Life

Life is not a race but indeed a journey. Be honest. Work hard. Be choosy. Say thank you, I love you and great job to someone each day. Go to church, take time for prayer. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. Let your handshake mean more than pen and paper. Love your life and what you've been given, it is not accidental-search for your purpose and do it as best you can. Dreaming does matter. It allows you to become that which you aspire to be. Laugh often. Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them. Some of the best things really are free. Do not worry, less wrinkles are more becoming. Forgive, it frees the soul. Take time for yourself, plan for longevity. Recognize the special people you have been blessed to know. Live for today, enjoy the moment. ~Bonnie Mohr

Cute Old Couples

You know what I love? I love seeing cute old couples. Especially when they are walking holding hands, or sitting next to each other on a bench with the wife's head resting on her husbands shoulder. Even when they share a warm embrace or a sweet kiss. It makes me feel that there still is that old school undying love left. It makes me believe there will be a day when husband and wife love each other no matter what happens. Without a doubt I want to have that lasting love and relationship I see old people have. Their love gives me hope that others want the same thing. It gives me hope that there is love left in this world. Awww cute old couple walking!

This is totally my favorite. So funny!

This is what I want someday...to be laying in a hammock with my husband.

(Pictures are not mine)

Insanity Part Deux

I'm approaching the end of week 2 and I'm definately feeling it. I missed 2 days one because I babysat all day and the other was I was doing Relay for Life all night and figured I should rest before attending. But even though I missed 2 I still feel the burn. I notice more definition in my arms and definately my calves. Of course my trouble area is my belly and even though I feel it in my abs I don't see anything because I've got enough fat in the way. So hopefully along with the cardio I'm doing eventually I will start losing some weight around there. I've still got 6 weeks left and thats still a lot of time to do some damage. I also have noticed that I make sure I work out before I get too tired to do it. I don't usually workout first thing in the morning. I attend class and then have most of the afternoon to do it. I actually get irritated when I don't get a workout in. I've noticed that I've been sleeping a lot better too. Not that I never did before. I've always been a sound sleeper and the deepest sleeper, but there were many times I'd wake up in the middle of the night and now I don't do that much anymore. Not sure if that is from Insanity or a combination of Insanity, school and work!

Insanity Baby

So last summer I purchased the dvd workout system called Insanity. Usually I find those things to be ridiculous. Lose 10 lbs in the first week blah blah. Insanity never made that claim, but they did say at the end of the 60 days, if you worked your heart out you would see results. I bought it because I wanted something new to do instead of the walking, running, elliptical and strength training I typically did. However, I made it through like 2 days last year. I'm not sure why I stopped probably because I was weak. Insanity also indicates you should be an intermediate/advanced exerciser. Last time I barely workedout prior. I decided to whip out the ol' Insanity dvds and give it a second try. I had been doing a variety of workouts before hand: walking, kettleball, taebo, zumba and another dvd called Ripped, which is taught by a Canadian woman. Its basically strength training intervals with shots of cardio mixed in. I love doing that and hope to get some more of her dvd's. So I've been getting a variety of cardio and muscular work done prior to restarting Insanity. As indicated above I only made it 2 days the last time I tried. I currently jsut finished the day 5 workout. Tomorrow I do day 6 and then Saturday is my day of rest. I can honestly say, I have never pushed my body harder than I do with this. I try not to take that many breaks, because I know your body won't change if you don't push it. I still need a few breaks here and there to catch my breath, even the dude who runs the show, Shaun T, has to stop. I haven't noticed a ton of difference with weight, but i do feel stronger and each day that passes I take less and less breaks which I find to be a good thing! :) There is a mix of cardio and plyometrics and some strength training. So even though, I'm still the same weight I was when I started 5 days ago, I think I'm just gaining muscle. (Let's hope so, cuz I've been eating exactly what I should.) Also the workouts are about 35-40 mins in length and I feels like I only work out for 10 mins by the time its done. It's crazy, but I'm hoping it shows results. I will try to update once at the end of every week to see where I'm at.

