Just Married

I’m sure if you live in the Savannah area you have probably seen several cars with the “Just Married?” written on the back windshield and wondered what was going on.  I’m sure several people noticed the website and meant to look it up when they got home but then forgot what it was by the time they got around to it.  Well, I’ll help you out on the big mystery.   Savannah Christian Church had the pretty ingenious idea of writing “Just Married?” on the back of every car that would let them in order to get the questions going and invite you to their marriage series.  The basic message is as follows (in my words…)

Just Married – GREAT!  A couple made the commitment to each other to stay together for a lifetime.  It’s a long hard road, one which you have to work at otherwise you will find yourself “just married”.  The life will slowly begin to leave your marriage and you will soon find yourself in the relationship for the mere fact that you are married.  So many marriages get to this point and it spirals out of control from there - soon they are knocking at Divorce’s door.  This is the rut that my church, Savannah Christian, is trying to keep marriages out of or rescue them from. 

I’m sure everyone KNOWS you have to work at a marriage for it to work but knowing and doing are two different things.  A few months back I had an epiphany regarding my marriage and how I treated my husband (Changing my ways and putting my husband first).  I figured that I couldn’t change him so I had to change myself (the same thing the first message of this “Just Married” series stressed).  For about two weeks my marriage was great – my husband was being thoughtful, I was being cool headed, things were good – but then slowly it began to revert back to how it was.  I quit holding back and began bickering again, the peace was gone.  My marriage is not bad, but it is also not GREAT and it could be better, just as all marriages could be. 

When I heard the first message of the series and the philosophy that you have to change yourself came about, my first reaction was “AMEN – see Honey, you need to change.”  It was at that point I knew I was in for a rude awakening.  If I changed then slowly he will as well – just as he did when I made a decision to change a few months back. 

As Cam said “Healthy breads Healthy.”  Makes sense right?  Don’t you smile when a bubbly person walks into the room just as your spirits drop when a person who is consistently negative is in the same area?  Look at your Facebook friends – there are people you want to read their posts and some you wish you could unfriend but know you would hurt their feelings if you did.  Wouldn’t that same principle apply to your marriage?  My dad once said watch a dog and see how excited they get when their owner gets home and do the same thing to your spouse.  As much as I hate admitting my dad is right – he was right.  If the first reaction to your spouse coming home is excitement – like you have been waiting for them to come home ALL day, it would be easier to have a great night then if you greeted them with complaints. 

If your marriage is lacking (or just could use a little freshness) I would encourage you to attend this series (or watch it online if you don’t actually want to go to church). 

p.s. I borrowed the car picture - it looked a lot better then my car.

How (and why) I lost 25 pounds...

Last summer my husband broke his wrist in a training class – apparently the police dog liked his wrist a little too much.  Being a guy he figured he could wrap his wrist and it would heal.  About a month later the wrist started to swell again so he finally went to the doctor.  Sure enough it was broken and apparently he would have healed it himself had he had a larger brace on it (which he ended up getting rather than casting it) but while he was there the Dr called him out on his weight.  I had been telling him for MONTHS that he needed to lose some weight but his excuse was always “I don’t have the time to go work out as much as I would need to.”  He never listened to me that if he watched what he ate he would get great results but when the Doctor said that he needed to watch what he ate (since he was older and working out would not help much) he finally listened. 

At this point I felt a little bad that he was going to have to go on a diet and here I was still eating McDonalds and whatever else I wanted with no consequence (granted I was still nursing so I could afford some extra calories).  I made a deal with Mark that I would change my eating habits with him so he wouldn’t have to do it alone.  All fast food was a no-no, soda was gone, Mark gave up his sweet tea (which he substituted with splenda water – gross!), fish and chicken was readily stocked in the house as well as lots of veggies. 

We never did get a good “starting weight” on him cause he refused to step on the scale but I have a pretty good idea.  I still had a few pounds to lose from my pregnancy so my starting weight was 152 (pre-pregnancy was 148).  I set myself a goal weight of 140 and no less than 135 cause I never dreamed I would ever lose more than that and didn’t want to set myself up for failure. 

