That is one of the questions that Sue from GAG asked us this week. I answered this question first because this is probably the easiest one for me to answer.

SODA

This above anything else is what I struggle with the most. I always have from the time I was in high school. I probably had the most trouble with soda while I was in college. I was never a coffee drinker, so my caffeine intake of choice during college was soda, particularly Coke and Cherry Coke. At one point I was up to a 2 liter bottle a day. And since I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, and believe me I tried, I was unknowingly (at that time anyway) consuming thousands of calories a day, just in soda. All that soda had other side affects as well. I was getting horrendous headaches almost everyday. Of course at that time, I was not connecting the soda drinking with the headaches, and the weight gain. I probably hit my peak, my last semester of school when I was student teaching. Anybody who has student taught, knows that it is exhausting. So to stay awake in the afternoons so that I could get my work done, I was drinking large amounts of soda. Once I got out of college and was working I was able to slow down a little. I was teaching in a preschool class, which is not as demanding of your time in the evenings, so I didn’t feel the need to drink quite so much caffeine.  It was at that point that the headaches went away and I put two and two together. I didn’t start losing weight, but that is for completely different reasons.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed to cut back on my soda drinking. I was living at home again, so it was easier to control how much I drank, mostly because my parents only bought diet soda, and like I said before, I can’t stand diet soda. Since then I have drastically cut back on how much I drink. Even to the point of going for weeks at a time without drinking any. Once I knew that the soda was contributing to my weight gain, I was even more determined to cut it out of my diet. And every time the soda wins. It is almost like a drug at this point. I can go for a few weeks, even up to a month without it, and then I have a hard day and that is what I crave at the end of the day.

At one point I really did think it was the caffeine that I was craving. So I tried drinking tea instead. I have been told that tea has more caffeine than soda anyway. Guess what, it didn’t work, I still craved the soda. I think it is the combination of the sugar and the caffeine. It is something that I still struggle with every day. Some days and weeks are better than others, and I continue to work on it everyday. I am much better now at choosing water or something else that isn’t soda when we are out to eat. I don’t buy any soda, so it isn’t in the house, which often is half the battle.

I will continue to work on it, because I do believe that one day, this will be one habit that I no longer have to worry about breaking.

There I said it,

I am so tired of people going on and on and on about how horrible Halloween is. I can’t tell you the number of times today I have heard people, basically yelling at other people, about how horrible Halloween is and how they are going to permanently damage their children if they even acknowledge the holiday, let alone celebrate it.

(If you are one of those people who feel this way, than stop reading now, don’t send me any comments telling me how horrible I am, or why you don’t celebrate Halloween, I have heard them all, it is not going to change my opinion. This is my blog, I can write what I want and I am entitled to my own opinion, if you don’t like it, stop reading now.)

Yes we let our children get dressed up and go trick-or-treating. Yes we have pumpkins on our front porch. Granted they are plastic and store bought, but that is because I don’t really like the mess that comes with carving a pumpkin. When the kids really start asking to carve pumpkins, we will. No I don’t decorate for Halloween, other than the before mentioned pumpkins that don’t come out till the week before Halloween. Yes I decorate my front porch for Fall, It goes up in September and goes down right after Thanksgiving, when I put up my Christmas decorations. And yes I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Participating in the Halloween festivities doesn’t change what I believe.

Okay now that I got that off my chest, let me explain. I don’t see the harm in letting little kids be kids. I don’t dress my children up as devils, witches, monsters, etc.. If they wanted to wear something like that I would say NO!!! Celebrating Halloween by dressing up in innocent Disney or Superhero Costumes is not Pagan Devil Worship. I REPEAT, DRESSING UP AS CINDERELLA OR WOODY DOES NOT MEAN MY CHILDREN WORSHIP THE DEVIL OR PRACTICE PAGAN WORSHIP. If that were the case, millions of children around the world would be in trouble. Little kids play dress up everyday, I know my daughter does. I am sorry if I seam a little harsh about this. I have been hearing more and more about how horrible people are who celebrate Halloween. Yes I believe that the devil exists, and that worshiping him is just asking for trouble. But what harm is there in dressing up and begging your neighbors for candy.

