


Well this weekend is the 1-year anniversary of our wedding. The year has surely flown by for us. God has blessed us immensely throughout this year. We are thankful for the things he has gifted us with and the ways he has guided our lives together. This last weekend we had the great privilege of going to stay the night at The Castle at Glen Eyrie. It was amazing! We also got to hike to the Punch Bowls. I had a few falls on the rocks and got pretty banged up but it was a lot of fun. It was one of the more challenging hikes we have done together and Josh did an amazing job as my leader. That is an area where we have seen some growth. Not so much a problem with Josh leading but with me following. :) In the past when we would do tough hikes like this it would be quite difficult to work together and trust each other but this time we did a great job communicating and helping each other out. Well, mainly Josh helped me but it was a lot of fun! And no arguments or raised voices (except for my screaming as I fell) made for a very, very enjoyable time together enjoying God's creation. **I am adding clarification here to let you all know that I tend to get a little cranky when we hike and a certain man enjoys pushing me to go harder when I would just prefer to sit down so that is where the "raised voices" come in..mainly from my whining!)**
Another great event coming up is my birthday. I don't need to say anything else about this, you know what to do. ;)
To see the pictures of our trip, click the picture below...
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Some of you more dedicated readers may remember when I started posting my fitness accomplishments a few months ago. By fitness accomplishments I mean that I got up and went to the gym in the morning before going to work. Well Lacey and I have still been keeping this schedule as time allows and it has been going well. Lately though we have been getting very bored with the same old exercises and running on the treadmill. Not surprising! And we haven't been watching our food intake very closely so all the working out for me tends to get cancelled out by my late evening Sonic run for ice cream or a slush.
We were faced with the wonderful fitness frustration: PLATEAU. Neither of us had enough excitement about working out to push up the intensity of our workouts. We tried but it was too hard. J So we thought about challenging ourselves by training for a race. We also noticed this girl who is always at the gym the same time as us and she was using this book called Making the Cut. We talked about checking out that book to see what it would be like and I just went ahead and bought it. We both skimmed through it and decided it would be a good thing to try. The author is a trainer from the show, The Biggest Loser and she seems to have her stuff together.
The book consists of meal plans and menus along with fitness plans to reveal the strongest, sexiest you in just 30 days. We are just going to track our calorie intake and follow the workout plan exactly. We just completed Day 2 of the workout and I think it's going to kick our butts. Each daily workout has 5 circuits to complete and each circuit has 4-6 exercises. You do a variety of different exercises and I think this will give us the switch we need to keep our excitement going. I'll keep you posted every once in a while on how it's going.
So…trying to post pictures to blogger is proving to be difficult these days. As soon as I can we have a ton of pictures to put up.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you to blogger for making our lives difficult. J
We just had our first house guests and it was quite fun. Josh & I could really see ourselves opening a B&B someday. We both just love hosting and being hospitable to people.
Here are my nephews. Not sure what they are doing but it looks like they could be reaching for the stars. Keep it going boys, you'll get there someday!
My aunt in Michigan is their babysitter so we randomly get pictures this way. Jackson (in blue) looks a lot like my brother, moreso his uncle instead of his dad. And Tucker (in orange) looks a lot like his mom's family but I can also see a little bit of our genes in him. They are such cute little guys and are growing up so quickly! I don't know when we'll get to see them again but I hope it is soon!
Well, have a good weekend! Josh is off the whole weekend so we are planning lots of NOTHING! :) On Saturday we hope to go watch our friends who are running the Pikes Peak Ascent. And that is really all we have planned!
Last night we went to a surprise birthday party for a friend. It was fun and he was very surprised. The best part is that his parents flew in to surprise him and he had no idea. His wife took him out for a picnic while his parents arrived at their house and set everything up for the party. The look on his face when he saw his mom was priceless. He looked at her for probably 15-20 seconds and said hello and then it was like the light clicked on and I think there was a response that went something like oh my gosh what are you doing here?!
