WINSTON...THE BIG BLACK DOG!

We have a dog..or shall I say my son, Ben has a black lab that was given to him last Christmas as his BIG Christmas gift from us. I was hesitant at first about getting another big dog and one that sheds no less...but we did it.

I’ll have to admit...I’ve fallen in love with Winston. As of now he is about 9 months old and he weighs 77 pounds. He is so long and he has the longest tongue I’ve ever seen on a dog.

He has a mind of his own but is a very quick learner. He was house broken in a month..and can now do several tricks that he would learn in a matter of minutes. Sit, lay, roll....shake hands...(both hands)..and now we are working on the going outside to get the paper. That one will take longer.

But today...Mr. Winston got a wild hair and proceeded to be just a bad dog. He ate two screws that belong to a pistol my husband was working on at the time. Now we wait for the wonderful poop! No...my husband waits for the big event. These screws cannot be replaced.

Then..while I was taking him outside to see if we would retrieve the screws..he decides to take a running jump into his kiddie pool..then jumped back out..ran down the little hill..right into my legs...and knocked them right out from underneath me and down I went. I landed more on my left side and at the time I had my blackberry in my hand talking to my sister in law. All I could say was OMG..OMG...“““thug“““. My blackberry never left my ear...LOL. Winston then proceeds to try to bite my hair and take my sunglasses off my head. All I could do was laugh.
At first I thought...“boy, I’m not even hurt“...but now...I’m starting to get a little stiff.

Despite all that Winston has done today...we still love him to death!!

This all got me to thinking about how we live our lives day to day and what God thinks of us. We make mistakes, say things we shouldn’t, do things we shouldn’t, and just plain screw up...but God still loves us unconditionally..even during our screw ups. How awesome is that?

Now let me go find that Advil....again....

WHERE'S THE MOTIVATION?

Lately I've been extremely motivated on exercising. I have to give all the credit to God because I have people praying for me to stay motivated and I've asked him myself to help me in staying "gun ho" with it all. And so far...I have. It's like everything has finally clicked with me in the exercising, watching my calorie intake, and wanting to stay healthy as I can be.

I've had several people to ask me how I stay so motivated or they commented on "how motivated I am". Believe me...the motivation has not always been there. In fact it's been missing for years and years. It's so great to get back into something worthwhile such as my health and really take it seriously. Maybe all of this has come around since my nuclear stress test in May. It all turned out great. I think with having such a great outcome it gave me even more reason to make sure that it stayed that way. Sort of like having a second chance.

God does this with us everyday. He gives us a second chance...a third and fourth. Daily we mess up, but when we ask Him to forgive us..... he makes our stress test come out clean...again and again. So have you been lacking in motivation to build a closer relationship with God? Or have you ever truly had a relationship with God? Whatever your answer just know that God's grace gives us the luxury of the "do overs"...and I think that's a good thing.