praising

Today I am praising God for providing to me the opportunity to support my family. He is so good! I am learning to live in my faith and it is a day by day process. I feel stronger each day in my faith. Some days are crazy and I have to really work to stay sane and strong in my faith. Today is one of those days! But still I will praise him for my opportunities and rejoice in His goodness.

One of my blessings today is that my weight loss is continuing in a very strong manner. I exceeded my 5% goal today! That means I have lost 5% of my starting body weight. It is a huge step on my way down. Another way to look at this number is that I have lost over 10% of what I want to lose! Yeah me! Summer is looking much thinner if this keeps up!

Another blessing is that my DH is suddenly very interested in his health. He wants to watch the amount of carbs that he is eating and is exercising much more! We walked together yesterday morning and it was wonderful! I look forward to a time when he and I can walk together even more.

So I pray that you can look around you and see your blessings today and rejoice also in God's goodness for he is always good and wanting what is good for us!

recovering

This past couple of weeks have been rough in my hometown. First there was a school shooting in the small town that is our neighbor / suburb. It involved two ninth graders and one lost his life. Then if that was not enough, we were hit the following week by a shooting at the university where three people were killed. It has stunned our whole community I think. I know I feel overwhelmed by this and I don't even know anyone directly involved. I do have indirect ties to the shooter (her son attends the same school as my children), a professor who lost her life (neighbor to my friend's mother) and a survivor (who is another friend's boss). It just leaves so many questions unanswered and so much talent has been lost.

Add to these the events the stress of my own life and it feels crushing at times. I know God is good and is not going to give me more than I can handle but oh my it is a heavy load at times. I will be glad when the media can drop this story. We saw a "news broadcast" last night where they literally tried to make this shooter look evil by changing her eyes to yellow and photo shopping the heck out of her picture. I think we can safely assume that her trial will not take place here but rather, somewhere else in the state where they haven't seen the demon picture. Truly, it only lacked horns!

I hope that your week has been better than mine. Not that mine was bad... I think it is more the case that it lacked balance. The current events seemed to weigh too heavily and my family events were not in proportion. So this week I need to work on that proportion and try to bring life back into perspective. It is particularly important to me with the beginning of Lent. I have not made a decision to change anything at this point. But perhaps I need to make more time for God (not really a perhaps kind of statement there!) and make that my Lenten goal this year. Have you made plans for Lent? Would you care to share what you are doing?

Celebration!

Well my DD made Alabama's All State Choir for SATB. This was her first time to audition for the choir and we really were not sure that she would be accepted so we are thrilled that she made it. The actual days for All State are April 15 and 16 and it will be held in Birmingham. Now we find ourselves planning for a quick trip to Birmingham! We will probably try to go down on the 16th for the concert. We are so proud of her and recognize that her voice is a gift that is all her own and given by God. Neither of us sings like she does!

valentine gift

This is a painting I made years ago for a Valentine dinner at our church. There was a vellum overlay with the program on it. I think this one was a reject from the project. I suspect that most people did not realize that they had been given an original piece of art but that is okay. My art is simple at best but it was from the heart. So why am I sharing my imperfect valentine with you? I suppose to show that I am in no way perfect. Also because I love this piece in all of its imperfectness. There is only one perfect Creator and all my efforts pale in comparison! It reminds me that we all have flaws but our Creator loves us despite those things. How wonderful it is to be loved!

Ooops

A week has slipped by in the blink of an eye! I found myself in Decatur, AL on Thursday driving 5 girls and another mom over for all state choral auditions. We are still waiting to hear how the kids did but they were told by the judge that it might be this week when they hear. That would be nice. I will have much planning to do (and saving I might add) if Katie makes the choir.

This week also found us finishing up the 2009 employer's taxes on Monday. That is never a favorite job but it is done now and I will have to think about it again in April. Now it is time to get our personal taxes filed and get that money back from Uncle Sam! Woohoo!

The high light of the week for me though has to be the results of my dieting! Down 5 pounds from last Monday! I posted about my WW goal but figured out that I needed to revise the goal to be more accurate. So I still have 5 pounds to go to reach the 5% goal. That means I will have lost 5% of my weight when I started. Not 5% of what I want to lose, but 5% of what I weighed! I have already started to notice that my clothes are getting big on me which is a thrill! I have tried on pants that have never really fit and suddenly they are starting to look good. I find that the WW online program is really good for me. I am enough of a private person that I do not want to join a group of other people on this journey. I do have 2 friends that are doing WW right now too and that helps. One of the things I really enjoy about WW right now is it is one of the few things I have any control over. I am in total control of what goes into my body! My oldest DD is also trying to lose weight and is using SparkTeen. It is free and seems to be motivating to her. I am hopeful that my setting an example plus her program will be what she needs to get losing!

New week, new month!

It is hard to believe that it is already February 1! That being the case, I am going to make sure I do a goal check. At the top of my goals is health and I can say that yes, I am working on health and have lost about 4 pounds since the beginning of December. Not a lot of weight but considering that the holidays were in the middle of it, I think I did okay. I'm still on track and trying to lose another 6.5 pounds to hit my first WW goal. I'll be thrilled if I can make that by Spring break! Next on the goal list is promoting arts and crafts in Huntsville and see my previous post on that one! It is on track too. I'm working on keeping better records for TRB this year and got that started yesterday too. Over all, I am very pleased with how things are going this year ... I know only one month but that is how we do it... one month at a time. I still need to work on my spiritual goals but I do find that FB is actually helping me there. So many of my friends are Christians and put their faith out there for all to see and it helps me too! So thanks to my FB friends for being the people you are!

So have I gotten you to think about your goals for 2010? I hope so and I hope that you find you are well on your way to accomplishing the things you desire for 2010.