Rainy Monday!

Clouds, more clouds and some rain.  Not much, but enough to make me happy.

And then the blue skies came out for most of the day but towards the afternoon, the clouds began moving in again and right now, this is what my sky looks like.

Kind of ominous don't you think?

It's almost like a shroud of darkness is descending upon us, so weird and so beautiful at the same time.  Will we get more rain?  I'm not sure, but I am not going to complain about this weather, I'm going to just enjoy it to the maximum because here in Arizona, we don't get it too often and very very VERY soon we'll be back to the triple digits.

I've had a good day.  A good but tiring day, and not in the sense of too much housework or running around etc.  But tiring in the sense that I worked out quite a lot, and though I'm sore I love it, and am already looking forward to more tomorrow.

I've jumped back on the Sparkpeople train, which I've been on and off since 2007.  Sometimes I look back at my first entries and my weight back then and I think "you silly woman, you were complaining back then, and here you are, 10 pounds heavier.  You should have just been happy with where you were".  But isn't it always like that????

I'm watching what I eat, I'm religiously tracking my calories, down to every crumb that enters my body, because whether you believe it or not, we consume so much junk with such high caloric intake, and we don't even realize it.   My total for today has been 900 calories, and I'm not starving, just making better choices.

Also did 40 minutes of yoga, and 20 minutes of belly dancing.  THAT was fun LOL

Hubby is off at class, the kiddos are in Nic's bedroom playing a game, and I'm on the couch, in my pajamas already, even though it's not quite 6PM yet, but I've taken my shower and don't quite see the point of putting clean clothes just to take them off again in a few hours for bed.  Anyone else do that?  Take a shower earlier than usual and then wonder if they should put on clothes or pj's?  Or is that just me?

I'm going to show you what I did today, nothing super interesting, but nevertheless I always capture what my days are like.

I love Tulips, and I'm keeping an eye on this one, just waiting to see the beautiful orange start to show.

Little Miss Lola is so cute, I've said it before and I have to say it again, this little tongue is always hanging out and I just want to grab it. LOL Love her!

I don't know if I've ever shown you my Menu Frame. My children are always asking what is for dinner, at random times of the day, and multiple times, over and over. So last year I decided to write it down somewhere so they would know to just go look and not come and ask me. They like knowing what is for dinner and lunch etc.

All it is, is an old picture frame I had laying around. I used a sheet of scrapbook paper for the background, and I just use a dry erase marker to write on there whatever is on the menu for that day. It's easy to erase, and I think it looks cute too :)

Since I'm using old recipes for my next menu plan, I pulled out my folder with all my random hand written and printed recipes to have a look through.

It was great looking through some of these and remembering when I wrote them/got them. This one above is handwritten by my grandmother, who is now 89 years old. She wrote them for me before I got married, and handed them over for me to use.

Just seeing her handwriting makes me smile. I love her so very much and it's heartbreaking that I'm so far away and can't just sit down with her for a cup of tea, but these recipes will forever be treasured by me.

And then there's others hand written by me, so many years ago. The handwriting of a young girl and they take me back in time. This one was for a Christmas Pudding that I made for Christmas one year, it came out really well and it was delicious, I was so proud of it.

So I spent a good part of the morning looking through old recipes and loving the fact that they're so simple, so easy to make, and so comforting. I think often we tend to make things harder than they are, even in cooking, it seems that today everyone is so busy trying to make elaborate dishes and use all these weird gourmet ingredients, that they forget to cook just good basic meals.

There you have it, a little peek at my Monday. There was also some Bible reading done, I'm following a smaller Bible plan that so far is just perfect for me and what I need right now.

Now my granny stripe blanket beckons me, so I'll oblige and maybe see what is playing on the TV, but I wanted to leave you with this video of one of my favorite Christan songs from For King & Country "The Proof of Your Love", I especially like the monologue

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. 

-- 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 --