Triathlon training!

Yes! You read correctly, I am training for a triathlon. I am not quite sure I believe it myself. I have certainly NEVER considered myself a sporty person and I really don't like the pain brought on by over exertion. However I do value my appearance and my health! Apparently vanity can be quite the motivator! Ha! Seriously, I have been trying, as many mums will understand, to shift the kilos brought on by baby-bearing and over-indulgence. I have had my successes over the past few years through different stints of exercise and healthy eating.

I had hit a plateau a couple of months ago and haven't lost much since then, exercise had fallen to the wayside a bit and I was feeling frustrated. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find a way to shed the stubborn 8 or so kilos that seem to stand between me and the ideal weight. I was feeling like there was no hope left, when inspiration struck!

Two friends of mine decided to stage their own triathlon, and encourage other unfit mums to join in. Perfect! I dont' think I could bring myself to do one in the public eye, but one we are doing ourselves, thats doable. So I've been spreading the word to other mums around and quite a few are getting on board. I am not just talking the talk though, I am walking the walk! The past seven out of 8 days I have swum, run, biked (or a combination). I am feeling great and so pumped to have a goal to work towards with other ladies who also find it a similar challenge. The date of the Triathlon is september 5th and I plan to exercise just about everyday between now and then.

I am feeling so energised from the exercise; it has really helped my mental state as well. I usually go out between 4.30 and 5.00, after shane gets home from school. I am usually tired at this time but after I go out I feel great and have energy for the rest of the day. I have found swimming to be especially enjoyable and refreshing! I am hoping to continue the swimming regularly into my next pregnancy.

I hope that my efforts, coming from a very lazy, unfit person who generally dislikes exercise, will inspire you too! We all know it is good for us, but it is so hard to do. Another friends was asking if I had any tips. I am certainly no guru on fitness (yet!) but my biggest tip- prayer! I have prayed ALOT about finding the right strategies and motivation and just the desire to keep going long term. I am a bit up and down but when I am down I just pray again and ask God for strength and ideas and he gives it to me! This triathlon was an answer to prayer for me. I KNOW I don't have what it takes in me, but, as the psalm says , 'with my God I can scale a wall!' So if you need help finding a way that works for you, pray about it and talk with other mums too. Doing things together is so much more fun, we dont' have to battle alone!

ps. How good does that show 'dance your ass off look?' another great exercise idea...

Cooking rut

Yes Oprah, you are right. It is an amazing thing- getting dinner on the table every night. I listened to her speak- in amazement, about how incredible she thinks mums are; being able to whip up dinner every night, 'it's an incredible thing, its a miracle- something new every night! wow!' Yes it is incredible, I agree, but I wouldn't say 'it's something NEW every night'. I don't want to admit how many times I've cooked spaghetti bolognaise in the past fortnight...But the fact that I have now got two CANS of leggos spaghetti sauce (mince-meat included) in the cupboard is testament to the fact that I am in a serious cooking rut!

I do enjoy cooking and it is probably the household task that comes most naturally to me, but every now and then I need some major inspiration to keep me going. To keep the passion alive! It is hard work keeping passionate sometimes. I love how we can inspire each other though. I love how you can be feeling so flat and hopeless about something and then spend time with someone and suddenly have a whole new outlook on things. That is what happened tonight. I went and hung out at my friend Mia's place. We chatted and worked on our own little projects. Mine tonight was getting out of the cooking rut. I took a few cook books and began poring through them. I found lots of recipes I would love to eat, but not many I would love to make...You know, like lamb shanks and slow cooked legs of ham and fish laksas with a million ingredients. PLUS a lot of these gourmet looking recipes were probably not going to get my girls coming back for seconds. With a sigh, and wondering if I was ever going to get past spag bol I opened my recently purchased 'How to Eat' by Nigella Lawson. Yes, it's no secret that I love Nigella, but I had just put down another of her books that hadn't helped me much so I was a bit dubious. The book has ravingly good reviews about it being the cook-book of the decade and great reading as well as great cooking. I began to flip through.

I was finding myself a little turned off by the fact that there are no pictures of recipes, just annoying shots of partially unwrapped butter, solitary leeks, an unpeeled potatoe and perhaps my favourite; a half-opened (apparently empty) tin of sardines. Hello, I KNOW what a jar of uncooked rice looks like, It would be nice to see a picture of the risotto you are talking about here....Gah! Anyway, before I became overwhelmed by the frustration these photographs were stirring up in me, I stumbled upon the chapter 'feeding babies and small children'. And then I rediscovered why I love Nigella. Not only does she have great, no fuss recipes that are delicious, but the way she writes is so hilariously entertaining in its passion and uplifting in its honesty.

for example, here's a quote from page 457;

'You do need to be able to feed babies promptly. If you can prepare baby food in advance, freeze it and then microwave when needed, you reduce the time you are subjected to outraged, hunger-crazed screaming. But the practical advantage is the least of it. If you slave away cooking from scratch, trying to create some perfect morsel for you baby's edification, you will inevitably take it much harder when she spits it out in disgust or wipes it all over the walls. It isn't wise to put so much emotional pressure on either yourself or your children at mealtimes. If you slave and then freeze the product of your stove-bound slavery, the memory of the effort will inevitably recede and you won't take rejection so badly. This goes for feeding older children too.'

