I think I am getting bored.

Today for breakfast, I did not juice.  I was running late and really just needed to get out of the house. So I grabbed some carrots and away I went.  I don't think it was that bad of a choice.  When I got home I was in a hurry - as always - to get Jordan to Wildcat.  So I grabbed an apple and headed out the door. Both times I made sure to take water. 
I think just juicing and juicing might drive me bonkers.  Yesterday I only juiced once.  But I didn't eat badly either.  Today we headed to the food coop to look for some vegan alternatives.  I have been reading labels at my regular grocery store as well, just to see what is going to be doable in the future.  While I was at the coop I got some Boca burgers and whole wheat vegan buns.  So tonight for dinner I am going to have a veggie burger and sweet potatoes. I am really looking forward to it.  It will be a different taste I haven't had in my mouth in several days.  I still had a large salad for lunch....so I am still right on my program.  Tonight I add a little grain.  We shall see how I feel. 

What I learned today...

I learned that cantaloupe is better for eating rather than juicing.  It tasted kind of weird, and it made my morning juice more like a smoothie.

I learned that Quaker Steak and Lube has very little in the way of vegetarian meals.

I learned that I can resist the 4 wheeler at Quaker Steak and Lube, which consists of onion rings, fried pickles, mozzarella sticks, and soft pretzels.  Used to love all those things.  Tonight we went and I didn't have a bite.

I learned that I can resist birthday cake and ice cream even if it is from my own kid's cake.

I also learned this weekend that I need to be more vigilant about my water.  My weight loss has slowed, and I'm sure it's because I haven't been drinking my water like I should be.

It's been an interesting weekend with grilling, eating out and cake, but I have resisted it all.  I find myself thinking, "Surely I can have one thing..."  but I haven't had anything that isn't on my list yet.  I hope I can keep up with this program for at least another 10 days.

Day 9 of the Reboot!

I am really bad about this blogging thing.  I get so busy and don't find time to write. And I know I really should blog and get out all the crazy things that run around inside my head.  Especially now that I have been doing the juice reboot.  I have been juicing for 9 complete days now.  I honestly didn't think I would make it this far. But lo and behold here I am. So after 9 days I have lost 13 lbs.  I feel wonderful.  I think this program has been so easy for me because I really like vegetables.  In the morning I usually have a couple of apples and carrots with maybe some celery added in.  For lunch I have mostly vegetables, celery, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, and maybe an apple thrown in. Sometimes I don't have the apple.  For dinner I have a salad or stir fried vegetables.  I have added in a few black beans in my stir fries and salads for some extra fiber.  The only place I seem to be having problem is getting in all my water.  However, I figured out a solution to that problem.  Starting tomorrow I will be filling up a 2-liter bottle with my water and make sure I get every drop into my body.  I know I can do this! 
The best part about this whole thing is that all the swelling is gone from my legs.  I never even thought of how swollen they were until I could push on them and move the muscles in my calves.  Another bonus is that I no longer need an afternoon nap.  I have even tried to take one and I don't fall asleep. 
The hardest part I have encountered is the amazing smells that come from my kitchen when the kids' meals are being prepare.  I thought I was going to lose it the other night when they were having spaghetti with my homemade spaghetti sauce and garlic bread!  OMG that was hard.  And then this weekend we had Jordan's birthday party, we grilled hot dogs and there were chips, snack mix, smores and M&Ms.  I have no idea how I made it through, but I did.  I didn't even lick my fingers when they were covered with sticky marshmallow.  Tomorrow the family comes for cake and ice cream...I will not have any!
Tomorrow will mark the end of my 10 day phase.  I told myself I was going to take this 10 days at a time.  I went to the store and bought more veggies for juicing...so I am about to embark on another 10 days.  I am planning on doing at least 30 days and then I believe I will switch over to Engine 2 diet, which is basically eating a plant based diet, concentrating on whole foods.  I will probably at least continue to juice once a day.

