Excuses, Excuses

Wow, what have we been doing for the past week? I will admit that I'm not always on the ball about posting to the blog, but it's a big difference to go from last month's record number of posts to letting the past week go by with nada. One of the things that we've been doing lately is working hard to slim down! Andy and I finally decided to put our money where our mouths were (we put money there now instead of food--it's quite low in calories) and go on a diet in hopes of losing weight and creating tone for the upcoming summer months. We have a nice beach vacation planned for July, and I am personally hoping for some positive results to ready me for those days on the sand in a swimsuit. But as you might know from personal experience...it's hard to eat right! It involves all that planning and counting and cooking and trying to muster up some enthusiasm for an afternoon snack of carrot sticks when a bowl of ice cream would do nicely. The easiest part, actually, is that we are doing this together. I have a friend in California (Hi, Jen!) who started a blog experiment to chronicle her journey of losing 40 pounds by her 40th birthday, and she has (besides her husband and toddler daughter) a pre-teen son in the house who plays sports--I can't imagine how many calories he has to eat while she sits next to him at the dinner table. If I had to carefully portion out my ounces of whole-wheat pasta with tomato sauce while Alton energetically wolfed down lasagna with extra cheese, using a steak as his fork and flour tortillas as his napkins, I think that I would start to lose my willpower! But with Andy counting out forkfuls of ground turkey meat onto the food scale alongside me, we are managing to look on the bright side of our new eating habits (the getting skinnier part) instead of salivating over Alton's leftover Easter candy (I will be so glad when those chocolate bunnies are gone).
Like my blogger friend Jen, Andy and I are doing Weight Watchers, which is actually a sensible eating plan despite my whining above, and like Jen we are incorporating exercise into our routine to help us feel energetic and fit. Instead of guiltily averting my eyes from the exercise equipment at the gym while I usher Alton into the family pool, I have been lacing up my sneakers and hitting the machines or one of the many classes our athletic club offers. After hearing good things about a salsa-dance-based exercise class called Zumba, I decided to show up on a Monday afternoon and boogie myself sweaty. Well, it kicked my ass. After 45 minutes of stepping, swiveling, kicking, jumping, shimmying, and sashaying, I had to starting modifying the routines that our instructor was demonstrating because I feared that I would misstep and sprain an ankle! My limbs Jello-fied, I headed home and stumbled around the kitchen like a klutz trying to make dinner while Alton begged Andy to read book after book. I was all thumbs and after I cut my finger trying to slice a tomato, Andy took over the cutting board and gently suggested that I go sit down while he finished things up.
I passed out exhausted in bed that night, but was surprised that I wasn't too sore when I woke up the next morning. Two days after my Zumba class, I worked out again, then again two days after that, and slowly but surely I can feel the exercise getting easier! I went to Zumba again a week after my original class and was surprised that afterward I was tired and sweaty, but not the gooey mess I was the last time. Hooray for muscles!
I was also trying to keep up the workout regimen in anticipation of Mother's Day. I knew that Andy had some meals out up his sleeve, and I was surprised on Saturday night when we went out to one of my favorite restaurants in the area, an Italian place called Mingo West. We wined and dined (the restaurant has one open-air side that overlooks a station for our Max light rail train--Alton was in heaven throughout the meal) and amazingly, after two weeks of clean livin' Andy and I were unable to finish our desserts. What?! We were weighed down with delicious but rich food and it was a good thing that we didn't have a big Mother's Day breakfast planned, because water and coffee was about all we could manage in our poor overloaded systems (we were still able to go out again to dinner again that night, however). But we loved our celebratory weekend and I felt very pampered and showered with lovely gifts from my two great guys.
(Alton and me at dinner on Mother's Day--picture with Andy's camera phone.)

We also got a little bit of outdoor work done that weekend, in preparation for our major yard overhaul! Expect more to come about this in the future. Until then, I am your lazy blogger and vow to take more pictures (or at least ask Andy to do it) and share them with you. Off to go enjoy gorgeous sunny weather!