If you look long enough and hard enough you can find Pagan roots to all of the major holidays that we celebrate. Does that mean we need to stop celebrating? I know some people would say yes, yes, yes. My thinking is than, how do you explain to you kids why they can’t do something as innocent and childlike as begging for candy (which lets face it, is what trick-or-treating boils down to) when that is what all their friends are doing. And before you give me the, if your friends were jumping off a bridge speech, No I don’t think we should just automatically conform to what the world thinks. What I do think is that we need to use some common sense and know and understand that our kids are going to ask these sorts of questions. Children are not dumb, even though they often act that way when you ask them to do something. If you don’t have a good solid answer then they are going to keep asking, until they get a good answer. I believe there are ways to let your kids celebrate, and still keep Jesus front and center. I know plenty of people who use the pumpkin as a way to explain how Jesus saves us. He cleans out our insides and fills us with his light. We don’t do that, but mostly because of my aversion to the mess carving a pumpkin makes. You want to get the Good News out there during this season, go ahead and do just that.

Instead of turning off all your lights, and locking your door and pretending that you don’t hear the constant ringing of your doorbell on Halloween, be The Light to your neighbors. One thing I have done in the past is hand out scripture candy, and special Halloween cards with scripture on them. Jesus tells us to get out there and spread The Word, how can we do that if we stay locked up safe and sound in our homes and churches.

Here are a few other things you can use to spread The Word.

S.H.I.N.E. Reflective Slap Bracelet

S.H.I.N.E. Squeeze Light with Carabiner

Let’s Shine Jesus’ Light on Halloween Board Book

Have a happy and safe Halloween.

(By the way, the pictures are from last year, I haven’t taken any pictures of the kids in their costumes yet this year)

Here we are at the end of October and fall is in the air. When the wind was blowing over everything on my deck last week I realized that it might be time to start gearing up for winter. If the temperatures this summer are anything to go by I have a feeling that we are in for a chilly long winter. Global Warming here we come. I read somewhere that this was the coolest summer in our area on record for something like 20 years. Anyway I digress. In the process of clearing off the deck and taking the table down I realized that a ton of leaves have fallen in the last week. Which also explains why I am finding leaves all over the house. I realized that I would have to get out the trusty rake and actually rake the leaves. I was ready to wage war against the leaves. I am pretty sure that the leaves won. All I did was the pine needles, since that is what we all are allergic to I wanted to get them up and out of the way. The maple leaves have not all fallen yet, so I figured I would wait to do those leaves until they had all fallen. Yesterday Sunday I started. My wonderful husband came out and helped me to rake, as did the kids. Although I am not sure if you can call it helping since all the kids did was spread the needles around rather than rake them into a pile, but they are still learning. By the time we were done yesterday the four of us together had gotten all the needles from the back to the curb, and my husband had collected all the large branches and sticks and put them out by the curb for pick up as well. Not bad for and hour or so of work. So when today rolled around and the kids woke up from their rest I figured how hard can it be to rake up the pine needles in the front yard. There is only one tree and it is in a pretty confined area. Easy right? You would be wrong, as was I. the pine needles kicked my behind. Yes it only took me a half an hour to rake that small area, but by the time I was done I thought I was going to fall over. I was hoping that it might help me to burn some calories before my weigh in tomorrow morning. I did get my heart rate up, and I did work up a good sweat, but it was only a half an hour so I am not too hopeful. The good news is that because I wasn’t in the house when the kids first went out to play they didn’t hover at the back door. Instead they are now playing outside on this beautiful day, giving me the chance to write this. I am also thinking that since it is such a nice day and Jason isn’t going to be home for dinner, I may just take a late walk with the kids this afternoon, and make PB&J for dinner.

Heather

So this is our points challenge this week,

GAME TWO: SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR COMFORT ZONE.

It’s time to shake things up.

Between Tuesday October 20th and Monday October 26th you will receive 100 extra challenge points for every new activity/exercise/class you try. So, if you’re a walker and you add some interval running to your routine? BAM. 100 points. If you’ve always wanted to give Spinning a go? BAM 100 points. If you are interested to see if you are, in fact, that one person who has forgotten to ride a bike? BAM. 100 points. And of course, if you decide to Zumba? You guessed it. 100 points.

