Weight: 212.5
I sat down yesterday and made up a menu plan for the next 8 days, then I went grocery shopping. Today, I've stayed to the menu plan, even when my mind was tempting me to eat something not on the menu. But I resisted. :) So at 3:41pm local time.. I am still good to go on the diet. That is a big plus. Here recently, I've been eating practically non-stop from lunch until dinner. No exercise today, but we're talking baby steps to get back up to speed, so I'm okay with no exercise.
I think I am suffering from a mild depression. I am not cleaning the house, doing the laundry, cooking meals. I have got to get out of this funk. It's not just me that is being affected by this. My kids are too.
It's been a busy 7 days. Mac was sick early last week. Then Kendra and Kim started getting sick over the weekend. Kim has missed school all this week, but Kendra managed to get back yesterday. This is a short week of school. The kids are off Thursday and Friday for school registration and teacher conferences.
I called the school yesterday early in the morning to have Kim's homework collected up for her. But the teachers never responded with her assignments. Now she is afraid to go into school today "unprepared." This sort of thing really pisses me off. We try to do our part in this, but when the teachers don't or can't cooperate, it's the kids that get burned. ARGGGH.
At any rate, I've got all the forms filled out for registration. They have early registration here at the local elementary school so I don't have to make the trip to Katterbach. I'm just not sure how successful I can be. Kim and Mac have lost their ID cards and I am unsure how important this is to the process. All the kids were enrolled last year, but apparently this is something that must be done each new school year. We'll see.
This is my oldest daughter with her daddy in his helicopter. The year is 1991, the location Ft. Polk, LA.
I post this picture here because this pic is very special to both of them. Since her dad has left, Kendra has posted this pic, along with one of her daddy in our living room, on her bulletin board. She frames both pictures with her rosary. This is a special rosary that she picked up at Notre Dame in Paris during our visit there last fall.
She is an incredible child. Smart, emotional, creative. I remember when she was five years old, we took her and her siblings to Gettysburg. This was Paul's trip, he had been wanting to visit the battlefield and see the museum. So one weekend, we packed up the kids and drove north (we lived in VA at the time). What I will always remember about that trip is Kendra's reaction as the reality of that war began to sink in. There was one room set up with little lights on a light board to represent the killed in action over the course of the battle. At the end, the little lights that were on practically lit up the whole room. Kendra asked about the lights and I explained what they represented.
We moved on, and in another area of the museum, there was a diorama set up of how the tents and such were set up. The men were shown, around campfires and such, when they were not on the battlefield. Suddenly, Kendra just sat down and put her hands over her face. When I asked her what was wrong, she said "All those men, mommy, dying. Such a lot of men to lose." I was taken aback at her sudden comprehension of all that was lost in that battle.
I wonder now, what she thinks about her daddy and the job he is doing. I know she is proud of him. She wears a special bracelet that our PTSA created to support the troops we currently have deployed. She says she will not take it off until daddy returns. She is very much a "daddy's girl" and they are so similar in thought and view points, I sometimes think she misses him more than the other two, who have always been more connected to mom.
Each morning as I straighten up her room, I see her little "shrine" for her dad and I pause and I say a prayer. I pray for his safety, I pray for the ones fallen, I pray for the countries involved... and I pray for my children, that even though I can't shield them from what their daddy does... that God give them understanding and faith and hope. I pray that they continue to realize daddy does all this because he believes in his country, in the constitution and that he believes what he does matters.
So It's been days since I heard from my hubby. There was an accident involving a Chinook on Wednesday in Afghanistan. I figured communications were limited while they were contacting next of kin. Well... yes... that was going on, but my hubby apparently was out flying when the weather changed as well. His group of aircraft had the chance to set down before an accident could occur. He had to wait out the storm for a day, and then wait again until someone could come out and give his aircraft a "jump start" when the engine wouldn't start running.
I am not so sure I can be as complacent again when I don't hear from him for a few days. This is such a tough line to walk.. to be so sad for the service members we've lost, to feel the pain of their loved ones left behind and yet be thankful that -this time- my soldier is still safe.
It reminds me a bit of a short story I read called "The Lottery."
There are not enough options on the mood list. I am not sure that sad really covers my mood, but of the choices, it came closest.
I started feeling ill yesterday. Sore throat, achy body and stuffy nose. I took the kids to Kristall Palm Beach, a water park near us for part of the afternoon. The place was steamy and hot. I did not go dressed to get in the water, so I spent most of my time sweating something fierce. I just kept feeling weaker and weaker as the day passed by.
This morning I knew I had to clean house.. it had gotten pretty messy in the last few days with me being gone most of each day. Kendra has a date tonight and I did not want her date being frightened when he picked her up by how the house looked. The kids were so good, they jumped up and helped me. We had all the public rooms done in about an hour. When they jump in like that to help without fuss and muss, I feel so blessed.
Well, her date just picked her up. She is going to an JROTC ball tonight with a friend. It's not a romantic date. She looks so nice in her ball gown, when I get the pics developed, I'll post one on this site.
Now it's time to just relax and take care of me. :)
Still going strong on my walk/strength training. The exercise is easy to do each day and I feel so much better for doing it. I'm having trouble with the eating though. Seems I can't stay as focused on that. I think I'm going to try using more of the diet frozen entrees so I have less reason to go scavenging for food.
I've lose some pictures that I was supposed to send my mother in law. Now I need to retake them first thing in the morning and go up to Wuerzburg to get them printed at the two hour photo shop. <sigh> this messes up my plans to take my kids to a water park tomorrow. Mac is really disappointed, but the pics need to be to my MIL by next week so I really don't have much choice in this.
