iCal - how I've missed you!

If you didn't hear from my last post, I got a new laptop for Christmas!!

It's really nice, and really more than I deserve or need right now, but I'm going to put it to good use! It came with the new iLife and I'm excited to use that to make some awesome photo books so I don't lose any more photos! It's also got iCal. One thing I really missed about having my own computer was iCal. Sure, I know I could have gotten an old fashioned analog calendar and used it to keep my life organized, but let's be realistic here. How could I ever go back to paper when I've experienced the ease of using iCal?

In the last few days, I've gotten 5 Calendars going: Training, Dinners, Food, Finances, and Appointments (and that's the order I created them in... where are my priorities?).

It's probably too small to really see, but here's my training calendar: (click on it to see it bigger)



I've got myself starting running about a month after the baby's due. I might have to push that back to 6 weeks or just start out a little easier than I've got planned, but we'll see. I'm flexible, but I still like to have it all spelled out there for me. :)

I've also got myself going to a Cycle and Core class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and swimming on Saturdays. I like to think of that swim as a nice recovery for the week, and I can bring the whole family with me since we now have a family pass to our nearby rec center! Yay! Sundays, as usual, are rest days.

There's also something called TriWater on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I might just have to find out what that's all about, or I can just go swim those mornings when I feel like I need to add in more swimming. Really, I just need to focus on running for a while, though, to get myself ready for Utah Valley Marathon which I'm pretty sure I'm going to switch over to the Utah Valley Half Marathon. That just sounds a lot less stressful and I know I can be ready for that on time without hurting myself in the process. My sister likes this idea as well since she'll be working and going to school full time and doesn't feel like she'll have time to train for a full marathon right now. That's cool. Half will be my distance this year. Full next year.

Onto the food! Here's my Dinners calendar:



This one is my favorite because now I've got dinners planned out for the whole month! Yay! I also have each dinner repeating every 4 weeks so I don't have to go through and plan this out every month. If we don't like something, I'll just switch it with something else. Also, if 4 weeks seems to be to often to eat everything, I can always go in and add more things later.

The hardest thing for me about cooking dinner is knowing what I'm going to make and having the ingredients to make it when dinner time comes. I've been really bad about this lately, especially because when dinner time comes around, usually nothing sounds good to me. I'm hoping that will change once I'm not pregnant anymore. Of course, then I'll have a baby to add into the mix.

Anyway, this calendar is really handy because I put the url of the recipe (if it's online, which most of them are) in the location section of the event so I can just pop over to Safari and look at that when I'm making my shoping list and when it's time to make the meal. I'm really excited for this, and I hope it helps keep us eating healthy dinners and also save us money because we won't be so inclined to eat out as much if I've got a yummy dinner planned.

Speaking of babies, my friend who was due the same day as me, was induced today. She's in the hospital this very minute having her little girl! (Congratulations, Sara, I hope everything goes well!)

I have a doctor appointment tomorrow so we'll see how things are progressing for me on that front. I've been having a lot of contractions and just feeling super uncomfortable, but I don't know if that means labor is in the near future or if it just means I'm 38 weeks pregnant.