Newsboys Concert

So, tonight I was able to go to a Newsboys concert at my church! It was AWESOME! Recently the lead singer of the Newsboys, Peter Fuller, stepped down and over the past few weeks has been integrating a new lead singer in to the band. Can you believe that is the former lead singer of DC Talk, Michael Tait?!?!? Well, tonight was so amazing to hear the Newsboys with Michael Tait as the lead singer! And it was also cool because they played Newsboys songs and DC Talk songs. It was like seeing TWO concerts in one night! And everyone loved the show.

Unfortunately, I was a LAME-O once again and I forgot my camera. I have been forgetting that A LOT lately! Grr.. And there were some great pics to be taken. Well, during part of one of the songs, the drummers platform was raised and while he was doing his solo, the platform tilted forward and started spinning. It was great! Lucky for me, lots of other people have recorded it at other concerts so I'm just gonna show you what they captured. Same thing as our show.

Newsboys Drummer in Concert


In addition to that, this concert was so AMAZING because the TRUTH was spoken throughout the whole concert! I'm really going to have to start using some of these concerts as a ministry to my unbelieving friends. The music is GREAT which can attract an unbeliever, but then once they are there, they will hear God's truths!! Wonderful!!!

This may have been one of my favorite concerts ever!! Although I still think the Barlow Girls concerts were pretty great, too. They also made sure to preach God's truths throughout their concerts. I love to see these artists using their talent to reach people for God's Kingdom! AMEN!!!

Weekend Wrap-Up

So, the weekend is over and I must say that it was actually a pretty good weekend. It went by so fast and I can't believe that it is going to be Monday again already. I also want to say that I am so impressed by all those bloggers out there that have a post every day of the week. I can't even imagine blogging every single day. For one, I find it hard to find the time and then second of all, I don't know if I would have something to blog about everyday. My life just isn't as exciting as the rest of you blogging enthusiasts. Well, let me get in to the weekend wrap-up.

FRIDAY
Well, I started my weekend with a wonderful award celebration for the basketball league that I was coaching in at my church. It was great. They brought in this Christian entertainer/comedian who the kids ALL loved. His name is Keith Coast and he definitely had the kids laughing. I just want to share a video of something he did at the awards night. This is not at our awards night but it's the exact same thing that he did at our show. This was taped at another event that he went to. And for some reason I just can't seem to figure out how to get this video posted on my site but here is the link. It's about a 6 minute video. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GpNtRW_m80

SATURDAY
This was the first Saturday in a long time that I was actually able to sleep in. I definitely enjoyed it. And then we all had a late breakfast. After that, my hubby, my son, and I went to Del Rosa Lanes to meet my parents for some bowling. We got in four games in about 2 hours. That was pretty good with the 5 people playing. My first game started off pretty good, finishing off at about 160ish and then after that each game got worse but I still had a lot of fun. But my philosophy is that I always have to break 100 pts even when I'm not bowling well. We were all pretty tired after bowling. Taylor, Tyler, and I went home afterwards and rested for about an hour and a half. Then we headed right back out to play some basketball with a couple of friends. We had a great time. We did girls versus boys and us girls kicked the guys' butts!! It was great.

Unfortunately, I have NO pictures from this weekend because I was too busy enjoying myself that I totally forgot to bring a camera and take pictures. Bummer.

SUNDAY
No exercise on Sunday. This morning we went to church and after that we didn't really do anything exciting. We were all really tired and we had LOTS of laundry to do.

So, that is my weekend wrap-up. I'm really going to have get more pictures in because I know that no one is going to want to only sit and read all of my boring stuff. I hope everyone has a great start to their week!

P.S. - Check out a couple of contests going on in the Blog World!
Every Gym's Nightmare is giving away a One Year Subscription to Fitness Magazine
N Her Shoes is giving away some MyMix Granola

I Finally...

Worked out with Jillian again! I REALLY had to make myself do it tonight because I was feeling extremely tired and lazy but I am SO glad that I did it. And I feel way better afterwards. I even felt like it wasn't as hard this time as it was last week!! Don't get me wrong...This is definitely a tough workout but I didn't feel as much like I couldn't do it as I did last week. So, I am starting up again. Hopefully, I can really stick with and also get my food consumption under control, too! One step at a time! I'm on my way!

