December Update!

Um…I wrote this in December!! Apparently I never hit Publish. Ah well, here it is anyway!

Wow! Finally time to update the b.l.o.g.!  I’ve been meaning to for quite some time but things have been hectic and extremely busy around here!  However, with all this world ending talk…I sure would hate for my last blog post to be the depressing one I left you with in September.  Gross!! So here’s a new one for you plus some updates!

The good news is that almost immediately after airing out all of my feelings, I felt WAY better!! From that point on, my feelings and attitude turned a 180. I’ve just let a lot of the stress go. Stress does not help anything so I’ve done my best to just let it go and not worry about it.  Things will be what they will be…and will turn out how they will turn out! And I’m completely happy and content with that.

With that being said…updates!

Pregnancy

• It’s still been pretty easy on me. Thank the good Lord for that! I really have very few complaints other than my back hurting occasionally, my sciatic nerve problems are flaring up again and I find it hard to sleep more than 6ish hours because my hips end up hurting from laying on them so much! 
• No food issues at this point for the most part. I had an aversion to meat in the beginning but now, I am pretty much back to normal. Sometimes I can’t sit and eat a steak but now, as long as the meat is part of a dish, I don’t have any issues eating.
• Still no cravings to speak of. Leighton has had to make zero 3 a.m. trips to Tom Thumb for ice cream and pickles!
• I do like sweets more than I ever have in my life. I am not a sweets person at all but I really find myself liking ice cream (really only Marble Slab with bananas and strawberries) and sometimes cookies. I’m hoping this goes away after the baby’s born.  I like it that I don’t like sweets!! 🙂
• Midwife says everything is going along normally and still have nothing on the radar that I need to worry about. Baby has been strong, moving, good heartbeat, good sonogram, good blood work…all good.  She even said that many of my vitamin levels that are usually very low in pregnant women are in a great high range in my blood work. (AND I’ve taken maybe 10 prenatal vitamins the entire pregnancy) So that’s awesome. I’m really not purposely NOT taking them…I’m just really bad at remembering to take pills.
• I hadn’t been sick my entire pregnancy until Christmas Day. The good thing is, the bad part really only lasted about 48 hours. I had a fever, but it never got crazy high. It was really, really hard though not to go grab my TheraFlu and down a cup! I did good though and I just rested, drank lots of water and ate lots of soup! I still have a cough and a little congestion but I am all better for the most part!
• I haven’t been eating as healthy as I’ve wanted to but what can you do? The past is the past! The good thing is, I am still well within my healthy range for weight gain in the pregnancy. I still have about 13 lbs that I’d have to gain to be out of the healthy range. I don’t think I’ll gain that much in just the few weeks I have left! I am going to do a Whole30 in January, though, to finish off my pregnancy. I’m pretty excited about that. I want my body to be in tip top shape for the birth and I can’t think of any better way than eating healthy for a month!!

Baby

• No, we don’t have a name yet. And…let’s face it…we may not until after she’s born!
• Our nursery hasn’t even been started and we are only ~5 weeks away from D-Day. And I’m not even worried.
• We virtually have nothing that we “need” for the baby. I use the term “need” loosely.  We have diapers, wipes, newborn outfits, 0-3 outfits and a bassinet. I mean, we have other things…but as far as essentials…that’s what we have. Sometimes when I think about it, it is overwhelming to think of everything we are missing but, it will all work out I’m sure!
• I absolutely LOVE going to Buy Buy Baby. That store is simply amazing!! I don’t even have to buy anything to have fun there!
• My early labor fears have passed. I was really scared I might go into premature labor for whatever reason and really, it could still happen. However, I am reassured by the fact that at this point in pregnancy, both of my sisters had already been born and, even though it wasn’t easy, they are both just fine and developed normally! (side note: it’s really scary to think that some people elect to induce this early to fit some “schedule” they need to work around. Absolutely terrifying.)

Work

• Leighton still works for Casey Donahew Band and is doing some other freelance things on the side when he’s not on the road. He is still loving it and he really is working for some good people. He gets treated right and they are very generous with time off and also working with us when Leighton needs off unexpectedly. Couldn’t ask for much better! It will be hard at first when he has to go back out on the road after the baby is here but, in the end, he will actually probably be home more hours in a week than a dad working a typical 40 hour a week job!
• I am still working for Paychex but this year I was fortunate enough to receive a promotion back in October!  I have moved from the Operations department as a Client Trainer training our new clients on our payroll software into a new position in our Sales department.  I am not a sales person, rather, I demonstrate our software to prospective clients and I am also the technical guru for when client’s have technical questions about our software, interfacing or custom reporting or requests. This new position allows lots of flexibility with where and when I work (I can do some of it from home!) and it is much more challenging than my last position, which I love. I feel like every day I learn so much more and every day a new challenge is thrown my way for me to work out.  I also work with some really great colleagues. They’re a fun and energetic group of people for sure.

