Goosegirl sews: Aprons for Christmas -A Giveaway!

Goosegirl sews: Aprons for Christmas -A Giveaway!

woo-hoo would love to have the fun aprons, aren't they cool?!?!

Women's Wellness Workshop

FREE! Two options this Saturday, spread the word!

Women’s Wellness Workshop

Are you experiencing hot flashes, trouble sleeping, irritable moods, anxiety, PMS, irregular or difficult periods, foggy thinking, baby blues or postpartum depression, decreased libido, declining vitality, and energy?

Do you want to learn how to prevent: osteoporosis, dementia, breast cancer and instead be able to age with strength and vitality?

OR do you feel great and want to understand your body?

Then come to the free "Women’s Wellness Workshop," topics: Hormone Health at All Ages, Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement

Presented by: Melinda Hughes PA-C

TWO workshops on Saturday November 13^th

9-11 am at Integrated Medical Arts Center, 824 17^th Ave S, Nampa 83651, Phone 466-3517

1-3 pm at 3592 Arcaro Avenue, Meridian, 83646, Phone 887-9200, RSVP

Check out www.newliving.weebly.com for more upcoming events and info.

Melinda is my sister and my provider, I think that you will benefit so much by attending her workshop. It is fascinating to learn and be empowered for health!!!

Sun

Do you see it?

The Sun is piercing over the horizon.

The trees are flooding with light:

small leaves are glowing as light makes them nearly transparent;

larger, thick leaves are dappled with sunbeams pooling between their curved edges.

I feel the sun as it warms me and beckones me into brightness.

It pierces my eyes and heart with awareness of the Son rising in my life.

Everyday the Light flows around me, wanting to fill me.

And I exult in His presence, joy comes in the morning....

His Light is my joy,

His Son is my strength.

It is my honor to carry His Light in my life,

I am valued and rich with the blessings,

He tenderly shows me each moment of the day.

Sweet Smile Creations: {Backer Family}

Sweet Smile Creations: {Backer Family}: "This family was such as sweet family...and were 100 times sweeter when I saw them wearing all white(eeekkk...I LOVE IT) ! You guys created s..."

Tie Dye

This week we hosted a tie dye party. I just provided the location for the messy work and for kids to play. We are a good local for both of those things. The kids had asked about if we "ever could" tie dye and since my friends had been discussing it on-line I decided to see about making it happen. I have only tie-dyed once and that was in college, way too many years ago. I am so grateful for friends that share, teach and coach others in new arts!

Here is the whole new family wardrobe.

This is Joshua's creation

This is my shirt and a scarf - got it as a freebie with the order so I dyed it too! And it turned out so gorgeous, the swirls look like flowers.

These are Maggies a peasant shirt and pajamas. Yes, I made hers for her!

This is Caleb's creation:

I made this for Aaron:

And here is Gretchen's creation:

We really had fun (even though I worked tediously to do all of the tying).

Raising Generations

I am loving this blog about Raising Homemakers, one of my heart's desires for my girls is to be Godly homemakers that love their families, homes and serve the Lord through serving others. Now, a home and a house are very different and the home is the heartbeat of the family; the house is just the structure that we dwell in as a family.

They are doing a giveaway today so go check it out!

Raising Generations Necklace

New Starts and Enduring Days

Today I marked a milestone in Maggie's life. I dedicated her at church this morning publicly committing myself to raise her to love the Lord with all her heart, soul, mind and strength. She will have pictures of the occasion and her siblings will likely remember it most of their lives. She is blessed by a legacy of generations that love the Lord and walk with him in their daily lives. And she is blessed that those elders are covering her in prayer and will someday exhort and encourage her as she matures in her faith. What a rich heritage!

We also attended our Financial Peace University class, almost done! As we all checked in half of us 4 couples were back to step one of creating our baby emergency fund. Our teacher was discouraged by the significant drop-out rate due to summer travels, etc. But the good news was that we had a fund for our emergencies and were not whipping out credit cards to solve the crisis. This I assured our teaches was progress. If we had not had the class we would have been still cycling down the spiral of debt and justification rather than preparing and purposed planning. So we are enduring through life's normal ebb and flow. Emergencies do happen and we are wiser to stay prepared for them.

