Happy Friday!

Have a wonderful Friday!

It started off as a lovely day…

It started off as a perfect Saturday. I got up and went to Bible study with a fantastic group of women who I am certainly enjoying getting to know better. They are so welcoming and seem to actually be interested in what I have to contribute to the group. They don’t even seem to mind hanging out when we’re done and listening to me vent - I swear they must be saints! Seriously, I am so honored to have been welcomed into their circle and I look forward to diving deeper into my own faith with them on these Saturday mornings.

After Bible study I got a text from one of my best and oldest friends, Jessy! We have known each other since kindergarten. She is 8 1/2 months pregnant and she suggested we have a girls day to go get lunch, get pedicures, then hang out at her place to organize baby stuff. Fabulous! We enjoyed lunch at Chick-Fil-A, got wonderful pedicures which included leg massages and then practiced swaddling, looked at all of the baby clothes she has acquired and ooed and awwwwed at all of the other cute baby stuff she has. I even showed her all about Shutterfly so she can easily make and share photo albums with her extended family after the baby is born!

Sorry about the blurry picture. I used my phone to take it.

After I got home Dave and I decided to take the night off from healthy cooking (mostly because I forgot to start the all day crock pot meal earlier this morning) and go out for Chinese food at my favorite Chinese food restaurant with the best crab rangoons I’ve ever had. Yuuuummmmmm!

Then my great day was over.

We were on our way home from the restaurant and only a couple blocks from home when we saw a woman hanging from a car on a side street then she went flying off the side and landed in the middle of the street, face down. The car drove off. We pulled over and I jumped out of the car to see if she was all right. A couple of other neighbors came out to help also. We got her out of the street, picked up her smashed glasses and the windshield wiper that she had been hanging from off of the street. She was hysterical and had clearly been drinking. She tried to tell us that her husband pushed her out of the car and drove off with their two-year-old daughter and we can’t call the cops because she had been drinking because her husband’s step-father made her. Apparently she had also had a previous domestic violence case against her and she begged us not to call 911 so her daughter wouldn’t be taken away from her, or something like that. Sounded like a crazy situation. Long story short, we were able to get her cell phone from her and call her grandparents to come and pick her up and take her to a safe place. While we were waiting for her grandparents to show up we encouraged her to take charge of her life and to seek help and counseling to help herself and her family. I don’t know if she’ll do anything about her situation, but I hope this was a wake up call for her to get herself out of whatever situation she is in and to make a better life for her and her daughter. Her grandparents finally came to pick her up and, thank goodness, they seemed to have sound heads on their shoulders. We all gave them our phone numbers in case they decided to involve the police so we could speak as witnesses to what we saw. It was a crazy night. A crazy, scary night.

I am so grateful for my wonderful family and friends. I am grateful that my husband and I have a strong relationship and that he would never try to throw me from a moving vehicle and leave me in the middle of the road. I am grateful that my friends and their spouses would never do that to one another. I am grateful that there are still good people in the world who stopped to help this woman. I will never forget this night and the horrible thing I saw. And I will never forget how a group of strangers worked together to help someone and encourage her to do better for herself.

I hope this woman gets her act together and puts herself in a better situation. Please, pray for her and her family.

So far, so good

I’ve been sticking to Weight Watchers these past two weeks and… I’ve lost 6 pounds! It is so nice to have some success to keep me motivated to keep going.

At work we were each given a 5-visit pass to our local rec center as a little gift for the new year (and my co-worker gave me hers for Dave to have since she wasn’t going to use it). I never knew that our rec center offered the use of cardio equipment and weights so Dave and I went to check it out on Wednesday night and we ended up staying and working out for a while. It really felt good to get a good sweat going and to work my body! We plan to keep going to the rec center and use up our 5-pass and then possibly buy another pack of passes, which turns out to be a lot cheaper than joining a health club or gym!

