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!