Update | Miscellaneous | Nothing Special

So this week has been about the same since the last post. For the most part anyway… 🙂

The Good

• No cravings. I mean, nothing out of the ordinary of a normal human being.
• Still don’t need maternity clothes
• All of my family is currently back on American soil (for the next week or two, at least!)

The Bad

• Things that disgust me at the very thought:
  • Rosa’s (or any Mexican food for that matter)
  • Cane’s chicken
  • Chicken in general
  • Steak
  • Well…any slab of meat
• I’m incredibly and unceasingly tired. As in…I’m standing, having a conversation, and pretty sure I could fall asleep any second. In fact, I almost fell asleep more times than I can count in the latest Batman movie. Which, as my husband can attest to, was ridiculously loud. I mean…RIDIK.

The Ugly

• Hunger comes on something fierce! Like, one minute, happy peppy JL…next minute…GET OUT OF MY WAY. It is … really … annoying.
• All I dream about is baby girls. >:-|

So, that’s the pregnancy update. Not much of an update for that.

On to life…

I’ve re-discovered how much I dearly, dearly love to read cookbooks. And how much of a joy cooking is to me. I started thumbing through an old vegetarian cookbook I have looking for ideas and read through some of my notes and it just reminded me how fun it was teaching myself to cook and learning my way around a kitchen. Trying new things, new creations and new disasters each week. It’s exciting and fun.

I need to get back on track with my reading this year! I’m a little behind, but not too much. I should be caught up in no time.

This Friday I’m running in the Chupacabra 5k night run in the woods in San Antonio. This will be the second time we’ve participated in this run and it is oh-so-fun! I am totally stoked. On top of that, we will get to visit my most favorite spice shop, Savory Spice Shop! It.just.cannot.be.beat. Cannot. We may even take a little float down the river if we have time. And of course there will be cupcakes!

I’ve started re-reading The Resolution for Women by Priscilla Shirer. Such an amazing book. It will change your life. Seriously.

Well, that’s it!

New Year’s Resolutions: Make My Home A Home

Earlier this month I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions. This is the final installment of six that will be detailing my goals. Whew! Got them all in before the end of the month!! 🙂

Organize

I’ll keep this part short and sweet because this stuff is boring, but necessary. I have lots of rooms that need to be worked on and I’m hoping by spending at least 15 to 30 minutes a day in each, I’ll be able to make some progress in getting them organized this year. There are probably 10 or 15 boxes in my house that haven’t even been unpacked from when we moved in in 2009!

• Office – most of it hasn’t even been unpacked since we moved in. um…yea.
• Garage – we have a storage closet in our garage that still has building materials from the last owner still in it. Yup. Time to clean it up! I’d rather have MY stuff in there!
• Studio – Leighton has transformed his “Nerd Room” into a full-blown studio (Hideout Studios, y’all!! Spread the word!) and it was done rather quickly and there is a lot of things sort of strewn about. My goal this year (for Leighton) is to get that room a little more presentable.
• Kitchen – I started this one at the beginning of the month!! The organization of my kitchen is just not working. Everything is just shoved here and there and every time I need to get one thing, I have to pull out 100 other things just to get the one thing.  This year is time for reorganization so I can cook a bit more efficiently. Already moved some of my spices, my cookbooks and cleared off some of my cabinet space.

Remodel

As I said before, we are budgeting money to remodel parts of our house. Provided we can find some great deals, our plans are to redo the floors in the entire house, remodel the master bathroom, replace the countertops in the kitchen and bar area and put blinds on all the windows in the house. We have very limited funds to pull this off so pulling it all off WILL be a challenge but Leighton, Pinterest and I are up for the challenge! We hare hoping to have as little done by professionals as possible as that gets very expensive very quickly. We will be doing as much as we can on our own. If you have any advice or good websites, please send them our way.

Well, that concludes my series on my 2012 new years resolutions. What do you think? What are your resolutions??

