Eat Up!

If you see me over the next few months and notice I'm looking a little rounder, please don't mention it.

You see, we found this little jewel:

The Wendy's Frosty Keychain.

{these are not my keys. they were found here}

For just $1, you too could be the owner of the beautiful keychain. The best part of it is not the cute tiny size or the punch of fun it brings to your keys, but that from now until

December 31, 2010, you get a free Frosty if you go to Wendy's and show them your keychain.

People, you don't even have to order anything. You just show them this tiny bit of keychain bling and bam, FREE Frosty goodness!

So, if I start looking a little pudgy, you know why. If you promise not to mention it, I'll let you borrow my keys to get your own!

Health Factor

Today I had my final stress test to evaluate my improvement from cardiac rehab. To say that I was dreading this appointment is an understatement. Though they repeatedly told me the stress test is no a pass/fail test, I certainly walked out of my first test feeling not only like I failed, but failed MISERABLY. The doctor basically said "not considering your valve replacement, you are really out of shape." Um.. thanks. And seriously, how can you say, "not considering your valve replacement?!" Isn't that what the last 6 months of my life have revolved around?

I was really afraid that I was going to come out of this test and he was going to repeat his words about how out of shape I am. Thankfully, I was able to last 2 1/2 minutes longer than I did with my last test and the doctor was pleased with the improvement I've shown. The bad news came when he told me my goal heart rate from here on out should be between 120-130. Um... have you ever had a decent workout and kept your heart rate below 130? Yeah. I don't think so. I plan on calling my cardiologist tomorrow to see what she thinks a goal heart rate is.

Despite the bad news about the heart rate, the doctor did have some good things to say which really got me thinking. Honestly, up until this point in my life, my motivation is driven by 1) vanity 2) a beach vacation 3) vanity for a beach vacation. So, you can see that I have really pure motivations. As much as I hear about how to be heart healthy, I haven't really applied the information to my life. The doctor encouraged me to keep a journal of my activities - how long I worked out, what activity I did and what my heart rate was. It is important to keep track of this information as a way of keeping track of your overall health. If my only form of exercise is walking from the car to my office, then it will be a long time before I feel the effects of deteriorating health and get tired on that short walk. If I am active on a daily basis, then I will be more in tune with my body and overall health and will be able to catch when any major issues come up.

It was really eye opening for me to view it this way and to think about how much time could be wasted and damage done to my body by my lack of exercise. Whether you have a major health condition like I do or you think you are an average person, I would encourage you to rethink about your motivations for working out and how exercising for 30 minutes a day could not only improve your overall health, but also help you to pick up on some health issues before they become a major problem.

Umm..

I have a great day of respect for bloggers who post multiple times a day. I'm not sure my life is that interesting to post that much information for the few readers that I do have, and even now that I have a few minutes to sit down and actually blog something, I'm having a hard time coming up with exactly what I should blog about. So, this post will be random and disordered, but at least it is a post of some sort.

July has been a great month yet has flown by way too quickly. Part of the reason it went by too quickly is that we used one weekend to celebrate our 2 year anniversary and the next weekend to celebrate Nathan and Kaitlan's wedding. Both weekends were great and definitely wore us out! It was nice to get to spend our weekend in Abilene with nothing to do for the first time in forever.

As for the wedding, you can see they certainly made a beautiful couple! We had a great time at the wedding but the highlight of the weekend was that Cody was the officiant for the wedding. It was so special that he got to be a part of it in such a key manner. I am not exaggerating when I say that he did such a wonderful job! Seriously, I cannot even count the number of compliments we received that night and the compliments my mom is still hearing to this day. I am so proud of him!

In other news, things were pretty quite around the blog for the month of June because my time was tied up elsewhere. The whole month my schedule looked something like this: work 8-5, eat dinner, do homework for 3 hours, go to bed, wake up and do it again. Do you notice anything that doesn't fit with this picture?

Yeah, 3 hours of homework a night after I've graduated? Back in May after I finished my Master's I was passionately claiming that I was finished with school, end of story. I myself would have never guessed that within a month I would seriously be considering making school a longterm goal. I know that Someone is the one who put the idea my head and I am so excited about the possibilities it brings. I took two online math classes over the month of June and am looking at different options to pursue a teacher certification. Not only will teaching be a good job for me to have in case Cody pursue's his PhD work, but I am very excited about the option to love on middle school students during some difficult years. I'm not quite sure how quickly it will all play out, but I'm excited to have an idea of where my next step is going to be.

June was quite the month for us as we had one of the most exciting things happen to date in our marriage..... WE GOT CABLE!!!!

Yes, 23 months into marriage and we finally splurged! Cody preached 3 times over the month of May at a small church and was able to make enough money to pay for a whole year of cable, so we finally felt like it was a financial option for us. This is my first time to have DVR and I am IN LOVE! I am finally able to record anything I want and have quickly become addicted to the Food Network, HGTV and my first true love, TLC. Whew... it is certainly a task to stay on top of all of my shows but I am loving the challenge of it :)

I think that is a quick update on what has been consuming our time over the last few weeks. We've had a good summer and are enjoying actually spending time together, which seems few and far between when school's in session. We have about 5 weeks left before school and travel season start up again and we're hoping to enjoy every moment of it!

Anniversary Fun!

Last year Cody and I were fortunate enough to get to go to Dallas for our anniversary weekend, but thanks to our long vacation in Cleveland this year (ha!) we had to get a little more creative with how we were going to celebrate.

We decided that we would both plan a date for the weekend. Cody ended up spilling the beans pretty early on about what we were going to do for his date, but I kept mine a surprise. I even made him wear a mask on the way there to keep in a secret as long as possible.

He was obviously very excited about my date.

I took us to Mine By Design, a paint your own pottery place!

Here's a close up of my bowl:

And here's Cody's:

(Make sure you notice Dakota on the surf board!)

The colors look dull right now, but they will end up really bright once they finish them.

After we finished painting, I planned on taking us out to Lucy's for dinner. Lucy's is a hole in the wall place out in Tuscola that serves delicious burgers. We've tried about 3 different times to go out there and it's been closed every time. I made sure to check and see what time they closed and that we would have plenty of time to eat after we finished painting.

We walked into the restaurant at 8:03 and the waitress greets us with, "I'm sorry but we're closed!" Of course I was like, "No, I checked... you're supposed to be open till 9!" Sadly, they had just shut off the grills so we were out of luck. We did at least get a little bit of their famous ice cream, but we're beginning to think it's never going to happen for us to eat at Lucy's!

We headed back into town and were planning on eating at Chick-Fil-A (a staple in our marriage!) but passed the Home Place on our way back in. We decided we might as well stop and see if they're open. While they were technically closed, the owner had a private party going on and said it wouldn't be any more trouble for us to join in with the buffet line.

So, my date certainly didn't go as planned, but Cody and I got a good laugh out of it. It was surely a reminder that marriage is ALWAYS an adventure and everyone is much happier if you just roll with the punches and smile when plans change.

More to come tomorrow!

It's Time to Celebrate...

Gerber daisies last night...





Sweet tea to make my afternoon pass faster...


Cody is starting our anniversary weekend off to a great start! I am a LUCKY woman!