If you don’t know how Weight Watchers works, every food is assigned a points value based on its fat, fiber, carbohydrates and protein. You are allowed so many points per day based on your current weight and your goal. You also get extra points to use throughout the week. What has been hard so far is trying to figure out points values for things not in the database that are also without nutrition facts; like the yummy-looking toffee I was given as a late holiday gift. There were no nutrition facts on the box and no nutrition facts on the company website so I figured it wasn’t worth trying to figure out how many points it was worth and I just didn’t eat it. If this is Weight Watchers’ sneaky way of getting me to avoid unhealthy food, its working.

Not much else is happening in our world right now. As I am putting together our 2010 digital scrapbook I noticed that nothing much happened in January of last year either. I guess this is a time for coming down from the holiday high, getting back into gear with work and planning for the upcoming year. Plus, with this cold weather (the temperature was bitter cold at the beginning of the week and is only now starting to get into the upper 40’s) we haven’t had any outdoor adventures. But Gromit has sure enjoyed playing in the snow.

Back on the bandwagon

I haven’t been very successful with New Year’s resolutions in the past and so I didn’t really bother to make any this year. I figure that if I want to change something or improve how I do things I can do it anytime of the year. Right? Historically I have had a love/hate relationship with weight loss and this year I didn’t want to make it another resolution that fizzled out in a few weeks. I found that right now I don’t have the time or money (gym membership, home equipment, more fresh fruits & veggies, etc.) to truly give it all I’ve got and drop this extra weight. But something changed.

My future sister-in-law asked me and my sisters to be bridesmaids in her wedding in April! While she was in town this past weekend we all went bridesmaid dress shopping. My sisters are much smaller than I am, which I’m used to. My future sister-in-law is also tiny, and there was much discussion of the other two bridesmaids and their dress sizes (which were also tiny). I am the only bridesmaid who is nearly 5’ 10'” tall and has a dress size in the double digits. So needless to say I will stand out in a tall and wide kind of way. Yikes! Time to take action, and fast.

This past Monday I started Weight Watchers Online. In these first five days I’ve been doing well sticking to the plan, tracking the food I eat and staying within my points range - even though I am slightly horrified that I haven’t already dropped two dress sizes. Ha! Seriously though, I don’t have high expectations, I just hope to trim down a little and feel better about myself by the wedding, and hopefully, beyond.

I am so lucky to have such a supportive husband and supportive co-workers! Dave is so open to trying new Weight Watchers recipes and has also been helpful at eating all of the unhealthy food in the house so I’m not tempted to eat it. And my co-workers have offered to walk with me at lunch and bring healthier snack foods. I feel like I’m in a good place.

So, I’m committed for the next three months to stick to the Weight Watchers plan. Here’s to a healthier, happier (and better-looking bridesmaid) me!

Christmas Vacation

Sorry for the lack of updates during the holidays, but I was busy having a good time with Dave, friends and my extended family! So, here’s the holiday catch-up:

For the very first time, Dave and I decided to spend Christmas Eve and morning together with no other family or friends. We have spent the last three years going between my parents’ house and his parents’ house and there was barely any time for us to spend as a family starting new traditions together. This year it was very important to us to spend time together as a couple, deciding what is important to us and starting new traditions for our family. Besides, who knows how long it will be until our focus for Christmas will shift to kids!

We took a short day trip to Estes Park do to some last minute shopping and drive through Rocky Mountain National Park (to see some snow since it hadn’t snowed where we live). It was a lot of fun and a was also a nice little getaway for us!

That night we went to church, went out to dinner and then went to look at Christmas lights all over the city. We came home, lit a fire and watched a movie and went to bed (after we filled each other’s stockings!). It was a great, relaxing evening and Dave and I were so glad that we got to spend that time together!

Christmas morning we slept in (hooray!), looked in our stockings and opened gifts from one another. We cooked breakfast together and enjoyed hanging out doing nothing for a while. It was a great morning!

We spent the rest of the weekend celebrating Christmas with Dave’s parents. After that we headed to the mountains with my family to celebrate the holiday, spend time with my parents, siblings, aunt and uncle and especially to spend some time with my brother, Curtis, before his wedding in April. We went tubing and skiing, all hung out together in the hotel getting to know each other batter and had a great time!

All in all it was a great vacation for us and we really enjoyed being able to spend some quality time together and with our extended families. I hope you all had a great holiday season as well!