The First Week

Whew! I have only had three actual days of class so far and I am already feeling the difficulty of this semester. All of my classes, while they all seem very interesting (except for maybe Astronomy), they are all VERY reading intensive. I feel like I don't have many assignments at all except a few papers, a couple exams, and to READ! This is the first semester that has ever really been the case so we will quickly see how that goes! I am really trying to stay on top of everything but that is definitely easier said than done!

Onto more exciting aspects of the week: workouts, food, and YoungLife.

Workouts

My workouts this week have consisted mainly of running, but I threw a TOUGH arm workout into the mix, as well as a little bit of swimming. I am going to really focus on running until the Austin Half-Marathon, and then I will still continue to run, but maybe not so often and not such long distances. I won't feel the pressure quite as much even though I am signed up for a few fun 10K races! My arm workout looked like this:

Exercise	Time	Reps	Sets	Weights
Bicep Curls	45 seconds		3	7 lbs
Frontal Raises	30 seconds		3	7 lbs
Lateral Raises	30 seconds		3	7 lbs
Tricep Dips		18	3	Bodyweight
Arm raises		18	3	7 lbs
Tricep Dips		18	3	Bodyweight

It immediately left my arms sore and hard to lift! It was hard to pull my hair into a ponytail after that workout!

While my workouts have been pretty top notch this week, my healthy eating pact has suffered some. I have found myself snacking more and more often than I usually do and I am not quite sure why! Triscuits and Kettle Corn are obviously my latest weakness in terms of snackies!

My kettle corn of choice!

Young Life

Yesterday around 4:00 in the afternoon I headed over to the first campaigners, or bible study, of the semester for the seventh grade girls of Northwest Hills. I think I have mentioned before that I am a YoungLife leader in Northwest Austin, primarily at Murchison Middle School, but students from private schools in the area come as well. I was so excited to see the girls, they are so loving and they have SO much energy! It is definitely contagious! My co-leaders and I were so surprised when the parent of the house where we hold campaigners presented us with thank-you letters from the girls for leading them and hanging out with them last semester.

It was so special to me, it must be the teacher in me coming out! I love letters and signs and I will keep these forever! They are the ones that teach me so much about love and living simply - they are such a blessing!

After campaigners was over, we drove over to one of our team leaders houses so we could meet up before heading to dinner and finally Camp TBarM for our all-area leader retreat. In typical YoungLife fashion, our team arrived about an hour or so late (that may or may not have been my, Julia, and Ellie's fault). We played a little basketball before meeting up in the dining hall and worshipping our awesome God together! When given the choice to stay up and play around or go to sleep, the girls on my team chose to go to sleep. We are grandma's. I woke up about an hour before breakfast and had a quiet time in front of the beautiful lake before giving in to the cold and curling back up with my blanket! After breakfast we had an all-area meeting talking about our visions for the semester before splitting off to meet with our teams. It was a short retreat, but really great to get out of Austin for the night and be under the beautiful stars, spending time with my awesome YoungLife team.

Some of my team at the WyldLife kickball tournament in November

Upon my return this afternoon, I was STARVING and quickly downed three bowls of cereal, grapes, and a mass-ton of kettle corn before going on a six-to-seven mile run around campus. It felt great to go on a longish run, as I definitely need to continue training for the half that is coming up in about a month!

I was looking forward to a delicious, healthy (since my healthy pact has sort of fallen off the wayside) dinner of My Fit Foods, and headed over there around 7:00 p.m. I surveyed my options before picking out the Salmon with broccoli and quinoa and heading up to the register to pay when I realized I had forgotten my wallet. Sadly, this happens to me more often than I would like to admit. Luckily, I live pretty close and quickly drove home to get my wallet so I could hurry back and pay for my dinner! It was definitely worth the trouble though; it was delicious!

Sorry for this novel of a post, I have had a lot to report in the past few days and not enough time to write!