So my friend reboot_kid turned me on to geocaching. He has posted about it numerous times and I was always intrigued. Today I finally had the chance to go out with some friends and do it myself. Dave & Julie Collier and their kids Matt and Nate went with me.

The first cache we looked for was near a neighborhood. It was fairly easy to find which was nice for our first one. It was called "Think Pink" and everything in it was pink. The person who started it was donating $1 to the Susan G foundation for each person who signed the log book.

A little bit later we drove to a local forest preserve to find some other caches. The first place we looked we were unsuccessful. We might try again in the winter when everything isn't so green :) On the way back we decided to try another one. Dave and I left the path and hiked about 500 feet into the woods to find it. We got to a decently sloped hill and Dave climbed it to find the cache. We were very happy to have found at least one there. We decided to try and go back when we were better prepared to go hiking in the woods to look for the others.

All in all we had a great time. I posted pictures on my facebook page :) We are looking forward to doing more geocaching over the summer.

I am so happy it's finally consistently warm enough to not have to wear a coat. I am sure I miss summer much more than I miss winter. I love being outside. I have finally gotten around to arranging my balcony the way I like it. I am quite pleased with the results. I promise to post pictures soon. I am thrilled that the birds are coming to my bird feeder even with it being 6 floors up. Of course my balcony is covered in birdseed shells now, but I don't mind so much.

I rented some garden plots that the local park district rents out each summer. I have been there the past three days and these are the things I have learned:

1. "The ground will be tilled" does not equal "The ground will be ready for your seeds."
2. 18' x 36' is a lot bigger in person!
3. Making friends with the older people who have been planting there for years is a good good idea.
4. Don't wear white socks.
5. Gardening gloves are awesome.
6. Even with gloves hands will still get dirty.
7. Don't bring anything you don't want to get some dirt on it.
8. There is not much better than sitting by freshly hoed rows of veggies and reading a book.

I will post pictures as soon as I finish making things look nice :)

As I mentioned before I have been taking a cake decorating class. It has been a lot of fun and I am looking forward to the next course, which I will be taking in June. To save your friends pages my cake pictures are behind the link.

( Enjoy )

So things are mostly back to normal with us. We are planning to go back out to Maryland in the summer to help clean more of John's things out of the house and help wit general yard work stuff. I will hopefully get to visit some friends that live out that way while we are there so I am looking forward to that.

Had an Endo visit today and my A1C is down to 6.7. Yay!! I am so happy things are back to where they should be. Now I just need to focus on weight. I am planning to get back into the swing of things with working out this week. I am hopeful that I will quickly be able to get back to where I was.

I am taking a cake decorating class with a friend of mine andhaving loads of fun with it. I will post pictures soon of the cakes I have done so far :)

So I got the immense pleasure of having lunch with absurd and stray today. Mike is on his way to Australia and had a layover at O'Hare long enough that we could meet him and have lunch. It was all sorts of awesome, as I would expect any time hanging out with the two of them would be :) I only wish we had more time to chat and stuff. We did get pictures though so there's proof!

Doing pretty well otherwise. Thrilled that the weather is getting nicer. I can not wait to get out and plant stuff. Fitness and health is progressive :)

Yesterday was my 28th day using the Wii Fit. I am thrilled that I have been able to go 4 weeks doing at least 3 days a week for 30 minutes. Even more that some weeks I did 4 days for 45 minutes or more. I know that it's not only the Fit (though that has been a huge help) but also emotionally I feel good with my workouts. Best of all I look forward to coming home every day and using the Fit. Never when I was only walking did I look forward to working out. I know that I will be able to succeed using this workout. Next step is adding ankle weights to the routine. My good friend who got the Fit a few weeks after I did just added weights to her routine and she said it's a great next step. So I will look for some this weekend.

