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Hubby got his blood checked and found out he has high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doc says he needs to go on a diet and do more cardio. This actually makes me smile, not because he is at risk for heart problems!!!  but because I've been trying to get him to eat healthier and exercise more for a really long time. He's not overweight or anything, he just doesn't eat healthy and doesn't do any cardio. He lifts weights and says that's all he needs. Now that I have a doctor backing me up, food in our house is going to change.

 I already have a lot of healthy things, because I like to eat healthy. Problem is, hubby doesn't like too many veggies unless they are loaded with something fattening (like cheese or butter) and he loves fried food, especially okra. I told him today that when I go to the grocery store, I'm getting healthy stuff. He said that was fine (YAY!!) He works at the middle school, so he is always eating the food from the cafeteria (which is in no way healthy!) so I told him that I am going to start packing his lunches (I've offered to do this before, but he turned it down.) He said that would be fine as long as it is something he would eat. We are just going to have to work on a meal plan, then.

Let me give you an example of how he likes to eat. He stopped by the grocery store the other day because he wanted steak for dinner (I wasn't able to get to the grocery store yet.) He comes home with steak, pork chops, Cheetos, and two boxes of Fiddle Faddle!!! Ugh! He decided he wanted pork chops for dinner, but he wanted them lightly coated with flour. Had no problem with that. I started on dinner and put just a little bit of canola oil in the pan. He tried to convince me that that would not be enough and I needed to put a lot more oil in. Good thing I know how to cook! Those chops ended up being the best we have had!

Okay. I will have to confess, we BOTH have a sweet tooth. While hubby will be more than willing to eat something sweet from the store (ie. Fiddle Faddle) I, on the other hand, like to make my own sweets. I usually bake my own cookies and substitute the oil in recipes with applesauce. I usually make my own pudding with low fat milk and make jello at home, instead of buying it in those little convenient tubs. I am now going to start incorporating more fruit into our sweets. I know I have a cookbook somewhere that shows you how to bake with out sugar, instead using honey and fruits as the sweetener. I'm going to have to pull that out and start using it. An exception to all of this is dark chocolate and licorice. Oh man! I love my dark chocolate and licorice, I just don't eat it all the time.

As for the exercising, hubby has chronic back pain from an accident almost 10 years ago. That pain makes all other body pain even worse. This I know. His feet have been hurting him lately and the doc thinks it's also attributed to his back pain. I'm going to convince hubby to start stretching his muscles (he says it's just not possible) and get him to start walking with me after work. See, we live on a mountain so even just walking for a little bit is a lot since we would be going up hill. We will have to start out slow at first, but I think he will be able to do more quickly. Now, if only I can convince him into getting a treadmill!!!

Well, we'll see how it goes!!

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I had a really nice Valentine's Day. Hubby made me a silver bracelet with a heart on it. It's beautiful. It's something that I can wear everyday for any occassion. I just might end up wearing it everyday! I ordered him a box of chocolates from this chocolate shop in NC that we went to one day. They have really good chocolate with out-of-the-ordinary flavors. For dinner I made Chicken Marsala and a nice salad with an Italian dressing that I made. Turned out pretty good. I've never cooked with wine before, but I've always wanted to try. I'll have to find more recipes. I was going to make a cake for dessert, but his mother had made a cake and gave us a couple of slices. It was okay, not my favorite. It had way too much almond extract. I'll make my cake this weekend.

I hope to be able to get some things done in the garden tomorrow. I've already cleared everything out in the front garden. Right now we just need to get some black landscape fabric and rake up the rocks that are in the front walk. I think this garden is going to be a challenge because directly in front of the house is all shade for about 6 feet, then it's full sun. So part of the flower bed will be full shade plants and flowers and the flower bed along the front walk will be full shade for about two feet and then the rest of it will be full sun.  We have a north facing house, so 6 feet in the front of the house never see sunlight except when the sun rises and sets. Makes for difficult planning! I know right off the porch I'll be putting in a lot of hostas, but I want something that will bring color, too. We used to have these mini boxwoods but they got infected with some kind of scale stuff and we just got fed up with them and pulled them out. Anyway, I've got some ideas, but it's just going to take a lot.

We decided what we are going to do with the veggie garden. Hubby's mother wanted us to spray weed killer on it because it has become terribly infected with so many weeds, but I told hubby that I do not want to use any chemicals. I'm very adament about that. I was thinking of just tilling, let it sit for a couple of weeks, and then repeating the processes a couple of times. That would make for a late garden. Didn't want that. Hubby has decided that we are going to burn it, till, burn again, till, and burn one more time. That's basically the same concept, just hurrying things up. I hope it works. I told him that after that is done, we are going to put permanent beds in and make permanent walk ways. We are going to need a lot of mulch for this. I've been saving my newspapers all year so I can use them to help control weeds. I think this will work. I also told him that we need to get a hot compost going. The compost pile we have now is a nice one, but it's in the shade so it takes forever to break down. We are going to find a place to start a pile in the sun.

Phew! I have so much to do! Can't wait for Spring to get here!!

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Well, my birthday was Sunday. It was nice and some what peaceful. Hubby took me to breakfast. He gave me a food processor (yay!!) I have been wanting one for quite some time.

My sister and her family decided to come down and have our Christmas together so the rest of the morning I spent tidying up the house. They got there about 1:30 and Mom got there very shortly after. We had a nice time visiting, although it can get a little hectic with her 10 month old and 13 year old. The 13 year old (AA) is a little hyper, but he also is not treated very well by my sister and her husband (S). S is not AA's father and my sister and S both treat him bad. I feel so sorry for him. I wish they lived closer so I can spend more time with him. AA made a comment that they would kick him out in a heart beat when he turns 18. I said they wouldn't do that. He just looked at me and said, "Uh, yeah they would." His poor soul is so damaged. When he is down here, I try to give him as much attention as I can. I'm hoping to be able to help him out like my aunt and uncle helped me. My father wasn't a very good father to me (but he was to my sister and brother) so my aunt and uncle would take me places occassionally and do things with me. I hope to be able to do that with AA.

Anyway, my sister crocheted me a top and gave me a photo album of AA and AI (the 10-month old). It was nice. My mom gave me a gift certificate to Michael's (yay!!) She also gave me an expensive German nutcracker on Friday. She didn't want my sister to see it so she gave it to me early. We all went to the local Mexican restaurant for dinner where my brother and his family met up with us. It was nice to have the entire family together for dinner. It's very rare for that to happen since my sister lives 3 hours away.

All in all it was a pretty good birthday. I thought I would be depressed knowing that this is my last year of my 20s, but it didn't bother me at all. Last year was bad. I was depressed and upset. Weird, I know. Oh well. I'll be 30 next year, but I don't think it will bother me, unless we have a bad year. I think one reason why 28 was so bad, was because there were some things going on that I had no control over and it was affecting our life. There was a lawsuit that would determine whether we had to sell the farm or not. Thankfully that was over this past year and we won! Who knows what the future will hold, though. Hopefully it will be a good year.

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