P.S.
Every Gym's Nightmare is having a Second Chance Giveaway for things she has given away before. Check it out to see what's in the give away!

P.S....

This morning I forgot to mention that I got some coupons from Odwalla!!! And I am really excited to use them! The first time I tried these was when I went to the San Diego Zoo Walk. They had samples of the juices the first year and samples of the bars the second year. They are SOOO good!! I just wanted to note that wonderful treat that I received in the mail.

Also, I forgot my camera so I didn't get any work pictures. Hopefully before the end of the week. :-)

In addition, check out some give aways that are going on the blog world:

The Health Nut is giving away a Nalgene 32 oz. BPA Water Bottle
***CORRECTION!! The Health Nut is ACTUALLY giving away a handy dandy Meal Organizer this week. Sorry the water bottle was last week. :-(

N Her Shoes is giving away 2 Bottles of Country Bob's All Purpose BBQ Sauce


Have a great rest of the week!!

I TOTALLY BLEW IT :-(

So, for my weekend wrap-up, I would like to say that I totally blew it with my 30-Day commitment to Jillian. I have missed my workout everyday since Thursday (including my WHOLE weekend!!). Now I feel like I have this HUGE set back and I feel like I am starting over from square one again. This did not make me happy.

However, other than that, my weekend was pretty good. We had Family Night Friday. We ordered a Little Caesar's Pizza and had some salad and grapes with it. Then we just relaxed and watched a movie. It was a really nice, relaxing evening.

Then on Saturday morning, I had my final basketball game with my kids. I coach a kids' basketball team through the Upward Sports program at Immanuel Baptist Church. I coached 3rd-4th grade boys and girls. After the game we had a pizza party at Uncle Howie's Pizza in Redlands. The kids got to enjoy the games. And I gave them certificates and we played some trivia game for prizes. We did that with my first team when I coached with my best friend. It was a great time. I'm gonna miss the kids but I am kinda glad the season is over. I like not having that absolute commitment every Saturday morning especially with Tyler here.

Then on Sunday we didn't really do too much because Tyler was having some attitude problems. It all started at church when he stole the snacks from another Sunday school class and claimed them as his own. After he was already caught he finally admitted that they weren't his. But because he had stolen those, we gave him a packet which at the end asks him to write a paragraph stating "How will we know that you have learned your lesson about stealing?" Well, he really did not like that question so he wasted the whole day away sitting at the table, not working on his packet. So, our Sunday was oh so boring. Blah!

Tomorrow I am going to try to remember to bring my camera to work so that I can take some pictures of my workplace. I hope I remember. I hope everyone had a great Monday! :-)

End of the Week Wrap-Up

So, I have not posted in a few days. This has been kind of a rough week for me. I started a new job this week and that has been exhausting. The job itself has not been exhausting, but scheduling it around marriage, family, and school has been the exhausting part. I even missed two days of Jillian's 30 Day Shred. That was quite discouraging. So, I started my new job on Tuesday. And basically, what I do is braid wire harnesses for classic cars. I have never had any experience doing this sort of thing but it's quite interesting. I NEVER thought that I would ever being working in the automobile world but here I am now. The other people at my work actually assemble wire harnesses but I am CERTAINLY not at that level. Next week I will try to take some pics of my workplace. In addition to that, I am also the one who ships out all their goodies. So, that job has changed my whole schedule around. I go straight to work right after school until about dinner time. I am the one who cooks dinner so that has kinda made me really lazy about making a well-balanced meal. I need to figure out a new schedule. I will have to start using my crock-pot more since it has ALWAYS came in handy on full work-days.

