Today is...

Today is...
Going to be a GREAT day!!! Nothing spectacular going on...I just feel very hopeful and happy today. The above pic is the kids at church a couple of week ago. Each week, their favorite thing about church (now that cookies have been cut out of the budget ;o) is sitting on Jesus!! Rain or shine, they want to be next to him. I feel kind of funny about climbing on him myself, but you will often find me holding his outreached hand.

Yesterday was my first real leg workout in a long long long time. It's hard when you are running and biking so much to want to actually kill your legs in the gym, but I'm going to do it anyway. I did do a workout at home a few weeks ago with free weights that just killed my legs for like a week, so if using 30 pound dumbbells could do that to me, I was worried what it would be like to do a real workout. I did keep it rather light, but I was a sweaty mess by the time I got to squats at the end. You forget how high your heart rate gets doing squats when you haven't done them for a while. So I did squats, leg press, leg curls, extensions, and seated calf raises - all my favorite easy go-to exercises and my legs are def sore today, but I think I'll survive.

I think I'm going to do a 12 week periodization with these same exercises. I'll use The Leanness Lifestyle's Muscle Professor. It is an awesome tool. Dave Greenwalt's website is awesome, too!!! First about the Muscle Professor. Coach Dave has a vast array of workouts to choose from and each day you print out your workout and it tells you exactly what to do: which exercise, what weight, the reps, the sets, the tempo and you just follow it all the way to the bottom of the page and you're done. Then you input the weights/reps you actually did (whether it was what the printout told you to do or if you had to drop the weight a bit or couldn't quite get in that lest rep) and it will spit out your next workout with increases based on what you did last time. It really is a fun tool! I plan on doing the Awesome Periodization workouts that are split into legs one day, chest/shoulder/bicep one day and back/tris one day. You can change up the exercises to ones you prefer if you don't like the one's he has picked out. You can also create your own which is really simple and I've done this quite a few times. The only time it hasn't worked well for me was when I was doing DoggCrapp, but it is seriously a very cool tool. He even has a BFL template that really really brings BFL workouts alive for you. Anyways, I'm a lifetime member so I'm not even sure what he charges for membership anymore, but you might want to check it out. His nutrition analyzer for logging foods is exceptional as well.

I have to apologize for the lack of PDL posts lately. I was telling Helen yesterday that it is just so hard to put into words what this book means to me. I was trying to highlight points on this blog that struck a chord with me, but seriously...my entire book is covered with sticky notes and highlighter and I would have to copy the book down word for word for you to see everything that is touching on my heart. And it's so personal that either I can't put it into words to explain how it's affecting me or it's just too personal to put into words at all.

So please forgive my inconsistency in PDL posts. I am too far behind in posting my thoughts to even get caught up so I will just start with some from Day 23 and move forward until the kids wake up...which will be any time, so I better get to typing:

Day 23 "God has given you a new life; now you are responsible to develop it "with fear and trembling". That means to take your spiritual growth seriously! When people are casual about their spiritual growth, it shows they don't understand the eternal implications.
*I think this is important and overlooked by so many people who are on auto pilot in their faith, however a point made on day 29 really made me realize that although I feel like I am taking my spiritual growth seriously, I might be going about it the wrong way.

I have OUCH! written next to this statement on page 231 "The last thing many believers need today is to go to another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles." Ding Ding Ding!! That is me. I not only am running from bible study to bible study but I've got so many other books going at one time that it's stressing me out and although much of it gives an immediate impact to me and makes me think - I never take the time to really put it into practice. For instance, right now I am reading PDL, doing a weekly womens study on Esther, reading The First Easter and actually opened up a new book and started reading it last week from Pastor Cordeiro. It's too much and I'm missing God's voice in all the hustle and bustle.
I. Must. Slow. Down.