I have spent the week trying to come up with something, anything. At first I figured, hey this is easy, right now I am not doing any exercising, so doing something, anything is a step in the right direction, plus possibly a hundred points. There is my problem, I started thinking. I saw the weather report this week and thought, “excellent it is going to be a beautiful week, I can go out and walk” HA, has anyone out there tried to walk with a two year old and a four year old. We did go out and walk, but it wasn’t what I would call exercise. Can you really call it exercise when you stop every 30 seconds to look at leaves, sticks, bugs, the cracks in the sidewalk. Now don’t get me wrong, it was a great walk, the kids discovered all sorts of things and we all had a great time, but it wasn’t exercise, it took us 30 minutes to walk around the block. I realized that in order to actually get some exercise in, it would have to be without the kids. (for the record, I knew this, but I was hoping it wasn’t really true) So when do I have time without the kids? The answer your looking for is late at night or early in the morning, neither of which is a good time for me. I am neither a night owl, or a morning person, I just don’t function very well at either of those times. Over the summer I tried getting up at 5 am to go out and walk before the kids got up and my husband had to leave for work. I was very grumpy on the days that I got up that early. Not only that, but I could never really walk as much as I wanted to because my feet and legs hurt a lot while I was walking, I am still to this day not sure why, but they did.

So, getting up early is not a good idea, walking with the kids is not working. Next idea, going out after the kids are in bed. For me that is just not an option. That is my time with my husband, and to wind down at the end of the day. Often when I sit down after the kids are in bed, it is the first time I have sat down all day, other than when I was folding laundry. The last thing I want to do is go out and walk, take some sort of class etc.. Also, like I said, that is my time with my husband. We put the kids to bed early so that we can spend time together without the kids, and I think that is more important then any exercise class I could go to.

My next idea was to join a gym, I thought of this over the summer. Specifically a gym with a pool. When I was younger I used to swim a lot. I was on my high school swim team and loved every minute of it. I love the water. I can swim much much longer and get in more exercise than I ever could walking or running, or taking a class. I joined a gym with a two week trial membership. The gym had a child care facility so I could drop the kids off and go swim for an hour all by myself. The kids were in the child care once before they both got sick. If I am going to be taking care of sick kids more than I could exercise, than it is not worth it to me, especially with the H1N1 virus floating around this year.

That left me with the 4 hours a week that the kids are both in school. Wednesdays and Fridays both the kids are in school from 9 – 11:30. Sounds like a great time to exercise. right. Well Friday is my time. I usually spend Friday mornings sitting in a coffee shop, upstairs at Wegmans, a book store, somewhere quiet working on my Bible study, and honestly my time with God comes first. So that leaves Wednesdays, that is the day I do my grocery shopping. I could take the kids with me on another day, and this week, I got done my shopping very early, so I did go walk around the mall until I had to pick the kids up, but it just didn’t feel like enough.

I do have a Wii fit and the EA Active game for the Wii. I should be better about doing both of those. I just don’t have much motivation right now. That is what I am going to work on for this weekend, getting up the motivation to get in a workout. If anybody has any other ideas I would be happy to listen. Obviously I am in a rut when it comes to exercise. I have a million excuses and no motivation. I keep thinking that it shouldn’t have to be so hard.

I am going through a bit of Facebook withdrawal. Since Sunday I have been unable to log into my account. It is getting very frustrating. So if you are trying to get a hold of me via Facebook, it won’t do anything, send me an e-mail instead.

Heather

This was a good week, I am very excited. I lost two pounds this week. I was pretty good all week, and especially this weekend, which is when I usually run into trouble. Fridays if the kids are good, they get to go out to eat and we allow them to choose the place. Well you can guess the kinds of places that a two year old and a four year old want to go. This week it was Fuddruckers. I was pretty good, I got the buffalo burger instead of a hamburger. I did still have fries, but not a ton of them.  Saturday and Sunday we were at home so it was easy to stay on track. The good news for me is that we realized that we can no longer eat at Fuddruckers with the kids. When Lizzie got sick Friday night from the vegetable oil that they cook with, we realized that Fuddruckers was one more place to cross off our list. Not so good for the kids, but it will make it easier for me.

This week my main goal is to not eat when I am stressed or upset. I have a very stressful couple of days coming up in the next few days, specifically tonight and tomorrow. I am going to have to really work to not eat mindlessly.

Have a great week.

Heather