BLT4ever

I have been gone for sooooo long!  Okay, Captain Obvious there….

Anyway…some of you may remember back in June my announcement that come late January my husband was heading back to Iraq for a 13 month tour.   I wasn’t here much at all in December and not at all in January due to the fact that we were spending all of our free time together as a family in preparation for the separation.  He left on January 30th, and I didn’t come on at all in February and for most of March just because I was allowing myself to dwell a little in my misery.  Just a little.  During all this time I wavered up and down with my weight.  I maintained for awhile but then for awhile I just went back to my old ways and gained back 16 lbs.

I totally allowed myself to do this though, call it a kind of strategy.  I want to start losing big again and I figured that it would work best after my body got used to eating whatever.  So since my husband left on 1/30, I’ve been eating whatever and the only exercise I’ve been getting is from my kickboxing class at the dojo.  In other words, I got my body used to being this size with this amount of calories and this amount of exercise.  Now I can shock it back into losing big again.  It’s kind of exciting cuz’ my husband doesn’t want me to send him any pictures or give him any details of my progress, so that when we get together again he can truly appreciate the difference.  I am SO looking forward to it that it gives me a new motivation.

We are going to have him home for the last two weeks in July for a visit and then he heads back out there for another 6-7 month period of time where I’ll lose even more weight!

I have truly missed my buddies here, and think of you all often.  I apologize for not checking in from time to time to see how you’re all doing.  I should have done so.   For this I have no excuse.  I have been extremely busy with everything that’s been going on…homeschooling, household chores, kickboxing classes…but still.  I should’ve found a few minutes here and there to come check in and let everyone know how things were here.  Please forgive me!

We had such good times before he left.  Our wedding anniversary is December 19th, 1988.  Since he will not be here for us to celebrate our 20th, we celebrated it this last time around.  We went and spent a couple of days in downtown San Diego.  We so love it there.  We went ice skating at Horton Plaza and wow was that fun!  I haven’t done that in so many years, and wouldn’t have been able to do so if I hadn’t lost so much weight.  We walked around the gas lamp quarter ALOT, did some shopping in Seaport Village, ate dinner at an extremely expensive, very nice restaurant that looks like a lighthouse and overlooks the harbor called “Ruth’s Chris Steak House”.  Very interesting name….haven’t a clue what it means.  We ate at some neat hole in the wall type places.  We stayed in the Horton Grand Hotel, which was so cute!  Everything about our get away was so nice….we even went to the movies (a favorite thing of mine to do)  Our daughter was in charge of things at home and that all went very well, which of course helped us to have such a good time.

I even planned my own little surprise for him.  My daughter even helped me put it all together by taking her brothers to her boyfriends house for the evening so that we could have the house to ourselves.  I surprised him when he came home from work with me in a robe,  a candlelight dinner (chinese) and music…the whole works.

 The kids each got their alone time with him too.  He took our 17 year old daughter Britney horseback riding and out for brunch at the Officer’s Club on base.  Our 15 year old son Brice he took to a Chargers game and they each got Charger’s jerseys to wear.  Our 12 year old son Nick he took to Medieval Times, and our 6 year old Noah he took to the zoo.  Everyone had a great time.  We made sure that we got in a lot of family dinners at the table before he left too, as that has always been an important thing to us.  Especially for that last week, we never missed one.  We cherished those last few weeks together and I’m thankful for them, it made the ordinary extraordinary!

 We do miss him, and I know he’s missing us.  But the time is going by fairly fast.

Anyway, that is enough from me for now.   Hope all is well with you and yours.

I was thinking the other day about something that I experienced before beginning this journey, and thought I’d share it with you all.

I would often think or say, “I’d give anything to be thin.”  As I was stuffing my face, playing computer games (yes, I am a computer/video game junkie…a blog for another day, perhaps).

One day while talking to God, I said, “Lord, why do I have this cross to carry, it’s so heavy.  I wish my cross to bear was something different, because this weight is so heavy and I don’t like it.  Lord, I’d give anything to be thin again.”

I clearly heard Him reply, “No, you wouldn’t.”

I replied, “What are you talking about?  Well, of course I wouldn’t give the health and well being of my family and loved ones….I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  But, Lord, aside of that, I would give anything else to be thin again.”

So, He said, “No you wouldn’t, because you don’t.”

I said, “What……”

Then it hit me, He is right (He always is), I wouldn’t give anything to be thin again because I don’t.  I would sit around all the time feeling sorry for myself and stuffing my face.  Would I be willing to give that up?  Would I be willing to give up my sedentary lifestyle for a lifestyle of activity?  Would I be able to give up my love affair with food?  If I would be willing to “give anything” to be thin again, why wouldn’t I give these bad habits up for good ones?  It’s a simple enough answer. 

So, it was then, during that conversation with God, that I decided that I would give up my lazy lifestyle and with God’s help I would develop a new, healthy lifestyle. 

I have been working so hard to loose this weight, I work my butt off physically every day, and I eat the way a healthy person should eat.  I am in better shape then I have been in years.  Probably even in better shape then I was 100 lbs. ago.  My endurance is growing, my waist is shrinking!  My belly no longer sags onto my thighs!!!

Every day now, I thank God for showing me the way.  There’s a long path ahead of me…as a matter of fact, it stretches on as far as I can see.  The road, I know, is going to have it’s rough spots along with the smooth, but, I will never look back!