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August 2014
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October 2014

September 2014

vacay ready!

In one week, I will be headed to the beach!  ah!  I cannot express how excited I am for this vacation!  I am looking forward to some much needed family and friend time!  This will be the third annual gathering for us and I am so glad taht we have kept it going.  The first year we had almost veryone of the Oswalt clan go.  We went to a huge lake house in Alabama and we all stayed together!  it was so so much fun!  Last year it was only the Powers and we went to the beach!  it was so much fun and so nice and just great.  this year, we are going to the beach again and will be joined there by the Bals!  I am so looking forward to just getting to the sand and the water and the no-schedule, laid-backness of the beach.  

I have a few goals in mind that I have been dreaming of all summer!  One is to be up before the sun and watch the sunrise on the beach.  I would love to do this every morning and I plan to do it as often as I can.  I love being up early especially to see the beautiful colors of the sunrise and seeing it on the beach will be so magical because it's not something I see every day!  Another goal I have is exercising on the beach.  When I first began running on a daily basis, this was something I was working toward.  From my past experiences of just walking in sand and running in sand for playing, I feel like doing any kind of exercising in the sand will be a very different experience from what I normally do so we'll see how all that goes.  

Ok, Oswalts, we only have a week left!  are y'all ready? :)  let's go to the beach!!


thoughts at the DMV

I recently had to renew my driver's license at the local to DMV which is known to be a time-sucker and you have to wait foreverrrrrrrr.  So to spend the least amount of time waiting, i got there 45 minutes before it even opened.  Because, you know, that totally makes sense, haha.  But it totally paid off because I was second in line!  The girl in front of me was a teenager there to get her driver's license.  When her mother asked her if she had her permit with her and the girl responded no, it reminded me of ten years ago and not caring about a thing!  I know I'm still quite young, but over the years I've learned a couple of basic things that are always nice to keep up with because it really just makes life easier.

1 - house keys.  it wasn't until a few years after I had moved out of my parent's house that this really stuck with me.  up until that point, I had no need to depend solely upon myself to get into the house that i lived in.  When i lived in starkville, i had begun to make it a habit to have my keys in my hand when I got out of my car.  That way i would be prepared to easily get in my house if i needed to.  I also thought it was an extra safety precaution because keys are sharp!

2 - driver's license or id.  you never know when you might have to drive for someone.  or you might need an ID for any kind of situation.  If you are in the habit of carrying it, you'll never be stranded without it!

3 - cash.  whenever i go out of town, I almost always make sure i have cash.  the first year kevin and i were married, we were out of town and both our debit wouldn't work!  this happened in two separate instances.  Luckily we were with family both times so we weren't completely stuck.  so now I try to go by the ATM before we go anywehre.

4 - pen.  there will come a time when you will need a pen!  there has never been a time when I have regretted having a pen.

5 - ponytail holders.  as a woman with long hair, I don't go anywhere without a ponytail holder on my wrist.  on the days i forget it, and i don't know how i do this, i feel so lost without it.

Y'all I'm sure there are several items that I've missed but these are the main things that i actually had with me at the time, so, duh. that's what went on the list! :)  What's some things that y'all have that maybe I missed?

 


what's up wednesday!

y'all.  today has been such an emotional day.  I kept going back and for from high to low.  looking forward to tonight.

what workout I'm doing:  still running.  "sexy legs" workout.

what I'm listening to: no woman no cry - bob marley and the wailers

what I'm eating/drinking: water. I'm up to 132 oz! what??

what project i'm working on: repainting the bulletin board for the office

what I'm wearing:  black pants, teal and brown dress top, flip flops

what I'm wishing for: an uncluttered extra room

what i can't wait for: church tonight with my church family!

what's up with y'all??


boiled peanuts

it's boiled peanut time y'all!  And let me tell you, we have eaten peanuts like every day this past weekend.  My aunt Sharon was in town from Jackson helping my grandmother have a garage sale.  Turns out, I found some pretty good stuff there!  As if I needed any more stuff, amiright?  But one of the goodies that I took home with me actually turned out to be a great pot for boiling peanuts!  it is kind of like a doule broiler, but the pot that fits on the inside has holes in it so it acts as a strainer, too!  So cool.

So, of course after I got home from the grocery store, I couldn't wait to use it!  I put the peanuts in it, then filled it with water, and added salt.  Lots of salt.  Then Kevin left. and I wanted to go across the field to visit with my mother-in-law and autumn, but i couldn't just leave them on the stove.  A quick call and a few minutes later I had those things switched over to my crockpot!  my aunt Diane cooked her peanuts overnight in her crockpot and hers turned out great!  Later that afternoon about seven hours or so later we had yummy peanuts!  Definitely worth doing again if you can wait for peanuts!