Endurance is also present as we struggle to reconcile challenging parenting days. There is so much to learn and understand and we are weary. It is difficult to know if expectations are too high, too low, too fast or slow. It hurts to see a child struggle and make repeated choices to struggle more. Does the child see they are making it harder on themselves and why don't they do differently? Some answer that it is effort to defeat rejection from others by being defiant and asserting rejection first. Sabotaging so that risk and vulnerability are extinguished.

As we talked today Aaron asked again: how am I suppose to do everything well when it requires that failure in some areas will occur? There are too many roles in life to even have success at the bare minimum of those roles. It does look futile for accomplishing anything successfully. But I recently did have a successful day, I made a list of the priorities and started at the top. I didn't make it to the end. But it turned out that those last two could wait or be dismissed. It was a successful day and all I did was what I could and I felt so accomplished! I didn't do everything that COULD be important I just did what I felt the Lord told me would be pleasing and would bring the most harvest for that day. Anyway, I am going to try to do this more regularly and see how this bring better focus and success to my days as I endure at home.

hum-drum summer

Well, we are really pitiful at posting to our blog. I imagine that people have even quit looking at it because it is just so boring to never have anything new!

Not that I am here to tell you that it will be any different. I am just here to say "Hi" for the evening. Umm, I am avoiding dishes and the kitchen so this is a totally more fun diversion!

It is HOT in Idaho, we are hovering near 100 and it is toasty! Makes me into a house hermit, love me some AC!

So I am in spring cleaning/topsy-turvey the house to declutter and re-organize. Want to define how each space is used and ONLY keep items in that space that are utilized. I have so many things stashed here and there because I am not sure where to "home" it at. I would truly love to have an outsider "professional organizer" type come in and help my mind jump start the mental processing. But that is only happening in TV-land - so I hear, and I don't even watch TV so I am left to my own devices and utilizing my family's assistance.

I have been mortified to find my mind not up to par this week. I am not remembering things so well and that bugs me. I think that I am getting more sleep and would thin that would help. However with more sleep I am feeling MORE tired, like my body is confessing just how bad it really is in my "burn the candle at both ends" mode of life. YES, I know that this is BAD, hubby reminds me that I lack in the sleepy-land and need to be better at self-care. Self-care has tumbled into non-existence since the end of May. I don't sleep well, eat kinda-well, stopped exercising, don't journal, haven't had a babysitter for any time alone. So it has been a down-ward spiral of self-care.

So my first step is to address the house, it is the "mental realm" that I manage: bills, paper-flow, organized cabinets, closets, etc. When it is up to snuff then I can move on to the next level of management. Aaron has stepped in the past 2 weekends tackled some of these tasks to help - drowning people need assistance - and boy was I drowning! Okay signing off to face the kitchen!

Shifting gears...book review?!!

I wrote this for work, but given that great management skills are also applicable to raising kids, I thought I'd share.

Ok, ok...really I just want glory and fame.

At some point I'll realize book reviews on family blogs probably aren't the way to go. Until then, enjoy.

*************

First Break all the Rules – What the world’s greatest managers do differently

How do you tell someone, politely, that they absolutely positively must read a given book? It's tough. People are dense, sometimes. They're thickheaded and miss the subtle signs you leave. Like when you say "you absolutely MUST READ THIS BOOK! It's AWESOME. It will CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!" People are so clueless.

I have intimate familiarity with the person described above. Because it's me. The person on the receiving end of the recommendation. 4 years later, I can now say I've read the book. And somehow wish the recommendation before had been delivered with a 2x4. It would have been worth it. And on balance perhaps even spared me some pain. Anyway.

"First Break all the Rules" (hereafter FBATR) is now firmly established in my pantheon of favorite books. Right up there with Peopleware, It's Your Ship, Getting Things Done, and Good To Great/Built to Last. It's a certifiable noggin-tweaker.

Here's the thing. You interview tens of thousands of companies across hundreds of industries. Hundreds of thousands of people. (Gallup really did this.) You figure out empirically who the absolute top performing managers are. (using solid business measures - store performance, warehouse volume, number of sales, what have you) You talk to both the absolute best of the best managers. Then you talk to the average managers. Sift through the responses to find what is significantly different between the two. And you take about 25 or so years to do this. But in the end you have data - hard data. This book is about that data.