New Year’s Resolutions: Get Back My Sanity

Earlier this month I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions. This is the fifth installment of six that will be detailing my goals. I’m trying to get the last two in before the end of January so hopefully I’ll post the last one in time for tomorrow!

Sometimes I sit back and realize that I’m kinda losing it a little. I snap at my husband, I get snappy at work (although that’s usually mutterings under my breath rather than directly at anyone), I get lazy with my workouts and I get lazy with my life in general. I’ve decided two aspects of my life really need improving. Mentally and Spiritually.

Mentally

Get more sleep. No better way to say it. I need more sleep. I’d like to start a goal of being in bed by 10 p.m. every weeknight so I can get at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Right now, I get between 4-6 hours most nights. And, here lately, it’s been even less than that. Let’s change that! I just need to start disciplining myself and going to bed at 10. I was really good with it there for a while, but slowly, but surely, I worked myself back to an 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. bedtime.

Spiritual

I’ve bounced between two different churches for a couple of years now. Sometimes I go to The Village in Highland Village and sometimes I go to Cross Timbers in Denton and sometimes I watch one or the other online. I’d like to finally lock down, commit and consistently go to a church. I think the problem is that I don’t know very many people very well that go to either and I always end up sitting by myself. I hate going by myself. So, I stay at home and watch online or bounce between the two. So, to rid myself of this vicious cycle I’m in, I decided that I’m going to choose between the two and stick with one church and then one campus of said church so I can finally grow some roots and plant my feet somewhere.

Well, good news, y’all. I made a decision yesterday and decided to stay at Cross Timbers, where I’ve gone for about the last 6 years or so, off and on. Rachel and I have been attending in person for the last three weeks and today we decided to go to the welcome class and join the church. It was a good feeling. And also helped me address some of my problems I described above. Toby talked about how to get involved and spoke about people in the past who have come to him after leaving the church because they didn’t know anyone after attending for months. But, he asked them, “When do you arrive at the service?” They would often answer, “11 or 11:05.” And when he asked them when they left, it was usually before the service was dismissed. How do you I expect to meet any people when I show up late and leave before or immediately when the service is over? Because this has been my habit in the past. Come late, leave early.

Well, no more for me! I’ll start getting there a little early or on time and stay at the end to chat and build relationships with all the acquaintances I know at the church. I’m actually quite excited about it. It’s been a while since I’ve really been really integrated into a church.

New Year’s Resolutions: Reclaim My Body

Earlier this month I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  This is the fourth installment of several that will be detailing my goals.

Did you know that your body is a temple (1 Cor. 6:19-20)? And did you know that by filling it with crap food and treating it like garbage that you are doing yourself and your God a disservice?

No?

Well…

You are. 

Last year I started the year off strong and healthy. But as the year progressed, I slowly fell out of good habits and back into old habits. Why? Because I got lazy and I started making lame excuses for what I was doing to myself and my body.

This year, I reclaim my body. Inside and out.

Eat

I want to eat cleaner for longer than I did last year. Within the last year I’ve eaten better than I ever have in my entire life. I want to continue that this year but I want to do much better. I’d like my diet to be about 80/20 or 90/10 paleo and last year out of the whole year I’d guess it was about 60/40. That just won’t do. My body deserves to be treated better than that, and I plan on doing so.

Fit

So, paleo takes care of the inside so what about the outside? I pay a pretty little fee to my CrossFit gym every month in order to attend up to 5 classes per week. On a good week I am in the gym 3 days. THREE days! That is ridiculous and I know I can do better than that. But, like I said, I started making lame excuses to get out of going to the gym and I got lazy. I didn’t really start to notice the effects until some of the workouts and CF totals we did in the last couple of months of 2011. Everything was leveling off. I didn’t get any worse but I certain didn’t get any better. It’s time to get better, y’all.

Cleanse

So, going with making the outside better…I am the worst at actually taking the time to care for my skin. Especially when it comes to my face. I’m notorious for going to bed several nights in a row not washing my face (don’t hate, you’ve done it too). For several months prior to my wedding in 2009 I religiously cared for my face in skin. Result? Radiant, glowing, flawless skin on my wedding day. In fact, I had gotten my skin to the point where I really didn’t even need to wear anything day-to-day except a little powder, mascara and lip gloss. This year I’ll be back to that thanks to miss Jamie Mullins getting me hooked up with some awesome Mary Kay! I can’t wait to not have to put on makeup everyday…

So that’s it for number four. See you for number five in a couple of days!

