Abundance

Today's Meditation mantra was "I create my personal abundance from an infinite source."  Which I quickly changed to "The abundance in my life comes from God."  God has given me more than I could have imagined and the grand blueprint plans he has for me - although a mystery to me, I know is just right. 

I am a control freak in many ways!  Not knowing what is in store for me, not being able to create a plan of my own has always been something I struggle with.  It is hard for me to give it to God completely.  More than anything I hope these 21 days of Meditation gives me an opportunity to release stress, frustrations and control of many things and to turn it over to God.

Somehow though, I have to find a quieter place and time for my meditation.  I am quickly distracted and frustrated with the noises around me when I am suppose to be releasing tension.  Copper and his continuous licking was driving me nuts!  I didn't end up as relaxed as I would have liked so I might try some other meditation tricks before I lay down tonight.

The thing I need to remember is that I have abundance of so many things in my life.  I need to be continously thankful and grateful for what the Lord has given me. 

And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 1: 14(NKJV)

Getting Back Into Things

Well it has been quiet a while since I've been blogging here at Endless Jubilee.  I have been reading everyone's blogs, but just haven't had much to share of my own.  However, with the holiday season approaching and so many online/virtual challenges popping up everywhere, I am considering joining a few and starting to journal my progress.

The older I get, the more I notice my body not keeping up.  It is time for me to get back into a routine and shaping myself in more ways than one.  First I want to focus on building up my fitness levels.  I need to spend time exercising - more than just once a week.  I am still very active but not by means of daily workouts.  I want to increase my weekly mileage and get in some more pilates, yoga and meditation.

The first challenge I joined is the 21 Day Meditation Challenge hosted by The Chopra Center.  I need to find ways to relax and destress each day.  This is just one way that I am going to explore this month.  I have registered and made it halfway through Day 1 - before my network connection cut me off.   I really found that the meditation audio file was well done and I found myself really relaxing and when done -refreshed and reawakened.

The second challenege I am considering joining is the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge.  I read about this challenge alot last year and so many people enjoyed the challenge and the results they discovered.  I think this may be just what I need to keep myself focused and encouraged to work out each day.

I also have a few personal goals such as focusing on eating better and taking time for myself that I have set for myself this month. Both of these virtual/online challenges will help me to meet those two goals.  So it is time to come up with a game plan, make a decision about the HBBC and continue the meditation challenge this week and see how things go.

March Madness 5k Race Recap

Hello all.  I know it has been a while.  I think I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), otherwise known as the Winter Blues and just have no motivation, desire, or ambition to keep up a consistent workout in the winter.  Therefore, I had nothing worthwhile to blog about so I took a break from blogging, again.  BUT….. spring is almost here.  I say almost because although we have been having gorgeous spring weather I am fearful that ol’ man winter is going to rear up his ugly head at least one more time before spring really gets here.

With the gorgeous weather this week I have noticed a huge difference in my mood and ambition.  I made it out for a run five times this week!  It felt so good to get out there in a sunshine and work up a sweat and hear the sounds of spring.  My last run of the week was during the first road race of the season here in this area.  (Side note:  one thing I love about blogging is being able to look back at previous entries.  I loved that I was able to go back and read about my race during last year’s March Madness 5k.)

I  look forward to this race because it is the first race of the season, but don’t love the course.  This year however I actually found myself enjoy the whole thing.  The weather was fabulous, hardly any wind (compared to last year) and I felt good.  I had no goals or expectations going into the race since I have had very little training this winter with an average of oh, maybe 4 miles a week.   All of my runs this week must have woken up some tired but not groggy muscles and got them ready for the race. 

I was very pleased with my time – 23:24 - a whole minute faster than last year.  SB,  a 10 year old and a 16 year old were the only other females ahead of me and I kept them  in sight the whole time.  I could tell that I was pushing it but never felt that I was dying and I recovered very quickly at the end.  I think I may have been so determined to not slow down or take it easy because so many of my students were in the race as well.  To my knowledge only 1 of them beat me! :)  Even my adorable little sixth grader who threatened me with “You’re going down” at the start of my race couldn’t catch up.  Whew!

Since it was Saint Patty’s Day we of course all wore our green. 