But hold on - first off, does any of this matter? Ok, these are rockstar-awesome managers that their people would take a bullet for. So what? Loyalty is nice. Employee retention is a warm fuzzy. But what would make a shareholder, or a customer, give a rip? It's all well and good to say "happy employees make happy customers which make happy shareholders." but up until this point evidence was purely anecdotal.

To solve the problem Gallup refined a series of 12 questions that ran the gamut from "do I know what's expected of me at work" and "do I have the right tools to do my work right", to "does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person". They measured business unit performance against four key areas that related to business success : productivity, profitability, retention, and customer satisfaction. 105,000 people across 24 companies in 12 different industries took part. When the dust settled and the numbers were crunched, (I'll spare you the suspense) while the impact varied, there were significant, measurable differences. People who answered the questions better (by extension, were managed better) worked in business units that performed better.

So we've established that there is a very real, bottom line impact to business units run by the best managers. (well, we haven't - but the book does. Trust me. Read it.). So what is it these people, these “best managers” *do* that’s so special?

FBATR reflects that the world's best managers pretty much ignore much of the conventional wisdom and - while the specifics vary wildly - do have some key attitudes and behaviors in common. The book boils it down to: hire for talent, find the right outcomes, focus on strengths, and find the right fit.

I found the very first key - hire for talent - the most profound. The other keys were very, very good, but this one in particular did the most serious shifting in my mental model. That popping sound? Sorry, my paradigm just shifted without a clutch.

The authors define "talent" very precisely. By their definition it is "a pattern of recurring behavior." That is to say the kind of things you (and I) do over and over again. While that could be applied to neurosis, in this particular case we're talking about those things that you find yourself doing and returning to because..well, you just seem wired that way. They contend (and modern science supports) that the vast majority of your neural connectivity pathways are well established by age 3. Whether nature or nurture, the fact is that a great deal of "what you like to do" (mmm, build things!) and that which you will never excel at (Selling? Eww!) is pretty much set by age 3.

"What?!" I hear the protest, "Herasy! Anyone learn to be anything if they just want it enough!!" Not so, say the authors. At least, they won't be excellent. World class. Here's the thing - by age 3 you have some neural pathways that are veritable superhighways. Others are residential streets. Probably most are dirt tracks or barren wasteland. It takes a lot - a LOT - of effort to turn a stretch of barren waste into even a dirt track. Hence the difficulty in teaching someone who hates confrontation to excel as a cop. Similarly, one who may love verbal sparring may have little to no empathy for others and - while they can (and should) acquire a minimum proficiency, they will never be world class nurse.

To brutally simplify the advice: first figure out what kind of talents - that is, patterns of repeating behavior, are possessed by those who are the best - the top performers, for a given job. Then find people who exhibit that behavior and hire them. These are the folks who will have the highest likelyhood of excellence in that context. It's important to note that FBATR calls out a difference between skills and talent - skills can be taught. Talent cannot. Well, not yet. Unless the CIA really does have neural rewiring stations. But I digress. (it's a talent)

Blitzing through the other three keys. Number two: establish the right outcomes. This comes of knowing the business, and figuring out what kind of outcomes are the optimal fit for the company and the individual. (side note: excellent managers know that people are individuals and need to be motivated/directed/given objectives as individuals. Some like bronze recognition plaques in front of roaring crowds. Others prefer quieter kudos.)

Number three: focus on strengths. This jibberish about "being a well rounded individual for optimal employment" is just plain bull. It's the easy answer. As I thought about it, I realized it stands to reason.

Great managers realize that we only have 24 hours in a day. They realize that we really can't change people. So you can spend that time teasing out connections in the ill-connected deserts of your brain. Or they can put folks in a positions that let them roar down their mental autobahns at 180mph. Which of those two do *you* think results in higher performance and more rubber-meets-the-road business success?

What about those "areas for improvement"? Excellent managers manage around weaknesses (excellent examples in the book), put people in symbiotic relationships (where one's weakness is another's strength), set the users up a support system, or recast (find the person another - better - roll). They don't waste time trying to fix something that probably isn't fixable in the first place.

In the words of the immortal Robert Heinlein, "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig".

