New Year's Resolutions

I am either an all or nothing girl. That makes New Year's Resolutions hard for me. I make resolutions and then mess up a couple of days or one day and then give up. I do not usually do resolutions for that reason. I have several things I really want to do this year, so I am going to give resolutions a try again. I am hoping that by listing them out on my blog I will be more accountable. I may even try to do an update each month on how I am doing with each resolution. Most of my resolutions are tied together in some way or another so hopefully listing them out will not be too confusing.

My first resolution is one that everyone has. I really need to lose weight! I never lost all of my weight after I had Seth and it really is starting to bother me. I need to lose about 20 lbs.

What is my plan for this? My first thing is to cut out my daily glass of coke. This is going to be so hard for me. I tried to get off of it before Christmas, but got really stressed out and tired of headaches and after a week I was drinking it again.

My second thing is to cut down on the sugar our family eats. I think as a family we would be so much healthier. We have not had the flue this season, but I am afraid that we are playing with a loaded gun by allowing our kids to eat as much sugar as they do.

And my last thing to do is to cut out or way down on the processed food. This is going to be hard on me with the kids lunches. It is so easy and cheap to fix the kids a box of Aldi Macaroni and Cheese for lunch. Now I will have to plan lunches when I plan our grocery trips. I really do not know what to plan for the kids to eat for lunch. Anyone have any ideas?

My second resolution is to run a 5K. I have always wanted to be a runner, but I never have been. Growing up I was not into sports. I took ballet forever and stayed in shape that way. When I was in college I was a cheerleader and that kept me in shape and before I was married I went aerobics class all the time. Now I can not afford a gym membership and I really need to do some kind of physical activity if I am going to accomplish my first goal.

How am I going to accomplish this? I am not an early riser and I do not like the cold, so I have started running our stairs. My goal is to do this a couple of times a day and keep track of it and run up at least one more time than the day before. If I make up and down 5 times on day one then I want to make it 6 times on day 2.

These are my first two resolutions and tomorrow I am going to post my last two, but now I need a coke and maybe I will run some stairs while I am at it.

Curly Girl

All of my life I have had straight hair. I mean straight as a board, nothing can curl it hair. If I use hot rollers or a curling iron, it will be straight again before I can get out the door. Back in the 80's, when perms where the thing to do, I would have to get my hair fried to get it to curl. It was bad.

When I found out I was pregnant with a girl in my second pregnancy, I selfishly prayed for her to have curly hair. I prayed for more important things for her too, but I did not want her to have the curse of flat hair. (Now I know some think curly hair is a curse too. I have a friend who has very curly hair and would love to trade me for my very straight hair.) When she was born, she had a full head of black hair. As she got older it got lighter and curlier.

When it got to the point it was very curly, I realized one problem. I had no idea how to take care of curly hair. It is so different from straight hair. My hair is soft and hardly ever gets tangled. Her hair is so coarse and get tangled when you just look at it. She also has a tender scalp, so when we comb it out we have tears and cries of pain and I get very impatient.

I have tried so many things to make it easier to brush out her hair. My hairdresser told me not to use the products that say they will get tangles out. She says they are very acidic. What has worked best for us is during her bath I comb out her hair while there is conditioner in it.

As she has gotten older her hair has become more straight. We have let it grow out long and there is just a wave to her hair now, but it still tangles so easily. And we still have so many problems combing it out.

The other night I was reading Smockity Frocks. She had a link back to an old post she had done about a book called Curly Girl and how she took care of her hair. I found it so interesting that I read all she had on it. So now we are going to try the Curly Girl way. Last night I did not use shampoo on her hair. We just rinsed it and then put conditioner on it. I then combed it with my fingers and then we did a quick rinse. I did not want to rinse out all of the conditioner, but just a little.

This morning her hair is curlier. She is complaining that it is too fluffy and will not go behind her ears, but I do think it is curlier and looks better. We will see what this does and if it makes it easier to take care of her hair. The only problem is that she got make-up for Christmas from her Aunt Sandra and she put glitter make-up in her hair. Just rinsing it in water did not get the make-up out of her hair. I wonder how long it will take to get that glitter out?

Here is the link to Smockity Frocks: http://www.smockityfrocks.com/2007/03/curly-girl.html

Out of the Mouths of Babes

We spend Christmas Eve with Chris's family. We usually eat dinner that always includes beef tenderloin, then go to church for Christmas Eve services, and then go back to Chris's parents house to open presents.

This year when we went to leave for church, Grant wanted to ride with Chris's brother and their son Jackson. So we took their daughter Caroline in our car with Katie Beth and Seth. When we got to church Caroline said, "I know why we are going to church. We are going to church to celebrate Jesus's birthday." Katie Beth answered with,"Are we going to get cake?" I had to tell her, "No there would be no cake."

Blogging again

I am going to try this again. I really want to blog, but it just seems to be something else to keep up with. With everything else I have to do, it just seems to get left out. But I really want to do it. So as one of my New Year's resolutions, I am going to try and blog again.

I have several other resolutions that I am going to blog about as I start this again, but for today this is the main one I want to focus on. I think blogging is such a good way to document the things we do in our day to day life, but I have never been much of a writer. Even as a child, I would start a diary, but it would not last long. I received good grades in writing in High School and then I went to college. The teacher I had for composition did not like my writing. I could not believe that I received a B in that class. From then on I have doubted my writing. So I second guess everything I write.

In other news, I was so excited tonight. For Christmas I received a gift card from my parents to buy clothes. I went to Kohls tonight and found an 80% off rack. I bought several things and now I have some new clothes and three pairs of jeans instead of 2. All I could think of was,"Thank you God for providing for my wants and need."