Yesterday we surprised the kids and brought home a puppy!! They have been begging for one for years and we felt like the time was right to bring one home.

Meet Angus 🐕 He's a Golden Retriever/King Charles Cavalier Spaniel mix. He's 11 weeks old and currently weighs about 8 pounds, he should be around 35 pounds fully grown. I know it will be an adjustment for a while as he gets potty trained etc but we are so excited. 😂 Wish us luck! 🤪

Cheese is good! I ate a block of chipotle oven baked cheese with lunch yesterday and it was divine. I love it, but know that it halts any progress I'm making, and will even trigger eating in excess to where I'll gain weight. It's sad but I have accepted it. If I eat it in small quantities with a meal, it's ok, but I really have to work to keep it in check.

What's your favorite cheese? How do you incorporate it? Do you see negative results when eating it?

Happy Sunday! Sharing a video today from our week, one of the highlights. This was Wednesday evening church, normally they have a more casual prayer meeting where someone plays the guitar, but they were doing some construction in the fellowship hall so they had their prayer meeting in the sanctuary. No one was there to play the piano so my my Grandma did it, she's been playing the piano in church for probably 80 years.

For context, she's 88, she had a really bad fall 5 years ago now and hit her head and ended up with a lot setbacks, similar to having a stroke. She has a lot of dementia like symptoms also (I am sure related to her Type 2 diabetes), she really can't read music anymore, and she has trouble seeing well, and she needs to wear hearing aids to hear but hates wearing them, so on this night she didn't want to wear them. My 93 (almost 94) year old grandpa takes care of both of them on their farm. Anyway, on this night she sat down on the piano and led worship as people called ...

Happy Sunday! I am flying out today for a quick 24 hour trip to Vegas. We have our big conference there in January, so I am doing some walk throughs of the venue today to talk about planning. Thankfully I have a friend in Vegas that I get to see today before I have dinner with coworkers. There are a lot of hard things about traveling so much, but a few perks as well. One of them is getting to see friends who live far away more often. This way of eating can be pretty isolating if you don't have a lot of support in your daily life (I am lucky to have support at home though). I've never really had a lot of friends in general, let alone any that live near me, so catching up when we can has always been special. Do you have friends you see regularly in your day to day life?

Reminder, I will be doing a YouTube Livestream Tuesday night.

Happy Saturday!! I finished work early yesterday and got to spend the afternoon with the kids. Today is just more of the same; movies, games, swimming, and playing with Angus. Probably no grilling since Chris is gone, I'll make some recipes that the kids and I like but Chris isn't as much a fan of. 😂😂 Today is my "breaded" chicken strips that I made a YouTube video about a while ago. It's actually a recreation of one of my favorite "pre-carnivore" meals, I just swapped the Ritz crackers for pork rinds on the coating.

What are your plans for the weekend?

https://youtu.be/oqmqhxkFWqg

Happy Friday! Chris is headed out of town today, going up to the cabin to hang out with his friends for the weekend. With all the travel I have had lately (and my upcoming Madrid trip), he definitely needs a break!! Chris and I are opposite of what people think we are. He is the extrovert, even though he's more quiet than me. So he actually doesn't need much alone time daily to recharge. A couple times a year he likes to get away from "Dad duties" and go hang out with his friends and watch football and go shooting for the weekend.

I am the opposite, I might seem loud and outgoing but I am actually an introvert. I get drained being around people all day and need small blocks of alone time daily. My job just has me talking to people all day long, and I want to give the kids/Chris my full attention, so things like going to the sauna, or just taking a long shower can help me reset and decompress. I travel enough for my job I don't do it for personal reasons, unless my family comes ...