Zoo date

Last Saturday, Glenn and I went to the Atlanta Zoo. It was Educator Appreciation Day, so I got in free and we got a discount on Glenn's ticket....yay for super cheap trip to the zoo! We haven't been to the zoo together since we were first dating, in fact, the zoo is where Glenn first referred to me as his girlfriend. It was sweet. :)

So anyway, we just took our time wandering through and looking at everything we wanted to see. We spent a long time in the reptile house because Glenn wanted to see them feed the viper....I was not so thrilled, and I could have lived my whole life without seeing that...but he enjoyed it. The zoo was super crowded, but we were still able to see everything we wanted to see and only had to wait a minute or two for people to move along. It was a really fun day, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go and spend the whole day just being big kids. After the zoo we went to have ice cream, which is always fun! :) Here are some picture for your viewing pleasure!

about to turn a corner

1 more day of week 3 and then on to week 4...apparently I'll be running 3 miles consistently in just 6 weeks...I'm feeling more confident that this will be attainable. Every day gets easier, and every day I get more and more excited about the actual running part of the run/walk.

Saturday I woke up with a terrible cold, and I have felt bad all weekend. The old Angela would have just said, "you don't feel good, take some time off, you deserve it." But, the new me decided to forge ahead and get my workout in anyway. It was definitely tough, and I could tell that I was more rundown than normal. But now that I've done it, I feel great! Okay, I don't actually physically feel great....but you know what I mean! :)

This is the time in a workout where the old Angela would start to get discouraged and give up...but not this Angela. My pants have started to become snug around the legs, and I have no idea where my weight is...I'm not looking for at least another week. BUT I know that this is normal. I know that my legs will get bigger before they get smaller. I know that I will probably gain weight before I lose weight. So, instead of being discouraged by my tighter jeans....I'm choosing to be encouraged, and excited, because that only means this is working! I WILL stick with this...I'm going on 3 weeks straight, and I have to say I think that is the longest I've stuck with any sort of workout routine. So, in short, I'm proud of myself, and super excited to see how far I can go with this, and what the outcome will be. If nothing else I will prove to myself that I can do it!

Thanks for joining me on this journey....

update

Just wanted to post a quick update on my journey. First I want to thank my sweet friends and little brother for your encouragement. It keeps me going more than you know!

Okay, I completed day 2 of week 2 today, and it was easier than day 1 of week 2. This week I am running for 90 sec. and walking for 2 min., and so on for 20 minutes, after a 5 minute warm up walk. I have one more day of this week and next week I will up it to running for 90 sec., walking for 90 sec., running for 3 min., walking for 3 min. and then repeat. So far I am sticking with it, and it's actually becoming fun, because I can feel it getting easier, and I am seeing results already. I have lost 4 pounds since my last post! Yay! While my clothes aren't really any looser, the scale shows the loss, and I know my body will be close behind. My sweet little brother told me last night not to get discouraged, and to keep going, and the results will come soon, and they will be worth it. I am taking his sage, 16-year old advice. :) I'm going to keep on keeping on!!

Confessions of a Wannabe

Since this is a new year, a new decade, and a fresh beginning, I have been thinking about the things I want to be...so bear with me, there are a few, and this may get more introspective than you are ready for! (this starts off a little pathetic acutally...but I promise it's going somewhere!)

I have always been the chubby girl. I have always been the biggest girl in the group. This has not been easy, and I am constantly thinking about it. I LOVE my amazing, beautiful friends, but it's not always easy having amazing, beautiful friends when you feel less than amazing and definitely too fat to be beautiful....only pretty cute at most. These are harsh realities, and while they are not healthy thoughts, they are honest. Some of you might be asking yourselves, well, if you are so unhappy about it then why don't you just lose the weight. Good question. The truth is, I've tried, and failed more times than I can even begin to count. I always start off fairly gung-ho, and give up shortly after starting for 2 main reasons....(1) Working out only makes me realize how truly out of shape I am, it is not fun at.all, because it is so hard, and (2) I so desperately want to lose the weight that I get very discouraged with less than immediate results.

This leads me to the first 2 things I want to be: (1) Disciplined and (2) Thin and healthy

I have made the decision to start this program called Couch to 5K. The basic premise of the program is that it enables you to go from being a couch potato to being able to successfully run a 5K (3 miles) in 9 weeks. It takes baby steps each week, gradually increasing the time you run, and decreasing the time you walk. It's 20-30 minutes each work-out, 3 times a week. This is doable, and honestly less overwhelming than trying to squeeze in intense workouts at a gym where everyone around me is fabulously perfect, and I leave feeling worse than I did when I went in. It's just me, my new running shoes, and my neighborhood, and this certainly ups the comfort level for me. So, as a way to help motivate myself to actually follow-thru this time, I am signing up for a 5K with some friends....in 10 weeks! This will give me just enough time to complete the program....no.time.to.slack.off! It also gives me the motivation to not be the chubby girl that slows down her friends....yet again....

