Smooth Sailing

The USS Jack and Ella

Ella and Jack loved fixing up an old carton into their boat yesterday.  Each side is painted a different color and, by the end, we had seats (stadium seats leftover from our days cheering on their Daddy and the Georgetown track team), a number for the boat (68 at Ella's insistance), and a nice rope attached at the front so I could pull them across the deck.  And the best thing?  They loved it so much that they wanted to take it home!  My decorating plan doesn't really have room for a small boat. . . .

My life has had happy sailing since my last post, too.  I lost 2.2 pounds at my WI on Wednesday (26. 6  since Christmas).  I also dipped down into the next decade--yay!  I record my weight every morning and enter it onto the physicsdiet.com site.  I love how it coverts them into an average weight, so that the minor fluctuations in weight don't have such an impact on the graph.  On the graph, green is good.  Here's my graph since Jan 1st.  There are a few spikes (red) and plateaux, but the trend is good.  You can spot the three dramatic down trends when I did 17DD cycle I (beginning of Feb was the first and I'm just finishing the most recent).  My average is just about 1 pound per week.

I had to squeeze in my run this morning to get to my hair app't on time, so I ran faster.  Another minute off my pace!  Notice my little Nike+ runner girl in the upper part of the side bar.  The pace there says 13:04 per mile, but that's the cumulative pace for all my runs and walks over the past few years.  The pace kept going up as I mostly walked last year, but it's definitely turned around.  I'm hoping to make the Nike+ girl's pace go back under 13 by the end of next week.  Today's pace was 10:53 per mile. :-)   My method of running for an increasing distance every time my ipod announces that 5 more minutes have passed works really well for me.  I'm now running 80% of the time (run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute).  I'm going to have to  start running earlier though, the weather is edging into the 90s and definitely getting more humid.

We're driving down to Wilmington NC next week to celebrate my FIL's 90th birthday.  We're rented a huge beach house that will accomodate 12 of us (DH and me, all our children, their spouses, and all the grands.  It should be really fun.  I've planned the party.  A tea party.  According to the RSVPs we'll be about 35.  I'm going to bake (scones and brownies) before we go, Laura is going to make the birthday cake (she has a white thumb!), and I'll get fresh fruit when we're there.  Pink lemonade for the kids, clotted cream and strawberry jam for the scones, some nuts, a nice selection of teas and we're calling it on the food offerings.  I found a rental place there that assures me I can walk in and walk out with teacups, linens and whatever else we need.  I've reserved the poolside clubhouse at my FIL's condo, sent the invitations, have supplies for the grandkids to make a happy birhday poster, and am running out today to buy a box of balloon magic (helium, balloons, and necessary acoutrements in a box).

We'll be returning from Wilmington with three of our grandchildren in the car! Ella and Jack are going to stay for a couple extra days (John and Tobey have to get back to work on Monday and this works out for childcare and gives them a chance to be with their cousins longer).  We'll also have Rose, Laura's youngest who is eight and enjoying her first solo summer visit with us.  (We've worked out a great deal with Laura and David--we get to have their kids come here  for a few weeks in the summer when they're 8, 11, and 14.  It works out so that we get one child each year and we have a lot of fun.  Ben (11) will come next year, and then Jeannine (14) the year after that!  We'll have a wonderful time!

Rose when she was 7.

We're going out to dinner tonight!  One of DH's international students (he teaches an advanced law course at Georgetown) invited us to dinner to meet his parents.  They are Italian and we'd had the student to dinner a while ago.  We lived in Italy for a few years and have some other connections.  It should be fun.  We're going to the Chart House in Alexandria.  I've got to peruse the online menu to make my choices, though my brain is trying to remind me about their Mississippi mud pie.  I'm trying to ignore that, we'll see.

Hoping to take a nice long bike ride, tomorrow.

We Interrupt this Long Hiatus to Bring You a Post!

Hi all!

Yes, I'm still here, and yes I'm doing just fine.  In the month since I've posted, I've survived a two week killer-cold, hosted my aunt and sister for a week-long visit, biked over 100 miles, run 36 miles (mostly in the past week), shaved more than a minute off my running pace, lost 8 pounds according to my morning weight record, fit back into some formerly-too-tight clothing, and generally done well and felt great about my progress.  I'm still there.  Sorry for the lack of posting.  I'm still trying to find a balance between my workouts and my connections with you.  I pretty much kept current on your posts, but I've slacked off on composing posts.  I miss it.  That cold really did knock me out--I was taking afternoon naps every day and going to bed super early and doing no structured exercise.  Maybe I can catch the wave again about posting.  Hope so.

The 17DD/WW Core combination is continuing to work well for me.  The WW Core plan calls for limiting grains/pasta to whole grain varieties and to one portion per day.  I had no trouble with the whole grain part, but, in the past, I'd edged up to three portions per day.  With the 17DD influence, I've reduced that component to less than one portion per day.  Eating bread and pasta always makes me want more bread and pasta.  Not eating them, makes me lose weight more easily and I'm over early cravings for them.  I choose losing weight and no cravings.  I eat pretty simply, but we occasionally work in a dessert or a dinner out.  I'm practicing portion control--it makes a real difference.  We haven't used the dinner size plates for a couple weeks--that trick of small plates making the offering look bigger works!

My DIL has gotten a great internship which has her working long days.  My responsibilities with the youngest grandchildren keep me on my toes three days a week.  Today after nap time (did I mention I LOVE nap time) we did art.  Jack made a motorcycle out of saved milk bottle caps, mini-popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.  Ella made a ballerina doll out of wooden beads, pipe cleaners, scrap material, and yarn.  Each was quite pleased with his/her project.  Art is not my strong point, but love and a well-stocked art box go a long way.  I'm happy to let them do as much as they can--Jack had a ball painting the bottle-cap, motorcycle wheels  orange.  I wield the glue gun, and help out with cutting and other tricky parts, but they do a lot themselves.  They actually come up with a lot of good ideas.

I'm really pleased with my running recently. It took me so long to feel comfortable about running after my surgery a year ago March, that I really thought I'd probably not run again.  Not so.  I'm finding I look forward to running and while I'm not planning a late life career as a marathoner, I think there's a lot of running in my future.

I'll leave you with some random pix from the past few weeks.

Ella and Jack decided DH's soccer cones would make great hats.

There is a bumper crop of poison ivy growing all along my
favorite running path.  I'm hyper allergic and hyper careful!

I had a great day biking with Sharon (Gains and Losses).
This was the beginning of the WO&D trail.

Dame's Rocket was blooming all along the
trail that day.  Beautiful and fragrant.  

More WO&D.   Doesn't this make you want to grab
your bike and come to Virginia??

Wild iris growing along the running path today.  I probably could
have had an even better pace had I not stopped to snap a few pix!

I'm at that very happy place where I'm entirely sure that I will reach my weight loss and fitness goals. This year. Maybe by the end of summer.  Once again, I'll try to be better about posting more often so you can peek in on my journey.

Ciao for now!