Fallen off the wagon...

...but I am getting back on! So remember those goals I made? Yeah so I kind of have fallen off the wagon this week in regards to those goals. Here is the update.

Rise at 7:00 a.m.- Yep haven't done it all week. Today was the best with me finally getting my toosh out of bed by 7:15.

Exercise- I have exercised once this week. That was tonight. I can come close to my goal with only falling one day short of my goal if I work out Friday and Saturday. I am determined to do so.

Sweets- I have been a rock. I am feeling less cravings which is good. Did I happen to mention that I was allowing myself one treat a week? Well I am. So Sunday I had a dessert at my house and had to refuse brownies at Husbands house. [Wanted a brownie so bad it hurt]. Then my sweet neighbor came and gave me a strawberry shortcake...so obviously I had to eat it! So I am done for the week until next Tuesday.

So overall I haven't done all that well this week with my goals but I have...

- Spent quality with Husband
- Participated in rejuvenating activities [like reading a book! Austenland was wonderful. Finished it in one week!]
- Devoted time to my spiritual self

All these things are good so I am happy that my time was still well spent. You can't have the triumph of getting back on the wagon if you never fall off so I am going to try harder the rest of this week to do as I have set out to do.

Book Club

My ward Relief Society has started a book club and I am SUPER excited to be a part of it! We had our first meeting tonight and the book that was chosen....drum roll please.....

I am really excited about reading this book because it has everything to do with Pride & Prejudice and Jane Austen. Goodness how could you not like this book already. I am hoping it will be an enjoyable read. Below is a little synopsis/review of the book.

Thirty-three-year-old Jane Hayes, who has a fairly serious addiction to the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice, inherits a trip to Pembrook Park, Kent, England, the location of a resort where guests dress, talk, think, and act in ways that Jane Austen would approve. Refusing to lie about her age, even on vacation in a place right out of Austen's England, Jane finds herself quickly overcoming the obsession with Mr. Darcy that may very well have jeopardized her 13 "relationships" over the years. Left to walk in last to dinner, mildly obsessed with one of the hotel's gardeners, and annoyed by another guest's overeager attempts to bag a man, Jane is eager to return to Manhattan. Then she decides to give it all one more chance, since Great-Aunt Carolyn did see fit to pay for the entire vacation. Hale does a lovely job with the tale of a single woman who would appreciate a genuine shot at love. The book is well written, quite readable, and the myriad characters, especially those working at the resort, are quirkily funny. Given the immense popularity of Jane Austen's novels among teen girls, this book definitely has cross-over appeal.—Sarah Krygier, Solano County Library, Fairfield, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

There is a man drilling...

...on the balcony of our apartment complex! It is a tad bit annoying that my house has turned into a contruction site.

All I have to say is the site better shut down before 10:30 or else some not so pretty things are going to happen.

Ok so I really am not that mean but I am serious about the shutting down part.

Self Mastery

I have jumped on the motivation train and decided to take some action to better myself. I fully recognize that it is going to be hard, painful and probably not that fun at times but I am going to do it anyway! It is an amazing thing when you can master yourself and that is what I am out to do. Here are the goals:

1. Wake up on time every weekday morning. This means no later than 7:00. This also means a 10:30 bedtime as well.[Saturday is my one day off. I mean come a girl can't just give up sleeping cold turkey. Church is at 8:00 on Sunday so no luck there]

2. Exercise at least 4 times a week. [I am hoping for more but you know life happens or you hurt all over so I am going to keep it at 4]

3. No sweets for a month. [This is going to be the kicker, already has been. I am a girl that LOVES her chocolate and so what am I supposed to do when I need a little sweet something after my meal!?]

These are all going to be pretty darn challenging. I have gotten into some bad habits of sleeping in, eating crap and not exercising so hopefully these goals will change all that and I can become a better, healthier person. I will keep you posted on how I am doing. [I can guarantee that there are going to be some "I NEED CHOCOLATE" posts coming]. I will let you know what I am doing to become more fit, curb the sweet tooth and get my tooshy out of bed in the morning.

I am looking forward to proving to myself that I can do all of these things and hopefully come out of it with some much better habits in place.

Check this out...

Nathan posted this on his blog and I thought it was kind of cool. It really is crazy how our brain's can completely block things out if we are concentrating hard enough.

Check out the video here.

Weekend Review

It is that time again and it is coming sooner because I am actually posting my review on Monday rather than Wednesday. Husband and I had a great weekend and I did so well with taking pictures to document it all. So you can have visual enjoyment along with the textual enjoyment!

Friday:

Husband and I hung out with Spencer & Tara. Spencer is one of Husbands old mission companions. Spencer cooked us some delicious kabobs on the grill and we also had rice, watermelon and lemonade. It was a really yummy dinner. We chatted played some Phase 10 which we only got to phase 4 before we got tired of playing. Then we pulled out the Wii Fit!

