I'm still here!

WOW, what a week we've had! Being intentional with my time is going well but for this previously lazy sloth, it's also exhausting! However, I feel so good about all that we accomplished last week and my energy is getting better every day. I didn't plan to take the whole week off from blogging, but life just seemed to get in the way!

School last week went great, of course we always have little moments of frustration or times when we have a reluctant little learner - but the fact that we made a schedule and stuck to it and got all the school work done was HUGE in my book! In fact, Monday and Tuesday we finished school by lunch time and were able to enjoy two awesome beach days in the afternoons. The weather was super gorgeous and we just couldn't resist! I'm not sure we've EVER had hot beach days this early in April before!

I have been doing well with eating healthy too. I joined the free site My Fitness Pal and keeping track of my calorie intake and exercise on there each day. It helps SO much to actually keep track of what I'm putting in my mouth! Of course, this does require planning on my part, including bringing a healthy salad with grilled chicken to the beach instead of a huge grinder, cutting up carrot sticks to munch on when I'm really hungry before dinner and bringing along healthy snacks when we leave the house. A little advance planning goes a LONG way!

I started and completed TWO fun projects this past week. You'll have to stay tuned for the after photos but here are the befores ...

We had a Balcony Girls tea party / breakfast here in our home on Saturday morning. What an amazing group of young ladies! We talked about authenticity and gossip. Love this group!

As I mentioned, we plugged away with school work ... my 8 wk - end of the year plan is working out fabulous!

Many times when the girls are working independently I can find myself going online and checking things out on FB - not this week! I've made myself more productive by doing my Bible study homework while the girls are busy. I'm trying to commit to only going online in the AM before the girls are up and in the PM when they go to bed - I am still not completely there yet - still checking in online every once in a while, not as much as before but I'm making progress. Still a goal to do ONLY the AM and PM check-ins.

As far as exercise, I did great, one of my best weeks! I took Thursday and Sunday as rest days, but worked out HARD every other day. I love that when I work hard I get more calories for my daily intake! I still make sure I stay at or under my daily goal, but at least with some extra calories I can still enjoy a treat every now and then.

So yes, it's been a great week. Perfect? No, of course not. Never will be. I'm just tryin' my best to live intentionally and work hard toward my goals. Life isn't always happy go lucky, every week doesn't always go well, we all have ups and downs. We had down or difficult moments this week too but I'm just choosing to focus on the positive changes that I'm trying to make in my life.

This week the challenge is all about 'Spirit'  -- Courtney asks us to commit that the FIRST thing we will read each day is God's Word. Some days I'm good with this, other days I go online before anything else. This week I'm going to commit and try to follow through with choosing God's Word first, foremost and above all else!

Have a great week friends!