Fireworks Ahead!

There are fireworks going off here tomorrow!!

I have been doing a lot of serious goal setting and planning the past week or so and I'll be back tomorrow to tell you all about it. I'll recap 2011 and let you in on my plans for next year. Stop back and check it all out. In the meantime.....

Have a very Happy New Years Eve!!!!

True Confessions

It's been quite awhile since I've posted a True Confession. I just get busy and things start to get away from me. It doesn't mean that I don't have anything to say or that things are going badly.
What I have been thinking about lately is that perfection just isn't a reality in my life. I am never going to be perfect. No matter how hard I try, it is just not going to happen. But....I am okay with that.

I might be older and I may be overweight, but this body can do some amazing things. I can walk for miles. I can do a kettle bell workout with the younger girls in class and keep up just fine. I can zumba and look ridiculous and not even care.

I may never be a size 8 again. I am okay with that. It wouldn't make me a perfect person to be a size 8 again. Just like staying a size 14 won't make me a perfect person. It's okay to not be perfect. It really, truly is okay.

Here is my confession.....perfect is not for me. I will never be perfect. I won't aspire to be perfect. It's a goal that I won't reach no matter how hard I try. I am going to be happy to just be me. I will be the best me that I can be. I will continue to eat right and exercise often. I will be a good wife, mom, grammy and friend. I will help anyone who asks me to. I will laugh. I will cry. I will drink Bacardi and diet. I will enjoy the little things. And I won't be perfect and that is just fine with me.

This is my goal for the new year. I just want to be the best me I can be. I won't be perfect, but I could end up pretty awesome.

Some Sunday Night Inspiration

True Confessions

I am writing this at school on my lunch hour, so it's going to be short and sweet. I don't even have time to read the True Confessions post of the SJ website. Sorry Mel, I promise to read it after school.

Here's my confessions....
1. Ever since I got voted to Exile Island, I've been lacking. Lacking in so many things weight and fitness related. Right off the bat for the first time in the challenge I gained weight. Halloween came that same week and so did the Butterfingers.

2. I've been exercising less. I read what other people are doing in the challenge and I know that I don't have a chance in hell of doing anything big on the island. Does that me that I should just give up? Of course not, but you'd think I have with the little that I have done this week.

3. Have you ever heard of water? It sounds vaguely familiar. Could someone please refresh my memory? Somehow in the back of my mind, I think I remember it being something important.

4. Mr. Bacardi has been my friend too much this week.

5. Meal planning has gone right out the window and eating out has become too much of a weekly thing.

Do you get the picture? I know exactly what I need to do and I'm going to do it. Starting right here and right now. I'm dumping out the rest of the diet coke I have beside me and getting my water out of the fridge. You see....I bring the water to work. I just don't think of drinking it. I am stopping at the store on my way home and getting something healthy to make for dinner instead of going for the 2 meals for $20. at our favorite bar/restaurant that usually includes a few cocktails. I'm going to exercise class tonight and I really hope it's piyo.

Okay...that feels better already. I don't think there will any big losses tomorrow but check back next week. I may surprise you.

I Ran the Hood 2011 / Well, I Walked the Hood

It was a sunny but chilly morning in northwest Indiana on Saturday. It was the perfect day to "Run the 'Hood" sponsored by the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans with some family and a friend. We started out a bigger group, but we got smaller as the day approached. My son-in-law ran early so he could watch the grand kids and my daughter could walk with us. Another daughter ended up having to work and a friend wound up sick and her husband wasn't walking without her. These misfortunes took us down to a team of five.....my husband, two daughters, a friend and me. It was all good.
We all started arriving a little before 10:00. That is Mari and Sarah making their way across the parking lot. We decided to walk at Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve. I thought the colors would be pretty this time of year. With the hurricane force winds we had earlier in the week, a lot of the color was gone, but some of it stayed around for us.

Some of us had to finish our breakfast. Abby is going to kill me for this picture.

Dick made fun of the fact that last week he was a Vickie's Chickie at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk and now he was in the Sisterhood. Good thing the poor guy is secure in his masculinity.

Mari got things ready with her Run Keeper.

So off we went. It was starting to warm up a little and the views were lovely. There was still some color to see. I love the water feature in the pond and there are lots of little bridges

Mari and I took the lead with Dick, Sarah and Abby bringing up the rear. That didn't last terribly long. Mari is really a runner and she walks really fast. I kept taking pictures and getting further behind her. It was at the first water hazard that she left me in the dust.

This is the point in the story when it gets fun or should I say funny. Dick is now beginning to leave the girls and I in the dust. They are too nice to leave their mom and I keep slowing down to take pictures. I slowed down to take the picture below and tripped on a tree root and fell. All I could think about was "save the camera" and if you know me at all, you know that I love my Nikon D3000. I would never let anything happen to that camera. So good camera mommy that I am, I held the camera up and I fell. Much to my surprise, I popped right back up. Just a few scratches on my left calf and off we went. We tried to go around water hazard number 2, but it was wet all the way across. Now we had wet shoes and socks, but at least it had warmed up by then.

