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 🙂

New Delicious Snack

My sister recently went through a big round of canning things and lucky me I got to benefit without doing any of the work. The main thing she did was a bunch of homemade salsa.

We’ve already gone through a couple jars ourselves because it is very yummy. I was searching for something to use with it besides nacho chips so I could eat a whole bunch and saw someone recommend cucumber. I’ve been eating this for a snack the past few days and I love it. The slices of cucumber work almost like nacho chips except they are much healthier, but they still taste great.

Not sure what I’ll do when I run out of this tasty salsa but maybe store bought will have to do. For now though I’ve found my go to snack I’d say.

Lots of Salsa
Wish this was all mine

Dear Brianna Lynne

Even after 12 years the end of August is still a hard time for me. Yesterday kept us busy, which was good, but I was thinking of you anyway and today has given me even more time to.

Sandy McFadden's avatarSandy McFadden

Dear Brianna Lynne,

Eleven years ago today, a day that will be forever etched into my memory. Some of the details and the timing of things have started to slip, but the feelings I felt that day will stay with me forever.

I’ll be honest, you were a bit of a surprise to your Mother and I. We hadn’t planned on having kids right away. Although we loved each other, in those early stages of our relationship I’m not sure either of us really knew where things would end up. Both of us had just left less than ideal situations so the possibility of things not lasting were very real. So when she told me that we were going to have a baby there were mixed feelings. I wanted to be sure that my next child was brought into a strong healthy relationship that would build the foundation for a…

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Hard to Eat Right

Sometimes it’s very hard to eat right in my house. The smell of these is driving me crazy.

Cookies
mmmmmm cookies