New Year’s Resolutions: CrossFit Goals

Earlier this week I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  This is the third installment of several that will be detailing my goals.

I started CrossFit about a year and a half ago. It’s been the best decision I’ve ever made! This year I would like to set some goals for myself. Last year, I don’t feel like I made very much progress because I had no real goal in mind. This year, I’ve set goals so that I have something to strive for in the upcoming year. I’ve spoken with Dave and hopefully these are reasonable goals for the next year…

Improve CrossFit: clean, press, row, run, pull

Clean 115 lbs. (current clean: 100#)

I’d like to get my clean over 115#. I’ve been stuck right at 100 or 105 for a little over a year now. It’s time to get over that hump and get to 115!

These aren’t very good squat cleans…but…you get the point!

Press 120 lbs. (current press: 105#)

The same problem I have with my cleans, I have with my press. So, yea. Need to get that one up. Kinda like this lady.  Except she’s awesomer because she’s 20 wks pregnant!

Row 500m sub 1:55 (current 500m row: 2:02)

Well, that about says it all.

I’m not sure why people video themselves rowing but…works for me! Since I needed a video. LOL

Run: Run a sub 7:30 minute mile (current mile: 9:02)

Pretty self-explanatory and I hope you don’t need a video for this.  And I know that this is pretty dang slow but…I’m really slow because this is cutting a minute and a half off of my current mile time. So…yea…

Pull: Do a kipping pull-up with no assistance (current pull-up: assistance with green band)

I’ve never done a pull-up without assistance. And I’d like to do that. I’d like to at least do one!! So, come December 31, hopefully I can make that happen. 🙂

That’s it for CrossFit. Did you set any fitness goals?  What are they?

New Year’s Resolutions: Improve Financially

Earlier this week I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  This is the second installment of several that will be detailing my goals. This one is probably one of the most personal of goals but, in keeping with keeping myself accountable, here’s number two.

Goal number two: Improve Financially

This year we will reduce (and maybe even eliminate!) our debt, increase our emergency and long-term savings and begin to invest more wisely (and I don’t mean in the stock market).

Debt

This year I think we’ll finally be able to nip that last tiny bit of debt in the bud. 2013 will feel amazing. Finally not owing anyone (except, perhaps, our mortgage lender) anything. We’ve already planned out our budget for 2012 all the way through December. After all the planning, we’ve discovered that 2012 will likely be a slightly boring year for the Autrys but that’s okay! Just bear with us for another 11 ½ months.

I’m really serious. If we decline invites to dinner, going out, movies, etc. it is not because we don’t love you! We’re just making ourselves poor so we can get this stuff off the books.

Save

I’ll just go ahead and say it: we’re really bad at saving.

This year, in addition to paying off our debt, we’ll be building our rainy day savings. It makes me all happy inside just knowing we’ll have that security of that fall back money. Just in case something were to happen, we won’t have to fall back on a credit card and get ourselves into more debt. It won’t be a lot but it will be enough for most emergencies we might get ourselves into. We’re also planning better for those unexpected…or, rather, infrequent (but NOT unexpected) things that come up.  Things like tires, scheduled maintenance on the car, home repairs, vet bills, etc. I’m sure our financial advisor is doing a little happy dance because he’s been trying to get us to do this for years. Instead, we’ve lived by the Dave Ramsey $1,000 in the bank theory. While it is great for probably 90% of the population, it has not been working for us. And he’s been telling us this for 2 years. Well, I suppose he finally got it through my hard head that I must save for these things in addition to my $1,000 emergency fund. Kudos, Justin King. Your persistence finally made it through my thick skull.

Invest

Screw the stock market.

When I say invest, I mean invest in us. In our things. In our home and in ourselves.

We have lived in our home for over 2 years and we’ve not put a dime of improvement money into it.  Mainly for lack of planning.  When we bought our house our realtor told us how important it was to constantly make improvements to your house, however big or small they may be. This will help us avoid costly last-minute improvements in the event that we sell our house in the future. This year we have budgeted money to specifically invest in the improvement in our home.

We might be really boring this year but our house is going to start going through some major DIY overhauls! Most of them will be done ourselves for very little money but we do plan on spending nearly our entire budget on redoing our floors. Our floors completely disgust me. Read in the next few days for the improvements we plan on making.

Maybe our house will look like this when we’re done. You think? ha! 🙂

Well, that’s it for number two. What do you think? Do you have any 2012 financial goals?

