Smooth Sailing

The USS Jack and Ella

Ella and Jack loved fixing up an old carton into their boat yesterday.  Each side is painted a different color and, by the end, we had seats (stadium seats leftover from our days cheering on their Daddy and the Georgetown track team), a number for the boat (68 at Ella's insistance), and a nice rope attached at the front so I could pull them across the deck.  And the best thing?  They loved it so much that they wanted to take it home!  My decorating plan doesn't really have room for a small boat. . . .

My life has had happy sailing since my last post, too.  I lost 2.2 pounds at my WI on Wednesday (26. 6  since Christmas).  I also dipped down into the next decade--yay!  I record my weight every morning and enter it onto the physicsdiet.com site.  I love how it coverts them into an average weight, so that the minor fluctuations in weight don't have such an impact on the graph.  On the graph, green is good.  Here's my graph since Jan 1st.  There are a few spikes (red) and plateaux, but the trend is good.  You can spot the three dramatic down trends when I did 17DD cycle I (beginning of Feb was the first and I'm just finishing the most recent).  My average is just about 1 pound per week.

I had to squeeze in my run this morning to get to my hair app't on time, so I ran faster.  Another minute off my pace!  Notice my little Nike+ runner girl in the upper part of the side bar.  The pace there says 13:04 per mile, but that's the cumulative pace for all my runs and walks over the past few years.  The pace kept going up as I mostly walked last year, but it's definitely turned around.  I'm hoping to make the Nike+ girl's pace go back under 13 by the end of next week.  Today's pace was 10:53 per mile. :-)   My method of running for an increasing distance every time my ipod announces that 5 more minutes have passed works really well for me.  I'm now running 80% of the time (run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute).  I'm going to have to  start running earlier though, the weather is edging into the 90s and definitely getting more humid.

We're driving down to Wilmington NC next week to celebrate my FIL's 90th birthday.  We're rented a huge beach house that will accomodate 12 of us (DH and me, all our children, their spouses, and all the grands.  It should be really fun.  I've planned the party.  A tea party.  According to the RSVPs we'll be about 35.  I'm going to bake (scones and brownies) before we go, Laura is going to make the birthday cake (she has a white thumb!), and I'll get fresh fruit when we're there.  Pink lemonade for the kids, clotted cream and strawberry jam for the scones, some nuts, a nice selection of teas and we're calling it on the food offerings.  I found a rental place there that assures me I can walk in and walk out with teacups, linens and whatever else we need.  I've reserved the poolside clubhouse at my FIL's condo, sent the invitations, have supplies for the grandkids to make a happy birhday poster, and am running out today to buy a box of balloon magic (helium, balloons, and necessary acoutrements in a box).

We'll be returning from Wilmington with three of our grandchildren in the car! Ella and Jack are going to stay for a couple extra days (John and Tobey have to get back to work on Monday and this works out for childcare and gives them a chance to be with their cousins longer).  We'll also have Rose, Laura's youngest who is eight and enjoying her first solo summer visit with us.  (We've worked out a great deal with Laura and David--we get to have their kids come here  for a few weeks in the summer when they're 8, 11, and 14.  It works out so that we get one child each year and we have a lot of fun.  Ben (11) will come next year, and then Jeannine (14) the year after that!  We'll have a wonderful time!

Rose when she was 7.

We're going out to dinner tonight!  One of DH's international students (he teaches an advanced law course at Georgetown) invited us to dinner to meet his parents.  They are Italian and we'd had the student to dinner a while ago.  We lived in Italy for a few years and have some other connections.  It should be fun.  We're going to the Chart House in Alexandria.  I've got to peruse the online menu to make my choices, though my brain is trying to remind me about their Mississippi mud pie.  I'm trying to ignore that, we'll see.

Hoping to take a nice long bike ride, tomorrow.