Rewarding

My girl Julie is graduating middle school in just a few days and is moving to Puerto Rico with her parents shortly there after for her parents job.  I love this girl with all I have and she was such a big part of my life while I was in seminary.  She was the coolest 11 year old I had ever met.  I would just take her out to Starbucks and chat for hours.  It was great for me to see her grow and mature over my two years there and I keep in contact with her as much as I can.  I used to love to go visit her when I would visit friends still in seminary and grab a cup of coffee.  Now that she is moving to PR I might have to make a bigger journey but the beaches (and Julie) would be totally worth it.



Anyway to celebrate all her big accomplishments and the great young woman she has become I wanted to make her a gift.  To be completely honest I wanted to make this for her when I was graduating seminary as a reminder of all our fun together but a little thing like a back injury kept me from sitting at a sewing machine to put it together so I’ve kept the secret hidden for years.  Now I have the perfect opportunity to give it to her.  She’s leaving at the end of June for PR so I only had one chance to get it to her next week when we are on vacation near her for the weddings.  So I had to bust my but….and my butt may be sore but the top of the quilt is done tonight…

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

It’s a reward for how much she has grown and reminder to her but it was so rewarding to work with her over the last few years and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have her as a friend.  Hunni and I had her read the scripture at our wedding and I hope to some day be attending hers.  WOrking with teens is just so rewarding.



I weight loss I’ve had to change my mind about rewards.  When something good happened I used to reward myself with food.  Happy Teacher Appreciation Day with donuts and cookie cake provided by the PTA.  Happy Birthday was full of ice cream cake and apple strudel (my favorite thing for birthday food).  Happy Thursday let’s go out to eat.  Food was a reward even going back to the free personal pan pizza for reading lots of books over the summer.



Now that I am living more healthily I needed new system of rewards.  It wouldn’t exactly work to lose weight at my meeting and go home and eat a bunch of cookies or celebrate my birthday with a big bowl of pasta.  Instead I had to settle on a system of non food rewards.  Things that would motivate me with exercise and healthy eating but also wouldn’t cost a ton of money.  Things like…

• iTunes Songs
• Pedicure/Manicure
• New piece of clothing
• New Book
• Night off from cooking (Hunni puts together dinner)
• Good new coffee
• Visit to friends

And the list could go on and on.  I like to break up my goals into smaller more manageable goals and put little rewards to them.  When I hit the larger goals, then I do the bigger rewards like the shopping spree I did on the Old Navy sale racks when I hit goal.



It is so much fun to be rewarded in so many different ways and not just assuming there will be sugar or food involved.  It makes me have a happier relationship with my body and food.



How do you reward your goals?