Good evening everyone!! How goes it? I’m doing great now. Makenzie has continued to improve all day, thank goodness. Hopefully things will get more back to normal soon. Until then, I just go with the flow. I was pleased to see so many of you feel the same way about that when it comes to blogging. We have to be real. Thanks for all of the feedback!

I have mentioned before that I hate eating fish. Except for sushi. I will eat the raw stuff all day long. Give me a grilled/boiled/baked slab and I will grimace. The only exception is Cheeky’s Fish Tacos. Odd, I know. I always thought that and my hatred for even remotely soggy bread were my only ones.

I realized different today. I have some strange food habits. I can be very particular about my food and taste preferences, often in ways that make no sense. I had my typical daily apple today and noticed that since it was a Honeycrisp I had to eat it whole.

Any other variety of apple? I have to eat it in slices.

I have other things that I have to do with my food. For example, whenever we make sweet potato “fries” at home, I only like them cut into discs. Not the traditional fry shape.

I have to eat with the small utensils. It bothers me greatly to eat with the big fork or big spoon from our cutlery.

When I have pizza, I crave a soda. I really don’t drink much soda at all. I did the first trimester because it helped ease the queasy, but other than that its far from a go-to beverage. Except with pizza. I adore it with pizza.

It grosses me out to mix food or have food touch on my plate. I would eat out of M’s segmented children’s plates if they were big enough. In fact, I had plastic plates with the 3 segments all through high school.

And oddly enough, as this publishes, I am likely enjoying a bowl of soup with our church small group. I love soup…even though it’s a whole bunch of foods mixed together and soggy. 😉

• What are some of your more interesting food preferences?
• Do you prewrite posts? I obviously did this one because I’m at small groups. I actually prewrite many of my posts since I like to write in the morning before M wakes up and during her nap. I then tweak, edit, and add photos just before publishing. I won’t prewrite posts for things we do that I’m not sure how they will go though – like what we do on weekends, etc.

It looks like I will be spending another day snuggled with my little M on the couch. On the bright side, she hasn’t thrown up since about 5:30 yesterday afternoon and she slept well overnight. She still has some tummy upset though and needs her momma. That is of course my number one focus, even if it does mean another lackluster blog post.

I’m not sorry for that though. Not every post needs to be exciting, motivational, special, or interesting. I do hope you all enjoy the majority of what I put out here, but I don’t worry when one week inhibits the fitness or fun part of Faith Fitness Fun. Thankfully, faith is always there to help me in these weeks. Life is life. It’s our job to make the best of it. Look for more regular posts on interesting topics - Q+A about my fitness competition, a discussion on abs, blogging, etc – when I have downtime later this week.

For now, I will share what I have been working on after so many of you showed interest last week when I mentioned it.

First off, I can’t believe I have red and green together on my blog before Thanksgiving comes. I know I could use a little cheer though. How it works? Easy as 1-2-3!

1. Send me an email ( tina [at] faithfitnessfun [dot] com )BEFORE DECEMBER 4th with this information:

• Name
• Blog Name & URL
• Mailing Address
• ANY information you want your “Secret Gift Giver” to know – vegan/gluten free/don’t like chocolate/obsessed with giraffes/etc

2. Receive your “Secret Gift Recipient” information by Monday, Dec 6th. Put together a small gift no more than $20 in value.

3. Ship the gift out by Dec 20th (a full two weeks after you get your recipient’s info), so hopefully everyone will receive their gifts by the end of the year.

DISCLAIMERS

• MOST importantly – please, please, please ONLY sign up if you KNOW you will participate. When Janetha hosted the Valentine gift exchange earlier this year, she had quite a few people not send their gifts. How disappointing for those expecting them. Let’s avoid that this time around. If you sign up, then DO IT. If you sign up and realize you can’t, let me know right away. Be kind!
• This gift exchange is open to everyone who participates in the blog community, including regular readers. This is a general gift exchange for the season of giving, so no matter what your faith beliefs, feel free to participate! Also, I plan to pair those in the US with each other, Canadian addresses with each other, European with each other, so shipping costs stay as reasonable as possible.
• Feel free to share about this gift exchange on your blog, tweet this post, share on your blog’s Facebook fan page, etc. You can also add the Holiday Blogger button (same as picture above) to your blog by copying the code from below and pasting it into a widget for your sidebar.

<a href="http://www.faithfitnessfun.com/5589/a-little-bit-of-cheer-for-us-all/"><img src="http://www.faithfitnessfun.com/holidaybutton.gif" /></a>

This is such a great community and we all deserve a special surprise to celebrate such a beautiful season of compassion and joy. Spread the cheer! And sign up! 😀

• Do you ever feel guilty for not having exciting stuff to share on your blog? I used to, but after 9.5 months of blogging I realize not every day is wonderful…plus, it’s best to be real. And still focus on life.
• Do you think you’re going to participate? Let me know if you have any questions on the gift exchange!