WHAT’S YOUR SECRET TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE? #HappyWivesClub

This post is part of the Happy Wives Club Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! 

Secret to a happy marriage?  Does this exist???  YEP, and I'm living it!  My husband and I have been married 16 years.  Almost the first decade wasn't so good for a lot of reasons.  And we both were ready to throw in the towel after 9 years.  But thank the Lord, He knew exactly what both my husband and me needed...  HIM! 

Yep, I had been living my life for myself...  I worshipped myself, my husband, and alcohol.  My husband had his own idols to deal with.  We were all mixed up on our priorities.  But God!  He showed up just when each of us was ready to listen and change.  God gave my husband a new wife...  and it was me - except nicer and not as self-centered(ok, I will always have things I struggle with).  I couldn't have changed without God.  Like the Bible says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"2 Corinthians 5:17

I praise God for saving our marriage from the ashes.  I praise God for making us new creations in Christ!  I praise God for blessing us with 3 kids!!!  I praise God that I feel safe in my husband's arms and that he is mine!

How to have a happy marriage?  Make Jesus the center of your life.  Then it's not your husband you will worship but God.  And when God is the center of your life, you can't help but be changed and be joyful with the hope of salvation!



Fawn Weaver, the founder of the Happy Wives Club wrote a book about the best marriage secrets the world has to offer. They say the book is like “Eat, Pray, Love meets The 5 Love Languages.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy HERE.

Organization Upgrade!

Our home's "Central Command", aka armoire, has been an evolving area in our house.  Well, we were needing a place for charging all our electronics and also needed a place for the kids coats to hang so I didn't have to go up and down the stairs every time we were heading out.  The only problem was the armoire only had so much counter type space...  see...

So the only place I could go was up.  That meant building a shelf somehow.  Unfortunately, I'm not much of a carpenter.  Luckily, Lowe's will cut wood to length.  So after bringing home the pieces, fastening them together, and a bit of staining, here's what I came up with...

 

This "shelf" could almost be used for a bench if I had put a center support in it!  So next was putting this into the armoire.  Sounds easy right?  Well... when measuring the width needed, I forgot to take into consideration that the door hinges were a little bit into the width of the armoire.  Oopsy!

 

Also there were a couple more items that needed to be corralled but didn't have a box for them.  Sooo...  instead of buying pretty storage boxes I decided to make my own.  Being close to the holidays with all the packages we had ordered, we had a bunch of cardboard boxes to choose from and also had pretty wrapping paper to choose from...  Voila!

 

 

In the very center is the file tower that I used for the electronics charging station.  Also hooks were added to the doors for the coats.  It's so great to have everything so much better organized and have one place in the house for all the electronics to charge.  So handy!

 

Things Toddlers Say

My 3 year old has successfully mastered potty training!  There are a couple accidents here and there but nothing that a normal little 3 year old might have.  So many conversations in our home(or car or unfortunately public outings) have centered around potties, or poopoo, or peepee, or farting.  These are just a couple excerpts from conversations lately.

The other day, she exclaimed, “I farted in my panties!”

 

My son told me a joke tonight…

Son :  Knock, knock.
Me:  Who’s there?
Son :  Bannana Peel.

Me:  Bannana Peel who?

Son :  Orange fart a poopoo.  (and then he laughed hysterically so it made me laugh)

Topic - Farting

On the drive back from Old Navy today, the long long drive back.  My son talked about Canyon Farts.  You don’t know either?  Well, he tried to explain these phenomenon’s but between the air conditioning kicking in occasionally and the fact that his seat is at the back of the bus I must have missed some key elements regarding his creative idea of Canyon Farts. 

Then we discussed why we don’t need to speak about farting in public.  Why?  Well, while we were at Old Navy in the dressing room.  He was trying on khaki’s for his new school uniform and keep exclaiming he had to step into his fart and try on a fart.  Then his little brother would try to swing open the wide door while big brother exclaimed something about farting.

 So why we can talk about farting at home but not in public was a confusing topic for my little boy.  “Why?” he asked perplexed several times.  I replied that some people might be offended by the topic.  “But Mommy, you think it’s funny.” 

