I had a request for an update!  So, I'm updating but no major news.  Life is completely insane.  Seriously, we are having a blast but between dance, soccer, church, full time jobs, volunteer stuff, weight loss/exercise journeys, trying to finish my master's project, and eating, we are full up!  It's almost Mother's Day again.  One of my very favorite holidays that I believe just needs to replace my birthday.  Even if we've lost our mothers or don't have a good relationship with your mother or you aren't a mother, there is something wonderful to celebrate.  Remembering all the good things about your own mother, honoring that amazing woman in your life that is such a nurturer, contemplating all the ones your nurture and love (plants, animals, friends, etc.), or just being a strong feminist for the day.  Wow we are awesome.  There are so many roles women are asked to play and this mother being is the beautiful centerpiece of the whole woman thing I believe.  We are shaped by our moms, either to spite her, in spite of her, or in pursuit of her. 

Anyway, I just wanted to stop in and say I'm alive and life is good.  My frustration has waned in the weight loss adventure because I've done much better at staying on track since the holidays finally came to a close.  I'm down 52 total pounds since January 2012 and I will post an 18 month update photo after we take our July 1st comparison pictures.  Is it weird to be excited about taking pictures of your butt and gut?  :)  I'm sure it is weird.  Oh and the half marathon was amazing and super hard and not something I really think I will do again any time soon!  Maybe if it didn't take me 3 hours to run the thing I would think differently. 

Oh, and I will leave you with a motivational schpeel I sent to a friend the other day.  It is truth folks. 

I am thankful today that I feel beautiful.  I see so many people, especially women, walking around all sunken in and down or arrogant and haughty and think to myself,

 I’m glad that I just feel like a person who is lovely inside and out.  I’m thankful that I feel like I deserve basic human dignity and respect but don’t feel the need to demand reverence from anyone.  I am grateful that God helps me feel worthy and deserving of love so that I feel others are also worthy and deserving of love.  God loves me and although I have done nothing to earn my place in this world, I feel an undeniable need to smile and bring light into the darkness and breath into lifelessness.  This must be a tiny glimpse of what God sees while looking upon the world, light and darkness.  It’s not always the darkness that comes from evil or cruelty, but the darkness that comes from ingratitude, arrogance, insecurity, self-doubt, discontentment, self-loathing, loneliness, grief, pain, and the absence of hope.  That darkness will not win today.  I see it in her, in him, in that room, and I’m going to shine my light so bright in those spots today that nobody will even like me tomorrow.  Maybe tomorrow my light won’t feel so bright and I’ll need a shining.  Today though, I’m going to beam.  I hope you beam too!