girly push ups in one set.
Friday
Week 4, Day 3 of sit ups. After one set, I quit. I just couldn’t do that many sit ups and knew I couldn’t finish the work out. I’m going back to week 1 on Monday. 🙁
Running – Week 2 complete! We took a different route today, heading directly south from our apartment. It was a nice run/walk with lots of houses decorated for Easter! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many Easter decorations. I like this route, as the bike lanes are wider so I don’t feel like I’m going to get run over every time a car drives by.
4/12 Weigh-in – 183.6 pounds
1.2 pound weight gain from last week, in spite of all the exercise. Bummer. I think it’s due to woman issues, but I’m going to watch my food intake closer this week. I’m going back to logging my food into Nutridiary so I can make sure I’m not eating too much/too little. I will lose weight this week!
God is so good!
We have had a great day financially, if that’s possible when both husband and wife have been out of work for 4+ months. 🙂
This morning, we deposited my husband’s check from that 2 week contract job he completed. When the teller handed me the deposit slip, I was surprised to see a $700 account balance. Our checking account hasn’t held that much money in quite awhile. When I came home, I logged into the online banking and found out that we did have $700. Between the check, some help from hubby’s dad, and a deposit from half.com, we had money to pay several more bills.
We are now paid up through the end of April. Yay! Every single bill has been paid in full, on time, and no credit cards were used. God is very very good. Also, I paid May’s car payment and realized that the payment brought our balance below $6,000. I love celebrating the small milestones. When I entered the payment in my spreadsheet, I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have now paid off 25% of our total debt. We are making progress, even though we’re both looking for jobs.
God is so good! He provides even when you least expect it. There are still big hurdles ahead, but when I see how God is helping us over the small hurdles, it’s much easier to have faith that He will help us over the large.
And my God will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus
(Philippians 4:19, NASB).
Homemade tortillas
Back to the homemaking topics… 😉
Hubby and I have been on again, off again vegans for our entire marriage. One of these days, we’ll make a permanent change in either direction. Maybe. When we eat out, we tend to eat dairy. However, I prefer to cook vegan foods at home.
I found an awesome vegan blog. I’ve browsed through some of the recipes and found a few I’d like to try. The tortillas were a huge hit. It took me awhile to figure out how to make them round, but they are tasty!
Next on the list are the Vegan Patties. I have yet to try my own patties but these sound delicious.
When hubby or I get a job (whichever comes first), we’re going to be eating like kings. We’ve had such simple, cheap food for the past three months, we’re ready for some more complex (IE more expensive) dishes! I think our orange chicken style tofu recipe will be first on the list.
Why?
I had another post planned but changed my mind at the last minute.
Why, oh why, do so many Christian blogs poke fun and/or say nasty things about politicians? I went through a long period right before elections where I would delete blog posts in my RSS feeds because they were just plain mean to the people running. I’m sorry, but even if you don’t agree with a politician’s views and beliefs, that doesn’t give you any right to say mean things about them. I don’t agree with President Obama all the time, but he’s our President. Period.
While I’m on the topic, why do I have to vote a certain way because I’m a conservative Christian? Why do I have to be anti-Obama because he supports abortion and pro-Palin because she doesn’t? Why do some people believe they have the right to dictate how other Christians should vote and look down upon Christians who vote a different way? All political parties have pros and cons; all parties contradict certain moral beliefs of mine. But why make people feel less Christian because they vote for a certain politician?
The Bible says that we are to respect our leaders, that our leaders were God appointed. I don’t respond to blog posts that bash politicians because I know it will just cause disagreement and bad feelings to any involved, as well as start flame wars. But why can’t Christians just focus on the positives? For whatever reason, God saw fit to allow President Obama to be in office.
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth
(1 Timothy 2:1-4, NASB).
Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king
(1 Peter 2:17, NASB).
Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God
(Romans 13:1, NASB).
We are to pray for ALL men, honor ALL men, love ALL men, be thankful for ALL men. We are all children of God and He wants to see all of us in heaven with Him.
Pasta salad!