This was my first experience with the Wii Fit and I thought it was so cool! They have some of the craziest games on that thing but they really do get you moving and I can see how you can become more "fit" by playing on it.

Funniest thing though had to be watching Husband hula hoop and duke it out with Spencer on Wii boxing. I recorded a video with my phone but I did it for too long and so I can't send it to myself. I am so mad! I have a shorter one but you really don't get the full effect. I have posted it anyway but just picture two guys punching the crap out of the air, making grunting noises and literally sweating like crazy! It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!

Saturday:

Was the biggest laundry day I have ever had in my entire life! It was crazy! This is all the laundry I had to fold. It took up half our bed!

When I say we did a lot of laundry I am not exaggerating. It was crazy. Felt wonderful once we finished 5 hours later. I also cleaned like crazy. With me being sick last week our house got a bit neglected and needed some attention.

After laundry we got ready and went to the temple. It was so nice. When we were leaving this is the beautiful sight we saw.

It was so gorgeous to see this beautiful rainbow after the showers of the day. After our temple trip we changed and went to treat ourselves to a little Applebee's on the gift card! It was delicious...obviously [mostly because I didn't have to cook it]. To really treat ourselves we got TWO desserts in which the waiter even commented, "Wow, that is a lot of dessert." I wanted to ask him if he thought we were fat or if he thought we couldn't handle it. Well I will have you know we showed him and thoroughly enjoyed both our Oreo milkshake and our cookie sundae.

Once our bellies were full we went to make an INTENSE grocery run. Again because of the sickness we had completely run out of food! Poor Husband was living off pretty much nothing all last week so we set out to get him some food. I have to say I love it so much more when Husband comes with me to the grocery store. I hate doing it alone. As you can see below we did a significant amount of damage. We waited in line FOREVER and a day and finally got home around 11:00 p.m. Whew! What a day. We were very productive and got a lot done. Oh and Husband fixed our DVD player! So now we can watch movies! Yippee!

Sunday:

We had a marvelous Sabbath. Got up early for 8:00 a.m. church well...I got up a little late because my alarm didn't go off [that is the honest to goodness truth] so we were a bit late and thankfully Husband forgave me. After church we enjoyed some delicious french toast with Colter & Laura [our downstairs neighbors]. Then it was on to an afternoon of reading and napping. I did maybe a little more napping than I should have but I think my body is still recuperating a bit from the sickness.

Husband and I ate our very first roast [it was also my first time making a roast] and it actually turned out pretty good. I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor but it wasn't burnt. It twas tender, juicy and flavorful which is everything you want in a roast! We had a nice walk later in the afternoon and enjoyed a few minutes of it not raining. It was a wonderful day and we ended it by going to bed early! What a treat!

This week I have a few goals and one of them is to get up on time everyday and so early bedtime is ESSENTIAL for this to happen. We'll see how it goes.

Trip down memory lane...

I was loading photos onto my lap top the other night and came across Husband and I's pics from our honeymoon so I thought I would show everyone all the fun we had! Enjoy!

This is me making a list of things we want to do. Anyone surprised? [P.S. Don't you LOVE the outfit!?]
You would be AMAZED at how much stuff we fit in out little fridge. It was a great team effort to get the door closed but we got it to close! Husband getting ready to dig into our microwave dinners that we ate on Sunday. They were actually pretty good! Ooo and we had G2's which we both LOVE!

Here is Husband at the beginning of our biking advendure. Isn't he cute!? We got to keep the water bottles. Pretty sweet honeymoon souviner!

Look babe! No hands! [This was number 20 in attempts at this picture]

Look at how talented Husband is. He took this picture while riding a bike. Wow. I married a stud.

We took this pic with a timer. Pretty impressive eh? St. George is pretty isn't it?

Husband decided to bring out a little of his mountain biking skills. Got to impress the new wife right!? This is how it started...

Some stuff happened and this is how it ended! : ) I will let you put the pieces together.

We had a little picnic. It was so warm and sunny! Loved it!

Ah! Such a cute couple!

Eating some REALLY good chocolate cake! This was DELICIOUS!

We had a fun night of movie, popcorn, sparkling cider and my favorite Twix! Ummm!

Yeah I got sun burned. Bad. I learned my lesson. Sunscreen is important especially for a white girl like me.

The beautiful St. George temple.

At the temple with my sweetheart! We had a great time on our honeymoon!

Weekend Review

This is a little late in coming but I haven't been feeling 100% lately (I am hoping I will start to feel better soon) so believe it or not I didn't even think I could muster blogging. Shocking I know.

Husband and I had a great weekend though!

Friday:

[I have a confession to make. I was going to post this yesterday but I couldn't remember what I did on Friday for the life of me. I had to wait until Husband got home to tell me what I did. I think this is the sickness speaking.]

