Thursday madness

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.

Still on schedule

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.

Tuesday's surprise march

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

Out of the starting gate at last!

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!

Sunday's relaxing mood

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. 

Cake walks

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.

 

The Bizarreness of datelines

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.