In addition to this stuff, on Thursday morning my hubby and I had to meet with ALL the social workers involved with our adoption process with Tyler. For those of you that don't know, we have a 9[year old boy, named Tyler, whoc we are currently in the process of adopting. Well, Monday was supposed to be the court date when the birth parents' rights were terminated but instead they had a continuance... ugh. Well, when we met with the social workers, they explained why. Basically, they have a lot of concerns that they want to have addressed before moving forward. Some of them are legitimate and some of them are REALLY lame. And on top of everything else, they think that the expectations for Tyler in this home (and in his classroom) are way too high. What they don't realize is that Tyler is fully capable of meeting those expectations. He has them completely fooled which is pretty sad. Anyhow, that put another damper on our week and I was pretty bummed ot hear all the stuff that they were saying. So, that was definitely a downer. :-(

Now moving on to Thursday night. Taylor and I finally got to go on another date night. Yay!!! My dad was so gracious as to watch Tyler again. Yay for DAD!! So, Taylor and I decided to go to Mimi's Cafe for dinner. I was not impressed with my meal but Taylor said his was pretty good.

He had their 1/4 lb burger with fries, medium-well
I had what they call their Thanksgiving Meal. I wasn't that impressed and the turkey was kinda cold when. The whole meal included turkey w/ gravy, mashed potatoes, corn-bread stuffing, and cranberry sauce. The meal wasn't actually that bad but I definitely like my turkey WARM! And they do have a healthier Thanksgiving dinner that had rice instead of potatoes and NO GRAVY! I'm not that healthy with my food yet so I opted to have the gravy. :-)

Date Night was the first night that I missed Jillian's 30 Day Shred. I will definitely have to get my workout in the morning when we have a date night because afterwards I'm already so tired, especially after school, work, and Tyler.

Now moving on to Friday. Every Friday I get off of work at 2:30 because that is what time we close which is SO awesome!! Friday nights is when we try to do family night. So, we had a $5.00 Little Caesar's Hot-N-Ready Pizza and some salad, grapes, and some chips. Then we watched "Nim's Island" which was actually pretty decent. But by the time it was over I was feeling too tired to do Jillian's workout. So, now I missed TWO workouts!!! This is not good. So, that is how my week ended.

I'll write more later to tell about my weekend, since it's not quite over yet. :-)

Manic Monday

MONDAY MANIA
So yesterday, I totally did not plan my day very well to get in my Pilates workout (or any other workout). I had to be in Indio by 8am (coming from Redlands is a little over an hour drive). So, I did plan very well to get a morning workout starting from the night before. I didn't go to bed until Midnight and then woke up at 5:45am in order to leave by 6:30am. So, then I didn't really get back to Redlands until after noon. And the time between noon and 3:00pm went by so fast that I feel like they didn't exist. The time was just spent running errands such as going to the post office, the bank, and little things like that. But they just consumed time.

After that I began to prepare some food for a birthday party that I was going. It took lots of time so I had to start early and the party didn't even start until 7:00pm. The dish that I made is called Lumpia which I learned how to make from my mom. It is a filipino dish and has always been a HUGE hit with my friends. Normally I make it with ground beef but in attempt to be a little healthier, I used ground turkey this time. Here are some pics of the process:

Ground Turkey while still cooking on the stove. There are also cut up green and red bell peppers, onions, and black pepper added to the meat.
This is some of the lumpia after being rolled. You basically put about a tablespoon of the meat (after it has cooled) on the wrapper (basically really thin pastry wrappers) and roll them up. And I use a mixture of flower of water as paste to keep them rolled up.

Here's the first batch of finished lumpia. Once they are rolled you can either stick them in the freezer to cook later or cook them right away. You just fry them in vegetable oil until lightly browned since all the meat is already cooked.

So, I was able to finish the lumpia just in time to go to the party. EVERYBODY loved them and I wasn't even able to take any home for left overs. But these definitely were not the only good thing to eat there. My friend, Grace, brought these "Apple Pie Apples" from the Chocolate Factory and they were Oh So Good!!

This is Veronica (the birthday girl) holding onthe Apple Pie Apple and Grace stuffing her face with one of the slices that were already cut. They were Super GOOD!!
Here's a close up of the apples sliced up. Don't they look just scrumptious!?!?

In addition to these delicious apples, Veronica's mom (and Veronica's daughter helped) also made a HUGE birthday cake. It was chocolate cake with sliced bananas across the top. I totally justified all the desserts because there was fruit involved. :-) There was also Neopolitan ice cream which I was able to resist.