Ok, I couldn’t deny it, “Yes, I do.”  “Why?” he asked again.  And here is a round about way of how I responded, “Well, it’s just funny that your body can make funny sounds and that it smells.”  Then I discussed why it’s always funnier to be the farter and other people be made to smell it. 

This led me to the discussion of “smelt it, dealt it” and different names and explanations of farts like “silent but deadly” “cut the cheese” “poot”  “make a stinky”.  Well, you smell the picture.  Our conversation wrapped up towards the end of the 20+ minute drive with me explaining that farts can actually be lit they can be lit after my innocent little child asked if farts could burn.  Sigh…  farts and burning something in the same sentence and he’s only 5?  This parenting thing is going to be a fun and wild ride! LOL

The Diet

Ok people I'm into day 8 of the diet...  have completely cut out sodas(except for the secret sips of my husband's coke that I sneak every once and a while...  shhh don't tell!),  carb free at dinner, still need to start up excercising again but all in due time.  I've decided to start writing down my calories for my 3 meals and 2 snacks per day.  It's really made a difference in how much I allow myself to eat.  It has also helped me realize what triggers my emotional eating habits which is mainly when all 3 kids are needing attention at once or when one is crying really bad for whatever reason.

Here's stats for the last several days...  (BR=breakfast, SN=snack, LN=lunch, DN=dinner)

10/19 - 1670cal
BR  240
SN  320
LN  290
SN ? 3 spoon fulls of cookie dough and 3 cookies (probably 600 cal)
DN  220

10/20 - 1240cal
BR  250
SN  110
LN  290
SN  140
DN  320
after exercise protein bar  130

10/21 - 1390cal
BR  140
SN  210
LN  320
cookie  100
SN  210
DN  250
cookie 100
10 grapes - 60 *guessing since 1/2cup has 60cal

10/22 - 1310cal
BR  345
SN  245
LN  290
SN  210
DN  220

10/23 - 1150cal
BR  220
SN  140
LN  300
SN  290
DN  200

Now it's the 24th and so far after lunch I'm up to 820 calories.  This morning when I weighed in I was at 137 (maybe lower but my scales not completely accurate.  So that means I might have lost 2.8 pounds so far.  I'm excited about that but maybe a lot of it is water weight since I'm not consuming so much salt now.  Still I've probably lost a pound at least. My caloric intake has decreased so much and my carbs have also.  Ok...except on cookie making days but this gal has to live a little people!

I'm excited that my belly flap is already deflating even if just a little.  I would like to someday wear jeans again that aren't low low rise just to accommodate that extra belly skin and paunch.  My lofty goals! LOL 

More updates soon.  I'd definitely say that MyFitFoods has been worth it for me just to regain control of my portions and to help me realize how many times a day I was eating etc.  Also keeping a simple food log has helped as well and cutting out carbs after my second snack of the day.  woot woot!  I'm feeling good!

Things Toddlers Say

Tonight at dinner, my  little girl was eating some elbow pasta and said, "Where'd my noodles go?"  I said, "I don't know."  She said, "In my belly having a party!!!"

Been a While...

Can't believe I haven't posted in soooo long!  It's been a busy several weeks around our house and now that things are calming down a bit...  I've started a diet.  Today.  And I'm starving.  Ok, not really starving.  I just am not shoving food every second of the day and am praying for God to help me with self-control every second of the day. 

So I decided to start posting about my weight loss journey.  This morning I weighed 139.8 pounds.  Sometimes I get a little winded walking up stairs but nothing like last year this time when I weighed around 155 pounds.  Slow and steady progress is working.  But now I'm in the home stretch.  I'm wanting to lose between 15 and 20 pounds and be back to my pre-baby factory weight.  My tummy skin and muscles will never be the same (as my ob/gyn remarked after my second baby).  But at least if my belly could not look as preggo as it has since baby #3 I feel a great confidence booster.

So let's see where the MyFitFoods plan gets me.  Lost 3-4 pounds over 2 weeks when I tried out the meal plan this past spring and have kept that off wahooo!  Now I'm going to try for 8-10 weeks and see what happens.  :)