Amanda's Life

I have been switching up different shows that I have been watching. Starting with shorter series or ones that I only have 1 or 2 seasons to catch up on, and then I’ll move to some longer series. I have also been trying to keep up with reading as this was one of my goals for the year, to finish all the books in my possession before moving onto digital books on Scribd. So far, I am making progress but I have A LOT of books to read through. I again started with shorter books, or smaller series and have moved into longer books and series. Currently reading through book 7 in the Outlander series, close to the end before moving onto book 8. Before that I read through EVERYTHING Julia Quinn. Her books were binged after watching the Bridgerton series on Netflix.

We have been moving along in school, currently 6 years old and in 2nd grade. My kid is a BEAST! She learns more every day and surprises with her vocabulary every day. Working on reading and getting better with that every day.

We all just got over being sick and reading and school was a little slower than usual, sometimes being skipped or skipping portions that we had already been over 1,000 times.

Towards the end of the month now and going into my birthday month! I’ll be 31 this year, past the big 3-0 and no more really big hills in a while to get over. 30 really didn’t hit me hard at all, it’s just another year.

Well, that’s about it for now, boring as usual!

Well, I suuuuuuuck at writing consistently. I have obviously not stayed up with writing consistently. And I don’t know if things will change.

Life gets hard something, obviously. Sometimes we need a break to just THINK and not be DOING everything. I keep reminders set up on my phone but it’s just one of those things, you see them pop up all the time and just dismiss them because you’re used to seeing them all the time.

Summer work is always busier, one of those industries where summer months = more calls, more issues, more actual working hours. I LOVE working from home and the flexibility it allows me. My daughter loves schooling from home, and I love that I get to watch her grow up.

Here’s to another post in hopefully less than 6 months. haha!

2020 ended well. We left on Christmas Day to travel to Florida for a week. My husband’s grandfather passed away a couple of months ago so we did the funeral right after Christmas. We stayed through New Years and had a good time with family, some we had never met before.

2021 starts a new year of goals. From Thanksgiving until yesterday, my diet was definitely not what it should have been. I am back on track today and will finally be working out again, after several months off.

I look forward to this new year to see what will happen. Last year was difficult for all and we were very fortunate during this time.

Here’s to a new year to see what can happen!

Time has been going. My 30th birthday passed. And now we’re just moving forward in life.

My weight loss has stalled slightly, the scale has moved some for the last couple of week but I’m going to try no reset days for the next 2 weeks, before my sister’s wedding and see what happens.

We are 2 weeks out from my sister getting married to her better half. I went and had her cut my hair and ran through her makeup for the event. We will mostly be doing our own hair, makeup, and nails for the event to save money.

I also picked up some motion sickness bracelets for my daughter. She has gotten car sick the last couple of long trips we took so we are hoping this combined with Dramamine will help everything. It’s about a 9 hour drive to the location of the wedding so we’ll be in the car a long time.

Here’s to the end of the year and hopefully good things to come!

It’s Friday! I love Friday’s, usually I get to make them short work days since the market closes at 4pm. This week not so much since it’s the end of the month and I have to get everyone’s clients entered to count for the month!

Tomorrow will be all garden, I have to mix in the compost I added last week and break up some clumps and then plant some more things in the back side of one of my beds.

I also got to order some bamboo posts this week which I will use for supporting my pole beans as they grow, which is one of the things I am planting tomorrow.

Since the bathroom remodel is finished, getting back in to my normal routine, cleaning a little each day, working out, just normal life, has gotten hard to get back on track. Slowly adding back in the eating healthy and working out so I can get on top of that. Next week will be steps and getting back into the cleaning. Although, I probably need to vacuum cause there is dog hair EVERYWHERE!

How was your week? Are you excited it’s Friday?

I knew I would be really spotty with my posting. It’s not a new problem with me and blogging. I have other things to maintain and try to keep all of my categories on their specific blogs. It’s a thing.

We are still in the middle of the pandemic, which I don’t think is technically a pandemic anymore. More information is found out every day, more crazies make their videos and posts every day, and move people don’t fact check and share blindly.

Life has gone on. We finished our bathroom remodels, we have continued with the garden growing, and we have been fighting pests there.

Jonathan is still working, which we are thankful for during this time. Since I work from home on the regular, none of this has affected whether or not I can go to work.

At the end of the day, I think everyone is ready for life to go back to normal. We all want life to go back to how it was pre-pandemic. Parents and children are unsure how school will go on this year. It’s time for life to start getting normal, whatever we might have considered our normal before.

We all push through and move on but it’s weird to remember a time before having to wear a mask to get groceries. It’s weird to remember a time when you didn’t have one or two things that were just sold out for no reason at the grocery store. It’s weird to remember not having to stay home day after day after day just in case.

But how was your time?

-Amanda

Okay, so I’ve had blogs for years. I’ve had blogs on multiple platforms. Usually it’s just my ramblings, what’s going on in life, whatever the case may be. I am VERY spotty with when I post. I go back and forth on posting lots and not at all. It’s been this way since I was 16.