Who else likes boiled peanuts??


happy Sunday y'all!

Hey y'all :) what a blessed day we have had! We heard a good sermon this morning on the gospel of Jesus Christ followed by an excellent lunch in the fellowship hall! Afterwards we had an encouraging devotional and then enjoyed the afternoon service brought by Heartdeep, a local gospel bluegrass group! I was really encouraged by brother chuck's words about "being the best woodworker." Even just reading the wonderful and uplifting words of truth gives me a renewed strength and peace!

Kevin and I also had a really good afternoon, just spending some time together around the house. We also took an afternoon drive and ended up at his grandmother's house for a few minutes! She has kind of like a living fence along the front of her yard that was made out of muscadine vines! So, of course I got a handful. :)

happy Sunday y'all!

fitness journey update

So far I have been exercising practicaly daily since well, I don't know! I know definitely since August 11, because that's the first day I tracked a workout via bodybuiling.com.  In my new years resolutions, I said I would exercise three days a week.  Well for a long time, I didn't do much.  Not even once a week sometimes.  But since about April I have been exercising a couple times a week and for a while now I have actually been exercising steadily, even working out in the morning before work and in the evening!  It is so great a feeling to exercise before work and it just makes the day go by so much better.

I really love looking at other people's motivations like on twitter or body space.  or the most part, being part of a fit family is such an encouragement.  Everyone is so supportive of everyone and it just so good and happy!  Reading fit inspiration posts and then exercising is just plain addicting too!  

I've begun an exercise program this past week for "sexy legs" by someone I follow on twitter.  It is definitely a killer workout and i am loving it!  You can look into her programs at zbody fitness inc.  Since I've gotten more into my fitness , I've been trying to do better with planning.  I printed out a calendar and have written in all my workouts and posted it on my fridge at home!  That way i can see it all the time and I've been crossing off the exercises as I do them.  It's quite fun to see that I'm getting stuff done and it is motivating to want to get the exercises crossed off!  In the side, i have written one of my favorite encouraging sayings "get it done today, the time will pass anyway"   IMG_1533

I also picked up this magnetic bulletin board from my old room at my parent's house to use.  It was a Christmas gift an old friend created for me back when i was in high school.  You can tell by the words I was a big softball player back then, haha.  Check it out ladies, she didn't need pinterest to come up with amazing DIY gifts!  :) IMG_1534
I'm going to use this as a motivational board hopefully!  At first I thought I would repaint it, but then I figured that since I'm going to be using it as motivation for exercising, I think i will leave it as is!  It can remind me of where I started from.

I have also come up with another idea, I guess to serve as motivation and a little bonus for working out.  In two months, my best fitness friend and I have planned a shopping trip to academy's around her birthday!  Hopefully they will be having a good sale and we can get some awesome fitness clothes!  So my plan is to put a dollar in a jar for every time I do a workout.  i want to use one of my old jars that I have, i think that would be super cool.  Also by doing this, I figure that at the end of every day I'll either be proud of myself or disappointed in myself haha!  I think jessica is going to do this too!  I love that we can share our ideas with each other and it's just even more of an encouragement because we just keep building on the original idea.  

Does anybody out there have any motivational techniques that really work??  I'd love to hear them!


daydreaming

I've been daydreaming a lot today.  it is so nice to have dreams, don't you think?  I believe it began w/an early morning trip by the farmer'smarket and then i ordered some plans to build a new chicken coop so now I'm dreaming about farm life again.  I really should have gotten a degree in agriculture or something :)  I also went to lunch with Jessica and that really does not help any!  We get to talking about all our interests and we just keep getting more and more excited.

I am very excited about my chicken coop plans!  They were created by Heather Bullard and I actually discovered this coop through the blog Happy Days Farm

will do a fall garden of sorts along with a bigger herb garden!  A lot of my herbs are in my fancy pot stand that Kevin got me for Christmas but i believe that they will flourish if I plant them in the ground!

I feel like I have  to do list that changes daily.  It's a little shameful but I know I have so much in my house that I don't even use or sometimes even remember I have.  I really want to clear out my extra room.  I feel like if I do that, a lot of my distractions will go down.  You know, like when you have so much to do you just don't do anything? haha. that's where I'm at a little bit.

Kevin has helped me out with this distraction a little bit this week!  He has done the dishes for me this past week! :)  now, I really enjoy washing dishes, but they're kind of like laundry, the never really end.  I love that he does things like that especialy since then I have more time to spend with him!

Is anyone else daydreaming these days?