Setbacks, a Part of Life

I have said many times in posts before about how I'm going to be finished with school come August of this year. Everything seemed like it was going down that road. Well, yesterday I found out one of the classes I'm taking during the summer got cancelled. Great! It's offered twice during the fall, but I don't want to stay here for one class. Then I was told to screw the summer classes and just take those classes during fall and take the summer off. Honestly, I don't want to wait any longer than I have to do. I'm meeting with my advisor tomorrow and hopefully he can tell me that this class is offered online elsewhere, or if I can do something else in place of it, or get it waived. This is the same advisor that underestimated my ability to do anything. He didn't think I could handle an independent study...well I've proved thus far that I can. So until I meet with my advisor tomorrow I can't say which way this is going to go. I'm hoping in my favor. It just seems that nothing as of recent has come easy for me. I keep stumbling upon these setbacks. So far I've been able to get around them, but not without working at them first. I know setbacks are a part of life, but I look around and everyone seems to be so successful and don't have to go through these issues. It's just one class! Why do they do this? I've been told that setbacks make you stronger. If thats the case I will be the strongest person I know. I'm afraid that I will have wasted all this time and energy I will have nothing left to fight for anything else. I want to graduate so bad! It's what I'm fighting for right now and I'm not going to give up!

Miles for Causes

Ok, so people do specific races to raise money for specific causes like diabetes, cancer, etc. I've been doing lots of thinking, well some thinking anyways about how I could put my everyday walking/running to good use. I enjoy exercising, but sometimes it becomes monotonus and I try to mix things up. Sure I do strength training and taebo some zumba among others. But there is nothing like getting outside and enjoying the fresh air and taking a walk or a run. Why can't what I do everyday, such as walking be put to good use? Why should we wait for a special marathon to raise money? Ok granted it would get really expensive really quick depending on how I figure it out, especially on my salary. I first thought of for every mile I walked/ran I would donate a dollar to a chosen fund. Then I started to think, you know how many miles I could log in a day and then in week? I might sound a little selfish if I don't give that much, but I also need to live too! Then I thought maybe a dollar for every 5 miles I walk/run. This seems rather reasonable to me. I'm not sure what fund I would give money to. Perhaps every 2 wks I would accumulate miles and money and send it off to one cause and keep rotating between places. This would also continue to be an encourager for me to keep working out everyday knowing I have something else to workout for. I still haven't figured out all the logistics of it, but I don't think it could be too complicated. Then one day I will walk/run/bike across the USofA and raise money along the way for the cause of my choice, but thats along way off yet. I would also like some people to accompany me on that eventual journey! Peace and Love!

SpRiNg BrEaK

I just got back to school after a nice relaxing spring break. I was not like every other college student who goes far away on vacation to get a nice tan and get drunk. I went down to Florida to visit my parents. I didn't do a whole lot mainly caught up on some reading and watched lots of crap on TV. I was going to do homework and I should have so now I'm going to have a really rough first week back trying to get it all done. Here is a quick review of what I did this week. Saturday I traveled 7 hrs to Florida. I met my parents at this podunk little town because they wanted to go to a chocolate festival. Low and behold there was no chocolate at the chocolate festival. That was very disappointing. So we ate at a local diner and drove another hr to get back home. On Monday I went to the allergist to see if they could give me something to stop my nose from running. That was an epic fail. The doctor prescribed more asthma medications, well that isn't going to help my nose and my horrible allergies. Hopefully by next year I will be in a place where my allergies won't be so bad. I also went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle that night. On Tuesday my dad and I went to see the movie Rango. Which was a pretty good movie. I liked the western themed music. All week I helped my aunt and uncle by taking there 3 dogs outside and playing with them while they were at work. I got paid pretty good for my work! :) Finally my last day was St. Patty's day and my mom, a friend of hers and I went out to a piano bar. I drank a few Guiness' in honor of the Irish. Pretty much the best beer ever created. Everyone was decked out in their green clothes and hats and beads. It was a fun night! Then yesterday I returned to S. Carolina after a long drive, or so it seemed. Having plenty of beers and not enough sleep the night before didn't help my cause. Lesson learned I suppose. That is about it. Back to school on Monday, finishing the semester, final homestretch!