Discipline

I recently saw the question on Facebook - "What's your one word for this next year?" I thought that was a really good question. One word to describe my hopes for the upcoming year. There are so many things I want to do - so many goals I want to set for myself - but, could I condense them all into one word? The word immediately came to my mind - DISCIPLINE. I am horrible at being disciplined. Whether it's sticking to a diet or exercise, instituting a new schedule/routine, or being consistent with Jack, I usually give up pretty quickly!

In past years, I have been somewhat "anti-resolutions" when it comes to the New Year. I think that in part, it has been my way of allowing myself to slack off. Another excuse to put off goals that I really need to be setting for myself. This year, that changes. I have several goals that I want to set for myself, but I think that I will be keeping most of them private for now. The one goal that has really been on my heart and mind though is losing weight and being healthier. My hot husband has recently lost over 50 lbs. and that has become a motivating factor.

So...here is my goal...50 by 30. Huh? I am turning 30 in September. My goal is to lose 50 lbs. by the time I turn 30 years old. That's less than 1.5 lbs./week. Totally doable. I am contemplating starting up another blog to keep track of all of this, but haven't decided if I'm willing to put in the time/effort (since I'm already a slacker at keeping up this blog!).

I've joined The Recipe Girl's Ten in '10 Challenge and I am excited about that! My goals for 10 weeks are to cut out refined sugar and exercise at least 3 times/week. I am currently on sugar-overload from the holidays and it will be so good for my body to have a break from all of it. Tough, but I've done it before and I know I can do it again. We'll see where I want to go from there...probably have to increase the exercise or something.

Alrighty - I'm putting it out there! 50 by 30!

Jack Update

We have not had a "good" nights' sleep for almost a year. Jack has been waking up multiple times at night and waking for the day usually between 3 - 5 am. We are all exhausted. Jack's behavior and attitude reflect his exhaustion on most days. So, we are taking him for a sleep study at Mayo Clinic. Ack! I am pretty nervous about this and of course wonder if we're doing the right thing. One parent will be able to stay at the clinic with him, so that is reassuring. I am just worried that he'll absolutely freak out about having things attached to him. But, hopefully we can get some questions answered and find out if there's some help for us.

Jack is also going to have eye surgery coming up. It has come to the point where his esotropia cannot be corrected by glasses and surgery is necessary to correct the muscles in his eye. There is a possibility that they will need to do surgery on both eyes, but we're not quite certain of that yet. We haven't met with the surgeon, but hopefully will do so in the next couple of weeks.

School is going really well and he continues to enjoy it. His teacher is fabulous and we couldn't have asked for a better teacher for Jack. He has started to have more recognition of letters and has been able to start sounding out some words! This is really exciting! I love watching him sound out letters and figure out how words are put together.

Jack has also been doing occupational therapy and speech therapy once a week for the past couple of months. That has also been going really well. His therapists are wonderful and seem to really "get" Jack.

So...we've been busy! Tired and busy. :)

A Little Contest-Happy

So, there are several blog contests going on for an HP TouchSmart computer. I am blogging about them to get more entries into the contest. Sorry.

But, seriously, this computer looks AWESOME and I can't even begin to tell you how excited Lonnie would be if we won one.

Check them out!

http://mckgiveaways.blogspot.com/2009/12/hp-touchsmart-giveaway.html

http://boomama.net/hp-touchsmart-600-giveaway/

http://totallytogetherreviews.blogspot.com/2009/12/hp-touchsmart-computer-review-and-give.html

http://kellyskornerreviews.blogspot.com/2009/12/hey-who-wants-to-win-free-computer.html

Once A Month Cooking

I have never tried Once A Month Cooking - but I would love to. It happens so often that I'm unmotivated to make something for dinner...so we end up going out to eat. It's hard on the budget and it's a challenge to eat something healthy when you're out! A fellow blogger is having a giveaway for the Once A Month Cooking - Family Favorites book. Click HERE to check her out and enter to win!

