I missed my post yesterday because James and I took a couple of days off together.  We had some much needed Mommy & Daddy time.  Just me and him in a mini van ready for an adventure.

We started the big date on Sunday morning by going to Lowes and shopping for a new lawn mower.  Nothing says romance like yard maintenance equipment.  Then we looked for some screws because, well, we don’t have any and we didn’t have anything else pressing to do.

After that excitement and some lunch, we headed to downtown San Antonio to go to the Tower of the Americas.  We had never been there and always wondered what was the big deal.  It’s a staple of the San Antonio skyline and we often wonder, what’s really up there?  It was interesting.  A bird’s eye view of the whole city and some serious wind.  When I say wind I mean my skirt flew up over my waist leaving me walking around the observation deck like a Marilyn Monroe wannabe.  My efforts at modesty kind of go out the window when a dozen Korean tourists are taking pictures with my Spanx covered behind in the background.  My hair will never be the same.

After that we walked around the city and had dinner in a great restaurant where they served tableside guacamole.  Or as I like to call it, heaven on a chip.  I wonder if James realized on our wedding day that what he was actually ending up with was a wife who would eventually have avocado all over her face while complaining that her feet hurt too much to walk back to the hotel.  I’m like a real life Disney princess.

We did have a wonderful time.  Sure we walked at a snail’s pace and had a bit of indigestion, but we laughed and saw the city we love from a new perspective and felt no pressure to be anywhere in particular.

On Monday morning we caught an early showing of the new Star Trek movie before heading home.  Yes, we are those people.  As we pulled up to the theater I was chattering on about something when he shouted, “STOP!” It turns out he was just reading aloud the word STOP that was painted on the ground of the parking lot.  But I thought he was talking to me, wanting me to stop talking.

So I froze and stared at him, completely quiet.  He gave me a puzzled look and said, “What?”

“You told me to stop,” I said, “So I stopped.”

He gulped, “You mean that would actually WORK?!”

Oh, the joys of a healthy marriage relationship.  We needed that time together to laugh, be outside, have no agenda and let the wind blow through our hair.

“May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.” Proverbs 5:18

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If you’re following me on my “get fit” journey I hope you’re ready for a long road.  This morning as I got on the scale and prepared myself.  It had dropped.  One. half. pound.

Yep, that’s it.  No fanfare, please.

The funny thing is, I’m not disappointed.  My goal is to get healthy.  I am thinking in my expert self-analysis that if I change what’s happening on the inside then the outside will reflect that.  I’ve done several quick weight loss programs in the past and I lose weight, but I can’t wait for the misery to end, then I gain it back.

So this time my strategy is different.  Change my habits, slowly instead of being drastic, until I am more healthy.

For the past 2 weeks I have exercised 6x each week.  I have cut sugar out of my diet and starting today I will no longer eat after 7:00PM.  This is going to be another difficult change.  But if I, the world’s most stagnant person, can start to exercise then surely I can do this too.  It will take some getting used to though.  Last night I ate dinner at 9:15.  {shame}

As far as the slow weight loss, I am going to try paying more attention to my portion sizes and cut them back a little more.  I can do that pretty easily I think.

So that’s it.  Week 2 done.  I’m know this will take a lot longer than 42 days, but really that’s OK.  I’m going to get there.

How are you doing on your journey to fitness?

If you want to join our Get Fit Facebook group let me know!

The post Week Two Check-In appeared first on The Pennington Point.

There are so many things I haven’t caught you up on since April ended.  That was a really crazy month for us with me doing so much traveling and James wrapping up tax season.

1. Our daughter Hope is graduating this year.  She has worked really hard to finish all of her school and be done with it.  She’s not a natural student, so I think she’s looking forward to having time to do some things that are more of her own interests.  We are not having a graduation ceremony.  She didn’t care about it and we couldn’t find a good time to do it, so we’ve decided to take a little trip instead.  That fits her personality better.  But we will send out announcements.  Here’s the picture we are using….she’s a beauty!

2. Speaking of traveling, I’m planning a few simple summer trips:

*In June some of my daughters and I will head to Kansas City for the One Year Adventure Novel Summer Workshop.  If you have a budding writer, this workshop is fabulous!  We went last year and my kids were so inspired that we can’t wait to go again.  I’d be glad to answer any questions about it if you think it’s something you might want to do.

*Most of us will be attending the Teach Them Diligently Marketplace in Houston in July.  I don’t know if my whole family will go since we have the farm animals to tend to.  But it will be nice to also visit with my parents while we are there.  If you’re going, please let me know so we can meet!

