Cracking That Habit

Trying to kick the caffeinated version again! Here is my Valentine's Day gift from Joseph. Sweet, huh?

Family Goals

On New Year's Day 2008 ,we made three family goals to try to accomplish:

1) Read stories from our ancestor's lives.

2) Make it to sacrament meeting every week (and on time so we don' t miss the sacrament).

3) Exercise as a family once a week.

Nathan's school genealogy project gave us a good start on reading family histories. We have yet to actually sit down and read a story, but we've been talking about it.

We've been trying hard to meet goal number two. Having church at 11:00 am instead of 9:00 am has helped. Not as much as you might think though!

Today was our first family exercise session. We went to the YMCA where Nathan was having his swimming lesson. We reserved a racquetball court and brought our jump ropes. I've checked some books about jumping rope and we are all hyped up to practice and try out some of those tricks we've been seeing lately. Jump rope is a tough sport! We're planning on doing swimming, jump rope, and basketball during the cold weather months.

A New Challenge

I got an e-mail in my box today from my friend Kristen. She sent me some information about "The Hinckley Challenge." It is to read the Book of Mormon, starting yesterday, in 97 days to honor Gordon B. Hinckley. One day for every year of President Hinckley's life.

I've been a little lazy in my scripture study lately and so I just decided to join this challenge. You can check it out and join for yourself at:

www.hinckleychallenge.com

I'm putting a graph in my sidebar that will show where I'm at (if I remember to log into the site and record it each day! --tying string to finger--)

Two messages

It’s interesting what happens, and I think it’s by design, when we find something in our lives that is truly working for us, we want to pass it on in the hopes that others might benefit as well.

For people who belong to my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) this is a very familiar theme as we are a very evangelical church. Why do I want to share the message of the restored Gospel with people? The answer for me is simple. It brings me joy. It gives me comfort. My earthly burdens are made lighter by the message. I want others to have this too. I have been brought up in the church my whole life and so there are truths that I have enjoyed since birth. Other things didn’t sink in until I became an adult and started investigating and questioning on my own. As I used to understand it, I was supposed to be a missionary (sharing the Gospel) because I was commanded (a commandment from God) to do it. It was a burden. It was a stressor. I was afraid of what might happen if I didn’t do it. Now that I understand God better, I know that He operates out of love for his children. It has made me free to love others and changed my view on sharing with them. I want to share because I love rather than because I fear. My burdens are lightened. I feel joy.

I want my friends who are not members to know that I love them as they are. I also want them to know that if they ever have questions or comments, I am open to talking about my religion and beliefs and I’m not interested in pressuring people to be like me or believe like I do. (You can also visit official church websites like www.lds.org or www.mormon.org) Hopefully, you guys already know this.

The second thing that has made an impact of late (though on a much less grand scale—Gosh, I probably shouldn’t even put them in the same post!) is Sparkpeople. I mentioned it in my blog some months ago. Probably there are people who are sick of me talking about it. But anyway, it’s a health and fitness site on the web that allows you to track your calories and fitness. It helps you to figure out how much to eat and exercise based on your current weight and goals. It’s also packed full of information (articles and videos), healthy recipes and forums for discussion. The site allows you to set up your own page and blog. There are nutrition, fitness and health experts on the forums to whom you can address questions. The greatest thing is that it’s all FREE!! That’s right, the man who started up the site uses his own money to run it and just wants to help people. At any rate, I’ve lost about 40 pounds since I started working on it using this site. It’s been good for me and if there’s anyone out there who’s looking for some help, this is a great place to go. If you are pregnant or nursing, they have a separate site for people in that category.

Here are some links:

www.sparkpeople.com

the basic link that gets you there walks you through signing up

http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage.asp?id=QUETZALGIRL

my user name on Sparkpeople is Quetzalgirl, this is my page and blog; there is a link to my nutrition and exercise tracker and a ticker at the bottom that shows my weight loss progress

http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/motivation_articles.asp?id=530

how Sparkpeople got started, about the owner/CEO

One of my favorites is www.sparkrecipes.com because you can find lots of new healthy recipes to try, but also enter in your own recipes to get the nutrient/calorie breakdown and then they can be transferred over to your Nutrition tracker on the sparkpeople website.

My understanding is that they offer what online Weight Watchers offers and MORE and it’s all free!

Have a great day, everyone!!