Hanging Out with RoboBoy

I'm still going sloooowly down in my weight. It's a struggle not to want to focus on doing all I can to make the numbers go down more quickly. I love what my dear friend said about that recently on Facebook.

I was reading 2 Chronicles 14 last night and here's how The Message renders that verse: "O God, you aren't impressed by numbers..."
No, God's not impressed by (in this case) the number of soldiers marching against His people. Nor is he impressed by the number on my scale or the number of pounds I can report having lost. God is impressed with whether or not I trust Him to provide what I need when I need it and not try to get it for myself. 
I'm the one who's impressed by a lower number on my scale or on the tags of my clothes. 
Then God reminded me that I don't live for myself. This isn't about me. It's about Him.

I think my friend Michele has got the right attitude here! Lord, please help me to have that same attitude!

As our church is getting ready to host our annual VBS Day Camp, my two oldest are going to help with decorating during the day. Actually they are preparing all the decorations which will be put up closer to the week of VBS. We have quite a large church so there are a LOT of areas to cover. This afternoon it was just my youngest and the pets here at home. We had gotten a few chores done, so RoboBoy and I decided to play a bit of Minecraft together. It was fun to just hang out with him doing something that he loves.

By the way, in my opinion, that is a GREAT way to foster internet safety for kids. Get involved with the things they like to do online so you will know what they are up to. By doing this you may also help them to see potential problem areas that they might otherwise not recognize.

If you have younger kids who you are just now teaching how to behave on the internet, you might want to check out the preschool games on Learning Games For Kids. There are lots of fun games that your little one and you can play with out worrying about accidentally seeing something offensive.

May the 4th be With You!

I finally did it! I broke past my plateau! I'm no longer stuck at 158 but am now 157.6. The challenge now is to stay below 158 and keep going down. I have help with reaching this goal. Someone anonymously donated a month of Fitness Bootcamp for me! I'm SO thankful for this gift!! While I didn't miss having to get up so early on Saturday morning, I DID miss working out with my friends!

We decided to enjoy some "fireworks" last night and invited our neighbor and her daughter to come join us. Our neighbor was commenting on how RoboBoy is getting so tall. All three of my kids are getting tall, but RoboBoy in particular seems to be in a major growth spurt.

One of their favorite activities is to write stories. Fashionista is working on one which she has asked me to edit for her when she is done. I figure that this is a great way for her to get creative writing help and also practice her spelling and punctuation skills, as well as grammar skills!

We got our new doggie, Lightening. He is so sweet! We couldn't have asked for a better dog to fit our family! Lightening is getting spoiled rotten with so much attention. I think even MyHero, who was reluctant to get a dog, is being won over by Lightening's loving personality.

I want to give a shout out to all the soldiers and vets who have served to protect and give us the freedoms we have here in America! This is a graphic made by a dear friend of mine and shares most succinctly my gratitude for my freedom! Thank you, Melanie for this wonderful graphic! Hope that you don't mind that I've been using it!

Getting a New Family Member!

I'm still working out and attempting to loose weight. Just keep reciting my mantra of "slow and steady wins the race". Still building muscle so that's a good thing and my clothes are bigger on me. Looking forward to finding out what my weight is at my next weigh in.

We are getting a new dog tonight. The kids and I are so excited! I've been wanting a dog for such a long time and saw that a family near us needed to find a new home for their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. They have a 4 year old who apparently can't keep his hands off Lightening. I'm guessing that their 9 year old named him. He was named after Lightening McQueen in Cars. Hehe This family has had him since he was a puppy and he is now 5 years old. We are so looking forward to spoiling him!

This past week was quite a busy one for us. The kids went for their yearly homeschool testing. I knew that math was going to be an issue for them and it was. This is precisely why we are continuing to work on math through the summer. I'm seriously considering giving the 2 month trial for Aleks a spin. They have an artificial intelligence which is able to target a student's problem areas so that they are able to get special focused attention on those. I'm thinking this may be just what we need to get our math levels back up around here.

Now that we have our testing done and the results mailed off to the appropriate authority, I just need to make sure that our homeschool portfolios are in order. This shouldn't be a terribly difficult task since our chosen curriculum, Time4Learning keeps records for me.

