one day i'll fly away

Tried to donate.
Aaron and I tried to donate blood today and it was very unsuccessful. There are few blood drives in this area, so the one I had chosen to go to (about 15 minutes away) has been the only one on the calendar for this area for the past month. It was at a high school and we were literally the only non-high school students there to donate. We waited two hours to finally be checked in and within a few minutes they had dismissed me because I wasn't 100% positive about my weight (I had done thorough research about this and was fairly certain every blood drive had a scale, but alas, I was wrong). Aaron was next and within a few minutes they had turned him away because of our trip to Mexico. I had also done research for this and apparently I wasn't up-to-date because Cozumel is back to being a malaria flagged area. This means we cannot donate until August. I'm not going to count this as a defeat yet, but I highly doubt I'll go through this process again...especially after I watched two girls faint and I had to really psych myself up to do this. Maybe a community blood drive would be better?

Vegetarian.
I'm trying out a vegetarian lifestyle again. My goal is a month, but I'd like to go until Aaron is done with work (it's really expensive and time consuming to cook for a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian). I found a bunch of single serving recipes on sparkpeople.com and I cannot wait to go shopping for some new foods and try out new flavors!

Valentines Day.
I'm almost positive our plans for Valentine's Day are going to consist of going to Pittsburgh, eating breakfast at DeLuca's (if that's even possible), shopping, and eating dinner (my vote is for Primanti Bros. but I dunno how much weight that has). For our trip, I'm going to make cherry sweetie pies (heart shaped mini-pies filled with cherry pie filling). I'll post the recipe if they turn out well. Aaron and I aren't exchanging gifts because of our strict budget, but the meals out will be treat enough as we hardly ever go out to eat.

The Total Money Makeover.
We have committed once again to The Total Money Makeover, but this time we own the book and have made copies of all the worksheets. We sat down a few nights ago and worked up our budget for February. Our first goal is to get money into a savings account (what's that??) and then to hopefully start paying off our debt. I'm confident this will work for us, as long as we both stick to the agreed upon budget and I am diligent in keeping it balanced. It's going to be rough for a few months as Aaron's job transitions and we're unsure of what he'll be getting paid, but it should level out by April.

Facebook strike.
Okay so it's not a real strike, but I need to significantly reduce the number of times I visit facebook in a day. I would like to keep the total to no more than 3 and to visit for no more than 10 minutes at a time. Today has been a little bit rough, but I know I can do this!! There is no purpose for me to be on a social networking site, especially when I have so much other work I need to be doing.

The Love Dare.
Today is day one for me as I have started on this personal journey (I am using it to benefit and improve all my relationships, not just my marriage, but that is a significant portion of it). I also think this would be a great marriage tool for counseling so I am trying it as an individual and then my hope is that Aaron and I can try it together at the end of the summer. KLOVE.com has been posting The Love Dare daily so I am going to follow along on there as long as the days remain archived. I have already noticed a difference even though it has only been a day. I want to make this a daily ritual and it shouldn't be too tough because I now have more free time from not being on facebook as much.

Many blessings,
-Ashley