You decide where the chain stops.

A few months ago I went out searching on the internets to find a good weight loss/motivational blog to help me refocus my eating and exercise habits. The very first one I came across was Roni’s over at Roni’sWeigh and I have loved it ever since. You can read all about her on her own site but basically she used to be very overweight and through Weight Watchers, food journaling (brilliant), exercise, and an entire emotional journey she is now a completely different person. I love that she has kids, a house, a husband, emotions, but still finds a way to meet her goals by eating right and exercising by a Flexibility Consistent method (if you can’t go run at your ideal time of 6am then do it at 8pm when you have time…that sort of thing).

  

Earlier this week she has this quote and little motivational segment about it:

“You decide where the chain stops”

  

Just because you have one bad meal doesn’t mean your entire day is ruined…one bad day doesn’t have to into one bad week…one bad week doesn’t have to turn into one bad month….ect. You decide when the chain stops….you decide when to make a change. Just because I ate a handful of M&M’s doesn’t mean I have to skip the treadmill waiting for me in the playroom. Just because I was too tired to get up to exercise doesn’t mean I need to eat Chick Fil A tonight. You decide where the chain stops.

  

This method can be true in other aspects of your life (you know, for those of you that have eating perfect and exercising daily down) such as your attitude. Just because you yelled at your husband for eating the last apple doesn’t mean you need to be angry the whole night…just because you had too much to drink last weekend doesn’t mean you need to do it again this weekend (I’m just using broad examples, not real life stuff…I have my hang-ups but this is not my secret way of out-letting all my internal battles). You get the point; you decide where the chain stops.

 

If your needed eating or exercising encouragement I urge you to check out her blog. Some days it may only be a food journal post but each week I feel encouraged after reader her blog and I bet you will too.

Deal Alert! I wanted to let all the locals know about this wonderful Final Sale item I got at the LOFT. I LOVE the LOFT but do they rarely have "cheap" sales. Sunday I was browsing and scored this adorable canva tote; it's cream with thick silver stripes and cost $17 marked down to $3.88! They had gold and silver sequence options as well as a light purple with gold stripes and all around at 13+ inches tall & 14+ inches wide. The purple was beautiful but I wanted something more versitile. It's perfect for a "throw n' go" bag and for under $4 you cant beat it! They had prob 20 total left so hurry over to LOFT if you want one!

First day, yet again.

The first day of school, yet again. Even though Moses is still at the same school this year he does move up each school year just like k-12^th grade does. This year he is moving the second floor at school where all the “big kids” are and oh my gosh my baby is growing up! We had orientation last week and I already really like his new teacher and his new classroom. They do a great job of transitioning the kids to the next classroom by introducing the teacher weeks in advance so this morning he had no problem going to his new room.

We were running around in a hurry but I remembered to pull out the camera last minute to take his First Day picture.

Please note the wild bedtime hair I tried to brush over and the 100 bruises and bumps on his legs; that’s my typical two year old boy! If you were to see him moments earlier he had sticky hands and a peanut butter mustache. Wonder how he is so patiently standing still smiling for the camera? Because he has his eyes on the jar of M&Ms I bribed him with the take this picture! Whatever works, right? 

Rewind 13 months ago to last year’s first day.

And finally the comparison shot of what a year of changes bring. I’m kind of tearing up and kind of have a proud smile on my looking at these side by side. This is just the beginning, I know, but oh my gosh my baby is so grown up! 

Speaking of grown up, check out this text picture I got this morning. My little sister aka Molly Polly Pocket's first day of high school!! I really can't believe the high school era has begun for her...pretty soon she will be driving off to college! A comparison to my first day of high school: I wore the shortest skirt I could find and about a pound of make up. When I asked Molly if she was allowed to wear makeup now she just shrugged and said "uhh I don't know, I'm not going to because I don't need it". Don't need it at age 14....yeah, talk about maturity!

Engagement, take two.

Today I wanted to repost an old entry because it tells the stories of one of the best days of my life. The day my boyfriend made it officially known to the world he wants to spend the rest of his life with me; it’s the day Davy proposed. I was laying in bed last night and for whatever reason started thinking about his proposal. I can honestly say it’s THE most creative, wonderful proposal of anyone I know. Warning, it’s lengthy, but it needs to be in order to tell the story in its entirety.


