Motivated

I'm going to start by saying that I have never been one to really like to exercise. However, with that being said, I have made the decision to start exercising on a regular basis. Not like a New Year's resolution b/c I always make those and break them in less than a week. This is more like a life change resolution. I made the decision to lose weight a couple of months ago and so far have been successful. I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months! So now that I have lost that I want to be able to keep it off, lose more, and not have a lot of flabby skin from weight loss!

For the longest time I have been using the excuse that I don't really have time. Between a husband, a 3-year-old daughter, and nursing school that doesn't leave much spare time. But just recently a friend from church has motivated me to do better (you can find her blog at www.kamamedders.blogspot.com). If you read her blog you will notice she is stay-at-home mother of 5 married to the minister of our church. Now I have never been very competitive, and I am not about to start, but I realized my excuse is just that, an excuse. I can take 30-45 minutes a day (or every other) to spend exercising. It will more than likely make me feel better about myself, sleep better at night, feel better during the day, & finally, the most important to me, have more patients and understanding toward my child and husband. Exercise will give me a way to release my stress and it will also release good endorphins to make me feel better all around. These are both things I said 2 months ago to some patients at a behavioral hospital. Finally decided to listen to myself.

I have started this journey by making myself a schedule for the next 2 months. I put it in my phone with a reminder and everything. After 2 months, I will reevaluate and switch it up if needed or just leave it the same. I also have written (typed) it out for the world to see. Hopefully this will work for me. I have started things like this before and just lack motivation to keep going. So if you see me and think about it ask me how it is going. I would hate for someone to ask and have a bad report. Oh and I will try to blog every now and then about how it is all going.
OK well that is it for now. Good luck to all that have made New Year's resolutions or if you are like me a Life Change Resolution!

Happy New Year!

Seeing as it is a new year now, I thought I should blog about December. It was just a busy month. I finished my first full semester of nursing school and passed! Jay's sister, Ashley, got married. Jayci was the flower girl in her wedding. She made it most of the way down the aisle clinging to Christian, Jay's brother, and not throwing flowers. Oh well she looked really cute.

Here are some pictures from the wedding. The first on is just of Jayci. Then there is one of all of us with the newly married, Dustin and Ashley Rhodes. And the last one made me tear up the first time I really looked at it. It is of Jayci dancing on Jay's feet. It really made me think about how much she is growing up. I mean she will be 3 this month. I know I have a few years before she gets married or anything but it just made me think about how fast time can go.

Oh yes and Christmas! It was really fun. This is the first year that Jayci has been really excited about presents. Last year it was fun but she was still more interested in the boxes than the toy itself. Needless to say she racked up on plenty of toys. The car she got from her Papaw and Nana. She is still not really sure about it. She likes to look at it and maybe even sit in it. But actually driving it is a different story. The other pictures of us on Christmas Eve in our "jammies", as Jayci calls them. This was something that my parents used to do. We could open one gift on Christmas Eve and it was always Christmas pajamas. This is something Jay and I decided we would start too. I mean who couldn't use a new pair of pajamas!?!

Well I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I know I am looking forward to 2009. We start the year out with Jayci turning 3 at the end of the month and then who knows from there. Just have to wait and see!

Busy, Busy

Well it is the end of the semester (finally) and boy have we been busy. Not only am I busy with school but with family too. My mom came in from Illinois with Greg (her boyfriend), Allie (Greg's youngest daughter), and Alex (Greg's nephew). We had a lot of fun. They got here on Friday and that night we went to Cajun's Wharf for my mom's birthday. I was really worried that Jayci would act out while we were there; however, she proved me wrong. Well, honestly she was asleep for the the first part of dinner; she woke up right about the time the food came! But for the last half of dinner she was excelent!!! She stayed with my mom that night at the hotel and LOVED every minute. She wanted to go back the next night too. Oh and before dinner my mom, Allie, Jayci, and I went and got our nails done! It was so fun just hanging out with the girls. Jayci was sooo cute she thought she was such a big girl getting her nails painted. Saturday we just layed around for most of the morning, which was great. That afternoon we went to Playtime Pizza. If you haven't been there you definitly should go. Just make sure you have plenty of money to go through b/c it can get expensive. Well, maybe it was a little more for us since we spent 5 hours there. Yep I said 5 hours...I would recommend 2-3 hours at most. But we had a really good time. Here are some pictures of us getting our nails done and at Cajun's.

These are pictures from Playtime Pizza. They had one of those fun photo booths and we took full advantage...As you can tell Jayci Loved it (Actually we all did)!!

The next weekend my friend Celeste and I took our kids to The Wonderplace. It is a bit pricey (mainly b/c you have to pay for the adults too) but it was a lot of fun. Because it is a little pricey I was going to opt out of going but my very good friend Celeste offered to pay so I said ok. We got there and told the lady we had 3 kids and 2 adults. OK wait let me say this when you go to The Wonderplace as a family you get the second adult free. So the conversations continued like this:

Lady: So it's all together?