I had originally asked Josh to plan a surprise party for my birthday that is quickly approaching (September 1 in case you forgot, Mom) and then last night I told him I didn't need a surprise party so who knows what will happen.
The only thing I do know is that I want this cake. Or this one. I could go all day with this. And if you remember I also want these.
So hold the date for September 1, there may be a shindig of sorts.
Today is a very repetitious day.
HA.
Last night we made smoothies for dinner and we put frozen green beans in them. You couldn't even taste the beans.
Tonight we will be going to an Olympic party hosted by these people. It should be fun. We are wearing togas. That will make it even more fun.
Josh has, in the last week, become a plumber and an electrician! He fixed some leaks over at Lacey's house and is in the process of replacing all the electric receptacles at our house. In case you have never tried to plug in a lamp or run the vacuum at our house only about 2 of the many outlets will actually hold a plug. The rest were like stretched out or something so Josh is working his way through the house replacing them all. Here's to happy vacuuming! J
And today we are having an Ice Cream Sundae party at work. Delish. It will be the perfect mid-afternoon snack. I'll skip my handful of pretzels and graham crackers today!
In case you are planning to buy me a gift (or 2) in the next few months since I have some celebrations coming up I have decided to post my Wish List here for all to see. Well all 5 of you.
I like how everything is turning to a point system. It seems that any store you go to wants to give you a reward card that you can earn points through to get free stuff or discounts or whatever. Actually it's really annoying because I have to keep buying a new wallet to hold all my freaking discount or reward cards or whatever they are.
I much prefer the stores who will just let you give them your phone number and track it that way. There are some programs that I am part of and every time I enter my phone number it gives some other random name. So some other person is accumulating points because of me but I don't care enough to have it corrected. I'm lazy. I don't want to have to dig through my wallet and find your card, I don't care if I give you the wrong phone number and someone else gets the points, I also don't care to come to your restaurant 10 times before I can get a discount. Airline points seem to be the hardest to accumulate because you just want to fly whatever is cheapest. It's hard to do this on the same airline every time you go somewhere. But right now I am pledging my allegiance to a certain company that I think will prove to be very rewarding.
The conference that I coordinated a few weeks ago was held at the Doubletree Hotel which is part of the Hilton family. With the Hilton HHonors program (I don't know why they use 2 H's but they do) they give event planners points based on your final bill. The great thing about HHonors is they allow you to do what they call 'Double Dip'®—you can also score airline miles. Now typically they give 10 points per dollar spent on a hotel stay for HHonors and then 1 mile per dollar spent to your participating airline frequent flyer program. For event planners you get 1 point per dollar + 1 airline mile per dollar…the conference bill came in at just over $80K…do you really think they will give me 80,000 airline miles??? There is always that small print that says, "Other restrictions may apply". But seriously if I do get this many miles as well as hotel points……Joshua, we are going on a nice trip soon!
It is 60,000 points to stay at a Waldorf-Astoria in high season and 40K in low. But it is only 7,500 to stay at a low scale Hilton such as a Hampton Inn. A "free" ticket on my airline starts at 25,000 miles.
So today I am praying that God chooses to bless us with this opportunity because we are trying to savesavesave and paypaypay off debt and a vacation isn't necessarily in the budget this year but we would really love one.
Me.
I forgot to apply deodorant today. Now onto my daily hygiene habits, I typically apply deodorant a few times each week but this summer and especially with exercising so much I have been sweating so much more. Actually who am I trying to kid here? I sweat a lot. Always. Always have and probably always will.
I recently switched to aluminum free deodorant and it is so nice. Only problem, I think it is not as strong. And you know sometimes if you forget to apply it one day you will be fine because there is enough stuck in your pores from the day before? Not so much with this stuff.
Sorry to all I have tried to stay away from today. It was nothing personal, just afraid you would smell me and think I was weird.
Bye, off to drive home and put on some deodorant.
=)