Learning Joy

Sweet sleeping baby 

Baby DuCom has arrived!!!! 

Jonathan in repose. 

:o)
Ok, so Tina & I are doing this thing where we are counting our calories and trying to exercise at least four times a week. Now, I haven’t done so well on the exercising yet, but I have been faithful to keep track of my calories every day. Somehow I have managed to stay under my 1800 limit each day. 🙂
Now we are at this weekend. Jef had promised to make me a cheesecake for Mother’s Day. However, our hand mixer did not arrive on time. 🙁 So last night, Jef started making his wonderful, to-die-for, chocolate (of course) cheesecake. Sweetheart that he is, he carefully measured everything, and calculated the calories. The cheesecake came up to 8000 calories. Wow! Tina & I figured that a piece (if he cut it into 12 slices) would cost 665 calories. That is as much as a decent dinner costs. 🙂
Today I was going to just say “forget it” and just have a piece of cheesecake, no matter how many calories it put me over. Jef made us a wonderful dinner of rice, stir-fry veggies & chicken. (he is just the cooking machine) The dinner cost me 547 calories. That left me with 552 calories left over. I figured the cheesecake would put me about 120 calories over. Since I’ve been doing pretty well this week, always under my count (Tuesday is a little iffy, but I am sure about the other days), I figured I could go for the cheesecake. 🙂 I was telling Jef the cheesecake would put me over 120 calories. He said, “How many calories did you & Tina figure the cheesecake would be?”
“675,” I said.
“500,” he said.
“What? How did you get that?”
“I cut the cheesecake into 16ths. Who cuts a cake into twelfths?” 🙂
So I was able to have a whole, VERY yummy piece of cheesecake tonight. The best part is I have 52 calories left over!!!!!
Why? Because Jef is the coolest husband ever!!!! 😀

Have you ever looked back on your walk as a Christian and observed places where you had part of things “right” but other parts so wrong? I remember a time when I was full of faith, and knew I was hearing God, but at the same time I was very proud, selfish, self-absorbed, critical, self-righteous, and pious. Yes, I heard God speak to me about where to go to college and stuff like that, but man, was I off on the whole personal aspect of life!! Have you ever seen this in your life?
How do you tackle the day-to-day Christian living? Is it a struggle to remember to be kind, or does it come naturally? Are you as courteous to your family as you are to strangers you meet? I have trouble with that. I am always so cheerful & courteous to people at the grocery store, bank, etc., but my family often sees the worst of me.

The weekend was very restful. Kamali & Tina took the boys Friday evening. The house was so quiet after they left. It was nice to just be by myself, not to have anyone to look after. Saturday was restful too. Jef & I spent the morning together, then I was able to get some cleaning & a little organizing done in the afternoon.
Sunday we were going to go to Anthony’s for brunch, but we decided against it. With Jef’s job up in the air, we aren’t sure how much money we will have in a while, so we decided not to go to brunch. 🙂 We just had a quiet morning, and afternoon. The boys came home around 6. The house had been so quiet! It got noisy very quickly!!
Kamali & Tina visited for a bit, then they went home. After they left, we watched the second Star Wars movie, “Attack of the Clones”. We’d begun it on Friday morning. We’ve decided we like it ok, except the parts with Anakin. 🙂 It seems the writers got lazy. Instead of transforming Anakin in this movie, they begin with him being a cocky, know-it-all, angry young man. There were different parts where we thought they could have used the situation to show how Anakin turned toward the dark side.
And what’s with the whole force thing anyway?? Yoda says that Anakin will bring balance to the Force. Well, the Jedis were busy doing good for years and years. We know the Force is a dualistic theology. Dualistic theologies require balance. For each good thing that happens, something bad must happen. So the thought follows, if the Jedis had been keeping the peace & keeping good on top, then there would have to come a time when a significant amount of evil would have to occur. If Anakin Skywalker was the chosen one, the one to bring balance to the force, then why couldn’t Yoda and the rest of them figure out that he would be evil. I mean, you’d figure.
Anyways, the movie was fun anyhow. The fight at the end with Yoda and Dooka (?) was great!
And that was our weekend. The kids went to bed after the movie. I made tuna (170 calories/serving) and Jef started making cheesecake. Sweetheart that he is, he calculated the calories in the cheesecake. (the whole cheesecake costs 8008 calories, in case you wanted to know) I went to put the tuna on our salad, but discovered the lettuce was all wilty. It is hard for me to use the big bag quickly enough. So I decided to run to Safeway and take advantage of their 10 bags (small) of salad for $10. In other words, a buck a bag. Thankfully I was able to spend only $14. I bought six bags of salad, two packages of hot dogs, two bunches of bananas, mushrooms, cucumber, and bread. 🙂 God is good.
After I came home, I discovered Daniel was awake. He’d been coughing, so Jef let him get up. We ate our salads, which were really good!! They were only 230 calories each, with tuna, dressing & some Parmesan cheese. We watched “Magnum, P.I.” while we ate. 🙂 I love this show!!! I want to move to Hawaii!!!! 🙂
Now I am blogging. 🙂 Thanks for reading!! Oh, and if you see a picture of the kids that you like, you can comment on it. They can read the comments. 🙂

Daniel running. The yard is covered in silly string from Spiderman webblasters. 🙂 

skating! Daniel, Jonathan & Aaron. 

toothless & fancy-free 

Daniel, their friend Aaron & Jonathan skating.