Geocaching

For about a year now I have been hooked on geocaching. It is fun, family friendly and free!!

Don't know what geocaching is? Basically other geocachers hide containers all over the world and you use gps coordinates to find them. You can read more about it on the website HERE.

Now to my post:

About a month ago the Alabama State Parks set out a series of caches in parks all over the state. The first 75 people to find all 8 get a special prize. This is no easy task since these caches are all the way from Ft. Payne to Mobile. To top it off they are puzzle boxes. Once you FIND them you have to figure out how to open them.

Up until yesterday we had found one of them located in Desoto State Park. Getting into that took forever!!!

Yesterday, after  having to bury our pet bird and just really needing to get away from the house and all the memories, we decided to do one located in the Guntersville State Park. Easy as pie! Found it, opened it and got our stamp and left.

So after that one the manfriend decides that we have time to make it to Birmingham for the Oak Mountain cache. Where this picture was taken.

There are two different perspectives happening at this very moment. I had just slipped on some leaves and was sitting there. Manfriend ( who snapped the picture) thought I looked cute sitting there resting. In his defense we had just hiked uphill for quite a bit but come on!! I have never needed a 10 minute break while hiking.

Meanwhile in my head this conversation is happening:

Oh my f&@!!?& God. I have f?!&@ up my knee. Can he carry me? Oh s&!@ , he's going to have to carry me off the g@/?)$@+# mountain. OH GOD WE ARE GOING TO DIE UP HERE!!!

You might be wondering why I didn't just tell manfriend that I had hurt myself. Well at this point we had drove over an hour, paid 6 bucks and were like 200 feet away from this cache. They would have to pull my cold, dead body off this mountain before I left without getting this cache. Manfriend would have insisted on going back to the car. Then I'd have to make a makeshift shank using all natural  materials, stab him, hide the body and THEN walk 200 more feet to the cache. No way I could do all that before it got dark. So I got up, put my big girl panties on and we found the cache!!

At this point I am really glad I didn't have to shank manfriend because there is no way I could have figured out the combination to get into the box without him. We get our stamp, pick up an official Alabama State Park pathtag and head out.

Thanks to a hint from a previous cacher we decide to walk by the edge off the little stream instead of taking on the inclined mountain side we had come in on. Things were much safer this way. Unfortunately everything looked different and I had another conversation with myself.

Self, we have a problem. You've done went and got yourself lost on a mountain. You are going to be out here all night before they find you. It is probably going to get cold and there are bugs. Shit shit shit YOU'RE GOING TO DIE ON THIS MOUNTAIN!!!

Again, you may be asking yourself why I didn't just think about using my PHONE and calling for help. I'm sure I would have eventually but my mind usually goes straight to the worse case scenario in situations before I'm able to rationalize.

We finally make it off this God forsaken mountain and head back to Huntsville. And my brain starts talking again. I've had two near death experiences today. I deserve wine!! 

Normally this wouldn't be an issue. Wine and I get along very well. But this was a very, VERY bad idea. Why? Because it shut my brain off and I completely forgot our post mountain geocaching procedures. That's right folks. We did not do our tick checks. Which brings me to today. This glorious and beautiful. Easter Sunday I woke up and found a tick on me. *shiver*  Tick was removed without incident and I can still limp around so we are now off to enjoy today with family. 

Ps-weighing in at 164 nowadays. :-)

Oopsie

Well, it has been 1 year 3 months and 18 days since I posted on my blog.

Why?

Well let's see.

First the fun/awesome stuff.

I started dating a wonderful man. We made it "official" in January 2013 and even though the first year was filled with all kinds of ups and downs we fought through it. We decided right off that "WE" were worth trying for. Worth fighting for. And that is exactly what we did!

My offspring turned 6...then 7. Wow. I have a 7 year old. Every day she makes me smile and laugh and pull my hair out. I won't even get into the disgusting pig sty of a room I have to clean out once a month or how she still can't eat without getting it all over her face. (Really?!? There is one hole and you can't hit it??) She is my light. My blessing. My heartache and all my fears of this world being as horrible of a place as I imagine and see every day is all rolled into my faith and hope for her to do better. To be better. To make this world a better place. If anyone can do it, she can!