Trying to Break Out of This Plateau

I have been sitting at the same weight for 2-3 weeks now. The only thing that is keeping me from being TOTALLY discouraged about this, is that my clothes are still feeling loose. In fact, I went shopping with my Mother-in-law yesterday. She pointed out a dress on a rack in Walmart and said, "That would look really cute on you!" I took a look at it and saw that it was marked down to $5 from $20. I decided to go try it on. While trying it on, I realized that it was a size 10 and if FIT!!! I can't remember the last time I could wear a size 10! A month or two ago, I would not have been able to get into that same dress! I kind of feel like this is God's special little gift to me as a reward for working so hard. And an encouragement to continue. God knew that I would never even consider buying the dress unless it was priced that low.

I'm continuing to work to get lesson plans ready before our new school year starts. One of my goals is to set up spelling lists for ManBoy in our homeschool spelling curriculum. My plan is to use vocabulary words from his science course. That way he will be getting practice learning how to spell these words as well as hopefully making it easier for him to learn his science.

A Little Wisdom, (very little!)

Yesterday during my workout I was telling myself that it was a good thing that I wanted to quit. The thought occurred to me that if you don't want to quit during a workout then you aren't challenging yourself. Then, as I tend to do, I related this to my spiritual life. I ended up coming up with a phrase that probably isn't all that deep or original, "The Christian life is like a workout. If you aren't feeling the burn, then something needs adjusted!"

My kids are feeling the burn! Even though it's summer break, I've been making them workout and do math. I just started a new math curriculum with them, Teaching Textbooks. Today is the first day with it. ManBoy has already voiced his approval of it. Praise God! Of all the pros and cons of homeschooling, one of my favorite pros is getting to choose the curriculum that best fits our family! We have struggled for so long in the area of math, it will be refreshing to finally find something that will work for us!

Still losing!

I'm down another pound this week! Yippee! A big part of me really wants this to happen faster, but I keep reminding myself, "Slow and steady wins the race!" This refers to my weight loss, not my movement!

I also was able to break past a MAJOR (for me) fitness barrier this past week! Warning:  Any guys reading this, you may want to tune out for the next paragraph or two.  

I tend to have very painful periods due to having Endometriosis. Because of that, I've always taken my period as an excuse to lay off working out. Previously, this has caused often long disruptions to my workout routine with me taking weeks or months to get back to working out. Doesn't make for very consistent weight loss!

Last month, I was thrilled that I was able to get right back into my routine after taking 10 days off for my period. This month, I'm elated that I've not taken ANY days off!! I managed to continue my workouts right through the cramps! I felt better during this period than I have in forever! My hope is that I'll never have to skip another workout due to my period again!

Ok, guys, you can tune back in here! I'm adding in a new thing to my "rest days". I want to start doing yoga on my non-workout days. A friend told me about this DVD that offers a Christian Alternative to yoga and I ordered it. It's called PraiseMoves Flow and incorporates scripture into the workout. They have other workout videos on their site as well. There's even one called, PraiseMoves Alphabetics DVD!

It's all yoga postures that mirror the letters of the Hebrew alphabet! Now that's what I call a unique way to put words in ABC order!

 

Can't Get Me Down!

It has been an interesting week. During one of my workouts last week, I pulled or injured a muscle in my abdomen. After that I would get intense pain when I moved or stretched certain ways. Not fun! Because of this, I knew I was going to have to modify my fitness bootcamp workout with the girls on Saturday. I was already feeling at a disadvantage because of that.

So then our instructor, Brandice, had us go do some suicide runs on a strip of pavement nearby. I was on my way back from the very first cone when my knees buckled and I wiped out on the pavement. How embarrassing! Brandice wouldn't let me do any more of the suicide runs after that. I joked that I guess I took the name of the drill a little too seriously. I did manage to get through the bootcamp in one piece, although my knee and palms are a bit scraped up.

I've been very careful this week to let the muscles in my abdomen rest and heal. I believe my injury is healing nicely since I can now do the stretches that before were causing so much pain. What a relief!

This past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend. I want to say a big THANK YOU to all the soldiers and veterans who sacrificed so that I can have my precious freedoms!

We celebrated the holiday by taking MyHero's mother to the beach! We all had a great time and then enjoyed a wonderful meal back at our house.

By the way! Did you know that you can get a Memorial Day spelling list at spellingcity.com? You can even go into the play games section and play hangman. What a neat way to learn the meaning of Memorial Day while learning spelling words at the same time!