Thanks for all the comments about sweet potatos and your favorite veggie!! I appreciate the feedback and comments.

My Sunday in short:
~ church and sunshine outside! gorgeous.
~ went to visit with one of my assigned ladies from church
~ HOME! washed dishes, lunch
~ my hunny bunny and Katie both took naps
~ I decided to talk to my Mom on the phone for a while
~ hanging out with my little family

Gonna fix my snacks and feed Katie dinner and just chill. Yup. Makes for a great Sunday! Any big plans this week?

What is your favorite veggie??? Mine would have to be the ever so wonderful SWEET POTATO.

One of our current favorite side dishes is the awesomeness that is sweet potato fries! Put some ground black pepper and black pepper on them to bake and you have simple seasoning that makes for a wonderful spice up. I LOVE the skin and all. Another way that I like to eat this delicious veggie is to put them in water and then either stovetop heat them or by microwave until they are tender. They are called one of the healthiest veggies with loads of nutritional value to them. All this talk is making me hungry! Speaking of which, I’m gonna have to grab a snack soon as I need to satisfy my tummy tum. Our health is SO important!! That is something I’ve really got a firm grasp on now. Everything I eat needs to be the right kind of FUEL to keep me going.

TODAY I ACCOMPLISHED:
~ running around getting the house cleaned
~ at the same time attempting to keep Katie content
~ washed and folded 2 loads of clothes to be put away
~ turned our mattress since one end was getting flat (we have foam!)
~ washed our bedspread and bed sheets
~ wished I could of went to 2 different events but wasn’t able to but atleast I had the WANT to go!

You know what would be interesting? To keep count of how many times I do things around my house. I know I atleast wash dishes 3-4 times a day. I’d like to know how many times I go up and down our stairs, open and close our fridge and various other things, LOL. It’s awesome, I love being so active now.

WE ARE BACK ON THE INTERNET! Apparently the outage caused something to go all wonky with our connection set up so Brad called the Internet company today while on his lunch break and got us back online! BUT Brad is gonna have to resync his laptop with the router so we’ll see how that goes tonight, haha. I’ve had a really laid back yet great day! Got up this morning and after eating breakfast and telling Brad bye then I did my Wii Active Fun Friday workout then proceeded with the daily routine. I’ve been catching up with all my online things and whatnot.

I wanted to share Brad’s piece of art that I mentioned in yesterdays blog! I thought It was really neat and glad that he wanted to hang it up on our wall.

I also took a full body picture yesterday just to have it to look back on! The first one is from yesterday and the one below it is from September 2009.

That yellow shirt from yesterdays pic is very baggy on me, haha. It is one of my many workout shirts. I really need some new workout clothes and I’m hoping once we get our taxes settled I can start putting some money aside for that and various other things I need. Yesterday I was browsing through my online folders of pictures of myself from 2008 and comparing them to recent pictures and just…. wow. You NEVER know what inner strength you have UNTIL you really put your all into something. THAT is when you take that inner strength you THOUGHT you never had and RUN with it. I’m literally running with it now!!!!!!!

While I was internet-less yesterday I also typed up some ideas for my new lifestyle page content so I will try to add that when I get a chance. Happy to be able to feed my Internet hunger once again!

I’m typing this entry on notepad! Our internet started acting sluggish late Wednesday afternoon and then eventually went out completely. Apparently there is an outage and as I sit here now our modem is still in blinky state. Since we didn’t have the internet last night, Brad and I watched 2 episodes of Deathnote. I’ve missed the internet today but have been so preoccupied that It’s not too big of a deal… for one day, lol.

Of course with it being Thursday I wanted to try to GIVE MY ALL on the treadmill and ended up doing a tiny over 4.0 miles! As soon as I type out this entry I’m off to the kitchen to fix myself a big snack to give my body some FUEL that it needs! OH OH, Brad had drawn a picture a while ago and he finally finished it and asked If he should hang it? I thought that would be wonderful so he took down our dragon puzzle hanging in our living room that a man from church had given to us and replaced it with his art. I’ll have to post a picture of it – perhaps with the next entry!

It was very cold today and did I mention that I’M READY FOR SPRING??? BUT ESPICALLY SUMMER! Speaking of that, I’ll have to buy a new bathing suit seeing as I don’t have one that would fit me properly anymore but would literally just hang and fall off of me now and I surely do not want that, haha.

