Just in case you thought I wasn't blogging anymore...

Nope, I'm still here. Just not as often. "Oh, I'll have to blog about that" has been a passing thought several times over the last couple of weeks, but I haven't made it any further than that! Nothing too crazy here, but more of my weekday evenings have been busy with the gym, which has been a good thing. Hitting the road to Florida with Dave and the kids in less than a month, and although I've been lax the past couple summers about working out (even with us having a boat the last two summers. You'd think that would be a motivator to look GOOD, but it didn't seem to happen - well, the workout didn't happen, and the excessive wine did happen, and neither were good for the waistline), I really want to get out of that rut. I have lost 2% body fat since my last visit with my wellness coach at work back in Feb, so it definitely is progress. I've decided that my goal from the last two years of wellness visits, which has been to lose 10 pounds, is not what I need to focus on - it is the body fat. That's more the key, and I think I'm doing it... we'll see, I'm going to stop in and check my numbers again in a couple of weeks.

I'm not doing anything crazy, because I want it to continue to be attainable for me, and not just a mad dash to fitness and then slacking back off. I'm loving my cycling/cross training class on M-W evenings, have been doing that for about 12 weeks now. The instructor is one of Paige's high school teachers and she is awesome. She makes the 45 minute class very enjoyable, even though it is a hard workout. There is a class that it titled the same thing on Friday mornings and 6AM, and I tried that last week since I knew we were eating a big dinner Friday night. It was a far cry from the M-W class; everyone in there had cycling shoes on, and the teacher was a harda**; it was 1.5 hours long, 45 minutes of intense cycling (C'mon, Friday morning people, you can do it - go go go go GO! She bellowed like that for the entire 45 minutes!) and then we headed over to one of the open floor areas for the cross training. I have to say, I only lasted 10 minutes on the cross training and then I was out of there. To be fair, she did tell me that I could just go at my own pace, but all of these people were hard core, and it was just not comfortable for me.

My friend Gail is doing a "Couch to 5K" training over the next several weeks, so she has talked me into meeting her during her daughter's class on Tuesday nights and running. Tonight was "walk 3 minutes/run 3 minutes" five times. She is supposed to do it 3-4 times a week, which she has been doing. I'm only doing it the one time with her, the rest of my nights are cycling and other stuff. Sooo, I think as she gets further into it (next week is "walk 2.5 min/run 5 min") I won't be able to keep up as well. We'll see.

Hmmm, let's see - other news. Neil turned 16 Sunday and got his license Monday, and Paige came home from William Jewell on Thursday night and then left for Okazaki, Japan on Monday for five weeks. Her minor is Japanese, and she applied for and received a full grant to stay with a host family and study Japanese at a university there. We had birthday dinners for them Friday night, it was so good to see them both, especially since we haven't seen Paige as much now that she's 3+ hours away. Here's a couple pics:

Dave and kids

(I made Neil smile; he should more often, don't you agree!?)

Paige and Kathleen

Landscaping/flower garden update: Our back yard is looking great, AND I've been able to skip the chore of watering nightly or even every other night, with all the rain lately! I planted a bunch of bulbs in our front flower beds this time last week; but with all this rain, I just hope they're not rotting under there. I did see four of the hostas peeking out today, but we'll see about the irises and poppies. I still need to finish painting the pergola on the back deck, because our wisteria is already up the posts and heading for the top, so I want to get it painted before the vines reach the top. Hopefully this weekend's weather will be SUNNY, we've had rain for almost two weeks straight.

That's all for now, time to finish up a bit of work and head to bed.