Celeste: Yes...all together (b/c she was paying)

Lady: Like together b/c well I just didn't know if...

Celeste: Yea all together...

So the lady went ahead and rang it all up, giving us the 2nd adult free. Afterwards she kept telling Celeste how hard it must be to have 3 kids to chase after!!! Apparently (we think) the lady thought we were "TOGETHER." Oh well we got one adult Free!!! Anyway, here is a picture of Jayci doing a puppet show and buying groceries and Hunter playing with the big car center. Nathan was too busy running from one thing to another so I didn't get a picture of him.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know I plan on it!!!

Pumpkins & Pictures

A couple of weeks ago Jayci's Aunt Cori bought her a little pumpkin. Last Friday, when Jayci and I were hanging out, I thought it would be a good idea to carve it. I remembered how much fun I used to have carving pumpkins. I guess Jayci is a little young still because I did most of the cleaning out and carving. Well on Monday of this week I suppose Jay really wanted to carve a pumpkin and talked Jayci into wanting to carve a pumpkin too. So he went and bought a bigger pumpkin to carve. This time she still did not want to "clean" the pumpkin out. We finally talked her into at least sticking her hand in the pumpkin for a couple of pictures. There are pictures from both of our pumpkins below. The big pumpkin in the picture is a chiminea that Jay's mom, Brenda, bought us from the place she works. We love all the fun stuff she brings home.

The pictures below are some that my good friend, Kasie, took at the park. She took a lot more but I couldn't put all of them on here. In the last picture is Kasie's (and Kevin's) daughter, Kate. Jayci and her are so cute playing together (when they are not fighting). Jay and I are so blessed to have this family as friends. Thank you Kasie for taking such beautiful and timeless pictures of Jayci.

Updates

Well I finally got a free moment and decided to update our blog. There are several things that have gone on since my last update. The bottom picture is of from when my mom visited a couple of months ago. The picture of Jayci and Parker (the little boy) is from a visit at my pawpaw's house. It was a very fun day. Parker and Jayci played so good together. I love that she has someone to play with. Another picture is of her and her papaw. She spent the night with her Memaw and Papaw. They took her to Sunday in the Park with church. I also took Jayci to the fair on Monday with her Papaw and Uncle Christian. She was in a major culture shock at first. But after the Funnel Cake, Petting Zoo, and a Corn Dog she was ready to go. It was so much fun seeing her have so much fun.

Anyway, School is going good. I start my psych. rotation on Tuesday. I am actually more excited than I thought I would be about this rotation. Well I am a little nervous too but still. I think I will be ok.

Sorry if this post was a little sporadic like. It is like midnight and even though I can't sleep I can't really think about what to write either. Hopefully, I will do a better post sooner than it took me to do this one.








Jayci has decided that she is a "Ladybug Princess."

Time...

Well let me start out by saying that school this semester has been a lot harder than I expected. All the seniors told us once we got through the summer it would be a down hill battle. Well they are a bunch of LIARS!!! I think this is way harder than the summer. That is my reasoning for not being able to post anything lately. Plus I came to a realization that the people I started the blog for, Jay's and my parents, don't even read it. So here I am posting everything about Jayci, which I love to do, but they don't even read what I write. I guess I am just going to have to find different subjects to post about. But for now I have to go study. I could always post about Fluid and Electrolyte imbalance and Acid / Base. Now wouldn't that be FUN!!!! I would not do that to the few readers I actually have. I'm sure if I did that I would lose all readers and just would be typing to fill space. Hope everyone has a wonderful week. I will be trying to not get pooped on this week!!!

Swimming & "Redneck" Girl

Today we went swimming at Magic Springs with a friend from school, Kelli, and her son, Marshal. Jayci and Marshal had lots of fun playing in the water together. And just let me say I am so impressed with how well Jayci is swimming. Well she is not actually swimming per say but she is so comfortable with the water. She has started actually going underwater without holding her nose and doesn't come up choking. Which is a huge improvement. However, I am kind of nervous about the summer ending. Last summer she was also very brave in the water and at the beginning of this summer we have had to work very hard to get her to this point. I just hope that next summer she remembers how much fun the water is. That way we do not have to wait until the end of the summer for her to really enjoy swimming like we did this year.

This is Jay trying to turn my sweet little girl in to a "redneck" girl. I am not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I want her to like fishing, hunting, and all that stuff but I still want her to be girly. I guess she can be both as long as it is an even mix between the two. And really if we never have a little boy then that is the way it is going to be. Because trust me Jay is determined to have a child that hunts and fishes. I guess if I want to keep my girly girl then I need to hurry and have a little boy. However, as much as I would love to do this 1) I don't determine what we will have next and 2) I have to finish school before we have another baby. So I suppose I will just have to deal with a little bit of a country girl if that is what happens.