Family Vacation

I absolutely love my family’s annual vacation to Pennsylvania, and I look forward to it every summer. Reading, tanning, boating, eating, laughing, playing cards…..it is SO FUN.

But this year…..I couldn’t go.

I had already used up all of my vacation days on other fun trips, so I had to be an adult and stay home to work. What a BUMMER.

Luckily, I had some fun activities during the time that they were gone, but I was still disappointed to miss the trip. I decided to see how far behind I came out on the “Fun Scale” during the time the fam was vacationing without me. Every day I automatically started at -50 Fun Points purely for the fact that they were on vacation and I was not. Here’s how the breakdown came out (all Fun Points are from my perspective, so, for example, on really sunny, fun, vacation days for them, I went down 100 Fun Points. On days they had rain, I only went down 25 Fun Points. My sisters sent me videos throughout the week so I could stay up-to-date on their activities):

Saturday
Them: Wake up at 3am to travel ALL day to rainy PA (-25 FP)
Me: Sleep in, long run, relaxing day, awesome wedding of a college roommate (+100 FP)
Cumulative FP = 75 FP

Sunday
Them: Rainy day at the lake. Watch movies, play cards (-25 FP)
Me: Welcome Team at church, Pool Party and Pamper for the single girls in my small group, girl’s night dinner at a new restaurant (+100 FP)
Cumulative FP = 150 FP

Monday
Them: Another rainy day at the lake. Watch movies, play cards (-25 FP)
Me: Work. Drive to Brainerd to show the cabin to potential renters who never showed up (-75 FP)
Cumulative FP = 50 FP

Tuesday
Them: Another rainy day at the lake. Watch movies, play cards. Natives are getting restless (0 FP)
Me: Work. Friends over to grill and catch up (+50 FP)
Cumulative FP = 100 FP

Wednesday
Them: Another rainy day at the lake…… (0 FP)
Me: Work. Welcome Team Picnic for church (+50 FP)
Cumulative FP = 150 FP

Thursday
Them: BEAUTIFUL day relaxing at my aunt and uncle’s pool (-100 FP)
Me: Work. Shop for weekend food. Drive to the cabin again to meet potential renters. Renters show up, but I will NOT be renting my house to them… (-50 FP)
Cumulative FP = 0 FP

Friday
Them: Another beautiful day at the pool. (-100 FP)
Me: Work. Drive to the cabin with Bethel friends. Campfire and fun (100 FP)
Cumulative FP = 0 FP

Saturday
Them: Another beautiful day at the pool (-100 FP)
Me: Gorgeous day at the lake with friends: sleeping, boating, playing games, tanning, reading, grilling, laughing, discussing, relaxing….. (100 FP)
Cumulative FP = 0 FP

SO…..as much as I was missing being on vacation with my family, it turns out that I had a pretty good week after all, thanks to lots of great friends from church and college. I didn’t come out behind on the Fun Scale, and I’m definitely trying to soak up every little ounce of summer there is left!!

Weddings, Weddings

The last two weekends I have gone to VERY fun weddings. They marked the end of weddings for the summer, but I still have one in October to look forward to!

First was my cousin’s wedding. It was SO FUN and absolutely beautiful. My cousin and my little sister were born eight days apart, and I am barely two years older than them, so the three of us spent a lot of time together growing up. He’s grown up to become an amazing tennis player, and he met the sweetest girl ever at a tennis match – so they had a little tennis theme at the reception: tennis balls with their name and date as a party favor, tennis balls worked into the center pieces, and they walked under an arch of tennis racquets held by their wedding party when they entered the room. The food was AMAZING (can you say bacon wrapped fillet Mignon??) and they had the best coffee EVER (I’m still upset that I forgot to ask a server what kind of coffee that was!). The dance was a total blast, with the whole family (aunts, uncles, cousins) getting out on the dance floor and showing some (very awkward) moves. I even caught the bouquet! Overall, it was really a wonderful, wonderful day!

This past weekend was the wedding of a college roommate. She is one of the cutest, most fashionable people I know, so of course the whole day was perfectly styled. The bridesmaids had the best yellow dresses and the cutest pink and blue shoes – the bride wore a dress that didn’t go quite all the way to the ground in the front, and she had the most adorable blue shoes with a flower! The reception had awesome appetizers and a very cute lemon theme. During the dance they brought out “late-night snacks” (puppy chow!), which I thought was a great idea. It was another wonderful day….even though I failed to catch the bouquet that time!

