Workin' It

I LOVE my job. Seriously. I love the school, I love the kids in my class, and I love the people I get to work with. It all just goes to show that all the stress I went through this summer was silly and God had a plan all along. But I'll write about that another day.

Over the past few months I've gotten to be good friends with the teachers on my grade level. One day over the holidays a few of us got together to have lunch and just catch up. While we were there we started talking about how we had all gained a few pounds (even though they're still super skinny, but whatever) and decided that we wanted to start walking together after school. It's nice to listen to music or a book while you walk, but it's so much nicer when you have someone to talk to. Or it is for me, anyway.

So last Tuesday we started walking after school. The road to the school is a little over a mile long, and the school is pretty much the only thing on the road, so there's not a lot of traffic in the afternoon. We thought it was about a mile and a half, so we were a little disappointed after the first day when we realized we had only walked a little over two miles. The next day we decided to walk all the way around the school before walking up the road, and around the school again after we got back. I took my phone and used the Map My Run app that Sunny told me about, and that ended up being 3.6 miles. The time passed so quickly since we were enjoying talking. We walked four days last week!

I've really liked doing this because even though I get home a little later than I could, when I do get home I've already exercised and I can just relax. The other teachers on our grade level are planning on joining us, and we put a note in the school newsletter in case anyone else wants to join us. We figure the more people that go, the more motivation we'll have :)

Just by walking after school and not changing my eating habits much, I lost 1.5 pounds last week! Granted, I gained quite a few pounds over the holidays, so I don't expect to lose that much every week just by walking, but it was a good start. This week I want to add a little strength training to get toned up a little. I'm going to try to eat more fruit and drink more water, too. I should quit drinking carbonated drinks altogether, but I'm not ready to give up my Diet Cokes just yet :)

Netflix and Hulu

I love Netflix. We got mad at them a while back when they upped their prices and cancelled, but a few months ago we started subscribing again. We did it mainly because of a show that Lee wanted to watch, but I'm glad we did. I like it mainly because I have the app on my ipad and I can watch my TV shows while I walk on the treadmill :) We had been streaming it through the Wii so we could watch on the TV in the living room, but Lee recently got surround sound that lets us watch through that. So now the Wii is in the bedroom and we can watch Netflix in there too. Kind of a problem if I actually want to PLAY the Wii, but we can deal with that later.

Last week we started watching Downton Abbey on Netflix and got hooked on it. The only problem is that Netflix only has Season 1. Being the TV show addicts that we are, we decided to get the week-long free trial of Hulu Plus and watch it on there. When we were setting it up to stream through the surround sound we found out that we could get a 3-month free trial of Hulu Plus! So now we have plenty of time to watch Season 2 [but it won't take us much longer than a week].

Now we're debating on turning our cable completely off and just using Netflix and Hulu Plus [if we decide we like Hulu Plus, obviously]. The only problem is that not many of my Bravo shows are on there and not many of Lee's Food Network shows are on there. It would save us a lot of money every month if we did that, but I just don't know how I feel about it. Anybody have any thoughts on doing that? Also, any TV show suggestions for watching while I'm on the treadmill? I think there's a Hulu Plus app for the ipad too.

Hey there, 2013

Once again, my new year's resolution is to blog more. I've written on here several times why I want to blog, I just can't seem to keep it up. This year I'm really gonna try. So here I go!

The last time I blogged I was having a hard time because I couldn't find a job. I had started looking for a job ANYWHERE and had a couple of non-teaching job interviews lined up when I got an offer to teach at a school really close to the house. It was the job I had wanted all summer! I got the offer on Thursday and school started MONDAY! The three days before school started were a blur, as were the first few after school started, but I LOVE it! I'm teaching fifth grade and I love the kids, the school, and the other teachers I work with. I really think God was teaching me a lesson in patience and trusting in Him by having me wait it out. I spent so much time worrying about what I was going to do when He had a plan all along. 

