Home Again

Last post I made near the beginning of our vacation I was pretty optimistic that I would arrive home and be at my goal weight.

Things were going well. I was behaving myself when it came to eating, I had gotten out on a run and our daily activities were keeping me going.

That didn’t last long enough. I only made it out on one more run after that, and my eating habits sucked. We ended up eating out a fair amount, and that was things like greasy pizza and big hamburgers.

We also ended up buying more snack foods and taking them with us in the car. This made it way to easy for me to grab something and eat it down. I did it way to often.

Now we’re home and I’m pretty sure I actually ended up gaining weight on this vacation. What a disappointment that is all my own fault. I’m going to have to work hard just to get back to where I was.

I’ll weigh in tomorrow morning and then I’ll know for sure just how much I’ve set myself back.

I Know What You’re Talking About

One of our visits to the local zoo my sister noticed the turtles were getting fairly, ummm, friendly with each other.

Trying to be subtle about it she comes up to me and says, “Look the turtles are playing leap frog with each other”.

My nine year old daughter comes up to me a couple minutes later,

“I know what she was talking about. We learned it in health class.”

Going with the flow

Some of our vacation hasn’t gone exactly as planned, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been great so far.

We ended up cancelling our trip into NYC yesterday as everyone felt it was going to be just too much traveling for too little time in the city.This was after we had already started driving. Instead, on the fly, we changed plans and went to a water park for the kids and then hit up a beautiful beach.

Hampton Beach has been my wife’s favorite beach for quite a while now, so no trio to New England for us would be complete with out at least a shirt visit there.
Everyone was a but disappointed that we didn’t get to go into New York, but we all had great fun anyway.

Today is our last full day here before we start making our way home. It’s a good thing we live in such a beautiful part of the world or else it would be even harder to leave this place.

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Going Through Tech Withdrawal

Before we left for this vacation I knew one part was going to be rough for me in particular. It’s a very rare occasion where I’m not able to pull out my phone and be connected to everyone and everything.

Traveling to the US with a Canadian cell phone makes that very cost prohibitive. Luckily my wife has an unlocked phone so when we arrived in of the first things we did was to sign up for a prepaid account for her phone.

But that’s her phone, and besides where we are staying the signal is not great so it’s in and out. I find myself going through a bit of a withdraw. Even though I’m obviously still able to post blog updates and check email and social networks now and again, it’s sad how not having that constant connection is so noticeable and unpleasant.

During the day isn’t even so bad. But once the kids are in bed, or when we are trying to plan something for the day, it becomes annoying.

I’m hoping after a week of this I’ll be better, but that will be just in time to go home and be back to my connected world.

For now I’ll just enjoy my family and try to relax and enjoy this time away.

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Healthy on Vacation

Coming on vacation had me a little worried about staying in a good routine. Running would still be relatively easy if I could get myself out of bed. However eating proper had me concerned.

So far that hasn’t been a problem. We’ve been packing lunches and coming back to the cottage for supper, so it’s been working out really well. In fact I’ve likely been snacking a whole lot less because of it. This morning I went for my first run and did 5k around the neighborhood our cottage is in. It’s a pretty nice area and running is a good way to get to see some of it.

The other thing that bothers me is that this is going to be the first Wednesday since New Years that I haven’t weighed in. I could of course find a scale, but I’ve used the same scale every week and I’m scared another one wouldn’t be calibrated the same.

Hopefully when I do get home and step on I’ll be at my goal. It very well could happen I’d say.

We did a bit of shopping yesterday and I bought a pair of size 32 shorts. I can’t believe I wore size 44 at one point in time.

Traveling Day

 

Nova StarWe had quite the day of traveling yesterday. We had the alarm set for 4:30am to make sure we had everything ready to leave the house by 6:00am.

Things went pretty smooth except shortly after leaving the house we had to turn around because I forgot the laptop. However, we made it to Yarmouth right on time to catch the ferry.

The NovaStar was overall a pretty pleasant experience. The kids all enjoyed the fact that they could move around and not be trapped in the car for that long portion of the trip.
Everyone of the staff members we interacted with was extremely nice and helpful.

 

Yarmouth LighthouseOne of the activities for the kids was a scavenger hunt. Part of it was to find three different ways to say “hello” by talking to staff and finding out their first language and how to say hello in it. They all dealt with the kids like pros.

If I had two suggestions to make it would be to have more in the kids area including places for parents to sit, and a wider array of movies. The other would be to have places to charge your devices. All outlets were European and needed adapters. They did have some to borrow but they seemed to run out quickly.

It was a long ride though and we didn’t get into Portland until 7:00pm local time. By the time we got off and through customs it was after 8:00. We rushed to the mall and to the T-Mobile store to setup a prepaid plan.

From there we set out driving. With my sister following behind in her car we purposely neglected to tell her that we would be driving through the city of Boston to get to our cottage.

She was pretty nervous about the trip in general, but was a champ the whole way. We made it to our cottage in Wareham MA by about 12:30am and had everyone unloaded and in beds by 1:00.

Feeling the Vacation Stress

It’s the night before our family vacation and the stress is starting to set in. I’m not entirely sure why. We’ve gone on a number of big vacations with the family and they always turn out fine.

This one feels different though. I’m not sure if it is the driving distance, it’s not much further than we’ve gone before. It might be the destination. We’re planing on several day trips around where we are staying and one of them is to go into New York City for the day. I’ve been there once myself but this time we’re going with the whole family. This includes my sister and her three little kids. Maybe it’s because I just don’t feel prepared enough.

Usually we spend a great deal of time planning out almost ever part of our trip months in advance. Due to certain circumstances we had to change up our plans and shorten the trip a little. This means that things were done more hastily than I’m used to. I used to love having no set plans and just going, but thanks to my wife I learned that things with kids go a lot smoother when there are some plans laid out. I think I’ve come to need that planning.

This is not to say that we don’t have plans. Things are still well planned, and I think they are even better planned in my wife’s head than they are in mine, so that does give me some comfort.

I know once we arrive we’re all going to have a great time so I just need to relax now and start enjoying. I’m going to get to spend lots of time with my family. We’ll be making lots of special memories and seeing lots of exciting things.

Just writing these feelings out, and reasoning them through, is already starting to make me feel better. So I’m off to finish packing and hopefully make sure we don’t forget anything important.

When You’re Right, You’re Right

A couple months ago my son was asking my wife about her wedding rings. He wanted to know why she had two different rings.

Jen explained to him that one was the wedding band and one was the ring I gave her when I asked her to marry me.

“Mommy, why did Daddy ask you to marry him?”

“Because he loves me!”

Satisfied, he turns to his friend and says:

“Yeah my Dad asked my Mom to marry him cause she was the bestest one”

As the saying goes, when you’re right, you’re right.

It’s Rough Getting Old

A couple weeks ago my nine year old daughter sort of limps up to me. She takes her right leg and moves it back and forth and says, “when I do this it hurts my leg”. She then proceeds to do something very similar with her left leg but moving it in a different fashion, “and when I do this the other leg hurts”.

I asked her a couple questions about whether she had done anything to hurt it, how long it had been happening and so on. Her response:

“I think they just hurt because I’m getting so old.”

Jul 23rd, 2014 Weigh In

Weigh in for July 23rd, 2014: 181.0 lbs