Very excited for the next wedding in October!!

90 Day Challenge

I have been MORE than lazy this summer. I haven't worked out since May, and I've been eating everything in sight. This is not a good combination. I've been trying to think of some ways to have better accountability in these areas, but I always came up with a reason to not follow through. The timing seemed right, then, when I got an email from my gym a few weeks ago about the 90 Day Challenge. I'm not really sure exactly what this all entails (since my official weigh in isn't until later today), but I do know that it is a fitness challenge to see who can trim the most weight/inches in the next 90 days. You are assisted by a trainer and you also get some nutrition guidance. There are some prizes on the line, too. A few friends of mine have also signed up, so between the trainer and my friends, I should have some good accountability.

A few months ago I took a nutrition course (which I failed to blog about). Of course people were there to learn how to eat better to lose and control weight, but the instructor also encouraged us to set two goals in changing our diet that didn't have to do with weight. My goals were to have more sustained energy throughout the day and to sleep better at night. I was really pleased with how I could see the results: when, what, and how much I ate was effecting my energy and sleeplessness. I have totally fallen away from any good habits I acquired in that class, but I hope to implement a few during the 90 Day Challenge.

When I do New Year's Resolutions or little personal challenges like this, I am tempted to try and change EVERYTHING in my life that I would like to be different: eating habits, sleeping habits, exercise habits, devotional habits, etc, etc, etc. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew this time because then I get discouraged and I don't change anything. So I wanted to have a small list to work off of for the next 90 days:

• only one cup of black coffee a day
• no soda
• work out in the morning as much as possible
• run a half marathon (Oct 17 Des Moines) - this will be the work out plan I will be following
• not cutting out snacks completely, but making better choices with the snacks I do choose
• drink more water (which should be easy since I drink about zero right now)
• have a more consistent bedtime (hard to do in the summer, so we'll see about this one...)
• have salad for lunch at least twice a week (I eat horrible at lunch everyday since I am bringing in all kinds of good (bad for you) food to clinics - like pizza, Boston Market chicken-meatloaf-sweet potatoes, pasta, LeAnn Chin, etc, etc, etc.....)

So....we'll see how it goes! I have to remind myself to take baby steps and not get discouraged. I feel a little crazy for signing up for a race that is only 10 weeks away, but if I'm not ready for it, I don't feel like I absolutely have to do it - it is just a nice goal for me to have.

Cheap Solution

I heard a blurb on the radio today about the annual Ikea catalog coming out. Apparently over 500,000 people in the metro get this catalog and they run out of copies of it at the store. I guess there's also a rush at the store around this time of year, and moms wait in line over an hour to get their kids into the child care area (maybe they just need a break from their kids and they're not all that interested in Ikea furniture after all...or maybe they are just going to grab 3.99 Swedish meatballs sans kiddos). I guess there is a lot of interest in cheap, modern, assembly-required furniture in the metro.

I really don't like shopping - especially when it's busy - so I'm lucky that I had my random urge to reorganize last weekend before this rush at Ikea starts. I had just returned from a weekend at the cabin and I was completely unpacked. As I sat down at the desk in the office to get ready for the work week, I felt totally unsatisfied with the space. I've felt that way for awhile and my roommate has expressed a desire to also have a desk in the office (I have been using her desk because she wasn't using it when I moved in four years ago), so I knew I needed to shop for some kind of work space solution in the near future. Either I was trying to procrastinate what really needed to be done or I was feeling extra motivated, but for some reason I dove into rearranging the office at 9 on Sunday night. After I adjusted the existing furniture, I made a stop at Target, Office Max, and Ikea on Monday to accumulate a new lamp, a new desk chair, and a new work table all for less than $100! And I'm so glad I didn't have to fight the Ikea-catalog-release crowds! The assembly for the chair and table I got at Ikea were amazingly straightforward, and by 7pm on Monday, the office had a whole new look! I'm excited about my great buys and the reorganized space, and my roommate is excited to set up an office space again. We're hopeful we'll have lots of productivity in our "new" office.