New Year’s Resolution: Expand My Mind

Earlier this week I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  This is the first installment of several that will be detailing my goals. Some people have asked me, “Don’t you think this is a little too…personal?” Well, no.  I don’t.  Sometimes, in order to keep a goal you must have someone keep you accountable. Well, my blog is my accountability partner. I will have to go back to these posts periodically to make sure I am still on the right track and to keep me in check. I need this accountability. It worked last year, so hopefully it works this year too!

So, here goes number one: Expand My Mind

This year I will read more, blog consistently and write more. Last year I had a goal to read and to post specific things here.  This year, I’d rather make this more about expanding my mind and improving my writing skills.

Read

Last year I had a goal to read one book per month. I smashed that goal. This year I will set a higher goal for myself. This year I’d like to read 16 books. This is a little more than one a month and I think I can handle that with no problem. I read a lot of fiction last year. In fact, except for my cookbooks, I read entirely fiction.

This year I’ll mix it up.

I want to read fiction books and non-fiction books on a rotating basis. I started tracking my books on Goodreads last year and this really helped me keep track of my goal and I always have a plan for the next book to read. Also, for Christmas I got a Kindle Fire and I’ve been reading on it so much! Plus, with my Amazon Prime membership, I get one free e-book per month! So far, I’m starting off the year by finishing up Melissa Joulwan’s Well-Fed and The Kennedy Detail. Since I’m almost done with those two, I went ahead and started my first fiction book of the year, Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games series. I’ll read the fifth Harry Potter book after that and then…it’s all up in the air!

Write

I will write for me. Not for anyone else. Last year I apologized for being absent, apologized for being lengthy, etc. But I’ve thought about that. This is my blog and it’s for me and anyone out there who wishes to read it. Sometimes I will post about Paleo, sometimes CrossFit, sometimes I’ll just post about my boring life. But, it is what it is. And it is mine. No more apologies for not living up to some nonexistent standard that’s out there.

Blog

I slacked on my blog the last few months of 2011. In fact, the last two or three, I didn’t really write at all. Unfortunately my blog gradually worked itself to the back burner throughout the year.  First things first. This year, I will write every day.

Something.
Anything.

And you might never read it.

Sometimes it will be only for me but I hope to make most of my writings for the masses. I’ve always wanted to be a good writer and the only way to get better at it is to practice.

Every.
Single.
Day.

So that’s what I’ll do! But hopefully most of the posts make it to the live blog.  Secondly, I’ve got about 9 posts that I started last year and never finished. So, if you see some posts that seem ill timed (such as a post about my experience at a 5k I ran in September…) it’s probably me finishing up a post I’d been procrastinating on last year. Lastly, this year it will be less about trying to create a theme (which is what I was trying to do before) and more about me…in general. I really thought I needed a theme.  Like Paleo, or CrossFit, or cooking, or reading. Well, I decided…I don’t need no theme! So, the theme is simple: Jennilee.

With that being said…I hope you continue to read.  I really like having you around. Each and every one of you. 

New Year’s Resolutions 2012

This year I have a lot of goals. A LOT.

I think I did so well last year that I’m even more inspired to do even better this year.  However, this year, instead of having goals about my life in general, I’ve got specific goals for specific parts of my life.  Since there are so many, I decided I’d share them all here but post details in the next week or so with specifics on each. Plus, when I originally wrote the post, it was over 3 pages long in word and I hadn’t even completely finished it! So…multiple posts it is!

First I’d like to talk about goals, though. When setting your goals for 2012 make sure you make specific, attainable goals. My goals below are general, however, I have specifics for each which you’ll see in future posts. For instance, instead of “exercise more,” set a goal of working out 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week. This goal is both attainable and measurable. Also, don’t make too many goals if you have a habit of falling off the bandwagon before you reach your goal. Start with one or two. Once you can keep those, then add more! And remember, you can always make spring resolutions, summer resolutions and even fall resolutions! Keep these things in mind with all your goal planning for 2012.

So, here’s my summarized 2012 goal list!

1. Expand my mind: read, blog, write … more.
2. Improve financially: reduce debt, increase savings, invest wisely
3. Get over my CrossFit mental humps: clean, press, pull, row, run
4. Reclaim my body: eat, fit, cleanse
5. Get back my sanity: spiritual, mental
6. Make my home a home: organize, remodel

What are your goals for 2012? Did you meet your ones for 2011? Why or why not?