Claire, It's good to hear that your mother is on the mend. It is so hard dealing with illness especially with your loved ones. I hope that she does get to come home on the weekend. I bet she is looking forward to getting home and out of the hospital. Keep us posted Claire.

Thanks Tammy. Yup, you're right its really tough......But when I visited today she managed to walk, unaided, along the corridor, and up and down a flight of stairs. Which is great! So the plan is for her to come home on Friday.....she's been told to stop eating low-fat, and start eating full-fat, because she needs building up....so lots of chocolate, cheese and ice-cream....hmmm. Not when I'm around, I hope!

Claire, wow, it does seem like your mom is on the mend. Walking un-aided is a wonderful accomplishment for her. I'm guessing she probably lost alot of weight in those two weeks that she could not eat, so I really hope that she pigs out and gets her strength back. I guess that might be hard for you if you are around during the times she eats. I suppose if you have to you could just step out of the room when she is eating if you are there. It's great that she is going to get to come home earlier than you all thought. Take care Claire it is great that you are able to be with your mom so much while she is in the hospital. I'm sure it means alot to her.

I can certainly realate to how hard it is having a family member sick and in the hospital. It's like the whole world stops and nothing else matters. I'm so glad that she is feeling somewhat better.

Things here are going Ok. I have a doctor appt today. I have come down with an upper respitory infection. Need drugs. I just had one of these a couple of months ago. yuk!!

Hope everyone is enjoying their week!

Hey guys and gals,
well week one of supposedly getting my act back together is over, and I was far from getting my act back together, but somehow Mr. Scale decided to bless me with a 1 lb loss. I was quite pleased. So today I'm really on track. I'm writing every bite, and I've managed to resist munchkins, hershey's kisses, and ordering chinese for lunch (a HUGE temptation!!) So I'm feeling proud. I even spent time with Dr. Phil's book doing some bookwork, and I plan on at least doing muscle exercises tonight, and hopefully jumping rope for 5 minutes. That is one **** of a workout by the way, the first time I did it I almost died of exhaustion. I am ready to kick some butt, that's for sure.

I hope you are all doing well!! hugs to everyone, and it may take a bit before I get back in the full swing of saying howdy to everyone.

Go B.A.! Good job with the Chinese, that's a *really* hard one for me...
Go Holly!

About my trip to Spain for anyone who is interested, I've had a few questions about where I will be going lately, so, here's a little schedule:

June 17th -- we're leaving at 3 a.m. from my home to go to Minneapolis to fly to Chicago to fly into Madrid.
18th-21st --- We will be spending in Madrid with excursions to Segovia and Toledo.
22 & 22 ----- We will be in Grananda with an excursion to Alhambra and Sevilla
25-30 ------- Spending five nights with a Spanish family in Huelva, and one more night in Madrid.
July 1 ------- Flying back to U.S.


I'm SOOO EXCITED. I've been told to expect walking up to 10 miles/day for the first week, so I need to get practicing on that. Someone kick my butt...

I start a new temp job Monday, unfortunately, it is only part time, for someone's maternity leave.

I have a family reunion picnic this Sunday, that should be fun.

Friday I go back to the gym to be re-evaluated by the head trainer.

BA, baby steps, babe.

Sandi, hope you're feeling better.

Claire, glad your mom's doing better.

BarbyGirl, how was the Adult Happy Meal?

Gretchen, that sucks about your gym.

Apryl, congrats on the bankcard.

Tammy, being in a military family is hard. My dad is USAFRes & goes for his 2 weeks soon. *hugs*

Holly, congrats on South Beach!!

IceWoman, sounds like a fun weekend!

Ivanna, I think the blahs are being passed around, I've had them for the last week!

Julie, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii *waves*

I had such a good day yesterday until....