Day 2 of Reboot

About two weeks ago I watched the movie, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead."  I was quite inspirational and I really thought it was about time to get my self together and lose the weight that is making me so unhealthy.  I plan on juicing for 10 days and see where I am. I am hoping to lose at least 10 lbs in this first phase.  At the end of the 10 days I will probably go for another 10.  I really want to lose a total of 20 lbs this month! I think by losing a chunk (so to speak) at the beginning it will inspire me to keep going.  I want to lose at least 120 lbs. Although I have to admit I would be thrilled with 100.  As soon as the first few days are up I plan on getting on an exercise plan as well.  A friend of mine is doing the coach to 5K plan which seems to be working very well.  Good for her! I have to give her kudos for continuing in this heat. It's been at least 95 or hotter every day for the last week.  Hopefully the heat wave will break before we head to Bash - which is 4 days of camping on a fairgrounds.  Not a lot of shade.  We don't want to melt this year!

GeoWoodstock X Adventure (part 2 - the weird hotel room)

I love to get deals on hotels.  So, I use Priceline quite often. I have been pretty happy with our rooms, and I can't think of one really bad hotel room we have gotten. In fact, most of the time I am pleasantly surprised at what a great deal I usually get.  For GeoWoodstock X we were booked at the Days Inn in Jeffersonville, IN.  I checked it out on the internet, ad although it didn't have a whole lot of amenities, I thought it would be fine.  We show up at the hotel and the first thing I realize is that there is only one bed and it's not a king size bed at that.  Normally when you book on Priceline you get a double room - 2 queen size beds.  I am not sure this Days Inn had that kind of bed.  The next thing I notice is the bathroom.

 Here is the shower, it barely has a lip to keep the water in.  I mentioned this and Dave said, well if it leaks out there is a drain in the middle of the floor it can drain into.  Good point.  The water definitely did not stay in the shower.  The second thing was that there was a seat in the shower...we did not request a handicapped shower.  It was really no big deal until I realized it was the only place to put my shampoo.  There were no soap dishes at all.

So, as you can see, I just threw everything on the seat and went with it.  The other thing I noticed was that apparently giants frequent here as the shower heads are almost to the ceiling.  Dave adjusted the shower and I had to jump to put it back where I wanted it.                                
We will not even discuss the patched paint job.  I didn't get that at all.  Especially when there was a sign outside that said, "Yes, we are now open."  Maybe you should have waited until the painting was done before opening. Then next thing I noticed was the amount of safety features in this room. All these devices were on the wall of the main room, and the bathroom.  Yes, one says "door bell", but I never saw a door bell anywhere!

 I must give the Days Inn kudos in the fact the are trying to be creative in their decor.  This was hanging above our bed, and on the wall right next to the bed.

Isn't it lovely? It had metallic in it and everything.  Did I mention we are about a mile from Kentucky?  And yet, the Indian motif is what they decided to go with?  And I'm not even sure that's it's Indian either.  The one downfall for this trip for Dave had to be the coffee.  The packet for the coffee says it makes four cups.  He tried that, it tasted like water.  So he attempted to make just one cup...that didn't do it either.  We ended up at Waffle House for coffee.

Worthless coffee pot, since the coffee grounds are so weak.  But cool sink!

Our GeoWoodstock X Adventure part 1

I think I am going to try something a little different with this blog.  I am going to start writing about some of the trips we have been taking. 

This last weekend we headed down to Sellersburg, IN for GeoWoodstock X.  For those that don't know we are geocachers, which means me use multi-million dollar satellites to find tupperware in the woods.  We have a lot of fun and meet some wonderful people.  GeoWoodstock is a Mega-event, which means more than 2500 people will be descending on a little town in Indiana.  It was very close to Louisville, so we spent some time there as well. 
Our Friday night began with the Miles of Smiles event where we could pick up our registration packets and t-shirts.  The bag we got was pretty cool, had geocache containers, logs and our laynards for our tags.  We also got pathtags and our badges.  We headed over to get our t-shirts, and were none too thrilled to find out that the t-shirts were solid black.  OMG - the forecast for Saturday was supposed to be 98 degrees!  I will not be wearing that shirt on Saturday.  Oh well, it's good for other times.

 This is the event as we approached from the North.  We had to drive around the block to find parking. 










 The big blow up sign! GeoWoodstock! We finally made it. 









 This is one of the smilies. They had the streets lined with them and all you had to do was follow the signs.  They also had them set up for the next day, which was good because it would have been tough to find otherwise.