Oooooh.....HI!!!

Well hello there, bloggy land! Being at home over the summer with an incredibly demanding 4 year old leaves VERY LITTLE time to blog. Let alone very little time to pee by yourself. Haha...who am I kidding. Every mom knows that you never get to pee by yourself when you have little kids at home.

Jack started his second year of special education preschool this Monday. And I could not be more excited. Neither could he. He loves school, loves his teacher, and LOVES the bus. All he talks about is the bus. When I ask him how his day was at school, he talks to me about the bus. When I ask him who he played with at school, he tells me about the bus. When I try to find out what he had for a snack today, he goes on and on about the bus.

Jack had an autism evaluation in the beginning of September. It went really well and we really liked the psychologists we met with. Long story short, we walked away with a medical diagnosis of autism. Hearing that comes with a lot of mixed emotions. On one hand, we were relieved that they saw "it" too...that we weren't crazy and we aren't just bad parents. On the other hand, it's never easy to hear that your child will have extraordinary challenges throughout life and that there's something that makes them "different" from all of the other kids. The word "AUTISM" just never seems to lose it's weight. On that day, it hit us like a ton of bricks. They suggested that Jack receive clinical speech therapy and occupational therapy. So, we have an appointment at the end of this month with a pediatric rehabilitation center that offers speech and occupational therapies. They will do another evaluation, to see how much therapy he'll need and then we'll go from there. We'll be driving about an hour to each appointment...so I'm not looking forward to that, but I would drive much further than that if it meant doing something that helped Jack!

More Jack news - he has his first dentist appointment this afternoon. Yikes! I'll take pictures and share how that went. I am praying that we both hold it together and can reward ourselves with some Starbucks when it's all said and done.

My FABULOUS husband surprised me for my birthday (29....ahem) and got me a first-class ticket to visit friends in Sacramento. I am so excited to spend time with girlfriends and have a chance to relax. I also think that the time Jack and Lonnie spend together will be good for them. They'll have fun just being boys and hanging out while mom's gone.

Speaking of my fabulous husband - he decided a couple of months ago to take up running and start eating healthier. He has been doing awesome and I am so proud of him. Check out his running blog here - Fat People Run Too!

This year, I am involved with our local MOPS group as the Hospitality Coordinator. Yesterday was our first meeting and it was crazy! Crazy, but absolutely wonderful. It has been so much fun to prepare the theme, decor and "feeling" of the room this year. We went with a spa/relaxing-type theme and it is wonderful. I love all of the ladies that I am serving with and I am excited to be a part of this ministry.

Speaking of ministry - Lonnie and I are currently involved in starting up a new church in our city! It is called NewLife, and it's a campus of LifeChurch in Oklahoma City. It is involving a lot of time, energy and prayer...but it is exciting to see what God is doing here.

Do you see why it's been a challenge to update this thing? Life has been a little crazy around here! Hopefully with Jack in school, I'll have a little extra time to dedicate to the blog. Hopefully.

Visit with Nana

My mom, Nana, came to visit for Jack's 4th birthday! We had a wonderful visit and Jack was SO excited to see her. Her flight came in Thursday night (late) and we didn't tell Jack that she would be at our house when he woke up in the morning...needless to say, he was thrilled when he woke up and saw Nana in the living room! She got him a "big boy" bike for his birthday, so it was exciting to watch him learn how to ride it with Nana by his side. We also rode on the light rail in Minneapolis (to go from the Mall of America to the airport)...Jack was nervous about the loud "beep" that the train made when the doors closed, so his hands were on his ears most of the time. We also got to go to the water park! It was a really fun filled visit!

4 Years Old

4 years, 48 months, 208 weeks, 1,460 days, 35,040 hours, 2,102,400 minutes, 126,440,000 seconds. Exactly.

**Edited** Apparently my math was WAAAAAY off. I'm just going to blame that on lack of sleep. I changed it now. I'm going to bed.