I put my motivation into full swing this morning! Brad got a shower this morning then did some push-ups!! Makes me smile to know that he is trying to get himself set into his own routine. After he left for work, I fiddled online a little then ate breakfast. Here is my FAVORITE part of breakfast:

scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, tomato, spinach, onion, cottage cheese ALL on a yummy toasted piece of whole grain bread
SO VERY GOOD. I went straight into my Wednesday workout routine with the resistance ropes followed by 15 minutes on the exercise bike. When I do the resistance rope workout DVD, there’s a cardio interval of squat jumps and I LOVE doing them! My thighs really get a burn out of those. I rushed to fix Katie’s breakfast then go get her up and dressed. She’s in a really good mood this morning and just doing her usual babbling, running around and playing with her toys.

Make today a great day and YOU CAN! We all can!!! Quoting one of my favorite lyrics from Three Days Grace’s new album, “TAKE THIS LIFE AND MAKE IT YOURS” but we must always remember to BELIEVE and be POSITIVE. It makes a big difference, It really does but you must WANT it! Go after your happiness!!

The sun is shining and I’m feeling great. Thankful for another day to share my heart and I do give all the glory to my Heavenly Father. I could not ask for more.

edit I was reading some of my favorite healthy living blogs and came about someones post about not taking diet pills. I’ve been asked many, many times since I’ve lost the weight If I took weight loss pills or had surgery. Ummm, nope. One of the men at church came to our house a while ago and could not BELIEVE that I lost it without taking pills. He kept repeating the question, haha. You know what? I DIDN’T do it, It was my FAITH in GOD that LED me to WHERE I am today and I fully 100% know and believe that. EVERYONE can but I think you have to have the right kind of faith and motivation to do amazing things in this life. We don’t need all those diet pills and while the thought of weight loss surgery did come into my head back when I was at my top weight, I knew I did not want to put my body through that kind of surgery so I knew I had to take CONTROL and If you want it badly enough — start TODAY!

Eesh, its chilly outside! We just got back from picking up a sweet potato, celery, carrots, a pear and a head of broccoli from the store and my hands are freezing. I decided to try again to get up and do my exercise right after breakfast and I actually really like doing it that way instead of waiting until a little later so I may try to do it that way the rest of the week, possibly. I’ve been hoping Brad would get into an exercise routine and he told me today that he has found something that he wants to do that works everything… pushups! I’m happy for him and I pray he sticks to it. He’s gonna try to do so many a day then work himself up as he builds strength and hes even keeping up with it on his little planner, heh. He also found this oatmeal drink recipe that we tried today and It was OK. We’ve had a great day and Katie is currently babbling and rolling on the floor with her teddy bear! What a silly girl.

I updated my lifestyle > food, faith and 09 sections! I went through my livejournal at each week in 2009 that I lost weight to put into the 09 section and It’s so neat to look at it all together. I’ve become such a CARDIO junkie!! I love it. I’m getting more and more comfortable with running at 7.0 and it feels good!!! I can’t put into words how happy it makes me to be able to move about and not feel tired or like I’m having to “push” my body to move like I used to. Feeling this way makes me want to keep myself DEDICATED to this new very active lifestyle that much more.

It all comes down to my faith. My FAITH led me to where I am today and I know that with all my heart. If we would all try to push ourselves out of our usual comfort zones and to do things we don’t normally do then there would be so much more change towards the good. That’s what life is about! I’m actually really ENJOYING my life now and loving every second.

I cannot tell you how WONDERFUL I felt when I woke up this morning! Increasing my calorie intake a bit is proving to be more than working for me and It feels a bit old because now I can eat more??? I kindof have to reverse my thinking now since for a long while now I’ve been teaching myself to REDUCE calories and now I have to INCREASE. I got straight out of bed and dressed for exercise, haha! I wanted to go ahead and get it done since I knew I had my Docs appointment to go to. Ate my delicious breakfast and I added 1 more scrambled egg to my usual. Got on the treadmill and ran a little over 3.7 miles! Got a nice shower and did all of the usual as far as the babe goes. Eventually we got ready to go. We stopped by the produce store and I just ran in real quick and got some apples, cucumbers, plums, onion and a big red bell pepper. Away to the Doc we went! Yes, my liver enzymes have only been increasing instead of either staying the same or going down so that Doctor set up an appointment for me with a GI Doctor and I go next Tuesday to try to get this figured out as to why those levels keep going up. He said the GI Doc is probably going to want an abdominal ultrasound and possibly a CT scan to try to get a better picture of what might be going on with my liver or whatever is causing those levels to rise. Next up was good ole’ Wal-Mart for some groceries to hold us over till Brad gets paid Thursday. I BOUGHT STRAWBERRIES!!! They are finally marked down! Also picked up a SoyJoy berry bar for both Brad and I that we ate on the way home. It was actually really good, nom nom.

Hope everyones Monday has been great!

We filed our taxes this evening, yes!!! I cannot wait till we get that money so we can start to figure out savings. It’s gonna help us SO MUCH.