On Sunday night when I went to bed I was frustrated that even though I have been doing this workout thing consistently for the past month my weight has not changed much at all. I know it's because of my eating. I decided I wanted to try and fast some this week. To try and make a drastic change from my bad eating habits. Sometimes this is what it takes for me to change a bad habit. So I got up yesterday feeling good about my decision. I had talked to my doctor previously about fasting and I knew what he wanted me to do. At noon I did my workout and felt good (hungry but good). By 4pm my sugar had dipped a bit to low and I felt awful. My doctor called me to say he wanted me to eat something (I was faxing him my sugars each time I took them). I decided that I needed to move a step up. I had a small snack right then (some cheese and crackers) and decided that I just really needed to focus on eating right in the evenings. I am fine until about 4pm, then I go downhill. So for dinner last night I used a smaller plate than a normal dinner size plate. I took one normal serving of dinner, which filled the plate nicely. I was done with dinner by 6:30pm and had nothing else the rest of the night. I went to bed a bit on the hungry side but feeling great!

Today I had a breakfast bar in the morning and yogurt and a p&j for lunch. Of course now I am in my snack eat time so I am hoping tonight goes as well as last night. I am going to help a friend with something at church so my plan is to have a snack of cheese and crackers and then eat leftovers when I get home. It will be a late dinner but I will focus on eating good stuff. I am feeling confident about things so far :) we'll see how many days I can go!

I had a small gain this week. Less than a pound but bleh. I know it's because of my eating so I am focused on buckling down and controlling my eating. Some friends of mine are going to start south beach next week and I am tempted to do it with them to see if I can. I need to do something because I have been using the Wii Fit for 3 weeks now and still am hovering around the same weight as when I started.

I think I have a cold that is attacking me in small bits instead of all at once. I have been feeling really run down the past 4 or 5 days. I am going to try and get some more sleep and stuff so hopefully it will pass.

Before Christmas I decided to start reading the Terry Goodkind books. I was intrigued by the Seeker tv series they were advertising and I had heard from various people that the books were decent. I really like them. I am on the 7th of 12 books and still like them as much as when I started. I heard that they were like the Robert Jordan books, that they petered out after a while, but I have read more than I read of the Jordan books so I am happy. I find that I really love the women characters that he's written. I also am a sucker for the reluctant hero type (and I think Brendan Frasier plays them the best) and Goodkind's main character is that type. I am hopeful I will enjoy the rest of the series. I am dissapointed that the tv series sucked but eh, oh well.

I did not not not not want to work out today. When I went to bed last night I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was feeling slightly better when I got up but by the time I was driving home I was feeling worse. When I got home I decided to work out, hoping it would make me feel better. Now, 50 minutes later, I am glad I did but I feel worse. I will probably take some NyQuil tonight in hopes to fend off what is most likely sickness.

ugh

So several of my friends who are working on losing weight have started separate diet blogs. I debated with it for a while, but in the end I really don't have a good reason to. I understand their reasons, I just don't share them myself. I have a hard enough time as it is keeping up with this blog let alone starting another one. So for the time being I am keeping everything here.

I am considering skipping the body test every day and only doing it once a week. It basically just tells you your center of balance and weight each day. Last week my weight was so weird up and down that I was somewhat floored when on Monday it told me I had a 4 pound loss. My joy was somewhat tempered by the fact that I remembered my weight going up and down so much during the previous week. So I have decided to only do the body test on Mondays.

So I am into my third week with the Wii Fit and still love it. The first week I did 4 days for 30 minutes. Last week I did 3 days for 45 minutes. I will do at least 4 days for 45 minutes this week. I hope to keep it at a minimum of 4 days at 45 minutes but would also like to get to at least 4 days at an hour in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Once Awana ends (last week of April) I will easily go to 5 days a week for an hour (hopefully) a day.

I am super pleased with my progress and my goal. Since I skipped Friday last week Monday this week was rough, but I felt awesome afterwords. The muscles in my calves are starting to get stronger already which I love. When it get's warm enough I am going to consider adding a bit of biking to the routine, maybe on the weekends.