So, my original plan was only to stay for about an hour because the party started pretty late in to the evening and I knew that I still didn't get my dose of Jillian's 30 Day Shred. Unfortunately, I didn't leave until about 11:00pm. I just couldn't help it since there was people that I hadn't seen in SO long and I couldn't help but stay and chat. So, I got home around 11:30pm and still attempted to do my workout but about 10 minutes in to it, I just had to stop. I felt like I was going to just fall asleep with the weights in my hands. So, I just decided to stop. I still worked up a sweat but I know I didn't get the most out of the workout. I was able to go to sleep at about midnight.

TIME-SENSITIVE TUESDAY
So, this morning, I had to get to school by 8:00am. After my classes I just ate a quick lunch, which consisted of half of a turkey club sandwich (leftover from yesterday's lunch) and some grapes. Then after school, I went to my first day of work.

My first day of work was pretty good. Everyone seems so friendly and nice. And I got quite the workout while there. Due to some re-organizing that was going on when I got to work today, I got a great physical workout, which included taking boxes downstairs, taking lots of trash down the stairs to the dumpster, breaking down empty boxes, etc. After work i was pretty tired and I almost decided not to do Jillian's workout but then I made sure that I stuck to my commitment. I got off of work at 3:30pm (will be working short days every Tuesday) and went straight to pick up Tyler and take him to his therapy session in Highland at 4:00pm. Then right after that at 5:00pm, I coached my 3rd/4th grade basketball team until 6:00pm. Then I got dinner ready for Tyler and after that I finally got a moment to rest. After I winded down for about an hour, then I was able to do my workout.

So, that is where I am now. Had my workout and started blogging. Now, I'm pretty tired so I will be showering and hitting the bed. I hope everyone had a wonderful Manic Monday and Time-Sensitive Tuesday. :-)

The End of The Weekend and I Survived

So, it is now Sunday and I have been pretty good about making sure I get in a workout. Since I bought Jillian's 30 Day Shred, I have decided that I really want to do it everyday for 30 days. I started it on Friday, February 27, 2009. I did it yesterday and I have done it again tonight. So, this means that March 28, 2009 will be my 30th day. So, I really need to make sure that I schedule this in to each day just as I would with school, work, appointments, and just like I should be doing with my time with God. I am going to start making a weekly schedule which will definitely include time with God and exercise scheduled in.

Long Time Friends
Today I got to see a friend that I have not seen in SO long. She has been out doing the Good Work of our Father for the past 2 years. And now she is back for a few weeks before returning. There was a little party to celebrate her being here and let me just tell you that there was TONS of good food. Sadly, I did not stick to the healthy stuff such as these:
I went straight for the good stuff (but not as healthy stuff). And really, this family made everything as healthy as possible but my thing was that I didn't necessarily lean towards the healthiest things. I went straight for the meats and breads (wheat breads, though):

These are the meat dishes. I have no idea what they are called specifically but I know the two shredded meats are chicken and pork (I think). I only ate the chicken and it was GOOD. I was able to show some self control and NOT go back for seconds even though I REALLY wanted to.

This is turkey meat balls. They were GREAT. And I still managed to only get firsts.
And then comes my TOTAL weakness... DESSERT. Well, they had these AMAZING cookies. As you can see, they did not last long. They were home made. Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal, and Snickerdoodles. Oh SO good!! I managed to refrain to only one chocolate chip cookie and one snickerdoodle. Once upon a time I would have REALLY eaten A LOT more, especially at this house where there is ALWAYS good food.
Now, if you notice, in the bottom right hand corner of the above picture, there is a zip-lock bag full of Snickerdoodle cookies. That bag has about 20 cookies in and believe it or not, they were set aside before I got there and sent home with because they remembered that I always loved those Snickerdoodle cookies. So, I showed restraint at the party but I know they will be totally be tempting me at home.

Now, I would show pictures of the people party but I didn't want to compromise anybody's work. And for those of you that know what the Good Work is, then you know why I didn't post the pictures.

So, onward to start my next week of my new lifestyle!! I am starting to feel better already and I have been sleeping much better since I have started exercising everyday. So, I hope that I can really stick with it.