It wasn’t as warm outside today but It was still beautiful. Church was a great time as always! After we came home, we all went for a walk around the apartments to let Katie burn some more energy. We went into the backyard and spent time outside together. It was awesome. I talked to my Mom for a bit when Katie was down for her nap. The rest of the evening we’ve just been hanging out and then we put Katie to bed and BRAD CHANGED A POOPIE DIAPER for the first time in a long while, lol. It’s actually thundering, lightning and raining outside… we haven’t heard thunder or seen lightning in quite some time.

I was thinking today and I do not think I eat enough on a daily basis. I put out so much energy and I’m still holding to my same ole calorie intake from when I was trying to lose. I wouldn’t mind losing a few more pounds but I’m also happy where I’m at so I’m going to include possibly 2-300 more calories per day and see how that goes. I can feel that I haven’t been eating enough and I still haven’t been eating even though my body is saying uhh… food? Just need to find a good balance to where I have enough calories to help keep my body at it’s full potential for the day.

I finally go tomorrow at 3pm for my rescheduled Doc’s appointment on my liver enzymes! I hope I can get some insight into why those levels have continued to rise. Alright, gotta post this before the Internet stalls again from the storm and go get my frozen fruit and yogurt!!! Oooo and I’m also going to work on the new content for love-geek, I’M EXCITED about working on it!

I still sit and think about how far I’ve come in my life and outlook on life. I remember being overweight and cleaning my house then getting all sweaty just from doing a few tasks!!! I would also be out of breath just from moving about my own home and my back was killing me. Then I think of today. I was non-stop cleaning today and doing things this morning and tiredness never came upon me. My body feels so refreshed and amazing. I owe it all to my Heavenly Father! The Gospel has done amazing things for my life.

Last night I got to FINALLY watch the movie UP with hubby! WHAT A CUTE MOVIE! Adorable!!! Today was the WARMEST DAY we’ve had in a long, long while! I was not going to waste it either. I got all my cleaning done except for sweeping and mopping the upstairs but It was noon so I decided to take Katie out for a walk once again. It was sooo nice outside! Of course she threw her usual fit when we came back inside but she slept even longer for naptime which is excellent to me!! I cleaned out our living room closet since there was a lot of dirt on the floor because Brad keeps his shoes in there.

Such a wonderful day. Such a wonderful life.

We all have choices to make each and every day right? It’s called free agency! We CHOOSE to do right or wrong, good or evil. When I chose to turn my life over to God, I was using that free agency just as I would with any other decision.

I wanted to quote from one of my church books because It really spoke to me and I want to share it.
“When we choose to live according to God’s plan for us, our agency is strengthened. Right choices increase our power to make more right choices. As we obey each of our Father’s commandments, we grow in wisdom and strength of character. Our faith increases. We find it EASIER to make right choices. We began to make choices as spirit children in our Heavenly Father’s presence. Our choices there made us worthy to come to earth. Our Heavenly Father wants us to grow in FAITH, POWER, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, and all other good things. If we keep His commandments and make right choices, we will LEARN and UNDERSTAND. We will become like Him.”

Of course with choices, you have the GOOD and the BAD.
“For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.” (2 Nephi 2:11)

We have dear old Satan and he will try to guide us away from those right choices and to make us miserable and he is winning over the hearts of mankind, I know that much. There is so much WICKEDNESS in this world. So many who do not believe in themselves or Heavenly Father. My heart just breaks in two thinking about those things but I know I must stand strong in my faith.

“Heavenly Father has told us how to escape the captivity of Satan. We must watch and PRAY always, asking God to help us withstand the temptations of Satan. Our Heavenly Father will NOT allow us to be tempted beyond our power to resist”

I can testify of these things. I truly can because I HAVE come to learn and understand so much about the CHOICES I have in my life and how each and EVERY choice can bring me that much closer to every day happiness and goodness. If you want to change, make a different CHOICE today!!

It was another BEAUTIFUL day and a little bit warmer than yesterday so after the usual morning routine with Katie and getting my Fun Friday Wii Active workout in, I fed Katie a snack then put on her shoes and jacket so we could go for a walk! We walked 2 times around the apartments then I let her walk around in our backyard and she LOVES IT OUTSIDE. Of course she threw a big ole’ tantrum when we reached our front door but I had a great time walking with her. Well, well apparently my liver enzymes are still on the rise. I had to cancel my Doctor’s appointment over a week ago because we didn’t have the money. The nurse called today and let slip that the levels were still increasing but I told her I would get it rescheduled as soon as I could but right now we don’t have the money. I’m ready to get this figured out and I know I will at some point!

I’m about to work on adding some new content for love-geek so watch out!!!