Seeing Less of Me

Is a great thing!!! I weighed myself today and found I have lost about 10 pounds since September when we got our gym memberships. I am so excited about that. Eric and I said that if we could just maintain during the holidays and vacation than we would be doing great. Well, I am actually losing right now and I hope to keep up that trend. I need to lose about 35 pounds from here to be on a more healthy playing field. I have spent most of my life being "chunky" but for goodness sakes...I'm tired of it. I want to lose this extra weight for my son, my husband, myself and mainly God. If our bodies are God's temple than I have really trashed this one and it is high time I start the clean up with His help. If you read this blog and follow along please say a prayer that I will continue to be encouraged to lose weight. I will try to periodically update you with my progress. I might even start doing some before and after pictures to help with accountability.

Until next time, have a terrific day and God bless you and yours!

Stephany

Followers Anybody???

A good friend of mine told me about adding followers to my family blog and to be honest I didn't understand what she meant until I went to blogger dashboard and typed it into the help search engine. Blogger was very helpful in telling me how to add it to my family blog. So it is now on here for anyone who want to follow this blog. Simply click on the link in the right sidebar to follow this blog and *poof* you can follow. I can't really say that I have many people read it and for that matter I don't really keep it up too well but "maybe" now I will be a little more consistent with it.

Well today started out well with us all getting ready for the day but than when Andrew and I got to BSF he told me he didn't like going there anymore. He says this quite often but every time I pick him up from class he just loves being there. Today though he was full of pent up energy. I didn't notice it before I dropped him off but I really noticed it when I picked him up. I asked his teacher if he was like that during the whole time and she informed me that "he had a lot of energy today". She also told me that he still listened and participated. He even answered all the questions after the Bible story and got them all right. I don't get how he can look as though he is totally ignoring you but then he will repeat (almost verbatim) what you said. I know that God is trying to teach me something with Andrew but for the life of me I am just not getting it. He is such an incredibly sweet child and very caring when it suits him. Most days I do feel so blessed to have the privilege of raising him. But then there are moments (not days) that I just don't care for his behavior.

One thing God is teaching me is that if I want obedience from Andrew then I have to be obedient to God first. That sounds all well and good but so hard to do sometimes. For instance, I have been very lack with doing my Bible study on a regular basis. I start off with grand expectations of how much I will get out of the Bible study and then I fall off the proverbial wagon. I need to learn to be obedient to God in having a daily quiet time with Him. I continue to pray for my own obedience to God so that things in my life will fall in line. Until then I know I can't expect from others what I am unable to do.

Here is something that has been taking up some of my time when I should really be reading God's word: Digital Scrapbooking. Last night I was able to complete four new LO's. I really need to learn to balance my time and take care of my priorities first and then some playtime. Hopefully before we go on vacation I will be able to share them with you.

Until next time, Stephany

The Excitement Is Building...

We are getting so excited about our upcoming family vacation. Andrew can't wait to meet Mickey and his Nana Becky has requested he give a great big kiss to Minnie and he has promised to do so. Can't wait to see those pictures.

I have gotten into digital-scrapping again and have 6 layouts just waiting to be finished. After finishing through October I just did not have the drive anymore but now the drive is back and I am loving it. There are so many wonderful designers out there that provide great stuff to work with and it's almost as if my pictures scrap themselves.

Onto another note, we had a good Thanksgiving. We stayed home (and by home I mean we did not travel to our family in OK) and went to some friend's house to celebrate together. It was a really lovely thing they are doing because they invite all the people from our church who don't have family here in the area to their house. As much as we are grateful for this outlet we have decided that this is our last year to participate. Poor little Andrew was one of two children there and the other was a pre-teen girl. Eric and I were the friends and playmates of him and therefore we really felt unsocial because we didn't want Andrew to feel left out. Next year we will probably try to do something at our home or who knows. After we ate dinner we headed out to see a movie because of our unofficial tradition. Friday morning dawned and I woke up at 2:30 am unable to go back to sleep. I decided to hit a couple of places for black Friday before the boys woke up. I didn't have any previous plans to be out so early but what do you do when you can't get back to sleep on such a day.  Then, once the boys woke up we had breakfast and headed out to do some more shopping. I was really starting to drag about lunchtime so we came home for naptime. After naptime we headed out again to go to Six Flags for their Holiday in the Park. It was awesome. We all had such a great time and we were able to practice how things would run at Disney World. Saturday dawned bright and early and we made it a chore day. Eric and I cleaned all but one room from top to bottom. It felt good to have the house clean (like the dusting, vacuuming and moping) again. I do a good job of keeping up with laundry and dishes but I really don't get around to the rest. I am so thankful Eric didn't marry me for my cleaning and cooking abilities.

Well, this post turned out longer than I planned so I will sign off now. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Stephany and the Stratton Gang