How precious! I'll have to start collecting outfits for "Fluffy"!

I was doing good on nutritional but today was real hard. Some people drink alcohol when things get rough. Others (me!!!) eat everything in sight it didn't help the school provided staff with cinnamon rolls and pizza today! Tomorrow is the toddler's 3rd birthday going out to eat and cupcakes on the agenda. If I get enough exercise I maybe can make it tomorrow or don't eat tonight. I do have 4 days done so I guess if all else fails I can get 5th day Sunday.
Sincerely,
Someone who really wants this day to end! Or hide under the covers and wish it away. Did I mention I didn't sleep well last night???
Looks cool! Huh? It's a lot of work getting 400 elementary school kids in place!

@hawkins410 Tara could rock that outfit!
2 1/2 hours no electricity! Ugh!

mckelfam wrote: »

Hi all, hope everyone has had a good week. Sorry for being MIA this week on vacation. Vacation was amazing but as much as you want to go on vacation it is nice to come home and sleep in your own bed. I pretty much ate what i wanted on vacation made some good choices most times but still lost two pounds guess from all the walking helped that. I was nervous to get on the scale had to weight twice in different rooms surfaces just to be sure couldn't believe it. Lol
I will record my exercise in a bit for this week so far. As for the challenges I will try to do my best in the next two days. I did get a lot of stairs in this week think I need 4 more floors for this challenge if my tally was correct. The videos I can definitely do but kinda out on the calorie challenge this week sorry.

Looks like you had a great time!!

Got my five days under calories, did the videos, I've walked about half the stair total, but the grinding in my knees leads me to believe I'm not going to be able to finish that particular challenge.

Those of you of a certain age will recall that, back in the day, Levi's were not necessarily made for women, so we just bought from the men's department and squished our tushies into the boys jeans - they were maybe the original boyfriend jeans. I bring this factoid up to relate an amusing anecdote from my life this week.

Since my honey has lost so much weight I commented to him about how I can no longer immediately tell whose jeans I am pulling out of the dryer to fold because his are no longer twice as big as mine. I looked at the tag on his jeans and remarked that they are exactly the same size I wore in college. (I wasn't skinny then either, but...) Anyway, he challenged me to put them on and believe it or not, they fit great! It felt weird to wear jeans that didn't have some kind of spandex in them (how did we do that?), but I was pretty stoked that they buttoned without having to lay down on the bed and hold my breath.

The plan is to spend the weekend cleaning house and putting up the decorations. I'm trying to motivate myself to put lights up on the house, but I'm really not feeling it yet. We have a big front yard that slopes down to the road with absolutely no structure of any sort - so I'm having difficulty visualizing a plan. We are re-landscaping the front and at the moment there isn't even a shrub to give me a starting point. Maybe if the temps warm up a little this afternoon I'll get inspired.

@MissionEnforcer finished the dancing videos was under calorie for 5 days.

@celtikgirl - good job on the jeans fitting! Great feeling when you fit into something you didn't think you could. Yes, jeans were so much more unforgiving before.

@aenglehardt347 sorry your feet are hurting. Great job on finishing the dancing. Keep rubbing those feet - maybe rolling on a tennis ball or water bottle.

I powered through a big day today - at least the morning and early afternoon. My 5k this morning went well. I didn't try to beat my PR from last week so took it a bit easy and chatted with my friend along way. Plus we had cookies at one of the water stops. This one is such a fun holiday race. But I still felt like my time was good and it was 3 minutes faster than last year when I ran the same race. It was only the 2nd 5k I had ever run at the time. I'm amazed at how much easier running is for me now.

After I got home from that, I loaded Stella in the car and we went to one of the state parks to hike that has a lot of steps. Well, their main staircase was closed! I was so disappointed but fortunately there are still a lot of steps on the rest of the trail. We did about 50 minutes of hiking and 376 stairs there. Then I swung by campus to this long set of steps and we went up and down those for 356 more steps. Whew! We were both tired and had a good nap when we got home. I still need 453 steps to finish this thing. Which I will do tomorrow for sure!!!

Finished the day under calories, so that meets the challenge of 5 days.

Here's some pics from today:



Also, I had to compare to my photo from last year's race. I think I look considerably less fluffy in my Santa suit today than last year

@mckelfam - yes it's a Ruff Wear harness. I really like it. I had problems with chafing with the Easy Walk harness I was using with her before too. The Ruff Wear seems comfortable for her and it has a front clip too. Stella wears a small and she is 26 lbs. It's pretty adjustable.

Just about to get the day started here. Stella is getting antsy so we'll go for a walk in a bit. I need to get a long run in today and finish my stairs. It makes me a little tired thinking about it, but I have a plan.

WE CAN DO THIS TOGETHER! Let's Post our minutes and challenge points!

Well, that was a day. I went to my office and got a little work done, then set out for my long run on campus. Lots of stairs on campus so I decided to combine the run and finishing the challenge. I ran all over the place in a crazy pattern and ran up and down over 600 stairs total, which brought me to over 1950 steps. I stopped counting but there were a few more. I was intending to run for 90 minutes, but with the all the steps I was worn out and had to call it a day at 75 minutes. Not a great pace, unsurprisingly, but covered just over 6 miles. The Inca Trail is done!

My legs felt like jello, so I also did "yoga for tired legs" a little while ago. Nice stretching for my poor quads and hammies.

This week was a tough one! I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming for the last week. Can't believe it's been 7 weeks already, I've enjoyed this challenge so much! I hope there are no more stairs though.

I see a lot of squares getting filled in and some awesome total times for the week. You guys are all doing so great! I am always so in awe of those of you getting 1000+ minutes a week. Thank you all for pushing me to do more than I thought I could.

Good morning team one! Looks like Team 5 came out on top for week 7, they turned in a great performance. Great job staying close and still being number one overall! I know this team can pull off an amazing last week.

Vancouver! This is somewhere I've actually been, and it was fantastic. Looking at all the gorgeous pictures in the challenge thread though, I feel like I didn't see it at all. I was there for a conference and I really should go back. The holiday lights are amazing. I remember having the best sushi of my life there!

This weeks challenges are so doable! We should all be able to knock those out and pour on the minutes this week. Have a great day!