My hope is to sort of chart my journey over the next couple of months. No, I will not be posting my weight (I wish I didn't know what it was, I certainly don't want others knowing this information!) I will say it's "holy crap, that's ridiculous"! Hopefully I can move it to "wow, that's still not good" down to "Eh, not too bad", and finally to "yay! That is pretty good!" But more than that, I want my clothes to fit better (being in smaller clothing would be awesome), I want to be healthier, and I don't want to be the chubby girl anymore.

Okay, on to the next thing I want to be: (3) Proud of who I am no matter how I look in the mirror.

In case you haven't noticed, my self-esteem could use some work. I attribute my lack of self-esteem to many things, mostly internal, but also due to some external factors. Such as, it feels like EVERYONE is thin....everywhere you look you are confronted with why it's beautiful to be thin, and if you are over a single digit size there is something wrong with you, and you are to either to be pitied, made fun of, or - even worse - be subjected to the single digit size people around you talk about how fat they are while you look at them and think (seriously...if you are fat, then what on earth am I?!) I am not saying this to offend anyone, and I realize that even thin girls don't always have the best self-esteem....it's just extremely unsettling to listen to thin people talk about how fat they are, because I think to myself, "if they think they are fat, what must they think of me?" However, I also realize that thin people don't want to listen to fat girls state the obvious, because it's uncomfortable....and let's be honest, no one likes to listen to people degrade themselves. So, I'm going to work on stopping. I'm going to work on realizing that God made me who I am, and while it is my fault that I have let myself get this overweight, I was obviously not meant to be a size 2.

I moved from feeling down on myself and determined to change my appearance, to still being determined to make changes while learning to love who I am, and accept that being beautiful has much more to do with who I am, than how I look, or the size of my pants. I stumbled across this blog today -http://operationbeautiful.com/ and I was sobbing as I read about this. A dear, sweet girl named Caitlyn has started Operation Beautiful. She is making an effort to stop all of the fat talk among women (no matter what their size), by posting random notes in public with simple messages like "You're Beautiful", or "The mirror does not define who you are" or "Wow! You look fabulous today!" I think I may join the bandwagon...so be looking for notes. I think it is a GREAT idea, and I encourage you all to do it! You never know how much this might mean to someone.

So, my last wannabe of this post: (4) I want to be beautiful

inside.....

If you are still reading this - bless you! Here's to a great 2010!

You are beautiful!

PS - I did not post this as a means to fish for compliments or to have people tell me I'm not fat....It was just some stuff that was on my mind, and I wanted to get it out. Thanks for indulging me. :)

Busy schedules, leaky roof, and wasps

Are you intrigued yet? Lately we have been so busy we don't know if we are coming or going. And unfortunately it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Between Glenn's 3 classes, studying, and working full time he is busy all the time. And I am of course working full time, and then tutoring 4 days a week. Add in all of the normal stuff like cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and sewing projects, I don't ever get everything accomplished. It can feel very overwhelming most of the time, and I have moments when I come close to melting down, but then I get over it and get back to trudging along to get as much accomplished as I can.

So, on top of all of our daily stress, our roof has been leaking. There is no hail damage, or anything wrong that insurance will pay for, its just leaking. And since on top of being super busy and stressed, we are also poor, we can't afford to get it fixed...so we are sort of in limbo about that right now.

And, let's just add in one more thing to the mix....wasps. In our house. We have an infestation of wasps apparently. We have no idea where they are coming from. We see about 1-2 per day, until last Thursday when I got home and there were about 30 0f them flying around in our kitchen. YIKES! Glenn got home about 5 minutes after me and the wasp massacre of 2009 began. In about 10 minutes he had killed them all, and he didn't even get stung!! We discovered a window in our kitchen had come off track, thus creating a crack for them to fly in, and there is also a small hole in the screen. Well, Glenn fixed the window and we thought the problem was solved...but we have found and killed 4-5 more over the last couple of days... go figure. Again, no money for an exterminator, so we will just keep killing them, and pray they go away!

So, life is a bit difficult for us right now, but we are trying hard to find the blessings in our day to day...they are there! We know God will take care of us and get us through this time, and someday we'll look back and understand what all of this was for...

Zoo Field Trip

Last Friday the 3rd grade at CIE went to the Atlanta Zoo. It was a dreary day, but thankfully it didn't rain until the very end of the day when were loading back on the buses. However, when it did finally rain..it poured. 130 kids, plus 8 teachers soaking wet on a school bus for 30 minutes back to school....stuffy, not fun, and a lot smelly! Overall it was a fun day, but the kids were wound up super tight. Most of them had ever been to the zoo before, and were so excited they were literally jumping from animal to animal and SCREAMING at every animal we saw. It was crazy. We had to finally have a pow-wow when my class almost took out two deaf kids in the retile house. It just goes to show how totally different our kids are this year after getting 400 new kids from other schools. I was glad they were so excited, but we had to have a little lesson about how we act and keep our excitement under control in a public place. Ahhh, life lessons...anyway....here are some pics...enjoy!

U2 Concert

So, about a month ago, Glenn and I, along with his parents and sister went to the U2/Muse concert. It was awesome!! Considering I have only been to 1 major (secular) concert in my life (New Kids on the Block in 4th grade) it was quite an experience. Here are some pics from the night. It was great! (blogger is making the pics all crazy...sorry!)