"We aren't crazy, but we certainly aren't normal......"

"These are my people, This is where I come from
We're givin' this life everything we've got and then some
It ain't always pretty, But it's real
That's the way we were made, Wouldn't have it any other way"
These are my people

We fall down and we get up, We walk proud and we talk tough
We got heart and we got nerve, Even if we are a bit disturbed
These are my people!"

Wow! There isn’t a much better way to describe this weekend. It is hard to believe so much happened in 4 days. It is definitely going to take me longer to process it all than it took to happen.


First, the thank you’s. Donna, Phil and Noah….thank you for “the best bed and breakfast ever”. You have a beautiful family and being with you guys was amazing. Thanks for making sure I had the right food and just felt so comfortable. April and Jon, thank you for your hospitality and friendship (hope we didn’t scar your children too bad *smile*). Momma Koch…thank you for making me realize that just by existing I can make someone so happy. Mrs B…thank you for lunch, but also thank you for your candor about how you feel about not knowing a lot of what we were all going through. As a child it was always hard to understand why the adults around us weren’t stepping in to protect us, and knowing you genuinely didn’t know (both as a teacher and a parent of my classmate) made me see most people probably didn’t know and put that to rest. Shane thank you for the beautiful souvenier. Now the important one…Donna, April, Trish…the three of you are my oldest and dearest friends. You know all my warts, you know all my secrets and after 20 years it felt like we had only been apart 5 minutes. I love the three of you from the bottom of my heart (and if you ever disappear from my life again I will hunt you down and kill you *grin*) Thank you for loving me for who I am and for making me realize how amazing it is that we all turned out as great as we did. Also thank you for making this weekend so incredibly easy for me food and exercise wise! To my new friends…thanks for the laughs, and thanks for letting me be me. Oh yeah and to the cop who pulled us over for no good reason…Bite me…PLEASE! *grin*

There will be a bunch of posts about this weekend, but I figured I should start with the one that is related to the topic of the blog, food and exercise. This weekend went so much better than I had expected. Donna and April went out of their way to make sure I everything I was used to at home easily at hand and felt as comfortable in their homes as I did in mine. The party Saturday was a little more of a challenge for me. There were a lot of great desserts and food I would have loved to have had, but I am proud to say my biggest indulgence was one chocolate covered strawberry. Otherwise I did well sticking to high protein healthy foods (including the amazing buffalo meat chili Donna made for me).

I can’t say the weekend was a “piece of cake” on eating. I still had to force myself to stop and eat. More than once I realized I was skipping eating again. But in the end I would say I had one day where I ate a little too much, I had one day where I ate a bit too little, but overall it went really well.

On exercise, probably didn’t do as much as I should have. I had 2 days where I did nothing (vs the one I was supposed to have) but I did get to swim Saturday (I had an awesome little swim buddy) and we walked a bit on Sunday (probably didn’t do enough that day either) but I would say it was all ok. We’ll see when I get on the scale this afternoon *gulp*.

I have to say the best part of all of this related to my weight though, was the conversations I was overhearing other people have about my weight and this journey I am on. It was shocking to me how proud my friends were to tell other people (who didn’t even know me before this weekend) what I have accomplished weight wise and with working with the trainer. It made me feel incredibly loved and supported to have them that proud of me.

Oh and I did get a couple good laughs as they described my trainer and talked about him. There were two reactions on this topic. The first, the man should be given the Nobel prize for being the first person who has ever gotten me to follow directions, and they wanted his secret. The second, was about him being “not bad looking”. This seemed to be in the story every time they mentioned I was working with a trainer. Gui, I believe there is a group workout coming up when they all come to visit me, you have a fan club now!

I would say there are two areas I didn’t do as well as I should have on. The first is sleep, it was a bit like a 3 days slumber party, sitting up til 3am giggling and staying out way to late at a bar. Walmart is still creepy at 1am *grin*. The second is with not having the trainer around. I was as uncomfortable as I thought I would be with going that long without a formal workout session, it was only one session missed, but I just didn’t physically feel as well as I do when I have had a session with the trainer.

This is a work travel week (Bismark and San Antonio) and it is definitely going to be more of a challenge travel wise than this trip was, but after this weekend I feel ready to take on most anything…so off I go.