The fourth key - find the right fit - is about keeping people where they want to be, where they're most effective, and avoiding the dreaded Peter Principle. (people are promoted to the level of their incompetence) Wide salary bands, making heros at all levels - lots of good info here about allowing people to be more of who they are (instead of forcing them up a career ladder in order to advance) and having the company benefit.

The final chapters deal with how to hire for talent. How to determine when someone isn't right for the role. (ie: how to fire someone without destroying the relationship - and how it can be the best thing for the person. Even though it still generally sucks rocks all around. ) Also covered is how to work within the system you're given as both a manager and as an individual contributor.

Overall, good stuff. EXCELLENT stuff. I have read a few management books in the last 5 years. One of the talents I lack is leadership. Unfortunately, as a dad, that doesn't fly. (no recasting, sorry!) In trying to build at least a few dirt roads, I've run across a lot of stuff. Some fluff. Some clueless. Some gems. This is one.

No magic bullets. No fairy dust. No step-by-step surefire-success formulas. Just deep wisdom backed up by hard data.

Three thumbs up.

The Magster and the kitchen drawer

We finally cleaned out a drawer "for the magster only" Her she is enjoying "her" kitchen drawer.

Calling all Music Fans

I am trying to build a playlist for exercising and it is taking me too long to figure out some good picks. So please make some suggestions of upbeat, positive and energetic music!?!? I definitely prefer the Christian music variety been looking at Third Day, Mercy Me, David Crowder Band, Skillet but I don't know song names and am done sitting here sampling one song after another.

Please help!!!!

thanks ;+)

Backer nest cam

There's this silly bird that built a nest right on top of our big round thermometer. Well, kind of behind it. Anyway. She built a nest and I had the bright idea to stick a camera up there so we could see when the eggs hatch.

So the birds hatched today. Or last night. Or something. We saw wiggly things that weren't the momma bird in the nest today. Which inspired me to finally figure out how to get the wireless video feed online.

Note...right now (12:15am on Sunday - mother's day - Happy mother's day deck-bird!) it's dark. As in, no light. Sorry. Will put a light on it tomorrow. You can watch the black and bits of video noise and pretend you see the mother peacefully snoozing.

So here it is. Assuming it doesn't crash or something between now and tomorrow morning, you should see the mama sitting on the nest (and not to coincidentally, her children) and/or a seemingly empty nest, and/or small red and brown sploches with orange beaks.



Video streaming by Ustream


And the regular type url: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/backernestcam

How to plant a rosebush

Yard:1, Aaron:0

(1)find a spot along the fence where there's sure to be a buried sprinkler line
(2)cut line with shovel
(3)spend 30 minutes trying to figure out/remember how to turn the sprinklers back on after being off for the winter.
(4)fill hole with water making sure it's a sprinkler line and not some random buried hose
(5)run to the store, buy stuff to fix
(6)fix line, cursing $!@ cheap harbor freight hose clamps that I "had on hand"
(7)turn on sprinklers to verify fix...and notice that the hole is 6" in front of a previously forgotten sprinkler head. (which would have destroyed the rose)
(8)fill in hole. walk quietly away meditating on the character building qualities of the previous 2.5 hours.

Goals and Such the Slow and Steady Way

March was my second month of regular exercise. I made some goals that I thought were reasonable, though I didn't actually meet them. But here is my outcome:

400 actual /600 desired minutes of exercise

59.32 actual /90 desired miles of walking or biking

I am not discouraged, this is more than I did in February so I have progressed forward. I started out with my stationary recumbent bike and would be thrilled to burst up to 18mph. Now I can reach 26mph during a burst - my kids think I am pretty amazing! I certainly can't maintain it but I can get up there. At the beginning I thought a heart rate of 130-135 was work, now I easily maintain around 145bpm. I love to see that my heart is stronger and improving!!!

Just the fact that I have kept this up for 2 months is better than the past. So I will start April with the same goals and intend to get even closer and hopefully meet them this time. I know that I will be further along than I was last month and will be strong than I am today. What about you, how will your health be different in one month?

By Popular Request

(or: per Leia Davis' suggestion...)

Garden Time

Cute as a bug, we just got this cute hand-me-down but she could only wear it a few times, too tight!

Here is an adorable spring dress and hat for a friend's wedding this weekend.

