Learning to Trust and Lean: June 2020

The end of June brought the end of school. Hallelujah!

Since school proceeded all the way through June, nothing much changed for us. Sunday through Thursday consisted of schooling through the morning until around 2. At that time, we had a movie and snack. After we finished all of our animated Disney movies, we switched to rotating through who would get to choose the movie each afternoon. We celebrated the end of school with a small ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. It was delicious, but I don't have a great picture because J was unhappy about stuff right as I tried to take a picture. I can't stand to look at the picture of him nearly in tears, so I deleted it.

E was super excited to receive his year 6 hoodie!

Watching the end of year assembly on YouTube.

Making chapati as an end to his Indian studies.

On a call for school. I have them use my room for some quiet.

On Fridays, we do church via Zoom with a group of people in our area of town. It's been a good time to get to know people in our area some of whom didn't attend our service but one of the other service times. We've done a couple of Zoom meetings with the church at large as well.

For date nights this month, I ordered in Mooyah with E. We ate in the living room while watching a new Netflix show, The Floor is Lava. J arrived with Pizza Hut to eat with his daddy as we were finishing up. Both boys now love this new show. My date night with Stephen involved ordering in Chili's with a dessert of donuts picked up at the store to go with our Psych themed date night. We were watching the episode "Last Night Gus." It's probably my third favorite episode of the entire series.

Psych date night with my favorite guy!

Mooyah date night in with E.

J and Stephen brought home Pizza Hut for their date night.

The spread for our Psych "Last Night Gus" date. Stephen even helped decorate with the donut/gun display. You'd have to see the show to get it. "You shot Bobo!"

We celebrated Father's Day with a breakfast in bed for Stephen, gifts of Dr. Pepper and candy bars, and dinner of Five Guys. Stephen has been taking his furlough days on Sunday, so he did get to sleep in and enjoy a day off. It was also the summer solstice and an annular eclipse day. We made pin hole projectors to watch the eclipse. The good news about the summer solstice here is that it really does start to cool off after that date. It's not enough to be noticeable yet, but it's happening. It's crazy!

Opening one of his special Dr. Peppers.

The boys made origami cards for Stephen. Here he's looking at the penguins.

Ready for our Five Guys dinner!

A glimpse of just how hot it is according to WTForecast. Check out that "feels like."

Merged photo of the eclipse as seen from here in Muscat. Photo credit goes to a parent in 4I.

The airports are still closed. The land borders are still closed. They opened the UAE border to "Omanis", but that apparently just meant Omani military as Stephen can't even get an Omani field guy to the UAE to run a job there. We are booked on a charter flight to get out and back to the States! Stephen's work situation means he can do everything he is currently doing from the USA if we can't come back when we initially plan to return. That is a blessing as so many other people feel unable to risk not being able to return in a timely manner. But we're praying for Oman airports to open so we can return. Seriously, as frustrated as I've been, this is still our home for now.

On a much more personal note, we are in the middle of week 17 of being home: 14 weeks of school, 2 weeks of Easter, and 1 week since school ended. Seventeen weeks of stress that has thrown me into bouts of depression and anxiety. In fact, I had an anxiety attack just this past Sunday night. But I managed a small miracle in this stress: I lost weight. I'm a stress eater, so this is a big deal for me.

How did I do it? Intermittent Fasting. I love it because it's free and realistic for life. You choose what works for you with intermittent fasting. You choose how long you can fast (16 & 20 hours fasting is common). You choose what you eat when you do eat (carbs? no carbs? vegan? vegetarian? carnivore? your choise). I have admittedly been low carb and low sugar. I just completed 13 months of no refined carbs or sugars. I was just going to do 12 months, but I decided to extend it to the end of school. I had some planned exceptions, and I learned some eating habits that will continue. But I can't say that my hear of no carbs/sugar helped me to lose weight. The key is the intermittent fasting.

It all started last May. I started fasting 20 hours daily (I worked up to 20 at the end of April to prepare) by eating only a snack and dinner during Ramadan, but I made myself stevia-sweetened lattes that I drank throughout my fast. I didn't lose weight (probably thanks to how much I squeezed into my eating window and my lattes) which is why I began my year long no carb and sugar goal. My "dirty fasting" 16 hours daily with lattes allowed me to maintain my weight through long vacations, but I wasn't loosing the little bit of weight I wanted. I began "clean fasting" 16 hours daily with only water and black coffee (cold brew in my case) in January. I felt better and began losing sloooooowly. Then, I decided to go back to a clean 20 hour fast daily just before this May. I lost 5 pounds in May alone! I'm at my goal weight after losing just 1 additional pound in June. Yay!

As we head home, I plan to shorten my fasting window to allow lunch and maybe allow dirty fasting with creamer in my morning coffee. I'll see how I feel. But I'm excited to adjust and live life while still fasting!

As I close out this rather long update, I'll leave you with some favorite Coronavirus memes from June. The funny memes have dropped in frequency on FB, so I don't have as many to share this month. But here are still a few favorites: