Midweek Check in and I’m Feeling Down

I’ve been feeling really good about my eating this week the same as last week, and I moved to a new week in my workout program that has been kicking my butt. Running has been going just about the same as always. I’m working at getting faster and getting a good number of runs in. So when I hopped on the scale this morning for a midweek check in I was depressed. So far I’ve actually gone up in weight this week.

I’m hoping this was just an off morning and I’m going to keep pushing the same as I have been, but it was pretty demoralizing seeing me go the wrong direction.

Luckily I’ve made pretty good progress the previous weeks so I was on good track to meet my goal, but I don’t know if I can still meet it if I actually go backwards.

Today was going to be a break day from running, but after seeing that I think I better get out there and kick my own butt some more.

Chocolates, Oh My!

A few nights back I happened upon a Twitter party going on for the upcoming BlogJam conference that is coming up. I interacted a bit because I’m genuinely excited about attending. At the end I saw a tweet from them saying I had won a prize. I didn’t even realize there were prizes to be won!

Turns out the prize was a gift box of chocolates from Rousseau Chocolatier in Halifax. Not the best gift for someone who is working hard at watching what they eat to lose weight, but oh my I was excited anyway.

rousseau

The other night at the Refresh Annapolis Valley get together I was delivered the prize. I figured I would be strong and bring them home to Jen. I gave in yesterday afternoon and opened it up and ate one. Now I’m going to be battling myself not to eat the rest of the box because it tasted as delicious as they look.

Photo 2015-09-09, 3 02 27 PM

A big thanks to both BlogJam and Rousseau Chocolatier for this awesome treat!

Labour Day Long Weekend

This past weekend was Labour Day weekend. In past years it was always our last little get away for the summer. This year though the kids started school a couple days before and we had a few getaways this summer already so we didn’t take off. We did have lots of fun though. It was also a little sad though too because it was my sister and brother in laws last days here with us before flying home yesterday.

Saturday we did a trip around the lower part of the province.

trip

Sunday we went to the shore to celebrate my brother in laws birthday with a bunch of people. We cooked wieners on the beach and had some s’mores and other treats. It was a nice relaxing day on the beach.

Monday Caile and Ella were in a parade for their dance company. They danced their way through the whole parade even though it was a really hot day. They’re not scared of some hard work. Once the parade was done we headed out to a lake with everyone to cool off and spend some last time with our visiting family.

Getting Out and Being Social

This is something I struggle with. Working from home I am always interacting with co-workers and other people, but it is all online. As a family we go and do lots with other families and this is wonderful. Our group of friends are a great group and I always have a lot of fun with them and talking to them. Having these in person relationships and conversations are essential for me to stay a sane person.

Tonight I went out to a meeting with a group I haven’t been to in way to long, Refresh Annapolis Valley. There were three presenters tonight and they were all unique. Renée Downs is one of the organizers of the upcoming conference BlogJam in Halifax. She spoke about being a reluctant blogger and her story how she got started. Cheri Killam spoke about her year long project she’s undertaken called 5 Down. I’ve been following along and it’s an extremely interesting project, I encourage you call to take a look. The last speaker was Laura Churchill-Duke talking about her site and blog Valley Family Fun.

Equally beneficial to hearing the speakers is just the social interaction with other people. There were new people who I met for the first time and there were friends who I hadn’t seen or talked to for some time. Just tonight I’ve been invited to speak at a future Refresh event about WordPress. Tonight I also got talking with a professor who asked me to come be a guest lecture about WordPress to one of her business classes.

After getting a little taste I’m now even more looking forward to going to BlogJam and hearing and talking to more Bloggers in real life and to the upcoming first meeting for the Halifax WordPress Meetup.

Welcome Back Old Friends

It’s almost the end of summer, but today I welcome back some old friends. They had been packed away in a tote under my bed for a while now.

After my successful weigh in yesterday I decided to see if they were ready to come back. Today I’m wearing a pair of size 34 shorts again!

Still have a good ways to go just to get back to where I was last year, but I’m getting stronger, lighter, and faster, every day. 

Week Three Summary

This week I maid much closer attention to how much food I was eating. Even though I’ve been eating and snacking on pretty good and healthy food I’m pretty sure I was still eating to much of it. Meals were OK but I was eating a lot of fruit especially in between meals as snacks. As a result I’ve been much happier with my results this week.

Due to some scheduling things, just generally being sore, and not feeling overly well this week I only put in four runs. Even though they were only four I was still pretty happy with my progress. The two 5k’s this week were at a pace I was happy with, and I put in two longer runs this week working my way towards my 10k goal. I did a 6k earlier in the week and a 7k this morning. Evenings worked out better and I was able to get my six workouts in this week. 

Now for the results:

Last week: 206lbs
Now: 201lbs
Lost: 5lbs

Now that’s more like it. A total of 15lbs lost since I started documenting this for formally. Puts me back on a good track to be at my end goal after 8 weeks.

week-three.png

Day at the Beach

We had a long but fun day today. Seemed like a lot of driving, because it was, but we broke it up with stops along the way. To start we got up bright and early and headed down one shore of Nova Scotia to visit Jen’s Grandparents.

We unfortunately don’t get down very often, but it was great to visit for a while. They have a new dog since the last time we visited so the kids were especially excited to meet her.

When we left there we headed up the other shore of Nova Scotia towards Thomas Raddall Provincial Park. My sister a bunch of great friends were camping there so we meet up with them for the afternoon. There is a beautiful beach there that we spent most of the time on. The kids built sand castles and caught crabs. We had never been to this beach before and it is up there with one of my favourites now.

We then headed back to the camp sites where the kids ran and played with each other between different ones while we cooked up some supper. We had little portable bbq, portable stove, and camp fire all going cooking up stuff. Once again I was good and prepared and brought a better alternative with me to eat instead of the delicious burgers that everyone else was having 🙂

No camp fire can be complete with some s’mores for desert. Even though I was roasting marshmallows for them. I stayed away from those as well.

Evening Family Walk

This evening we went for a wonderful family walk. My sister is still home visiting with her husband so a bunch of us got together to take Finney for a walk around  Miners Marsh.

With us came my mom and my brother in laws parents as well. It was a perfect evening to be out. The kids each took turns walking Finney and thought it was great. The marsh is probably my favourite place in town. I end up using it as part of my runs a lot because of that.

Evening Walk at Miners Marsh
Walk in Miners Marsh
Walk in Miners Marsh

Back to School Pictures

The kids headed back to school this morning. I gathered up a few of the first day of school pictures over the past few years. These are the ones I could easily find figured it would be good for TBT

First Day of School 2013
First Day of School 2012
First Day of School 2015
First Day of School 2010
First day of School 2014
First Day of School 2009

Tomorrow is the Day

Tomorrow is the first day of school for the year for all our kids. This is also the first year they’ve been split up over three different schools as Caile starts at the middle school.

In my head I know everything will be fine but I’m a little stressed at the logistics of the whole thing. Getting kids to and from school, parent teacher nights, and school concerts, there could be a lot of overlapping.

Getting kids to school isn’t going to be too bad, but pick ups I can see being a pain. They all get out at different times and there is an hour in the difference between the earliest and the latest.

It looks like most days it’s going to involve multiple trips towards the schools. It gets more interesting when extracurricular a get scheduled shortly after school gets out for some because it will make it tight picking some up, dropping one off here, going back to pick up another.

It’s a good thing Jen is so organized and I have the flexibility in my schedule that I do or this would be a lot tougher to manage than it’s already going to be 🙂