I am happy!!

I was TOLD to post again, because my last post was SO depressing! I am one to obey when given a command, so here you go!
I am going to tell you some good news today. Are you ready? I lost three pounds this week!! My grand total is now 17 pounds!!! I only HAVE to lose 3 more pounds, but I have decided to not stop there. I am not sure how far I will go, but I think I will know when I get there!
My older girls are having a sleep over tonight. Morgan and Abby are the friends of choice this evening. They are supposed to be watching a movie here in the living room right now, but they are laughing and talking while the movie is playing. Girls are so much fun!!!

FOOD!!

I don't know how much I have truly explained to you, so I will do some explaining now. We live at Life Action Camp. We have SO many wonderful amenities for serving here!!! Here are a few...we have a beautiful lake right behind our house, ALL my neighbors love the Lord, we have a huge water slide that we can use anytime (I will get a picture sometime this week), my husband walks to work EVERYDAY, there are MANY other amenities, but for security sake I don't want to broadcast them on the Internet. There is one more that I can tell you about, and it is the topic of this post! We get to eat, all three meals a day, down at the lodge during the summer months. It is buffet style. I love this SO much, but it makes trying to lose weight more of a challenge. Every summer we eat ourselves silly. We have our absolute favorite meals that we look forward to all year. When one of my favorites is served, I usually take leftovers home and then eat it for lunch the next day. With this method I always gain at least 5 pounds every summer. This summer I can't afford to gain 5 pounds, so I have had to change my thinking and my actions. I now don't look at food in the same way. I have chosen for this summer, to forget about my favorite meals. I can still have a little bit for one of the meals each day, but not twice a day. I eat my BRAN flakes for EVERY breakfast, this is the easiest part of my day. The other meals aren't real hard, because I eat a huge salad. The hard part for me is the snacks that are served each night. Last night was ice cream sundaes....I LOVE ICE CREAM!!! Tonight is homemade pretzels.....I LOVE THESE TOO!!! Thursday night is homemade cookies.....I LOVE THOSE TOO!!! Friday night is Sm ores.....I LOVE CHOCOLATE!!!! I am writing this post to tell you how excited I am. Last week I skipped all the snacks, but the homemade cookies (not necessarily my favorite, but I CAVED by that point in the week, I JUST HAD TO HAVE ONE..then two...then three). I failed with one snack last week, but I realized that that one snack really didn't do much for me. I felt awful after I ate those cookies. This week it is much easier for me to skip those snacks. I keep telling myself that I can have them again next year and hopefully by next year I won't feel like I need them then either!!! It really is amazing to me how much I view food as RIGHT of mine. Hey! I deserve a pretzel, sundae, or cookie. I only get them during the summer or on this date or on special occasions. I have fed myself that lie for years. I don't need those snacks, I just want them!! I am so praying that the Lord will bless my obedience and help my get rid of this last 6 pounds during this summer!! I would be SO thrilled, if I could lose weight in the midst of eating at a buffet everyday!!!

How am I doing?

I am STILL working to lose those last ten pounds! I gain a pound, lose it again, gain a half pound, lose a whole pound, gain a pound, lose that last half pound again. There just doesn't seem to be any reasoning with this whole diet thing. I have essentially weighed about the same for the past month, but with all the gaining and losing I have done.......technically I have lost about 5 pounds. Does that make any sense to you?

I have been staying away from most Internet things, except for email and my blogs. It is going well, but I REALLY miss reading about what everyone is doing. I can't wait until May to be able to play catch up with all my friend's blogs. During this month away, I was supposed to be spending most of my time in the Bible. I haven't done too well at that. If I am not on the Internet, I seem to find something else to distract me! I have been in it more than before, but not as much as I had planned! My plan was to be reading it all throughout my day...in front of the children. I so want them to hunger and thirst for God's Word. I need to be that example for them.

God has been teaching me this week to think positive about people and to stop assuming the worst. I don't know how many times I have gotten half the information and yet totally assumed I knew the whole situation. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to be Christ on this Earth and NEVER assume anything!! He just KNEW all the facts!!

10 pounds

Last night the first person not aware that I was on a diet, noticed that I lost weight!!!
Today I hit the half way mark!! Ten pounds gone and I still feel like I have SO far to go!!

I will try to write more later. I am in a big hurry , but I just had to let you know the good news!!!

Doing much better

I was sick the entire weekend! I am so glad that I was sick on the same weekend that we lost an hour. Instead of being sick for 48 hours, I was only sick for 47!!!

Daniel now has this nasty virus. He has had a fever since yesterday sometime. I did not require him to do school today, so he (we) had a pretty good day despite the illness. He and Joel laid around most of the time watching videos. I spent a lot of this wonderfully, peaceful day cleaning the house!!! I enjoyed myself TREMENDOUSLY.

Joel is not eating much at all. Tonight he totally skipped supper and dessert. I hope that this does not mean something bad is coming.

As of this morning my total weight lose is 7 pounds. I got a little behind when I switched my thyroid medicine a couple of weeks ago. I gained two and a half pounds that week and it has been slow coming off, but I think that my body is doing much better now. I should hit a ten pound loss soon!!!

Yahoo!

As of this morning, I have lost my first 5 pounds!!! I only have 15 more pounds to go.

Lovin' the rain

Not often will I or can I say that I am lovin' the rain, but today I am! It is not too bad outside right now. It is raining and it is cold, but it is NOT SNOWING!!! It feels wonderful to have it rain, when the alternative is snow. One more example of perspective!
My diet is going great. I love Weight Watchers! You can choose whatever you want to eat. Each food item is worth a certain amount of points, there are some that are even worth zero points! Some of my favorite things that I have eaten so far.......homemade chocolate chip cookies, cheese filled ravioli, water, bran flakes, and string cheese sticks!! This is making me hungry. I better go eat something. I will stress that at the point level that I am at right now, I actually don't need all the points, but real soon I will be dropping a level and then things will get TOUGH!!!

DIET DAY!!!

My mom and I are losing weight together! We have started today! I have 211 days to lose my 20 pounds. (notice the countdown on the left side of page) In 211 days Emily and I will be flying out to Arizona to spend the week with my mom. If we have lost our predetermined weight then we get a brand new outfit. We both are very excited to be doing this together!
Congratulations Mom, you are on your way to a healthier you!

He keeps us on our toes!

Here are some pictures of different things that Joel has done recently. The first one is a picture of Joel stuck in the lid of our kindling box. The next one is him playing in the laundry basket. Emily giving Joel a piggy back ride is the next one. They have so much fun together. Amy is the sleeping child with the hat on. She wore that hat all day and didn't want to take it off lastnight. The last picture is of Joel finishing his breakfast. We thought he was done. I got him out of his highchair and let him go play. I forgot about him until I heard one of the children yell, "Look at Joel!" He was sitting on the floor feeding himself. I guess he wasn't done! I hope that I am not boring you with all these photos. It is just so hard for me not to share them with you.

I have a great diet plan to tell you about. I find it very motivating. I am in the middle of an excellent book series. It is the kind that you just can't put down once you start. Well I have told myself that I can not move on to the next book until I have lost 5 pounds! I have been working on it since last week and I am down 4 1/2 pounds already. I am following Weight Watchers and exercising four days a week. I can't wait to get that last 1/2 pound off, I have the book loaned from the library and just sitting on my counter waiting for me!! I will try to keep you posted. I want to lose a total of 15 pounds.