The helicopter accident in Afghanistan is part of the task force that my husband is involved in, although none of our task force members were involved in the crash. I hate that so much of what is going on there I hear through the news before I hear it through "official" channels.
Managed to stay on track for my exercise. Today I danced a latin beat for 30 minutes, did an upper body workout for 30 minutes, abs for 5 minutes, and stretched. I'm pleased that I kept up with the program. Definitely need to keep the workouts to the morning though, doing it in the afternoon allows for too many opportunities to blow it off.
I've hidden my scale under my bed. I am trying to keep myself to one weigh-in a week. After the end of May, I will try to only weigh in once a month. I am currently working on a challenge that requires weekly weigh-ins, but that ends on May 30.
Yesterday my 7th grade daughter had her "outdoor education" final. The teacher had asked for parent volunteers to help out and I signed up to help. Before leaving home yesterday morning I did my leg workout as per my fitness calendar. No walk planned for yesterday as it was to be a "rest" day.
When I get to school, I find out the teacher is not going with us, another adult is leading the groups through the final. The group Im assigned is a mix of males and females, totally 7. The first start of the "exam" is a series of puzzles for them to solve. Each puzzle requires teamwork and cooperation from the group in order for them to be successful. The first puzzle was fitting the whole group on a 2 foot by 2 foot wood platform. Called for close quarters but the kids managed to get this done quick! Then they had to move across an area from a large platform to a smaller platform and finally to a large platform again, using only two blocks of wood and a slender stick to cross.. without touching the ground. They had several "do overs" on this before they finally completed the task. 5 more puzzles were done during the course of the morning.
After our lunch break, we set off on a hike! The kids learned how to take compass headings and along the way we had checkpoints where they had to answer trivia questions. Kim's group amazed me with the overwhelming knowledge they had over a wide variety of subjects- the only question they could not answer was "Who was the author of 'Pride and Prejudice'. " The only answer they got wrong was about the famous swamp in Florida (everglades), they chose to go with "okeefenokee swamp." The walk was about two and half miles long. Difficult for me to judge, since we had frequent stops for the questions, but it felt a bit longer than two, but not so long as three. Still.. a very nice walk with lots of inclines. Guess my day of "rest" didn't happen this week, but that's okay.. I loved the walk and the time with the kids.
Estela
I am officially back "on." Today I did all the exercise I had planned out for me. I ate 6 servings of fruits and vegetables. I got three servings of dairy in. I used 3 flex points, but I earned 10 activity points in the WW system. So it's all a good thing to me. I finished eating about 6:30 pm and by the time I go to bed I should be in "fat burning" mode.
Life is feeling pretty satisfactory to me!
Future entries will most likely be added at the end of the day. Yesterday (Sunday) the girls and I spent some time on the patio, planting our window boxes with new flowers we picked up on Saturday. The patio is now a beautiful display of spring flowers. We also planted an azalea bush, which looks lovely on my new plant stand. I like the changes we've made to the patio, although I'm still working on trying to figure out how to make the hangers for the window boxes work. I actually pondered making them dual sides, so that the weight of the window boxes would balance out.
Today starts my marathon training. Here are the stat's I'm willing to share at the beginning of this journey. My weight this morning was 210.3, my fat percentage is 43.5, and the total fat lbs are 91.5. My exercise goals for today are 1. two mile walk 2. upper body strength 3. abdominal workout 4. stretching
Since my weight is well above 200 again, I've decided to increase my WWpoints back to 26. I figure I can work with the extra couple of points for a couple of weeks until I get back into complete control. Time to dedicate to this program and give it the time it needs to work.
It's Saturday, no alarm and I was up by 7 AM. <sigh> This weekend is the civilian spouses club Bazaar. I had to make cakes for the cake walk for the kids. I made coconut cake and chocolate cake. I have to bake more for tomorrow. I'm making yellow/ with chocolate frosting and lemon cake.
The kids and I are heading up to Wurzburg to the "big px" to do some shopping. Paul can't get his pert shampoo at his little px downrange, so I am picking some up for him, along with his favorite bath soap.
Tomorrow is the "official" start of my marathon training. Sundays will be a 20 minute walk for the first few weeks. Mondays I walk 2 miles, Tuesday is my "rest" day, Wednesday I crosstrain, Thursday I walk, Friday I crosstrain, Saturdays I walk for distance. Seems a simple enough plan. I'm kind of goosing it just a bit. The plan in the Prevention magazine I believe are for people that have not done much in the way of walking before. I've been walking fairly steadily now for a year or so, so I think I can bump mine up just a bit. We'll see. The important thing is to not injure myself.
Noting all my old entries, I find it bizarre that they reflect a late night entry, but in actuality they were typed in the early morning hours in Germany.
Paul is very good about getting to the internet cafe as often as he can. I've been lucky enough to get daily updates from him. But whereas in the beginning they were arriving at my email box first thing in the morning, the last two days thay have not arrived until late afternoon. The first day this happened it made me feel a bit aprehensive. Although you learn the concept of "no news is good news" being a military spouse, the truth is.. sometimes you can't help but worry when routines change. It didn't help that just before going to bed Wednesday night I read two articles about things happening in Afghanistan. Most people assume we are "done" there, and while it most definitely is safer than being in Iraq, it is by no means a picnic. There were two ambushes this week on military transports. No units were identified in the news brief I received, so it was kind of a panicky thing not to have my early morning mail from Paul.
I believe I'd know in my heart if something ever happened to him. During the course of his career in the military, I have accurately predicted three accidents within the units to which he was assigned. It's kind of scary when you have such certainty about things, and yet a little comforting as well because I believe I'd know before anybody could come to me with the bad news.
Thus far, all is well with him.