My developing frugality skills finally paid off. hehe
Over the weekend, my brother bought this really nasty Fry’s brand imitation cheese. Sorry Josh, but it was nasty. I looked on the website, and Fry’s has a satisfaction guarantee on all of their store brands. This morning, I took two packages of the “cheese” back to Fry’s and asked for a refund or store credit. Even though I didn’t have the receipt, they offered me a cash refund. Yay!
Fry’s has their Fry’s brand “real” cheese on sale right now, so we bought a block of that instead. Walmart had pasta salad noodles discounted and combined with the ingredients we have been saving at home, we’re having pasta salad for dinner! It’s been ages (well, several months) since we’ve had pasta salad and we’ve been scraping the bottom of the cupboards for food to eat the past couple days. The pasta salad cost us a few minutes of time to return the icky cheese and $2.25 for the noodles. The olives, frozen peas, and salad dressing was being saved for this day.
Hurray for yummy dinners! This will be so much better than hot cereal or canned chili…
Today was a great day!
Today was a great day. We woke up early, exercised, and ate a good breakfast (haystacks!). We spent most of the day job searching, posting stuff to sell online, and cleaning up the apartment.
We sold another couple video games today. We only have a couple left. Everything is posted online for sale and we’re hoping the rest will sell in the next couple weeks. I also posted our bookshelves for sale on Craigslist, as well as my SLR camera. It kind of hurts selling off your belongings, but I am so thankful that we are still able to pay the bills. Each item sold helps pay another bill. No late payments yet!
Hubby and I also had our devotional time in the morning. Usually, we read the Bible together in the evenings, but I’d like to switch to mornings if hubby is agreeable. I find that my day goes smoother when I read God’s word earlier. Almost as if I have advice and encouragement to remember all day long instead of looking back on the day to see how things could be done differently.
Sunday Exercise Roundup
It seems that the only really interesting thing I’ve been doing lately is exercising. 🙂 Hubby and I have been exercising almost every day for the past five weeks. Here was the run down for last week:
Sunday
Week 5, Day 1 of the One Hundred Push ups program. I can’t do full push ups, so I’ve been doing girls push ups for this program.
Running – Week 1, Day 1 of the Couch to 5K program. Not too difficult, but feeling it. First time running in awhile. I can tell I’ve trained before, but it’s still hard.
Monday
Week 5, Day 1 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program.
Tuesday
Week 5, Day 2 of the One Hundred Push ups program.
Running – Week 1, Day 2 of the Couch to 5K program.
Wednesday
Week 5, Day 2 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program. I almost died during this training day. I don’t know why it was so hard today. I barely finished the workout and I was crying during the last set.
Thursday
Week 5, Day 3 of the One Hundred Push ups program. I have to say, I was really pushing out these push ups. On my last set, I did 40 of them without stopping. I’ve never done so many in my life!
Running – Week 1, Day 3 of the Couch to 5K program.
Sabbath
Rest Day
I weighed myself on New Years – 187.2 pounds. This is my heaviest weight ever. Since New Years, I have tried to get involved in various exercise plans, portioned eating, etc. But I kept failing. My weight would go down 3 or 4 pounds and then go back up to where I started. Thankfully, I never exceeded 187.2 pounds.
For the past 6 weeks, hubby and I have been actively following the 200 sit ups and 100 push up plans. Unfortunately, that’s not enough exercise to lose weight. Last week, I decided it was time to run again. In one week, I lost 3.8 pounds. I’m praying it’s not a fluke. But as noted above, I exercised 5 days last week. I’ve been drinking lots of water, exercising, and attempting portion control. It looks like it might be paying off.
My goal is to lose 40 pounds and run a 5K without stopping for a walk break. I know I can accomplish my goals. I just need to stick with the plan. Lots of water, adequate rest, plenty of exercise, and eating fewer calories than I burn. I can do this.
For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength
(Philippians 4:13, NLT)
Whew! What a week! I am completely exhausted. I have a few things that I want to post about but I just don’t have the energy. Tomorrow may or may not be a laid back day, but Thursday is going to be packed. I think Friday might be our first quiet day but even that is debatable as I will need to clean for the Sabbath.
It looks like all our house guests will be gone by the end of the weekend. Getting back to regular blogging is one of my requirements for next week.
Until then… 🙂