Gah, it's been so long since I've been here. I think of you all every day and tell myself to log on and catch up, but then one thing or another comes up and I don't. Somehow it's harder to get on here when I'm not sitting at work for 8 hours with the internet and no work to do...
Ok, to catch up on my life, I'm still job hunting and getting a little panicky since my unemployment will run out in about a month. We have a little money saved, but not much and I need to find something now. Other then that, we are all doing fine, no one has been sick or anything, so that's good.
About a month ago a tornado ripped through my home town (I don't live there now), completely destroying around 100 homes and damaging many more. Fortunately, no one I know was hit hard and amazingly, no one died. To see the damage, it's really hard to believe that everyone survived that!
I'm finally back to exercising! Yea! I just hopped back on that bandwagon last week. I knew it was bad that I wasn't doing my exercises, but honestly, I'm so sick of my DVDs (even the new one) that I just wanted to throw them out the window! So it finally dawned on me that I could take advantage of the exercise room more. So, now my daily routine is somewhere between 9 and 10am, I go to the exercise room. I start with the Cto5K on the treadmill, then work my way around the room, using every machine and loop around 3 times. This all takes about an hour and I do it Monday-Friday.
I'm pretty happy with this for now. I start with some cardio (running) and get my heart rate up, then finish with some weight training. It's been a hard start though. It's really amazing how fast your strength and stamina go down when you take a break from exercising! I had never moved on from week 1 of the Cto5K, but I could do the full 20 minutes. Now I've only been able to do about 10... But today I decided to slow it down a bit and so I walk 2 minutes and run for 1 (instead of walk for 1 1/2 and run for 1) and that helps. I could do the full 20 min. Then I do 10 reps on each machine and go around the room using all of them (including the bench press) 3 times, like I said. I also do some crunches in there, 25 upper ab crunches and 25 lower and do the "plank" position twice (for as long as I can hold it), as part of each cycle around the room.
I think this is working fairly well, since the first round is pretty easy, the second is harder and by the third I can hardly do my 10 reps. My daughter goes with me (since she's too young to leave at home alone) and she'll count my reps for me. It's cute. She'll also copy my crunches, free weight movements, stretches, etc. I don't talk about losing weight to her, I talk about getting healthy, so it's probably actually a good thing that she sees me working hard to get healthy.
This last week hasn't been too good for me weight loss wise though, only one pound. And actually, this last month hasn't been good. My eating has been mostly good, but it seems like every week there is something that gets in my way. One weekend we went camping, one weekend was a family get-together, this week I went shopping with my MIL and we ate out for lunch and dinner. I still try to make good choices on those days, but the food is always so much more calorie dense. Anyway, I've only lost 3 pounds in the last 4 weeks, which has me feeling grumpy. I suppose maybe this is a plateau, I haven't actually had one yet. Or maybe it's just a combination of "hard to eat healthy" days and less exercise. But it seems like I've been in the 170's for forever and I'm not even quite half way through!
I really do need to get on here more too. You all always keep me so motivated and proud of what I've accomplished. Lately I feel like I'm beating my head on a wall and getting nowhere.
Anyway, that's really all that's new with me. I'll have to come back and catch up with all of you later. Right now I have to shower and run some errands. Hope all is going well with all of you!
Whoa mizzie! Thats a lot of inches! I didn't realize swimming could burn so many calories! I wish I could swim laps in my pool but its an above ground circular. lol! 
That's ok, it'll be better than sitting here all day.