One Wednesday night after church I went to have coffee with my girlfriends. All three of my best friends Sarah, Melissa, Beth agreed to all come and hang out which I thought was wonderful because we never all got to hang out on a week night. So we get our drinks and sit down to talk and Anthony (Melissa’s husband) calls her and proceeds to tell her a radio station (one I don’t listen to) is doing their “around town scavenger hunt trivia game”. The game was simple: they say a riddle about a certain place in town over the radio and then the first person to crack the riddle and get to the location wins $5000 (in $1 bills) and 4 tickets to the “Walking with Dinosaurs” event that was coming to town. She starts telling us the riddle and something about Betton Road. Well conveniently the coffee pub is very close to Betton so we, well mostly me, starts freaking out and decides it’s a great idea for all of us to jump in the car and play the game. Competition, money, and dinosaur tickets are all right up my alley and so I’m immediately very into the game and very determined to win. Let me pause and say Melissa did such a good job playing along, the way she was talking to Anthony and acting so nervous and excited had me completely fooled.


The riddle has something to do with a bench, tree, swing and peddles. Our first thought is the park off Betton; we pull in and I’m demanding Beth to drive over here and shine her lights over there hoping we find a matching description. We see a bunch of rose bushes at one side of the park and take off that way on foot looking for the prize. At this point I’m yelling at Beth telling her to pull her car off the road and shine her lights at the flowers so we could see better but she was acting all dumb and wouldn’t do it because she knew what was coming. So here we are with cell phones in hand trying to light up the ground. We found a bench and feel under it trying to find some kind of clue. We’re are having no luck and I’m getting bummed because it all made sense that the prize would be here. So then the girls start asking if there are any more rose gardens around here and me, being angry at Beth and Sarah (for standing by the car and not really helping) starts getting frustrated because OF COURSE there are no other flowers in the park.


And then all of the sudden I remember my dad’s girlfriend lives off Spruce road which is off Betton road and right by her house is this beautiful rose garden. So I start freaking out thinking no one else listening to the radio would think of that garden and we all pile in the car to head that way. Emotions and excitement are peeking and Melissa starts saying comments like “we could really win this” and “this has to be it”. We pull up to the rose garden and I’m yelling to Beth to drive on the grass to shine better light on everything; she doesn’t claiming she doesn’t want to get in trouble! We end up parking and practically running over to this bench by the swing. We are feeling under it but nothing. Then I remember inside the rose garden is a tree with a bench built all the way around it. We all start creeping threw the rose bushes but the girls are so far behind me acting skittish. When I walk into the center of the garden I notice rose petals have been laid all over the bench and I make the comment “looks like someone just got engaged” but even at this point I’m still oblivious to what’s really going on.


Then out of nowhere lights turn on. Christmas lights were wrapped all through the tree and rose bushes and my first thought was WE WON. We had found the location and the prize was ours. In a sort of confusion we’re all just standing there and then this guy, all dressed up, comes walking down the pathway towards me. I thought this has to be the radio DJ because we just won. As he got closer I realized it was Davy. “Davy?” I asked in complete confusion. The thoughts going through my head were “why is he here, he’s supposed to be at work, did he already win?” then he walks up to me and as nervous as he could be dropped down to one knee! He nervously mumbled out all the sweet things he planned to say and asked if I would marry him!


At this point I was in total shock. Of course I said yes and tears were flowing with the best emotions I’ve ever felt. He was so nervous that he just handed me the open box with the ring in it and as we were hugging I whispered “can you put the ring on my finger?”.


Out from the bushes comes his best friend Joe, and Melissa’s husband Anthony. Then my sister and dad come walking over from across the street and by this point I was beaming with excitement putting together all the details it took to set this up including devised an entire plan to get me to the perfect engagement! How could someone love me so much to have thought about this for weeks and planned every detail to come out just perfect? I have the best fiancé and can’t wait to be his wife for the rest of our lives!

How to have a free weekend and catch Baby Rabies:

Being new to home improvements/ craft projects there are some things I’m learning along the way. The biggest one so far is paint brush vs. roller; who would have known a roller can cover a surface 5 times faster than a brush and yield 80% less frustration! Hand painting the edges and drawers were no big deal but when I tried to use a paint brush to cover a 5 foot surface it was dang near impossible; the primer was already drying in the time it took to cover the entire surface and when I went to do long stroke (to make it look pretty) it was pulling my dry paint up! For the next coat I tried out a small roller and oh.my.gosh, genius! I’m not kidding when I say what took two hours took me 20 minutes during round two! Now I just need to apply the paint color, let everything dry, and the biggest painting project will be complete!