Weight started falling off of me quicker then Mark, which I credited to the nursing, but he lost 15 pounds in the first month.  When I hit 140 within the first month I was shocked, then I hit 135, then 130 and I was getting a little worried that I was losing too much weight.  At that point every morning I weighted light I ate McDonalds for lunch to counteract it.  Right now (7 months after the “change” started) I am weighing in consistently at 127 (although I at one point hit 124 and ate horrible to gain that weight back).  Mark ended up losing at least 30 pounds (since we don’t have a starting number we can only go off what his first weigh in was). 

My sister told me when I started to lose weight to keep in mind that I will look good no matter what, that when I get thinner I will still think I need to lose more so be careful.  For once my sister was right.  As the weight dropped my weight limit dropped lower and lower.  I began striving for a lower number each day.  Eventually I realized what was going on and reminded myself that I couldn’t lose more weight without being too thin.  Still today I look down and find “pudginess” especially around my waist and think I can lose a few more pounds to get rid of that but I know that I will actually have to exercise that off (something that I really don’t want to have to do). 

I’m not trying to brag or say “look at me”, rather show that changing your behavior really does work, anything is possible.  I figured I would really have to work to lose 5 or 10 pounds and ended up losing 25 in 4 months.  This is also coming from someone who knows nothing about weight loss or any training what so ever but I am very good at self control (except when it comes to what comes out of my mouth – but that is for a different day). 

AFTER

BEFORE

(disregard the horrible hair and sunglasses - this was the only picture I could find)

The many faces of Colleen

"Daddy - Can't you see I'm driving?  Enough with the pictures"

"Hmm...this is really good - I wonder if I can get more?"

WHEEEE!!!

"Here I am!!!"

While I was away...

Life has been a little busy so here are a few “catch up” items…

• My little girl is growing up way to fast. She is already 17 months and learning new words every day. Her latest words are in the bathroom category – “Poo Poo” “Pee Pee” “Potty” and she knows what they mean. For the last week or so we have been trying to get her to actually use the potty but being the doubting mommy I somehow always manage to miss the opportunity. Today she was dropped off at my office and after she had a snack she walked to the hall and told me “potty” so I took her to the bathroom, stripped her down and sat her on the toilet. Since her diaper was wet when I took it off I figured she went potty and told me after the fact but I put her on the potty just to make her happy. After about 30 seconds she wanted down so I took her off the toilet and told her to stay so I could get a new diaper and in the 20 seconds I was gone she managed to “pee pee” on the bathroom floor. Mixed feelings about this – bummed cause I missed the chance of her going in the toilet ( a feat we have yet to accomplish), disgusted cause I had to clean up baby piss off the floor, and happy cause she actually had it right – she did have to go potty. One day we will get it right.

• Work has been a little crazy. This was the first year I did tax returns, which made me a little nervous but I managed none the less. I actually got the hang of them and by the end I was pretty confident that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It helped to know that my boss was reviewing them after I did them to catch anything I messed up and am happy to report that I did pretty damn good! Although I did enjoy the extra responsibility I still did not enjoy the season much. I have a lot of guilt due to the fact that I could not work as much as I would have liked. With Mark’s schedule and lack of sitters I couldn’t really work much on the weekends while my boss was there every weekend starting in February. Perhaps next year Colleen will be able to come to work and play by herself and not get into everything so I can take a little more off my boss’s plate.

• I’ve decided to go back to school and get my MACC degree and take the CPA exam. Being 26 I have a lot of life ahead of me and there is so more opportunity if I have the 3 letters at the end of my name. Right now I’m at a standstill because in an office like ours there is nowhere I can go without going back to school. I am hoping to start in the fall (that is if I pass the stupid GMAT test and get accepted into graduate school. I’m planning to take the test in the first week or two of May so hopefully I can get the ball rolling on the studying thing.

• My church search is over and I have found a home at Savannah Christian. For the past few months I have been volunteering in the nursery which has been doing wonders for my baby fever – each week with the little ones crying and spitting up on me further puts that urge to have another baby far out of my mind.

Well, that pretty much sums up my life lately…