Well let me get to the good part first. I ate well up through dinner. My salad for dinner from mickey d's was okay and my pedometer doesn't seem to work well but I have one from slimfast that you clip to your shoe that works well. So anyway after eating at McDs I drove the 35 minutes home, strapped the 2 kids into the wagon (William in his car seat and Lilly just in the seat) and started walking. I get to the road in front of the house and realize I'm going to need william's binky so I walk back down the drive and into the house to get him one. I take back off down the road and walk to the cemetery up the road, walk around the cemetery and look at graves and head back home. It's probably about 2 miles total (I'll drive it tonight to see just how far it is). I got home, got william fed and in bed and lilly put to bed as well.

I needed to do some cleanup on the computer. I had to update our anti-virus database (we had 5 viruses BTW) and download a firewall and spyware killer. I highly recommend all of you get these if you don't already. We had over 1000 spyware junk on our computer that has been making it run super-slow. I'm still working on getting a decent free firewall.

So now for the bad. I wasn't really hungry but I had some cappuccino chocolate chunk ice cream in the freezer (it's 3 pts. a serving). Now why I didn't go ahead and measure me out 1 or even 2 servings I still do not know. I had the points for it. But NO I took out the 1/2 gallon (there was about 1/2 a container left) and spoonful by spoonful ate the whole thing without so much as a second thought. I didn't feel bad about eating all of it either. I just calcuted my point I used eating it and dipped into my flex points. I'm sure I earned a few activity points as well but I never mess with calculating them. I will when I start going down in points.

Lesson learned: do better at my self talk asking the key questions before eating and stop breaking one of my rules I'm trying to set for myself--only eat in the kitchen!

Dawnyal, Don't be to hard on yourself. You realized what you did wrong and you can try to avoid it next time. To avoid temptation I have not really bought any ice cream in so long. I love it, and I don't think I am ready yet to have it in my freezer and it not be a huge temptation for me.

SAPF, good luck with your temp job. Kind of bummer it is only part-time but at least it is something.

Apryl, you are such a lucky girl!! Have a great time on your trip. Wow, 10 miles a day?? You will be getting some great exercise.

Beth Ann, Nice job on the pound loss. It is nice when the scale is good to us when we were not quite as good as we should have been for the week. It's great to hear how motivated you are!!

Sandi, Yuck!! Being sick is the pits. I hope that you are feeling better soon. It really stinks to have just gotten over one a couple of months ago and then come down with another one. Maybe your immunes system is just not back to normal yet from all the stress you have been dealing with and are still dealing with.

funny story -

went swing dancing last night, it was only semi-fun, less good leads (aka males) and surprisingly, all good dancers DIP ME!! they'd stopped even trying because i was so big, you know? (i used to still go to swing at my largest weight). they pretty much wouldn't even ask me to dance, but if they did, no dip. so its really hard for me to get used to... i can't believe they can support my body weight! it's really fun, though!

hey, that might even be an NSV, huh?

Just popping in to say hello ladies and any of the resident gents hanging around. Today was my sons 7th birthday and we had a party at the playground. It was sooooo cold and the wind was tearing all the decorations down. But he had a great time anyway. We went to some memorial day fireworks after and tommorow we are going to the movies. Today was the first time in a long time I had a truely off program day and i feel lousy for it. It was planned but i feel yucky and not satified at all! I feel much less hungry when I eat on plan. I should take note of this but I know it wont be the last time but hopefully it wont happen again for a very long time.

Sorry that you had a bad day Julie. Don't beat yourself up to badly. You made a small mistake and it sounds like you took a good lesson from it. That day is behind you now and you have many great days ahead.

Took the words right out of my mouth, Tammy!

Holly: Yay! That must be so exciting. Congratulations.

Holly it is just awesome when things like that happen. Makes all the hard work so worth it.

Claire, did your mom get to come home??

Hi guys, just popping in to say hello.

Julie - its just one day....put it behind you, and I'm sure tomorrow you'lle do better, and feel better..

Holly - thats a great NSV...I love dancing too, but never tried line dancing...

Tammy - thanks for asking, yup, my mum came home on Friday. She's very weak, and very tired, and having difficulties eating much, but at least she is home! I guess it will take around 3 months for her to recover, but at least things are moving in the right direction....