My friend Liz took this and I was intrigued, and then surprised by how accurate the results were.

Rachel took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Wants to make a favorable impression and be regard..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

50 minutes on the Wii Fit and down 2.2 pounds from last week!

Sometime I just have no idea what to put in the subject line. I think I have found a solution :D

So the Wii Fit has been awesome. I love love love using it. I used it Tuesday, Thursday and Friday last week, for 35 minutes each day. I am hoping to use it Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday this coming week for at least 45 minutes each time. I'm working on my diet, but still struggling with snacks before bed. Last week I had cheese and yogurt for lunch every day and plan on the same for this week. It was pretty easy to do so i am going to put more effort into being good in the evenings.

I have started to cut back on things that take up my time. I am spending a lot more time with friends from church and stuff and have found it harder to do some of the things I was previously committed to. There was nothing wrong with those things, I just think I am changing. I think it's for the better for me and am happy.

So all in all life is nice! :)

So few good things to share from today. I had my first visit to my new Endo. My A1C was down to 7.5 (woohoo) I am confident I can get it under 7 by the next visit. He is a nice doctor, very personable. I got my Wii Fit in the mail yesterday, and installed it today. Wow is it fun! I used it for 35 minutes, though there was a bunch of getting to know how to do different things. I think it will be easy to do it every day. I am so excited!!

Last Friday some friends gave me Zelda: Twilight Princess. It is a lot of fun :) It's going to take me forever to get through the whole game but I am enjoying it so far!

So I bought an exercise dvd today. It was as beginner as I could find and they still moved about four times as fast as I can. It's 3 different 20 minute segments, cardio, strength and flexibility. For the moment I am going to just do the cardio and flexibility until I can get up to speed. It will be a few weeks before I can get a Fit I think so I wanted to do something in the mean time. The goal is to do this dvd at least 3 times a week, 4 if I can help it. When I get the Fit I will hopefully have a bit more energy and do that on the other 3 days. It's a goal :)

On the other side of it I have been trying really hard to be careful about what I eat. At the moment I am focused on smaller portions. I have been interjecting more salads and stuff too. So far not so bad. The challenge will be sticking to this. For right now it's still just a new and different thing. In a week or two I will want things to change. My hope is that I will get my Fit at that point and change things up a bit. By the time that gets old I will have been at it four weeks or so and it will have become more of a routine things. We will see how it goes :)

Christmas vacation was nice. The cats did better than we expected while at Ed's parents house, which is good to know for the future. It was good to see Ed's family and our friends Carl and Joyce. They adopted a brother sister pair this past year and the kids are adorable. Kenny is 5 and Mackenzie is 3. They have been with Carl and Joyce for 2 years now and are very well behaved and fun kids. Carl and Joyce seem very happy with their little family :)

Not doing anything to exciting for new years. Staying home and playing with my new Wii. I don't like going out on new years eve so we will probably just go to church then home.

I hope everyone has a great new year :)

One of my Cubbies lost her mother this morning. Her father brought her to club tonight and told us when he dropped her off that she died early this morning. She had cancer, her name was Monica. She was a beautiful, soft spoken young woman. She had a gentleness about her that was special. I enjoyed seeing her each Wednesday night when she would drop Naomi off, ask her how she was feeling and how her week had been.

Please pray for Naomi and her father. I know Monica is with the Lord now, and at peace. It gives me a measure of joy. I just wish it was not quite so painful for those of us left behind.

Yeah so WotLK ate up most of my November. I am slowly getting back to a normal routine though. We stayed home for thanksgiving and it was very nice and relaxing. We are headed to Maryland for Christmas, just for a week. I am looking forward to a rather relaxed holiday.

Success!!! Obtained my copy and got home quick as I could. Took about 15 minutes to install and patch then played for about 30. Now I am going to be a good girl and go to bed. I will have lots of time to play tomorrow :D

loving it so far!