School has pretty much been my life since I got the job. That, and college football. I love football so much and I'm a little sad it's almost over but I'm kind of excited to have my weekends back. I started reading again, too! I didn't have time for much reading for a while, but I've learned to balance things a little better now so I've made time for it. It's been nice :)

Since this is my first post of the new year I feel like I should put some of my resolutions (I like to call them goals though). I have several goals for 2013, but I thought I'd just share a few (besides blogging more) on here:

• Get my car paid off
• Start saving for a new house
• Work out regularly (3-4 times a week)

Real exciting stuff there, I'll tell ya!

80's party

Lee's best friend turned 30 last week, so last weekend we went to a birthday party for him. It was an 80's party!

I had fun dressing up for it. I got to wear a side ponytail, which is something I don't get to do very often! And I got to wear pink tights, so that was fun.

It was a little bit harder trying to decide what Lee was going to wear, so we found a Ferris Bueller t-shirt for him to wear.

 

It worked out pretty well because his friend dressed up as a version of Ferris :) I wish I had a good picture of him because it was pretty funny!

It was a fun party...now I just have to figure out when I can wear the pink tights again...

The one about losing weight

I went to the doctor for my yearly visit a couple of weeks ago, and when I FINALLY got back to a room [after waiting for an hour] and the doctor came in, he was looking at my chart and this is what he said:

"Your blood pressure's great, your hemoglobin's great, your weight is...okay. I wish you'd lose ten pounds."

I wish I would too, doc!

So now I'm gonna get serious about trying to lose weight. I've tried Weight Watchers, I've tried My Fitness Pal, and while those are great and work for a lot of people, they don't work for me. They work for a little while, but eventually I quit tracking everything. I would eat something that I didn't have the exact points or calories for and I'd get frustrated and then eventually just stop.

I started thinking about it, and the times I've lost the most weight I haven't tracked my food/calories at all. I've just eaten smaller portions, drank lots of water, and exercised almost every day. So that's the plan now. Drinking water isn't a problem. I'm pretty good at that. However, here lately I've been drinking a lot of Diet Coke. I just love it so much. So I'm trying to cut back to just one a day. Working out isn't too bad, I just have to make myself do it. I never regret working out, so that's just what I'll have to remind myself of every day when I'm feeling lazy. The eating smaller portions part is going to be my biggest problem. I can't just give up food that I love, so I'm not going to try. I just catch myself eating even when I'm not hungry because whatever I'm eating just tastes good. I need to remind myself that I can save it and have it again later.

I've also noticed that I tend to eat when I'm bored. I'm not necessarily an emotional eater [even though I had to fight the urge to go buy ice cream when I had a bad day last week...I succeeded though!], I'm a bored eater. If I'm not keeping myself busy I find myself thinking about eating. So I'm just going to have to find something to keep me busy during those times.

So that's the plan for now. Nothing major, just some small changes that have worked in the past. We'll see how it goes!

It's me again

Geeze, I'm awful at blogging. It's honestly just not been that great of a summer for me. I haven't been able to find a teaching job so I've been seriously bummed about that. I would be a really good teacher, but nobody will give me a chance. It's just a terrible feeling because I quit a good job to go back to school to be a teacher, and now I can't get a job. Then I see girls I went to school with complaining about having to get up early to go to training, and I want to tell them that some of us would LOVE to be getting up early to go to training. I know it's all in God's timing and I'm trying to keep the faith, it's just really hard.

Anyway, enough complaining and feeling sorry for myself. The good news is that after a rough summer of his own, Lee now officially has his MBA! His spring semester was really rough, then he had less than a week after that semester ended before he started his summer classes. He went to class every night this summer until about 10, on top of working 50+ hours a week, and still managed to make A's in all his classes. That boy is smart! I'm so proud of him!

Now we're just looking forward to football season! The weather here was a little cooler the past few days and that made me so ready for fall! I think I'm gonna get my fall decorations out sometime this week...is it too soon for that? I mean, it is the middle of August! Maybe I'll wait...

