AWOL Blogger Returns, WI

I think I'm really back now.  We flew overnight Sunday night (DH loves the idea of the red-eye, and he made these reservations) and arrived home early Monday morning.  I had the two little ones that day and my sister, who had gone with us, stayed here until this morning.  We also have our 8 yr old grandson, B, for the next three weeks.  (The west coast grand kids get to visit here for a few weeks when they are 8, 11, and 14--it works out to one kid per year and we all love it).  Here a picture of B (8), R (6), and J (10) with our sparkler fun on the 4th.

In retrospect, I did pretty well staying with my plan while we were away.  As is always the way with traveling, meals were a bit tricky.  My lovely daughter, Laura,  knows I'm "watching it" and cooked fairly reasonable meals while we were with her.  She even stocked up on my favorite WW Latte Bars!  The eating up at the beach (west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada) was full of land mines--homemade molasses cookies, long cocktail hours with fancy drinks for the grownups, at least 5 bags of chips on the shelf at all times, 2   s'more cookouts,  high fat beach burgers, and not one, but three birthday cakes (for me) in different flavors they know I like.  I did have some of those goodies--half a cookie, No chips (!), small slivers of each type of cake, none of the fancy drinks--totally not worth the calories!,  a beach burger on a lettuce "bun," and . . . NO s'mores.  It was easy to resist the first time.  I just told myself I could have them, if I wanted to, on my birthday.  Then, on my b-day, I'd just had small pieces of cake and decided to go on a sunset beach walk with DH, instead of having a second dessert.   Here's the dinner I cooked.  That's Pacific salmon straight off the boat, corn on the cob, and new potatoes.  No greens as there was nothing green (even frozen) except iceberg lettuce at the little local co-op.  The cherries in Seattle were awesome, and also about half the price of the ones I bought here, today.   

I was also able to keep to my goal of exercise.  DD took my sister and me along to her Zumba class twice, I ran on the gorgeous Seattle area bike trails several times,  we hiked, and, when all else failed,  I walked laps on the 3 hour ferry ride and at the airport.  These beautiful ferns were about 4 miles into our July 4th hike through a gentle rain to the gold mining ghost town of Monte Cristo.

This visit was not without excitement from the local fauna.  This young bear was happily roaming on the beach, about 20 feet from the hiking trail we were on in the Pacific Rim National Park.  He posed very nicely for pix.  He was not there when we returned and we kept the children close while we wondered where he might be!  I failed to snap a picture of the wasp that decided to sting me on the arm as I tried to make my way through a very narrow path through some wild rose bushes.  All things considered, I decided to leave the path to the wasp.

I went to my WI last week (in Seattle) and had another stay the same week.  Disappointing.  Today, though, I scored a 2.8 loss!  Down 30 from my starting weight of 218.2.  Nothing like a little success to fire my burners!   

I joined DietBuddyDaily's Summer Diet Buddies--see logo at right.  Join us, we've just started!  My goals for the next 8 weeks are:

I'd like to lose at least 12 pounds in this 8 weeks. I'll measure my weight by my WW weigh-ins, which are on Wednesday. 

Other goals are to keep up some of the habits I've developed over the last two months-
*Drinking 8+ cups of water daily
*Exercising 45+ minutes daily (running, walking, hiking, Zumba, biking, & weight lifting)
*Eating more slowly--taking at least 17 minutes to finish dinner and never again being the first "clean plate kid" when in a group.
*Keeping my portions in control
*Eating small meals a breakfast and lunch, with a major meal at dinner time.
Not eating pasta, rice, or potatoes at lunch time.

If you've read this far, sorry for this long post! I'll be better about posting shorter posts more frequently.

How are you keeping yourself on track this summer??

188.2