Even little Ella was dressed up with her Shamrock shirt and hair tie!

Thanks SB for the pictures.

Now that the seasons are changing and racing season is starting back up I hope to return to more regularly scheduled blogging!

Wordless Wednesday

Life is crazy!  Just a quick moment before bed to share a great image I found today on Facebook. 

This sums up my house, my windows, my glass door.  Except I don't have just one dog making nose art, I have SEVEN!   (No they aren't in the house all the time, but they are in here enough to leave lots of nose art - everywhere - but I love them regardless).  

TGIF!

I has been a rough week!  Nothing seems quite “right”.  Haven’t been feeling the best and definitely haven’t been doing well with my fitness challenge. I am glad it is Friday and I can wrap up this work week and focus on a relaxing weekend.

I didn’t make it to the gym this morning but am planning on a nice run after school and then a Girls-Night-Out with my sisters! It is much needed and long overdue.  I am looking forward to going out to eat and having someone else wait on me, cook for me and clean up after me.  Cowboy hates to go out to restaurants so when he is away I tend to splurge and enjoy.   Here’s hoping it is a quick day!

Tuesday’s Tip

So last week I bought and prepared avocados for the first time.   I think I’ve had them before but I have never prepared them myself.  I thought for my first attempt I would just cut them up and add them to our great big salads last Monday.

I didn’t do my research before hand so when I went to pick out my $1.00 avocados I had no idea if avocados should be soft, hard, mushy, etc.  So I just took my best guest.  When I got home I use good old Google to learn a little bit about avocados.

If the avocado yields to firm gentle pressure you know it's ripe and ready-to-eat. If the avocado does not yield to gentle pressure it is considered still "firm" and will be ripe in a couple of days. If the avocado feels mushy or very soft to the touch it may be very ripe to overripe. (Avocado Central)

Did you know….

It's true that avocados have a high oil content, but they are also packed with vitamins A, C, and E--primary vitamins in the antioxidant group that protect the cells in human tissue. A high protein content makes avocados a good meat substitute, and unlike animal fat, the fat is not saturated. The big surprise in avocados is how high they are in dietary fiber--they have one of the highest fiber contents of any fruit or vegetable. (Produce Pete)

My biggest challenge was how to cut these things up.  I figured there was a pit inside but I wasn’t sure and didn’t know how to get it out. So…for anyhow else who doesn’t know how to cut an avocado (or am I the only one?)…here’s what you do:

1.  Hold the avocado lengthwise and carefully slice around the pit.

  

2.  Take your knife and carefully but firmly tap the blade into the pit and it will pull right out (my co-teacher told me this tip after I struggled with trying to scoop out the pit.

3.  Score the avocado half into cubes.

4.  Gently squeeze the avocado and little cubes will just pop out.

So much easier than I thought and it was delicious on my salad.  I think this week I will try to make some guacamole.  I also want to try to prepare kale or attempt to make kale chips.  Any good links for recipes to prepare kale?

Family Fitness Challenge – Week 1 Recap

I know I promised this yesterday, but yesterday got away from me.  I still wanted to share our successful first week of our Family Fitness Challenge.

I felt like I started the challenge off great.  I easily increased my fruits and vegetables to the 5-7 servings a day and a few days even reaching 8 and 9 servings.  Salads at least three times in the week got me several points.  I have become quite fond of the Hunger Runner Girl method of roasting broccoli which we had with dinner at least two nights.

   
source

I also found that dried fruit is delicious especially apricots!  Love them!  They taste just like candy.

As far as the exercise points I had two days in the week where I did two workouts – am and pm.  I made it to the gym three times and did lots of different weight/strength sets.  I like the Jamie Easton’s Live Fit daily exercise plans.  She does a great job of breaking it down into two areas to focus on each day and gives great videos demonstrating the movement.  I also got in two great runs last week and some Pilates and yoga.

My family had a great week as well.  Everyone participated and had anywhere from 250 – 450 points.  All of our teams were really close overall.  My sister and I were first of our four teams by just 50 points.  My little niece (2 years old) was a baby-exercising queen and fruit/veggie monster!

A great start to our five week Fitness Challenge!  Looking forward to another great week although I’ve been slacking a little bit in the exercise department.  Time to step it up!