Lee makes me laugh

Lee has always been a Celtics fan, so that makes me a Celtics fan by marriage. 

[Lee's groom's cake was a Celtics cake AND we watched the Celtics on our honeymoon]

I enjoy the Celtics, but it's not like my Alabama football, so I don't really watch them much. I mean, I hope they always win, but I don't watch every game like I do with my football. If  I haven't watched the Celtics, I certainly haven't watched any other team, so I really have no idea about injuries from other teams.

So anyway, we were watching Game 1 of the Celtics/Heat last week and I saw that Chris Bosh wasn't dressed out. That led to this little conversation between me and Lee:

Me: What's wrong with him?
Lee: Who?
Me: Chris Bosh.
Lee: That's just the way he looks.
Me: No, why is he not playing?!
Lee: Oh, he's hurt.
Me: I gathered that!

Apparently Lee thinks Chris Bosh is a funny-looking dude!

Think about such things

It's easy to get caught up sometimes in everything that's going wrong, but I have really have a lot of blessings in my life. I printed this out and I'm going to frame it as a reminder to focus on all the good things in my life.

I'm obsessed

with viggle. 

I feel like I'm late getting into this, but it's an iphone/ipad app that gives you points for watching TV. You just check in to whatever show you're watching and you get a point for every minute you watch TV. Once you get a certain number of points you can get awesome gift cards. I've almost got enough points for a sephora gift card and I've only had the app for a week! 

You can get bonus points for checking in to some shows, too. Last week I got 1,500 points for checking into Ellen! You have to stay checked in for at least ten minutes to get the bonus points, though. But once you do that you'll get the bonus points plus points for the minutes you're checked in. So, if you checked in to Ellen that day for the 1,500 points and stayed checked in for ten minutes, you would get 1,510 points! I love that show so I stayed checked in the whole time and got 1,560 points :) 

At night there are several shows that offer bonus points. You just click on "What's On" and it shows you what shows have bonus points, so you can just check in to those for ten minutes and move on to the next one!

I LOVE this app! Any other apps I should know about for making money?

It's me again!

Man, I'm a terrible blogger. I swear I'm gonna get better.

Since it's been about three months since my last blog, here's a little update on life:
I graduated! Now I'm on the job hunt...it's early in the process, so I'm still feeling pretty optimistic at this point.

Lee is taking FOUR classes this summer on top of his work so he can graduate in August instead of December. He'll finish his first class at the end of this month, he'll have a class on campus Monday-Thursday in June, another class Monday-Thursday in July, and an online class from June-July. The class he's taking right now isn't too bad, so hopefully the other classes won't be too bad either.

I'll be working at the pool again this summer, so that will give us a little extra money until I [hopefully] start teaching in the fall. That'll also mean that I have time to get pretty much everything done around the house to relieve some of Lee's stress when he gets home from class every night.

I got my wisdom teeth out Monday, and I look kinda like this guy:

My jaws are so swollen! Lee can't stop laughing at me...I do look pretty funny. I haven't been in too much pain though, mainly just uncomfortable. If I move around a lot I start to hurt a little, so I've pretty much just been resting all week.

I have lots of craft projects I want to try over the summer, and lots of books I want to read, so I'll probably be posting about all that soon.

Presidents Day Weekend

We've had a busy and fun Presidents Day weekend!

Friday night our cousin Lauren and her husband John came to town to stay with us and go see Wicked! I've wanted to see Wicked for years (we had tickets a few years ago when we lived in Memphis but we ended up moving that weekend instead) so I was extremely excited when I found out it was coming to Birmingham! It was so good!!

Saturday morning we got up and rode with Lauren and John down to the beach for Lee's (and Lauren's) grandfather's 80th birthday party. The party wasn't until Sunday so we just got to hang out with everybody Saturday night. It was a lot of fun :) 

Sunday we had the birthday party at a camp on the lake. Here's a picture I stole from my sister-in-law's facebook:

(I've decided that our next house is gonna have to be on the lake. Lauren and John live on the lake so Sunday morning I got up and enjoyed the view while I worked on a little bit of homework. The view made even homework more enjoyable.)