The icky stuff...

I went through a couple jobs, unemployment and just had no direction. Still not sure if I really do but I'm at least on a paved road now.

I stopped running. I stopped calorie counting. I put on some weight. The lowest I ever saw was 157 and that was when the manfriend and I first started dating. I last weighed in at 165 something. It doesn't sound like a lot but thinking about how HARD I tried to get below that 160 mark makes me sad that I just gave up.

I joined Scale Back Alabama with a group of friends 10 weeks ago with a goal to lose 10 pounds. Easy enough, right? ha! I weighed in officially at 172 and go in Friday for the final weigh in. No doubt it won't be much of a loss since it will be in the evening. Probably a total of 4-5 pounds. Blah.

All this to get to the point of I'm READY!! I'm ready to start back. I'm ready to run (ok..walk fast), to eat better. To get to my goal weight. Which I think is 155..lol.

Some motivational images...

The swimsuit I want!!

My weight loss progress from before...

I'll take another one in the morning to get a "starting point"

:)

Low Carbs

So I decided to take my kryptonite and beat the hell out of it.

CARBS

Carbs are my kryptonite for sure. So I started researching exactly what it meant to go to a low carb diet. After some reading it didn't seem too bad! I could do this!!

Normally I ranged between 100-150 carbs a day when I was watching what I ate. This isn't a "bad" number but to really kick the carb addiction they suggest between 0-50. It seems impossible to do 0 (for me anyways so as a newbie my goal was to keep it below 50.

I started this past Tuesday...

Tuesday - 68 carbs

Wednesday - 65 carbs(Had a spaghetti dinner to attend but my awesome friend made me my very own low carb noodles!!)

Thursday - 32 carbs!!! Woot woot!

I'm very interested to see my weight after a full week. Since today was my official weigh in day (168 today!!) It will be next Friday.

What a week...

It all started Friday. We have all heard about it. The innocent lives lost Sandy Hook Elementary School. It hit me hard when it came out. My daughter is in Kindergarten. It is an unthinkable action...and we were forced to think of it.

I left work and picked my daughter up and hugged her as much as possible.

I did not go running the next morning. I did sign up- just didn't go.

I will be doing a 5k Virtual race with proceeds going to the Sandy Hook victims.

http://www.active.com/half-marathon/tampa-fl/sandy-hook-elementary-memorial-virtual-half-marathon-and-5k-2013

I still cry nearly every day over this tragedy.

Sadly, I had to let my daughter go back to school Monday. It was hard to say the least. However, she wasn't there for long. I had to go pick her up from school sick. I was more than happy to do it!! She stayed with Grandma the next two days and went back today.

And now..here it is Thursday. Doesn't seem like it has been a week since it happened. I am sick now, pushing through and still praying.

RUDOLPH RUN 2012

I wasn't going to do it but what the heck!! It is $20 registration and begging my mother to watch T for a little bit. So I'm breaking out my running shoes and charging up my watch! I want to do it in under 40! It will be cold though so I've never really run in the cold...I guess we shall see!!!

And this helps with my goal of a 3k every month for 12 months!!!

Getting my motivation back

Motivation is hard to get and definitely hard to keep. I have been unmotivated for about 2 months now. It is not fun.

I finally realized that my motivation ended when I put the scale up. I listened to everyone saying that the scale was evil. The devil. Not an accurate measure of your success. Then I realized that just like every health journey, every motivation is different.

I need my scale. I need to get on it once a week and see if there are changes. I mean, Weight Watchers has helped a lot of people and they weigh in every week. It can't be all bad right?

So tonight the scale is coming back out!!!

WINNER!!!

The winner of the Stompeez Slippers is...

Bobbie Jo!!

This was my first time using the rafflecopter thing ....I finally figured it out but don't know how to paste it here BUT..it did let me post it in the original post. :)

Thank you so much for all who entered!!