*In August I will be heading to California for a women’s retreat in Rancho Mirage, CA.  I will be the keynote speaker and I am super excited!  If you are in the area and are interested in attending let me know and I can email you more information.

3. We’ve got new products in the shop and more on the way!  I’ve added Mason Jar Straw Lids with Acrylic Straws for the kids.  We did a fun photo shoot last weekend for those and my boys clowned it up for the camera.

4. Lastly, I have a great series coming up about siblings.  I get so many questions asking how we did it….our kids get along so well.  So I am working on a 6 part series starting in June on that subject.  Stay tuned!

Have a wonderful day and enjoy your family!

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This weekend proves what my whole family has feared….I am on a mission to get my house completely cleaned out.  I mean completely.

It started with my exhaustive bedroom clean out last weekend and is still going strong.  I’m like the movie “Speed.”  I have a sense that if I slow down with the cleaning & organizing I could die.

James must have picked up on my craze because he said to me yesterday, “For one of your Mother’s Day presents I am going to clean out my closet.”

I was over the moon excited.  He couldn’t have given me a better gift if he has said there was a spa weekend to go along with it.  I should tell you that we don’t share this closet.  It’s just his.  I never even look in there.  But the knowledge that there is this black hole of messiness in my house that I couldn’t clean or straighten was an albatross around my neck.

I didn’t complain much about it because I have read that verse in the Bible about a man being better on the corner of a roof than inside the house with a nagging wife.  Every time I wanted to let loose about the messy closet I pictured him up on the roof trying to get as far away from me as possible and it stopped me.  The idea of my husband being miserable because of me is enough to close even my mouth.  And that’s a tall order.

So he and the boys spent the entire afternoon pulling everything out, folding, sorting, stacking and putting it back in the closet.  It was awesome!  Best Mother’s Day gift EVER!

Speaking of my house, I wanted to thank you all for your clever ideas about my extra room last week.  Your main suggestions were a reading room/library, exercise room or sewing/craft area.  Well I hate to admit this because it proves that I am pampered and I like to keep that fact mostly to myself, but I already have spaces for all of those things.  We have a little room that we call our “study room” where we have shelves, a desk and a comfy place to sit.  I have a whole space for Shop24 to do projects like that. And my bedroom has plenty of space to do my exercises.

I think the moral of the story is I am spoiled.  Plain and simple.

But please don’t tell my husband because I am hoping he will keep the momentum going and clean out the garage.

But I’m not going to nag about it.  Nosirree.

Have a great week!

Be sure to follow me on Facebook!

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It’s been a week since starting my “42 Days to Fit” challenge and since a bunch of you said you were going to do it with me, I thought we should check in.

So far I have lost a whopping ONE POUND.  I know it’s not much, but I’m not too disappointed.  In the past I will do these crazy diets and lose a bunch of weight, but then I am anxious to get back to normal and I gain the weight back once I have met my goal.  So I have a new plan.  Here it is: Don’t do that!

Instead, I am using the 42 Days ebook as a guide to change my lifestyle.  This past week it’s been about going off of sugar, drinking more water (which I need to do more) and exercising.  I think that’s enough change for one week, don’t you?  I have never really exercised with regularity, so it’s been a big difference in my life.

Every morning I try to convince myself to stay in bed.  “Just this one day,” I tell myself, “won’t hurt anything.”

But then I think about my kids and how they have started getting up early too.  Noah is walking with me on the days I walk and that has been so nice!  He talks to me about his life and at 14, I don’t get to talk with him much so I am treasuring that.  Our road is a sweet, simple place to walk.  We love to look at the little houses along the way.

On the alternate days when I’m just exercising in my room by myself I am more tempted to skip it.  But so far I have made myself get up and do it.  It’s a whole new Lisa!

Another thing I am doing is T-Tapp Basic Workout Plus.  Have you heard of it?  It’s a 15 minute workout that I had great success with a few years ago.  It’s not too terribly hard and I really feel better after I do it (which is unusual since I mostly feel worse after exercising). I am doing that 3x a week (the same day I am doing some, not all, of the core workout, which is making me so sore!)

I can’t say my meals have been super great.  I’m not pigging out, but I know they could be lower in calories.  But for me, the sad truth is, if I jump into something drastic I will be miserable and not stick to it.  I know myself.  I’m weak.  Not eating sugar has been such a big change that I will have to work slowly into watching calories too.

I have a long way to go y’all!

I’m not going to rush it.

So how about you?  Are you making an effort to get fit?

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So much for easy, peaceful weekends.  Ever since starting my fitness challenge, I am up and at ‘em every morning.  It has changed my activity level drastically.  I am not sure how I feel about that yet.  In theory I should be glad that I am actually using my body for more than a recliner decoration, but my legs are crying out in opposition.

