Finally!

Well, it seems as though we're FINALLY over the worst of things! YEAH! :) It has sure been a long week! But, Nate went back to school today -- still coughing, but fever-free and feeling great overall and back to his normal, smiley self! :) I 'drugged' him with some Delsym cough syrup and he was on his way! (LOL) I could tell that by yesterday he was doing better and anxious to get back to school with his friends -- he was more up and moving around, rather than just lying on the couch, so I knew he was feeling better. :) Steve's doing great and I'm feeling great, so....all is well at the Banderman home once again! :)

Actually, for me personally, this has been good for me physically! My appetite greatly decreased, but the one thing about me is that when I'm sick, I ONLY want healthy foods. Some people want sugar and stuff, but not me -- when I'm sick, I want NO junk food. So, it was a good 'stripping' for me to getting some yucky stuff out of my diet. All sugar - #1. Thus, I've gotten rid of drinking the sugary creamers. I do really love that stuff, but decided I just needed to make a break from it. So, now I do 1 Tbsp. of real cream and flavored Stevia, which is an all-natural, healthy sweetener. It's not quite the same, but I am getting used to it, and my body thanks me for it! :) One cup per day.

The other major nutrition change I've made is to get off the dark sodas. I like my diet pop, and jump back and forth between Diet Coke/ Diet Pepsi, etc. But, always dark -- like the caffeine. But, over the last several months, I've noticed that when I have those, I want CARBS and SUGAR. It's as if the cravings intensify. So, when I wasn't feeling good, I wanted Diet 7-up or Sprite Zero anyway and got off it for a couple days, and then just decided to stay off it. Now that's not to say I'll NEVER drink another dark soda, but I'm really going to just try to stick to the clear sodas. One can per day.

The crazy thing is -- those two changes alone have resulted in a small weight loss already! I'm so excited to get things moving again! I have been eating 'normally' overall, but made those two changes, and am not eating 'extra' and the weight is slowly coming off this week. I'm kind of amazed! :) But, I think, for whatever reason, my body didn't like those two things. :)

Oh, I started doing some workouts at home, too. I was finding that with Spring Break and then the flu hitting, it was sooooooooooooo hard to get to the gym. Plus, for a few days I didn't even feel like working out. So, I decided I needed to figure out something, but hate working out by myself at home. BORING! lol So, I went out and bought the two newest Biggest Loser DVDs. I love that show! It started right about the time I was first losing weight and has been such an inspiration/motivation for me. So, I bought their new cardio one and sculpting one. I just did the Sculpting for the first time yesterday. For me, the segments are two short, so I combined all three levels together and made it a longer workout. It was challenging -- and get this -- I was actually even sweating a bit! Wooohoooo! Today, I'm going to try the Cardio one, which should prove interesting seeing as how my cardio is bad! :) But, I'm excited to have some new DVDs. Almost all my excercise ones are from back when I did aerobics in high school! lol So, I think I need to invest in some new ones for the days I can't make it to the gym. There's a message board I'm on and a friend just recently linked to a great site with all sorts of different DVDs - even some that utilize the treadmill and some for the BOSU! :) I'm excited to add to my collection over time! :)

So, that's my rambling health stuff....... :)

Hmmmmmmm.........let's see, what else?

Well, we're on our LAST foster parenting class tonight! YEAH! This has been a LONG 10 weeks! I'm excited that it's over, actually! :) It's been good information, but a tedious process. Lots of wasted time, in my opinion. I totally think they could leave some unecessary stuff out and shorten the classes. It's interesting, because we started with about 14 people and now there are only 6 of us left! Tonight there's supposed to be a couple different families that have been foster parenting for awhile and will do sort of a 'question/answer' session with us. It'll be good to talk to people that have done it.

At this point, I think we're feeling comfortable doing respite and/or emergency care....and then seeing what God does from there. Respite care is where you give other foster parents a 'break'. So, we might have a child for a weekend or something like that. Or if they needed to go out of state and the child couldn't go with them, etc. And then the emergency care, means we could get called anytime day or night to take a child that has been brought into police/protective custody. They'd only be in our home a maximum of 72 hours before they'd have to be placed. Now, they COULD be placed in our home, if we agreed to that, but we don't have to either.

We both feel 'at peace' about starting things this way. They're more brief intervals, where we can get our 'feet wet' and figure out what we want as we're going. We're looking at being licensed for ages 0-5, but with our preference being 0-2. So, we'll see. We're just taking baby steps, as we feel the Lord leading us, and trusting Him to make it all clear as we go along. :)

Other than that, we're already making our summer plans -- with camp for the boys, travels to Iowa, etc. Kinda crazy summer coming up. :)

Well, that's probably enough rambling for now -- can you tell I haven't had much social interaction the last week? Been couped up in the house! :)