We got home around 8:30 last night, then today I went to Anniston to pick up our puppies from Lee's mom. She had had them since Wednesday so I was so happy to see them!

Ellie was quick to get back to her normal napping spot--in the closet under Lee's shirts!

I love spending time with our families :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!  We don't really have any plans tonight, too much homework! :( Lee is gonna cook steak so I'm excited about that. It's been SO LONG since I've had a good steak!

10 pound challenge update

This is the 4th week of the 10-pound challenge and I've lost four pounds, so I feel like I'm on track :)


I haven't done as well with my exercise as I had hoped, but I'm hoping now that I'm in more of a routine with school and everything I'll be able to work it in more.  And I am on my feet all day every day, so that probably helps a little.


I'm planning to step up my diet a little this week and really start counting my calories. The past few weeks I've just been trying to eat more fruit and watch my portions, but this week I'm going to start keeping track of what I'm eating.


I'm happy with the rate I'm losing weight, and hopefully I'll be able to keep it up for the next few weeks!

Little Update

Life has gotten kind of crazy again! I'm going to do a quick update today of everything that's been going on.

• School has been taking up most of my time lately. I'm still loving my cooperating teacher and 5th graders I'm with for my internship. I was nervous about 5th grade but I adore these kids, and my cooperating teacher is amazing. She's so helpful and fun to work with. I'm in my 10 consecutive days of full-time teaching right now, and it was overwhelming at first but I feel like I'm getting in the swing of it now. My last day in this class will be March 2, then I'll move to a 2nd grade class at the same school.

• I'm doing pretty well on the ten-pound challenge. I know I haven't updated like I said I would, but I'll update about it tomorrow :) 

• Last weekend we went to Lee's grandmother's house. She lives in the country so we decided to take the gun and shoot. Lee loves that thing!

me shooting

Lee coaching his mom

Lee shooting

That's pretty much all that's been going on with us lately. I haven't had time to read as much as I'd like :( I FINALLY got Mindy Kaling's book on epub from the library and didn't even have time to finish it before they took it away from me :(  Sad. I was liking it, just didn't have time to read for fun.

Book Club Friday 1.27.12

Happy Friday!  I'm linking up again this week with Book Club Friday.

This week I'm reviewing Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

Here's the summary from Goodreads:
One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.

Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them both legions of faithful fans.

Lauren reviewed this book on her blog and she loved it, so I decided to check it out.  [Lauren introduced me and Lee to The Hunger Games, so yeah, I trust her judgment!]

I loved this book!  It was really easy to read [I started reading it on Friday and finished it on Sunday] and I thought it had such a good message about all relationships: romantic, friendship, family, pretty much everything.  It's funny and a little sad at times, and I felt like part of me could identify with all the main characters.

I'll definitely be looking for more books by these authors.   

Oh, How Pinteresting

I've really been trying to cut back on my time on pinterest. But I check it a lot looking for ideas for school and it sucks me in every. single. time! I keep finding things to add to my to-do list even though I don't have time for what's already on the list!

Here's what I've been wasting my time with this week:

It's funny because it's true

via

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Cookies...I'm gonna have to make these really soon...definitely won't help with the 10-pound Challenge...

via

I really want to do this to the mirrors in our bathrooms

via

White queso dip

via

And an outfit...I'm just gonna have to find that top for a good bit cheaper!

via

10-pound Challenge Week 1

I didn't start off the 10-pound challenge as strong as I hoped I would. I didn't lose any weight...but I didn't gain any either.

I did exercise 5 days this week, so that was good.  Wednesday and Friday were my off days because I wasn't feeling too great.  I mainly did the 30-Day Shred and a little jogging.  It was cold and rainy most of the week so it was hard to get motivated to get outside and jog.