On Saturday morning I decided to do a job I had been putting off for too long.  My bedroom had become a waste dump for everything that didn’t have a place in the house.  Books, picture frames, kids’ drawings, blankets, pillows…..anything we didn’t know where to put but wanted to keep.  It was beginning to resemble an episode of Hoarders.

In addition, I had never finished cleaning up the nursery since moving Levi out about 3 months ago and I was starting to feel ashamed of myself for my laziness.  Since James was out of town this weekend, I thought it would be a good time to clean out the two rooms, get rid of the junk and get ‘er done.

As usual, my ideas are too big for my energy level.  The older kids all had things they needed to do (rude) and so I just had the younger boys to help me.  A willing heart is nice, but it’s also nice if the person helping you isn’t more interested in his jacket zipper than he is vacuuming under the chair you are holding up.  Let’s just say, it was a long morning.

After lunch I asked my older 3 girls if they could just help me for a couple of hours so we could get this job finished.  I promise you I wasn’t intentionally being deceitful, which they may have wondered at 8:00 PM when we were still working.

We had to clean everything as we moved it.  The amount of dust in my bedroom would have filled a king sized pillow.  And I didn’t even deal with whatever is under my bed.  I don’t look under there.  It scares me a little.

By late Saturday night we were all completely spent with barely enough strength left to shower and get ourselves to bed.  Even my high energy girls were strewn across my bedroom sofa like boneless chickens (Did you ever see that picture?…so funny!)

Yep, that’s what we looked like.

I didn’t take before pictures, but you’ve seen messy rooms, right?  Here’s what my bedroom looks like this morning.  CLEAN! I want to paint the faux oak cabinet in the corner.  I’m thinking of painting it a gray green.  What do you think?

I’m loving the panorama option on my iphone.  You can see almost the whole room!  The door on the right goes to a long, narrow room that used to be the nursery.  I don’t know what to call it now, so we’re just calling it “the old nursery.”  It is a spare room I can use however I want.  Right now it’s just a quiet place for anyone to go read, get away, be alone.  But I have a few ideas for this room.

On Sunday we were still tired from the day before so I just filled my shop orders and we rested.  Kids played outside, girls read, we ate leftovers….nothing too strenuous.

There’s something about having a big job done that gives you permission to do nothing for about a week.

Summing up….these are the questions I have for you.  1. What would you do with an empty, long, narrow room?  2. What color should I paint the cabinet in the corner of my bedroom?

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Well my friends.  It has begun.

I ate my last dessert, slept late for the last time.

The next 42 days will be filled with things that will take me out of my comfort zone. (Read HERE if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

I got up this morning and exercised and wondered, “Who is this stranger wearing these horrid shoes and doing lunges?  She is unfamiliar to me.”

And man, oh man, I am sore already.  I can’t for the life of me figure out why people do this to for fun.  Like those people who actually exercise when they are on vacation….crazy town!

The good news is that “42 Days to Fit” seems like it’s a gradual increase into fitness, which is what I need.  Those people that go on The Biggest Loser and start training like Olympic athletes the very first day must go into some kind of exercise shock.  It’s not pretty, and I like to be pretty.

In fact, sweating in general is not my cup of tea.  Just one more reason, folks, that I might have a problem.

If you left a comment on the original post letting me know you will be joining me on this harrowing 42 day adventure, then I hope you’ll consider joining the Facebook group I set up.  It will be a place to encourage one another and share in the journey.  It is a private group, so we’ll have to become Facebook friends for me to add you.  Oh, and you don’t have to be doing the 42 day challenge to join us!

Today I’m drinking only water and eating more purposefully.  I did my core exercises and tomorrow I will start walking.

As an added bonus, I am planning to invite one of the kids to walk with me each time.  That will give us a chance to spend some one-on-one time together.

So, how are you doing?  Have you already started?

Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Instagram!

The post Getting Fit Together! appeared first on The Pennington Point.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how much I need to get into better shape. I think about it a lot actually.  Don’t do much about it, but that’s going to change.

My friend Brandy wrote an ebook, “42 Days to Fit“, and I knew it was a sign that the time had come.  OK, it probably came a few years ago, but I prefer to stay in denial as long as possible.  I got the book and have been reading through it, preparing myself to get off my behind and make some real, not faddish, but honest to goodness changes.  The book makes me feel like I can do this.

When I saw that “42 Days to Fit” is on sale for 99¢ today only I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to tell you about it.

