The family "challenge"

Thanks for your prayers and your comments everyone after my last post! I am feeling much better, although you may notice that the post time is once again in the middle of the night. ;) I got a chance to catch up on some much needed sleep, and while I am still tired, the last few days have definitely been better.

When I started nursing school in the fall of my junior year, I started gaining unwanted weight, attributed to the high stress levels of the program. I wasn't too worried about it, and figured that once I had time to exercise it would be fine. Well, it is now two years later, and I have tried multiple times to lose weight, and it has just never happened for me. I usually end up extremely discouraged, and with no results.

Because of this, I rarely last more than about four days at any attempt to exercise and "watch what I eat". The problem may be that I "watch" what I'm eating, all the way to my mouth! However, I have started to lose some weight over the summer since the stress of school is over, without really even trying!

A few days ago, I got an email from my sister, challenging members of our family to do Weight Watchers together. So, I agreed! It is a time when I am feeling very ready to do something like this, and the family motivation to do it together will be very helpful for me!

I would love your prayers again - mostly for self-control in sticking with it, but also I really would love to see something work!

With that - has anybody else tried it? Any stories, suggestions, or recipes with points?

I'm starting on Monday, and will let you know how it goes!

Exhaustion

Currently, it's 5:40 in the morning, and I am 2 1/2 hours away from bed.

This week, I started night shifts at work, and it has been really hard! This (Sunday night) is my third night shift in a row, and I am completely exhausted. I could use your prayers to avoid sickness, frustration, and more exhaustion.

I am still loving my job (although I am needing more reminding of that this weekend) and I am thankful for how God has blessed me with it, and I am thankful that I am not dealing with a harder situation, but it is very difficult to deal with the negative aspects of it sometimes, as it means days and nights away from Danny, and I do nothing but sleep and come back here.

Thank you for your prayers, hopefully I'll be able to blog about something more upbeat tomorrow or the next day, after some much needed sleep :)

California pics

Here are some pictures of our wonderful 5 days in California!

On the pier the first day we were there :)

One of the crazy huge houses in Beverly Hills

A cafe on the beach where we had lunch, with our toes in the sand.

The reflection pool outside The Getty, a free museum we visited.

This sunset was beautiful!

A cool picture my honey took of the pier.

Saturday we rented bikes and rode along the beach.

I'm not as good at taking moving pictures as Danny is :)

The view from our hike, it was weird to be in a mountain looking at the beach!

The beach was kinda chilly on the last day - but I didn't want to leave!

It was a great blessing to be able to go on this trip, what a beautiful state.

Home again

Well, after 5 days in wonderful sunny, 75 degree California, the dream had to end, and I flew home yesterday. The remainder of our time was absolutely wonderful. We spent endless hours on the beach, reading, napping, and just chatting.

Saturday morning, we rented bikes and rode along the bike path that runs along the coast. We stopped several times to take a break and rest on the beach. Then, on Sunday morning, we met up with Danny's coworker and our landlord, Katherine, and went hiking somewhere up past Malibu. It was SO cool to be climbing through the mountains, and looking at the ocean at the same time!

These last 5 days were so refreshing for us! Starting this job, our schedule has been really hectic, and we have not gotten much time together just the two of us. It was wonderful to be able to relax, sleep in, talk, snuggle, talk more, watch movies together, and not have anything we were responsible for doing for that long!

Sadly enough, dreams can't last forever, and I'm home now, and Danny's not. :( He is in his training class until thursday, and comes home on Friday. So, until then, I'm here in this big house in this scary city by myself! I tried today to get everything done and ready for the rest of the week (laundry, lunches, etc.) because I have to work wednesday, thursday, and friday this week. Usually by the time I get home from that, I'm pretty exhausted, and very hungry! It'll be a hard few days, but that vacation was totally worth it.

I'll upload pictures sometime when Danny gets home, he still has the cameras, with all the pictures on them!

Yay for vacation!

We are at the beach! We left early on Wednesday morning for a VERY long flight out here to California! Wednesday we got here around 12:30 California time, which left us with most of the afternoon to explore and get settled in at the hotel. We ate lunch at a cafe on the end of a pier, came to the hotel, unpacked, rested for a bit, and then we got some groceries for lunches so it's not any more expensive than necessary. We fell asleep at 8:30! Something about getting up at 5 o'clock four days in a row just was a little much for us, and it was 11:30 our time.

We're trying not to adjust to the time change too much, as I have to work right when I get home. And though we know it feels like 10:30 to our bodies, there is something slightly disappointing on vacation about waking up and seeing 7:30 on the clock. :)

The beaches here are amazing, they are SOOO long! I love that there is no humidity and such bright sunshine.

Well, we're off to watch a movie before going to the beach, I'll try to post again, but if not, I will post some pics when we get home!