A Puppy, COVID, and VR - oh, my!

Hello, friends!
​
I realize I haven't posted on my blog in a really long time. Honestly, I took it off my site because I found the process of keeping it up-to-date very overwhelming over the last year or so. In that time, I've also found that I've truly missed it. So I'm back, and I hope at least some of you are still out there. To start a new blog post off, I'm going to share the message in my latest newsletter. Then I'll be posting new content from then on. 

We've had quite the beginning to our new year.  

We got a new puppy for my husband's birthday. Shortly after that, we all came down with COVID one-by-one. Dealing with being sick and a young puppy who is getting up multiple times at night to go out or because she was hungry hasn't been easy! On top of that, both our daughter and my husband were sick for their birthdays. Our son is having some health issues in addition to COVID. 

We're all mostly feeling better, finally, but are still dealing with congestion and fatigue.
I'm so ready to get back to normal. Oh, and spring. I'm really ready for spring. Ha! 

Okay, enough about being sick. On to the new puppy! My husband named her Natty Gann, and we call her Natty. She's about 9.5 weeks old now, and fits perfectly with our family. We bought her to be my husband's dog. My dog, Loki, turned a year old in December. The two absolutely LOVE to play together. I really don't know how we would've made it through not feeling well if it weren't for Loki entertaining Natty so much. 
Natty is supposed to be a full German shepherd, but that didn't matter too much to us. I guess time will tell as she grows. We may do one of those DNA tests with her that we did with Loki because it was fun. But will wait a while for that. 

---

Have any of you used a Virtual Reality (VR) system? My husband wanted one last year and I finally got him one in November thinking I'd never use it in a million years. After trying it that first day, I absolutely loved it and had to get one of my own. 

I've been using it for Beat Saber, which is a music and rhythm game, and for Supernatural, which is an amazing fitness game. I've used them regularly for about two months now and I'm seeing improvements in my strength, heart rate, blood pressure, and my stress levels.

I so look forward to my time on there. Being able to take an hour a day to do something for me, to better my health, has made such a difference on the days that stress would normally have me feeling down. 

While I haven't been able to get in an hour straight since COVID, I do feel like doing at least some exercise a day has helped with my recovery time. Hopefully I'll be back to normal again soon.

And yes, I had to buy the sticker you see on the picture above to make the VR system look like Baymax from Big Hero 6. Ha! 
​
I hope you are all doing well and hanging in there. It seems like so many people I know are sick right now. Take care of yourselves, okay? 

---