I’m going to start the challenge this Thursday, May 2.  I need to go through the book a little more and pick up some food at the store and then I will be ready.  I think.  If not, I’m jumping in anyway.  And I will be keeping myself accountable through updates on Facebook and Instagram.

What do you think?  Want to do the challenge with me?  It’s only 6 weeks, which takes us into the beginning of June.  It’s a great time to start!

Get the book for 99¢ and join me for 6 weeks of changing our habits and improving our lives.

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The post Will You Take the Challenge With Me? appeared first on The Pennington Point.

It was a peaceful weekend, quiet and low key.  We milled about doing this and that.  No trips, no rushing around.  Delightful!

On Saturday I gave a couple of haircuts on the front porch.  For some reason, even though I cut the boys’ hair myself and own all of the cutting tools, I wait until they look like orphans in a third world country before I actually cut their hair.  I will go weeks saying, “Boy, you need a HAIRCUT!” knowing that all I have to do is pull out the clippers and have it done in about 10 minutes.  Pitiful.

After the haircuts were done Patience and I decided to use the nice light on the porch to take some new photos for our shop.  My Mason Jar Straw Lids are our hottest seller these days, so we wanted to spice up their pictures.  We set one of our tables on the porch with our pretty summer dishes and took about 7000 shots.  This is Patience’s influence.  I am a just-take-a-couple-of-pictures-and-be-done kind of girl, but she likes to keep going with gusto.  My problem with taking so many is that I have to reject a bunch of good ones.

Just to show you, here’s one of the rejects….but I love it!

And the good ones…they are super yummy!  I love this one with our new stainless steel straws.

Seriously, I could show you 6998 more!  And we have several new listings in the shop and more to come.  EEK!

Since the table was all set anyway, the 4 girls decided to eat dinner out there and had a lovely time.  Although I couldn’t tell you why they aren’t actually drinking from the mason jars with lids.  I wonder if they know they are allowed to actually USE them.

Yesterday was James’ birthday.  The kids and I pampered him as much as we could.  We did whatever he wanted, which meant spending the afternoon playing Wii Family Feud.  It was girls against boys.  The girls won.  I’m just sayin’.  Birthday or no birthday….no one lets anyone else win around here.

I had to look through my Instagram feed to remind myself of what happened over the weekend.  It’s sad when I can’t remember what I did yesterday.  Especially when I saw this picture from church of 2 of my kids singing for the Lord.  Really Mom, this is something you should remember.

Sorry for the grainy picture.  I was using my iphone and I was way in the back.  Note to self: sit in the front the next time my kids sing.

I guess that’s not a completely uneventful weekend.  A few interesting things happened.

How about you?  Did you relax?  Or go gusto?

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I am so, so, so, SO glad to be home at last!  If you don’t hear from me for a week or so it’s all because I’m busy hugging my kids.  I’ll try not to bruise anyone but I may not be able to help it.

I spent last weekend in Salt Lake City at the SNAP! Conference.  It was a gathering of creative bloggers.  You wouldn’t have believed all of the cuteness in these women.  It was just one adorable moment after another and I am exhausted. I did so much Instagramming that my arms ache from holding my phone out to take pictures of myself.

This is me in my gorgeous Soft Surroundings gown and robe heading out to the pajama party.  You know me, I overdress for everything.

Here’s the pajama party.  This room is where we ate, had a market and did the Lowe’s challenge….it’s so cute how they decorated it!

Once I got home I slept, then slept some more.  I am now enjoying the easy days of not having something big looming on the horizon.  Although I do feel a pressure to improve my sidebar and try to make Google love me.  All of the things I learned at the conferences are stuck in my head until I get them out and put into action.

My friend Becky and I did a session at SNAP! about time management that went really well.  At least we thought it did.  We got so much great feedback that we’re going to do some online hangouts and share some of the session plus some new ideas and answer questions.  Y’all are welcome to join us.  I will let you know when that will be.

After I rest for a few more days I am planning to get back to finishing up my painting of the kitchen.  I did the living room and dining room and then just stopped dead in my tracks.  I am still trying to decide about the color for the kitchen cabinets.  I’m usually pretty decisive about color choices, but this time I’m having a hard time.  Do I keep the same colors?  Or do I want a fresh look?  I’m even thinking about replacing the cheapo countertops, but don’t tell James.  He freaks out when I start talking about changing things.

You’d think I was making an important decision the way I’m mulling it over so much.  And let’s not even talk about how hard it is for me to decide what to put on the window in there.  I do know for sure that I am over the balloon curtains I have now.  Circa 1995.

Clearly I have some hard thinking to do.  I may need a nap to help me decide.

I hope you all are doing well.  What’s going on in your world?

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