 This is Jon, myself, Dave, Brian, Michelle, Angie, Tim and Heather having dinner at Rocky's.  They had wonderful food.  And even though I was not too thrilled about sitting outside, I was certainly glad we did since we had this wonderful view of Louisville.  Of course, no trip is complete without Brian showing us his boobs.





 On Saturday with the temperatures soaring we headed into Sellersburg for the main event.  We knew it was going to be hot, but you just don't know how freaking hot until you are standing in a field with very little cover.  Thank goodness for the sno cone vendor and little bits of shade here and there.  Even with some shade I was done by 2:30, I had wanted to stay much later but just didn't have it in me.

 You can barely see them, but up on the hill they spelled out GeoWoodstock X in huge letters.  The balloon was here for awhile, but even the heat put that down within a couple hours.

 Signing the 3D log. 

 Larry Davis aka Super Genius as Signal the Frog  He was so animated and fun.














Saturday night brought another meet up with friends for dinner.  After a nice cool shower I researched some places to eat and came up with Buckhead Mountain Grill.  We piled in there for some refreshments and pretzel bread and were good to go.

 The pretzel bread with beer cheese was pretty yummy, but huge portions!

 Alex smiling behind his pacifier in his sleep.  We were at dinner for over two hours and he was perfectly content.  He had some bananas, a bottle and when it was time for us to eat he was fast asleep. 

 The very tired, scorched crew.

Crazy but fun weekend!

Our first camping trip of the season was last weekend.  We had planned to go to Mounds State Park, but we changed our minds because a situation happened that made us all want to really be together rather than split up over a couple of parks. 
As the trip approached I found out that I was going to have to have the kids but my ex-husband had something going on.  This was going to prove interesting since Adam had a math thing at IPFW and Lindsay had a volleyball tournament.  But I decided that changing the trip to Pokagon State Park with our friends would solve the problems.  I would be close enough to return home to get Lindsay and Adam on Saturday. And then I started watching the weather forecasts...it was not looking good.  It was supposed to be very cold with chances of rain and even sleet.  I just told everyone to pack warm and see what happens.  And on top of all that I also knew the next week after our trip was going to be Finals week and I would be overloaded with studying, and I had a huge project I needed to get done for Holy Cross. But with all that going on I decided a relaxing weekend was on the agenda.  I worked hard all week to get all my homework complete so I didn't have anything left over when we got home.  It took me until Thursday night, very late, but it was done.  I got home on Friday, we packed the cars, waited for Jordan to get out of school and away we went.
The first thing we realized was that we had forgotten a tent.  So Dave and I set up Jordan's tent and headed into town.  We started at Walmart, but I was not impressed with their selection.  However, on our way out we find dishes that match our current set that Target had discontinued.  Finally!  We now have enough plates that match for everyone.  Bought the plates, Jordan a pair of jeans (I forgot his clothes), and headed over to Dunham Sports.  We found an 11 person tent for $120!  It was huge.
We went back to camp and set it up.  I felt like I needed a road map to find my way around. 
Since there were so many of us, 20 in all, we had teamed up with everyone and Katie's stepmom agreed to cook meals if we all chipped in ingredients...DEAL!  She put out an amazing spread and we ate like kings all weekend long.  We socialized around the fire, dodged the rain and sleet - it did downpour on Saturday morning and had a great time.  I traveled back home to pick up Lindsay and Adam.  Since it was so cold on Saturday, and pouring I decided to just come home in my pajamas and take a shower here at home.  That was really nice.  I also was able to pick up an extra air mattress for Amber since her's had sprung a leak.
All was going well, it was cold, but nothing that couldn't be managed.  We started packing up on Sunday and Fred noticed that there was something wrong with the truck.  He had broken a brake line, and if that wasn't bad enough, he was towing their trailer.  Thank goodness he found it at the campground and not on the Interstate.  Amber had Gold AAA which would get the truck towed back to Fort Wayne, and the tow driver even hooked up their trailer!  Because we had driven separately we had room for Fred, Katie and Jeremiah to ride back with us.  It just shows how things work out.  We all worked together to make things happen. 
All in all it was a really good weekend with a few unexpected events, but we made it work!