This weekend was operation Don’t Spend Monday and we were (pretty much) successful. I would be ashamed to tell ya’ll about our 6 day eating out streak and the total cost of our stupidity; to make things right we immediately stopped spending money for a few days. The strike was poorly planned with the lack of food in our house so Friday night we had to make a small trip to Publix but the rest of the weekend we were spending free! We played at the house, went to the gym (free child care and guess pass thanks to Davy’s part time job), and spent time with our parents. It was definitely hard not to visit Chick Fil A, Target, or Starbucks but we need to start making better spending choices and if it means not stepping foot in Target then we have to do it! Moses had a blast in child care at the gym and we all left feeling good about our mid day exercise so it may become a regular weekend family outing.

I was worried about how I was going to get a gift for the birthday party we attended Sunday but I remembered I had a store credit to a Toy store (pure blessing is what that is) and took Moses (his first time in an actual “toy store” and not isle in Target) to picked out something special.

This may be semi creepster of me but I have to share a picture of the birthday girl. She is not only extremely welled behaved and “chill” but she is adorable and super petite and makes my heart go pitter patter. When she came out in her bathing suit it was one of those moments when you see a baby and your all the sudden figuring out the fastest way to make another baby (something people like to refer to as Baby Rabies) and oh my gosh I died inside and even start typing like a Valley girl because I get so excited about babies . I was standing right next to her Mom and Grandma trying to take a picture of this cuteness; yes, I’m that creepy lady at the party.

Yes, she is wearing a tiny weeny yellow polka dot bikini!

Who runs the world? Girls.

Girlfriends, gal-pals, besties, friends, best friends. Back in high school and beginning of college I had oodles of time to spend with friends; no real job, no real responsibilities, and not much going on besides homework and friends. Now that I’m getting older and have many more things on my plate keeping good girl friends is a lot harder! I need friends in my life that understand the importance of family, working, the responsibilities “real” life brings, and that I’m not readily available. I need friends who can go days, sometimes weeks without speaking to and then be able to catch up over coffee without explaining myself. I need friends who I can cry with, laugh with, and most importantly be myself around.

Thankfully, I have them. Even though it may not be a “posse” of girlfriends anymore it’s certainly more than one and I am so blessed to be able to say that.

My girlfriends love to eat and talk and watch stupid TV and exercise before ice cream and confide in each other and trash talk each other (in a good way) (ok you may need an explanation: “uh I hate how SHE has such great legs…her legs are perfect…she looks so good in those jeans…Hey ___ you look so good in those jeans!) and just be together.

Our collective favorite thing to eat is fruit with homemade orange-caramel dip and our favorite show was Grey’s Anatomy. We battle about this (and majority rules) but our favorite guilty pleasure books are the Twilight series and The Hunger Game series.

We can be serious, stupid, funny, loyal, and a good time. I am truly blessed to call these beautiful ladies my best friends.

Divorcing his free time.

Today is a very special day because as I write this Davy is sitting in college orientation! All his ducks are in a row and now all he has to do is sign up for classes and show up! I am so proud of him for taking his professional life to the next level and taking on such a big challenge.


Ever since high school Davy has worked for his parent’s business and went on to become certified and licensed in the industry. Eventually he took over running the business as his father become too ill to work and now he’s practically a one man show. He is great at what he does and enjoys his interaction with his business partners and their clients but in the long run this is not the career he wants for himself. As old as we seem to some of our single friends who go out drinking on a Tuesday night or stay up til 1am giggling or play Xbox til 3am or go to the beach on days they don’t have class we are still so young and have so much life to live; taking a few years to better our family is only one small step in the grand scheme of things. well unless the rapture happens in our lifetime and if that’s the case I’m totally okay with leaving Earth in this weird transition phase we are in to live eternally with the Lord

As far as the immediately future is concerned…he will continue to work full time, open the gym a couple mornings a week (he’s up and moving at 4:00am folks) to keep his free membership and bring home a little extra bacon, AND will take 3 or 4 classes a semester. He has no idea what he wants to do yet and that is a-ok with me; this first year will be full of the basics and discovering what classes put him to sleep and what classes has him researching for the fun of it.

I’m not going to lie…I’m anxious! Not anxious because life is going to fall apart, but anxious/excited for him to begin this venture and to see how our family life is readjusted to make time for school. I know what it’s like to work a full day and take two classes and be involved with family and it’s hard! I have no doubt that he can do whatever he puts his mind to; unlike many college freshman he isn’t going for the dorm life or because “it’s the next step after high school”…he’s there because he wants this!

Oh and THIS is the reason why the office needed to be cleaned out!