Okay here we are out at the garden for the first time this year! What can a momma do with a baby in tow? It was an experiment! At first she was totally transfixed and just soaking it in. Watch the eyebrows - they reflect her thought process.

On dried up, nasty leaf from the pole beans, it was light and crispy to play with. But she looks very concerned about what to do. See the eyebrows?

She was really absorbed by it all and very carefully looking and thinking.

Then she got busy, raking through the lovely soil. She is in the "take it out" stage and got to work emptying the soil from the raised bed into her lap.

We mixed this soil ourselves last spring: vermiculite, compost and peat moss. It is so light and fluffy!

She Loved the Soil!

What do you mean I am getting dirty????

A dried up bean pod was fun.

Decorating the slats of the squares?

Am I doing a good job Momma? I like being a gardener!

oh, this so interesting, but dirt doesn't taste like I had imagined!

I've got to stand up and get a better view of this here garden.

Dirt goes out, dirt goes out, WHY haven't you ever brought me here before? This has got to be baby heaven!

Health Care Stats

Ten Facts Every American Should Know About Democrats’ Final Government Takeover of Health Care Washington, Mar 18 - NUMBERS TO KNOW: • $569.2 billion in tax increases • $523.5 billion in Medicare cuts • $48 billion more for Medicaid 1. A Job-Killing Government Takeover of Health Care. No amount of changes or legislative tricks can hide the true destructive nature of this bill: $17 billion in new taxes on Americans who do not comply with the individual mandate, $52 billion in new taxes on employers that do not provide health coverage deemed “acceptable” or “affordable” by government bureaucrats, and new taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest that will further stifle economic growth and job creation. 2. New Tax on Capital Formation and Job Creation. The Medicare tax on capital gains, dividends, and other investment income gets bigger, magnifying the destructive power of this new tax. The bill increases the tax from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent, pushing the top capital gains rate to 23.8 percent and the top rate for dividends to 43.4 percent in conjunction with tax relief expiring at the end of this year. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized this week, this tax will “permanently skew the incentives to work, save and create jobs.” 3. Democrats Continue to Say ‘I Do’ To Marriage Penalty. The bill leaves in place a massive marriage penalty, which will mean higher premiums for those that tie the knot. As highlighted in January by The Wall Street Journal, “the disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance … are pegged to federal poverty guidelines.” The final bill leaves this unfair penalty on married couples in place. 4. Lower Wages and More Unemployment. The final bill imposes $52 billion in new taxes on employers, including small businesses, that cannot afford to provide health coverage or that don’t offer coverage. The effect of this type of tax, similar to a payroll tax increase, would ultimately fall squarely on workers in the form of lower wages or reduced employment. In fact, the Tax Policy Center concluded that “economists generally believe that the burden of payroll taxes is borne by workers in the form of lower wages, regardless of whether the tax is levied on the employer or the employee.” The tax proposed in this bill will likely have the same effect. 5. Employers Targeted By Even Higher Taxes to Enforce Employer Mandate. The final bill incorporated President Obama’s suggestion to rake in a little more cash to pay for a massive government-takeover of health care by nearly tripling the job-killing mandate tax on employers who do not offer health coverage to $2,000 per employee. Sure enough, the President’s suggestion raises an additional $25 billion on the backs of American employers, according to CBO. 6. Individual Mandate Tax Reduced? No, Not Really. Democrats are highlighting their generosity by lowering the amount of the tax for not complying with the mandate. But just how generous are they? Not very. Democrats propose to reduce the individual mandate tax flat payment amount by a scant 14¢ a day. And, while Democrats “reduce” the individual mandate tax flat payment amount, they actually raise $2 billion more by making other alterations to the individual mandate, according to CBO. 7. The Power to Tax Our Health Care. The Democrats’ final bill doesn’t just tax individuals and employers if they don’t comply with the complex mandates in the bill. The bill sends the IRS out to tax the very products Americans use to maintain and restore their own health. New taxes on medical devices, on prescription drugs, and on health insurance itself are all targets of the bill. And, with $10 billion in new enforcement resources, you can bet the IRS will be taking its full share out of the pockets of every American who uses any of these products or services. 8. Even More Subsidies, Even Greater Threat to the Economy. The bill increases the subsidies provided under the bill from those provided in the Senate bill by $65 billion, a significant and unsustainable increase. In fact, the Associated Press reported a warning from Massachusetts’ state treasurer, who stated that Congress will "threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years" if it adopts a health care overhaul modeled after the Bay State's. 9. Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Coverage. The final bill does not include the Stupak amendment language that would prohibit federal funds from being used to fund elective abortions. Instead, states are given the option to opt-out of providing insurance coverage of abortions. Still, taxpayers in a state that opts-out would still see their federal tax dollars fund elective abortions in other states. Additionally, each state through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) can provide access to two multi-state plans, and only one of them will exclude abortions. OPM’s current health care program – the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) – does not include any plans that cover elective abortion. For the first time, a federally funded and managed health care plan will cover elective abortions. 10. Medicaid Rolls And Waiting Lines to Swell Even More. CBO estimates that as a result of the Democrats’ bill, one million more Americans will get their coverage from Medcaid, which is plagued with financial woes and wreaks all kinds of budgetary havoc on cash-strapped states. The Democrats’ bill, as The New York Times highlighted, will push even more Americans into a program where they will have trouble finding doctors and have to wait for potentially months to receive care. That’s not meaningful reform by any measure. BONUS: Republicans have proposed a health care bill based on common-sense reforms that, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, would reduce premiums for families and small businesses by up to 10 percent. It is not too late to start over. taken from: http://gopleader.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=177137