I was not only entertained as I read but I was also (as I had hoped) re-inspired to cook for my family. I found a number of recipes in this chapter that were perfect for the girls but would also be a welcome change for Shane and I as well. To name a few; Macaroni and cheese (from scratch), marinated drumsticks, fried rice with omelette, chicken patties, fruit crumble as well as some more good ideas for next week. Ok, so they aren't exotic but a change is a good as a holiday (even if the holiday is going camping in the backyard). More importantly I feel my creative juices flowing again and as I shopped, (I stopped at the supermarket on the way home) before I came up with some more ideas of my own that I want to try out this week. Yay!

So if you are like me this week- a house wife in a cooking rut. Or even if you aren't a housewife, Iwon't be prejudice, I would be happy to share my recipes with you and would also LOVE to hear your favourite thing to cook. What might be a cooking rut to you may be an exotic new venture for me, so do share!

Delayed Gratification

Well, I am writing to you now from the spacious desk in our new house. It has been a very long time since I last posted, this is largely due to my stubborn determination not to write again until we HAD actually moved. It was a very drawn out process with quite a few ups and downs and a few hard lessons along the way, but I will skip all that and just say - Yes! We have a new home! It is quite luxurious to have a spare bedroom, and suddenly more cupboard space than I am quite sure what to do with.

God has truly blessed us, not only with a home that more than provides for all our current needs - but also we are now very much in walking distance to Shane's school. It is literally 100m away and I can see the school parking lot from our balcony. For a one car family this is one awesome perk.

I think waiting for something, and working your way towards it creates an appreciation that you could never have otherwise. We lived in a very small home for 5 years, it certainly met all our needs but we were limited in what we could do and who we could host at our house. We waited. We waited til the timing was right and we felt led (or pushed!) to make a change, and even then there was a lot of waiting. Looking and wondering and asking and waiting. It is a very uncomfortable time for the soul. How we struggle with the unknowns in our life. How we can begin to doubt in God's provision. How marvellous to see him pull through and reveal his character and his goodness once again as we deep down knew he would. I am grateful for the difficulty, the pain of the unknown and all that it shows me in myself. Nothing like uncomfortable circumstances to show us what we are really made of.

In the scheme of things this was a very mild level of discomfort, it would probably be insulting to call it 'pain', but it was certainly a trial of sorts. Especially for me. I think the upheaval of house and home is far more unsettling to the wife than the husband. Especially when there are children involved. Talking to my mum about it, whilst in the midst of the process she had the image of a cat who has its kittens moved and how fretful the cat gets and how it will start picking up its kittens and carting them around trying to find a peaceful new home. We mums do get fretful over things, I hate to admit to being a fretter, to forgetting to trust in my heavenly father for doubting he had everything under control- its obvious that he did. He also allowed me just enough unknown to reveal the areas in me where I still doubt him, areas where I was sure my trust was rock solid- it isn't!

Through all of this though, it helps me be all the more appreciative and grateful for our current circumstances. To have a home again. We are quite settled in now. It is lovely to be able to spread out a bit. I am especially loving the freedom to be able to host people comfortably here, we have had more dinner guests in the past two weeks than we probably had in the last year. It is the beginning of a new season for us- we have been enlarged and are excited and how we can bless others with the blessing given to us.

Sigh. Sometimes I think my life is one great lesson in patience. I really am quite an impatient person it would be up there as one of my greatest weaknesses, I am sure. God seems to have a five pronged strategy in helping make me into a patient creature.

1) marry Shane (to clarify, this is not derogatory to Shane, we just operate differently...i like to rush...he doesn't)

2) have children

3) live in a hot humid climate

4) long waits in between seeing family

5) disciple young people

I see what He is up to.

Well, I seem to be coming to the end of this blog without having really tied in the fact that I wanted to somehow connect my delayed gratification with our house to our recent going-to-bed-without-getting-up success we had with Esther (by using a sticker chart and a tea set reward)....But somehow it didn't seem to happen...hmmm maybe next time. Anyway, the point of what I really wanted to get at was;

Delayed Gratificiation- so good for us all, at any age.