I didn't do as well with my eating.  My friend moved to Nashville this weekend, so she came over Monday night to hang out for a little while and we decided to go get ice cream.  Horrible decision, I know, but ice cream is kind of our thing. We just had to go one last time!  I felt like I spent the rest of the week making up for that decision.  I drank two Diet Cokes two days this week, but every other day I just drank one.  I'm really working on that.  But I did drink at least six glasses of water every day :)

I definitely didn't do as well as I had hoped, but it wasn't a TERRIBLE start.  I know what mistakes I made and what I need to correct this week.

My goals for this week are to continue drinking six glasses of water a day, only ONE Diet Coke a day, exercise five days again, and to eat fruit with my sandwich at lunch instead of Chex Mix [I do love my Chex Mix though!]

Sleep Talkers

Lee and I both tend to talk in our sleep.  We say some pretty hilarious things [they're hilarious to me anyway], so I thought I'd start documenting them.

Last night Lee fell asleep on the couch while I was reading.  I told him I was going to sleep after I finished the chapter I was reading.

After I finished the chapter, I said I was going to bed.  He said [asleep on the couch, mind you] that he was going to finish his chapter then go to bed.  I just accepted that and he fell back asleep. I was starting to get up to go to bed, then, out of his slumber, Lee starts the following conversation: 

Lee: About a million dollars a day.
Me: A million dollars a day?  For what?
Lee: Just driving around.
Me: I'd drive around all day for a million dollars!
Lee: Just...transport.
Me: Well do you get to listen to the radio or anything while you're driving around?
Lee: Sometimes.  Not when it's just me and you.
Then he woke up with a really confused look on his face

Anybody else have crazy conversations when you're sleeping?

Gun Powder and Lead

Remember this conversation?

Well, we did something about that this weekend. 

A new shooting range opened pretty close to our house recently and Lee went with his work last week as a team building activity, and he had a really good time.

Saturday morning Lee suggested that we head over the shooting range. I've been wanting to learn to use a gun for a while now so I agreed. After we decided to go he started talking about buying one instead of just renting one. We had been discussing it for a while, so we decided to go ahead and do it.  So off we went to Academy to get ourselves a pistol. We are now the proud new owners of a 9mm.

After we got the gun we went over to the range so I could learn to use it. Since I had never been to a shooting range I didn't know what to expect.  They had all sorts of different targets you could buy.  Lee got us a zombie Hitler target. Of course we were shooting zombies!

Some of these bullet holes were from me!  See the one right in the middle of his hat?  Here's a closer look:

See the little one?  That was my shot.  I was pretty proud!  But most of mine didn't really hit very close to the target.  I was just trying to hit the paper at all!

So now I know how to use a gun, and I feel a little better about being here without Lee when he's out of town. And in the event that our home ever gets broken into again [or the zombie apocalypse], I'll have a better plan than a frying pan. 

I feel like I should mention that we understand the seriousness of owning a gun. This is not a toy to us.   

10-pound Challenge Day 1

Today I started the 10-pound Challenge!  

I'm not gonna lie, I was not happy when I weighed myself this morning. I was several pounds heavier than what I thought.  But at the same time, I'm excited about the challenge.  I want to lose one pound a week--that's all!  That's so doable.  I'm planning on making small, gradual changes in my diet, and get back to exercising consistently.

I should be able to do pretty well on my diet this week since I've started back to school and packing my lunch every day.  I'll be taking a sandwich [on 100-calorie sandwich thins--those things are delicious!] and fruit for lunch every day.  My main diet goal for this week is to drink at least six glasses of water every day, and only one diet coke a day.  I'll allow myself to have one Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb a week because I love them and there's no way I'm giving them up completely!

I want to work out for at least 30 minutes five days this week.  I already exercised yesterday and today so I'm off to a pretty good start!  I started jogging again yesterday and I'm definitely going to have to work my way back up to where I was over the summer, but I'll get there.  I've been doing the 30-Day Shred again to try to tone up.

I'll be weighing in and posting updates every Monday!