I left work a little early to drive to Weber State to see my kid brother graduate. It was long [798 graduates take awhile] but it was fun to relive what I experienced almost 5 years ago. It is amazing how time flys. After graduation, my brother and I drove to Layton together to get some graduation grub. It was nice to use the time to talk to my brother. I really felt like we were "communicating." It is definitely a conversation I won't forget and I am looking forward to becoming closer to my brother as he gets older.

We all met up at Outback Steakhouse. Which was the graduates restaurant of choice. We ate greasy and fattening food and called it a celebration! I enjoyed spending time with my parents and my two brothers [sister decided she wanted to stay home to play with a friend. She is 12 years old and I swear she already a bit of teenager attitude].

I came home after dinner to FINALLY get to see Husband, who couldn’t come with me because he had internship things he had to take care of. It was so good to see him. I miss him so much when I have to go places alone. As corny as it sounds I really feel like part of me is missing. Love my husband!

Saturday:

We celebrated Husbands birthday! He turned 24 years old! Wozza! I was especially proud of myself because I was able to get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning and made Husband promise to stay in bed until 7:00. I made him breakfast in bed which you can check out the goods on our new blog Happily Ever After.

Husband had to go take and LSAT practice test [boo] so I used the time to get the car all cleaned up. Husband loves a clean car. I even put a big silver bow on top!

When Husband got home we went and played tennis with our new rackets. We had a lot of fun and only hit it over the fence a few times. By the time we were about to leave we were really starting to get the hang of it. I have a feeling that we are going to LOVE playing tennis together.

After Husband worked out at the gym [while I took a nap under a tree. Tennis wiped me out!] we came home and got cleaned up. I made Husbands cake, started to read and subsequently fell asleep.

Husband woke me up when his family arrived. We went and had dinner at the Pizza Factory and then came back to our humble abode for cake and ice cream.
Below are a few pics of the evening.

Sunday:

Started our new church schedule. 8:00 a.m. Boy was that and intense switch from 1:20 to 8:00. I did however LOVE that I had the whole rest of the day. I got so much reading/napping done! It was fabulous. Husband and I had dinner and then a WHOLE lot of cake and we were just as happy as we could be.

The rest of the night consisted of reminiscing by going through photos and videos of some of our past adventures. Including Europe videos. It was so fun for me to revisit all those wonderfully amazing places. Made me want to go back so bad!

We topped of the night with a little one on one in our bedroom on our little b-ball hoop. You can read about the events and the results on our Happily Ever After blog. Go read Husband did a good job of retelling how the game went.

We had a great weekend and to be honest I wish it was Friday again. Oh well, I guess I better live in the here and now rather than living for the future. Friday will be here soon enough.

I felt so bad I planned to make white frosting to write Happy Birthday but I forgot to get all the ingredients so I had to use chocolate. Just know that chocolate doesn't change color easily so you can barely see a difference between the cake and wording. I learned my lesson!
I got Husband the book "Men of Influence" which is the sequel to "Men of Valor" by Robert L. Millet which he loved. I am excited for him to read it and thinking I may pick it up and have a read!
I got Husband some plaid shorts which I have been wanting to see him in forever! He is going to look so handsome in his plaid shorts and brown t-shirt!

New Blog!

Yeah that is right I and my sweet Husband have started a blog together! This is where we will record all the fun things we do together and the wonderful lessons we are learning as we learn about this marriage stuff. Check out our new blog here.

Be kind...

...for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Plato

I read this on The Wild and Wily Ways of Brunette Bombshell a little while ago and it really struck me.

How many times do we run around never giving people the benefit of the doubt. We always assume the worst.

Why can't we look at a person who just cut us off, who was unpleasant at the checkout or who made a rude comment and say "They must be having a hard day." Instead we make judgements and harbor bad feelings.

Husband lives by a wonderful philosophy [this is only part of it] but he always tells me to "assume the best in everything." I honestly think that if we assumed the best in every circumstance and recognized more often than not that everyone around us is fighting a hard battle, just as we are, there would be so much more kindness in the world.

How much easier is it to treat someone kindly when you think of the hard things they may be struggling with that you don't even know about?

Softens your heart a bit doesn't it?

I hope that I can treat people as though I know personally the hard battle they are fighting.

A quote to think about...

I read this quote today and thought it was so good!

"If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?" - Shantideva

This makes so much sense!

I am a big worrier. My mom worries, her mom worried and I am sure her mom worried. So as you can see I come from a long line of worriers. Sometimes I think that it gets the best of me and that doesn't need to happen.

Worry doesn't do any good, all it does is keep you up at night and give you ulcers. In conjunction with this quote one of the PR blogs I follow posted a blog post about worrying. I loved it because this particular blogger talked about how to rid yourself of worry.

Think of a solution!

Just as the quote says if there is nothing you can do then why worry about it. If there is something you can do then think of a solution!

I am going to give this a try and see how I do. I enjoy life and I don't want to die of worry ulcers by the time I am 40. So wish me luck and maybe you should try worrying a little less (mom).