Happy Sabbath, all. 🙂

Hubby and I are headed to church shortly. We’ve been meeting at someone’s house for the past couple months. The couple who is hosting the service needs to attend regular services on Sabbath mornings. Thus, our study was moved to Friday nights.

Tonight we’ll be studying the plagues of Egypt and how God brought the Israelites out of slavery. If we have time, we’ll also be talking about the passover and its symbolism.

How fitting, then, that the encouraging word on KLove is this:

“But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:8 NLT

My God is an awesome God.

A not so traditional homemaker

I am on hiatus from full time homemaking this week. Oh, I’ve been keeping up with the basics, ensuring we have clean clothes and food to eat. But that’s it. Our house is still really messy in that you can tell we came back from vacation and left everything where it fell.

My husband was laid off from his job two weeks before Christmas. Actually, it was on a Friday afternoon, two hours after I purchased my plane ticket to Wyoming. Ouch. While I felt incredibly guilty going out of town right after he was laid off, Jeff told me to go.

Now that we’re home from visiting Michigan (tickets purchased last May, thankfully), we’re job searching. I’ve spent a lot of my time helping hubby with his cover letters, resume, and job searching. He does all the local job searching and I look out of state. It’s been slow going. I can’t tell if people aren’t quick to respond because they haven’t mentally returned from Christmas/New Years vacation or if it’s a sign of the economy.

Maybe my work as hubby’s “job searching assistant” still counts as homemaking, just not in the traditional sense of the word.

Today has been a fairly productive day. I’ve completed three loads of laundry and have one more in the dryer. I’ve applied for a couple freelance jobs. I caught up on all the dishes and put away most of the stuff that was on the table. And now I have bread dough rising!

I’m probably about half done getting the apartment back into pre-vacation shape. I still need to scrub both bathrooms, sweep the kitchen, and finish picking up our computer and living room areas. I can’t wait to have the apartment looking nice again. It was really clean and tidy before I left for Wyoming.

The diet/fitness goals are going as well as they can, considering it’s only the 6th of January. I’ve exercised every day except Sabbath (my one day off). I’ve also entered all of my food into nutridiary so I can analyze my calories. So far so good! I hope the scale will be friendly on Sunday and reflect some of the positive changes made this week.

Goals: Physical

I’m going to spend the next day or so thinking about and writing out my 2009 goals. I love new years resolutions. I love reflecting on last year’s goals and seeing how I can improve this year.

Last year’s diet/fitness goals:
• Exercise regularly. Find a form of exercise that I enjoy and stick with it long enough to reap the benefits.
• Eat a balanced diet. My diet this past year has gone from one extreme to the other. I need to find a balance and stick with it.
• Train for and run a 5k. I’ve been saying this for over a year now. This year, I’m actually going to do it.

How’d I do? Well… I was better at exercising regularly. I trained for and ran/walked three 5k’s. I still haven’t run the entire distance, but I ran about 2.5 miles of my last one (Thanksgiving day). Balanced diet? HA! I still fluctuate from one extreme to the other. Raw vegan for awhile, vegan for awhile, vegetarian for awhile… the only part that’s healthy is the raw vegan, as I can still eat pretty unhealthy on a vegan or vegetarian diet.

This year’s diet/fitness goals:
• Exercise at least 5 days a week.
• Eat a low fat, vegan diet. Achieve 80/10/10.
• Finish training for a 5k and run the entire distance. Increase race distance to 10k by the end of 2009.
• Drink my daily requirements of water!

Breadmaking!

My hubby is so sweet. 🙂 I decided that we should bake two loaves of bread. Unfortunately, I haven’t quite gotten the hang of kneading dough and I can only do one loaf a day with my present arm strength. Hubby mixed up the other loaf of dough and kneaded it for me. I am so lucky to have him!

Mini Reunion

I’m back in town for a quick visit! I was blessed by catching an earlier flight yesterday so I landed around 4:00PM. I’ve spent the day catching up on sleep, doing laundry, and packing for tomorrow’s departure. Hubby and I leave for the airport at 5AM.

Here’s one quick teaser picture from my trip. We were all visiting my grandpa for his 84th birthday. The picture is Grandpa and all his grandkids, except for my brother still stationed in Iraq.

Top (left to right) – Jessi, myself, Grandpa, Derrick
Bottom (left to right) – Nevin, Tiffany

What did I just get myself into?

I am now completely overwhelmed! My grandpa’s 84th birthday is next week. My dad called today and I was bummed out about how I couldn’t go. Now, since he is being oh so kind to pay for my ticket, I fly out on Sunday.

I have a layover in Denver for about an hour and then I fly up to Casper. I fly back on Wednesday morning. Then, my hubby and I fly out again on Friday to spend a week in Michigan with his parents and sister. Oy!

Thankfully, I have much to praise God for! First, I get to see two of my grandmothers, my grandfather, my dad, two uncles, and four cousins on the first trip. Second, I get to spend an entire week with my father, mother, and sister in love! Third, I spent the last two days cleaning the house, so it will be very clean for hubby when I’m gone. Fourth, my mother was kind enough to move our Christmas celebration from Sunday to tomorrow night so that I get to spend time with her and her boyfriend before we leave. Fifth, ALL the laundry is done. All I have to do is iron the rest of hubby’s work shirts and then I can pack. Sixth, United Airlines was having a really good sale and we got a fantastic deal on my ticket!

I’m just nervous about all the traveling, especially doing part of it by myself. I always stress over layovers because I’m afraid that I’ll miss the second flight. Thankfully, our trip to MI is nonstop. I much prefer to travel with my husband, and this is the longest we’ve been apart. Ever. I’m going to miss him a ton. At least Cingular has coverage in Wyoming, so I can still talk to him everyday.

Well, I’m off to finish ironing hubby’s shirts and then maybe do something about my disaster of a desk before sundown. I probably won’t be posting again until Thursday of next week and then I’ll be gone for another week. Maybe I should have waited until January to start a new blog!

Have a great Christmas!

Printer Issues

My hubby is a minimalist when it comes to his desk. I’m not, which is why my desk tends to overflow onto his. I decided to surprise my husband and clean off his desk. I stacked all his certification study books, removed all of MY junk (part of the reason the piles on my desk are now ready to fall), and dusted.

Once in a blue moon, the urge hits to create folders and labels for filing. In my kitty pictures below, I tried to crop out the background as much as possible. If you could see my desk, you’d be appalled by the huge piles of papers and books randomly stacked. Now that my piles are threatening to fall over, it’s time to file and purge.

Now if I can just get my printer to work!

Kitty pictures!

I have a lot of thoughts but no words. I’ve been thinking of faith vs. works, the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, what really matters in life, how much (or how little) you can put your faith in church denominations or organizations, and the belief of the inerrancy of Scripture. Unfortunately, I have no complete thoughts at this time.

Therefore, I bring you… kitty pictures! This is my Bruno. I’ve been taking care of him since he was one day old, abandoned by his feral mommy. My husband and I nursed this kitty from day one, and took care of all the other unpleasant mama duties that go along with that (did you know that you have to wipe a kitty’s behind until they are old enough to go potty on their own?).

Because I am his mama, Bruno is attached to me. Very. He’s about 8 months old now, but he still follows me around. When I take a shower, Bruno takes a shower. He climbs in the tub with me, as long as I don’t let him get wet. And when I’m working at my desk, he sleeps on my mouse and usually rests his head on my keyboard. My baby is extremely clingy.

Gotta love him!