Print version of this document

Hitting the Road

I have been watching Craigslist for months for a used single bike trailer/jogger. They are so hard to find, and it is amazing at how much these things can cost even for used! I thought last fall was good timing for people cleaning out their garages getting ready for winter parking. But here it is as spring just begins and I got my prayer answered.

I was just about to buy a friend's double trailer, but kept feeling odd. I really didn't need a double! So I looked again today and there it was, right price, a single and it can be a jogger or trailer. And she is located just a few miles from my outing for a hair cut. So I made an appointment to see it.

Along my drive I realize that my email directions from her have her business address, Ashki, and I realize I get to meet a friend of a friend. She is an amazing photographer - would love to use her services! And I was relieved that NO, I am not going to see a psycho-freak from CL!

Sadly it does not have the wheel to make it a jogger but my bike mechanic dude-hubby has it all figured out that I just need a quick release wheel and we will be ready to rock and roll!

I have been using my stationary recumbent bike and doing well with baby in her exersaucer. I think that baby is going to be thrilled to get to hit the road in her new chariot.

where is the mom of that B Family?

My oh my, time has flown by. The past six weeks have been packed and swept by so quickly!!!!

Here is my snippets of happenings:

We got ready for Christmas, stuck to our budget and have no NEW charges added to our debt.

Had the most simple and quiet Christmas ever.

Enjoyed a four day and then a three day weekend for the holidays - very nice family times.

Shocked and grieved to lose a dear baby friend on Christmas Eve, filled our hearts with much sadness and our minds with many prayers and thoughts for our beloved friends as we said good-bye.

Had a home tea party for sister's birthday - such a sweet fellowship with my best friends.

Putting house back to normal took some time. School routine started up again.

Still doing the cash thing, spending the paycheck in a spreadsheet before it actually goes anywhere works out very nicely!

Getting some stuff sold on-line.

Janey's wallet disappears, assume forgetfullness then learn it was stolen. God is good, the inconvenience was minor to the damage and cost that we could have endured.

Truth is confronted and progress is made.

Working hard to find answers for a sweet child - relieved to learn and apply helpful resources. Pursuing options. Grieved for what could/should have been noticed sooner and the struggles that have been shouldered. But rejoicing for new beginnings and hope!!!

Determine to change churches, a hard but needed decision. New fellowship seems to be fitting so far, very different and unfamiliar experience, but God is revealing as I follow.

Aaron solves so many home problems and keeps our home humming from freezers to pipes to electrical - he is such a BLESSING and a great fixer/maker/figure it out guy!

Time with friends on a late night for Janey - such a sweet reprise!

Back into swing with Prism: food is being measured, counted and tallied. Exercise is added and getting done! Amazed at the increased confidence that cardio brings to my attitude and posture.

God is good everyday and in every way. Prayers are answered and hope is fed, challenges abound and strength is supplied. Thanks for reading my thought bursts!