I spent some time at the beginning of this year collecting all of my posts from previous blogs, old journals, and current ramblings in one place. Here. I wanted ONE place I could go and just carry on. I have hidden the category with my teenage ramblings, no one needs to be subjected to that.

I try to keep it clean but sometimes life gets frustrating and you just need to vent somewhere lest you explode, I hide those posts too, it’s a lot.

I have two separate blogs I also maintain with different points of my life.

www.operationfindmyabs.com is all about my weight loss journey and what’s going on there.

www.letsgetdebtfree.com is all about my family’s debt free journey and usually gets updated weekly.

Life happens, life has to move on. Different people cope different ways, I am one that brushes everything off. I rarely get stressed but when I do, it usually results in migraines, possibly tears. Getting my thoughts somewhere usually helps but as you may notice, the posts are infrequent. When I have something to say, I say it.

I hope to continue keeping this updated and will continue to do what I need to do to move forward!

So by this point EVERYONE has heard of Covid-19. If you haven’t, you’re living under a rock, like for real. It’s affected pretty much every country worldwide. People have lied about it’s death rates, about who’s actually dying from it, and mostly all for some kind of political gain.

We haven’t left the house in MONTHS to do anything other than grocery shop, buy a new car, and closing papers on a house refinance.

You see, right as all of this was starting, we submitted documents to refinance our house, take some cash out, and pay off most of our debt. It didn’t close until well into everything going on so we had to wear masks to the closing.

Also, the day before Jonathan’s birthday, he totalled his car. Which was almost paid off. His new car he loves, which is good but it was not cheap. Luckily we got a GREAT interest rate on the car thanks to the *cooties* and we should be able to pay it off early.

So with the refinance, we were able to get enough cash out to pay off everything except my student loans and the new car. Those are the LAST two debts we have to pay for. We are super excited to be this close to the finish line. We were also able to send a rather sizable chunk to the student loans and we are continuing to pay off whatever we can.

We are getting a little restless, no church, no friends, no anything anywhere for pretty much 4 months straight.

Life will go on, it just sucks sometimes.

Yesterday was a bit of a dramatic day on the Transform group. We have a crazy going well… crazy. The Community Leaders banded together to help but it left some upset members in it’s wake.

It’s the year of me. No excuses. I am hitting my goals and not making excuses to be lazy. I have reminders set on my phone for everything. I have reminders set for when to drink what, when to eat, when to take preworkout, exercise blah blah blah. It’s the way I function, the way I know how to keep myself accountable to my actions. I have also been posting a daily accountability post over on my operationfindmyabs.com blog for myself.

I don’t need other people to see it, I can see it, I can look back at them if I want. It’s not anyone else’s concern whether or not I stick to my plan.

Work has been going well, other than being in the slow time of year where we are short on funding for everything. I hate this time of year. Dad always wants to run promotions for things but there’s no money in the budget. It will get better, there’s just a couple of months gap where things are really bad every year. I want next year to be better, I want us to have savings built up to cover the bad time.

Life is good. I am feeling better mentally that I have in a long time. I am working on letting things go and being myself.

Working on my mental and physical health and improving myself is a huge part of what I want to accomplish in 2020. I am off to a great start. It’s so nice to be in a good place.

A little late to the game but I do have a few resolutions for 2020.

1. FINALLY FINISH LOSING THE WEIGHT!
2. Actually be consistent in utilizing Duolingo to learn some awesome languages.
3. Listen to the Bible through chronologically.
4. Pay off as much debt as possible

1 is a no brainer. I have been trying to lose weight in some capacity since late 2013. I have seriously been trying to lose weight since August 2015 but I have severely slacked in the adherence for a while. It’s time to kick things into gear. I am giving myself monthly SMART goals to get me there. January started with just getting back to working out 6 days a week and hitting my calories and water each day.

2 every year for the last several I have wanted to learn Spanish and have severely slacked off. We are 2 weeks into the new year and so far I have used it every day.

3 I did this last year, listening to the Daily Audio Bible while on my morning walks, I have changed to the chronological version for this year.

4 We start every year off strong on this one and then we slack off toward the end of the year. 2019 was the year of me finally learning how to budget. I started using YNAB for ALL THINGS BUDGET and I started a debt free blog (www.letsgetdebtfree.com). I told Chelsea towards the end of December that I need 2020 to be a no spend year and while I was not entirely serious, I did implement some changes for this year (getting a month ahead on bills being one of them). I truly intend on us being debt free in 3 years or less and adhering to my debt free plan and limiting spending needs to be top priority.

After a hard year last year with my family I fully intend on this being the year of me. I’m going to be a little more selfish for my mental well being, writing here is one.

While I am not going to make this one of my resolutions I do fully intend to continue blogging into this year. I spent early this week rebuilding a couple of abandoned websites so I could blog on each respective website and I imported old posts I happened to have saved.

It’s the year of getting better and making progress!