Before Dick left us, he said that anytime we came to a fork on the trail, we should go right. So...we came to our first fork on the trail and we turned right. Bad move! We started walking and went on for a bit and as we walked the path became less and less a path. More like matted down leaves. Abby is bringing up the rear saying that if we meet up with Bambi she is going to scream. Below is a picture of Sarah saying "Why did we listen to dad, this cannot be the right way!".

This is the part where we added an extra one mile to our walk. We turned around and headed back to the fork where we made the wrong choice. We finally get back there and we go left. We go over some more bridges and a few more water hazard's and we finally see the parking lot. Dick and Mari are waiting for us. Dick has water bottles for us and the girls tell him that he was so wrong. I tell him I fell and he says he's not surprised. I have done this before. Some of us are just fallers. Mari says she ran the last mile and a half and Dick says he's been back for about 15 minutes.

Here's my team when we finally were all reunited. Nobody was around so I could get a picture of all five of us. My time was 56:02. Not that bad when you consider we walked an extra mile. That was confirmed by my Fitbit that said I had walked 4.2 miles.

Nine weeks ago I said that I was going to run this race. I came to my senses a few weeks ago. I gave all the reasons I gave up the C25K program here. I was totally okay with walking this race today. I had some awesome one on one time with two of my daughters. Sarah is the one with the three grand kids and we almost never have a time to talk like that without the little darlings chiming in.

It was a perfect day, fall and all. If we have this race again next year, I'll be doing it and trying to recruit a bigger team. I hope you all had as much fun as I did.

p.s. I woke up this morning and went to stretch like I always do and OWWWW. My left hip and upper arm hurt. Guess I didn't quite bounce back like I thought. As I am typing this tonight, my hip doesn't hurt anymore and my arm is still sore. I'll be fine!

Shrinkvivor Week 4

Week 4!?!? Holy cow, where is this challenge going? I love the Shrinkvivor challenge. It makes me stick to a plan and dig deep trying to not get voted off the island. So far, I haven't, but then there is always tribal council tomorrow.

This week I lost one pound. I kind of thought it would be more than that, but I'll take it. I had 402 exercise minutes this week and I did a pretty good job going green. The fact that every green pepper in my garden was ripe this week helped tremendously. I did make a major decision about how I exercise just in time for the Run the Hood 5k. You can read all about that over here.

If you have a chance to try a piyo class, do it! It is a most awesome class that gives you one heck of a workout. It mixes pilates and yoga and I thought it would be kind of flowing and easy. I was so wrong. It is flowing (if you do it right) but there is nothing easy about it. I love it though. I really do. Try it if you get a chance.

Team Vickie's Chickies!

Part of my exercise minutes this week came from the 5k I did on Sunday. It was the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk and I was a proud member of Vickie's Chickies. You can read my blog post about the walk here. That is Vickie front and center in the pink fleece. She is one of my very best friends and I do this walk for her and you. As of last night, I raised $1120.00 for Making Strides. I am very proud of that. I love Vickie and I would do anything for her.

Okay, that's what went on this week. See you all at tribal council. Good luck to us all!

Shrinkvivor Week 2

Well, it's the first weigh in after the initial let's get started weigh in. I am thrilled to say that I lost 2.2 pounds. I worked hard for that loss and I'm proud of it.

I have been going to classes twice a week. We had boot camp on Thursday and Tuesday and it was brutal, but man I got a great workout. I am also doing workouts at home on different days. I logged 467 exercise minutes this week.

I'm still trying to do the C25K program. I have to admit that I won't be done by the 5k because I have repeated more than one week. I'm old and have a bad knee and a bad ankle. It is hard on my joints when I come pounding down on them with all my weight. But I keep doing it because I swore to myself that I would run the entire 5k. I don't know if that will happen or not now. It's hard and to be totally honest with you all, I do not like running. This is like the third or fourth time I've tried to run and I still hate it. I guess we just wait till October 22 and see what happens.

I've been pretty on track with my eating. I didn't have any fast food but that really isn't a challenge for me. I gave up fast food a year or so ago. I am lucky in the fact that if I try to eat it now, it literally makes me sick. I'm following an eating plan that my fitness coach set up for me and it's not too bad. I love Friday! That is my free day with no exercise and I get to eat anything I want.

Tribe Maroon become the Maroon Maniacs. I love my tribe. They are a great bunch of supportive ladies. Unfortunately, we lost one of our members before we even got started. She never weighed in for the first weigh in. I don't understand why people sign up for challenges if they have no intention of doing it. Makes no sense to me at all.

Hope everyone had a great week. I have no idea what will happen tomorrow. If I'm the first to go to Exile Island, so be it. I'd like to spend a little time here though. We'll see what happens. Good luck everyone.