Jan
2020

Back to life…

I got my hair highlighted for an early birthday present and I love it!

He said

What took the better part of four full days out of my week, last week (the plague), is now a faint image in the rearview mirror. Monday evening as soon as I got home after work, I got right on the rower and churned out a 30 minute row and the sweat to match. I wasn’t feeling 100% recovered but after sidelining myself for 4 days from rowing and hockey, I was chomping at the bit to get in a workout. Plus I knew that the regular exercise would help my recovery. It felt so good to get back into gear and sweat out some of the lethargy of being horizontal for the better part of those 4 days.

Speaking of working out, I crossed a couple of significant milestones this week with my exercise. The first was weight! For the first time in quite a few years my weight dropped south of 225 lbs. When I started working out, because this was purely born out of wanting to give myself a regular exercise routine and not necessarily to reach a weight loss goal, I didn’t weigh myself. But, after a week and a bit of regular rowing, I did hop on the scale and from that first measure, I was down 13 lbs! And feeling so much better as a result. I also came within a sliver of reaching 6 km in 30 minutes which is a kilometre more than when I started!

I was asked at work what prompted the focus on working out, if it was started as a weight loss goal. The truth is it wasn’t born out of anything other than wanting to be the best version of myself health-wise for Danielle and Emelia. My father has had bypass heart surgery as has my oldest brother David. It’s not lost on me that could be a reality some day for me too. But, in the mean time, I am going to do every thing that is in my powers to avoid that outcome. And if it does land in my lap, I want my body to be in the best version of shape it can be. The byproduct of this is feeling a ton better, being faster at hockey, and feeling better about the message I am sending Emelia.

Given than it’s January and 2020, Danielle & I started loosely planning out the camping and summer season. With the daycare in the house and 5 families to consider the impact on – as well as – 3 other Managers at work we have to really iron out our plans a lot sooner than we’d like. Add that the Bon Echo that we love camping at is the most popular campground in Ontario and that it books in minutes when reservations are opened, six months ahead, and we usually have the entire camping season locked down by February. It doesn’t feel very loose and open to change, but it’s the price we pay given all the variables in play. And it never gets lost on me, the excitement of planning another camping season!

She said

Now that we are all on the mend and life is back to normal around here I am back to assuring we are staying healthy with healthy and yummy choices in the kitchen. Thanks to my good friend Jude and a group she created we are sharing incredible recipes but also challenging ourselves to try new things and to be better about planning out our week. This is week three of this and I am loving all the food we are trying, playing around with different cooking techniques and generally learning to love cooking again while assuring we are eating healthy.

Over the last few months I have been doing some physiotherapy for a long term injury of my left hip. This first started causing me a lot of pain during my pregnancy with Emelia and it has never really been 100%. With persistent pain I have not been as strong on working out, but with the pain under more control and re-building strength I am hoping that I can start back into my more regular workouts so that I am strong enough to start running again come spring. All in all we are trying to be an active and healthy family. Emelia of course is well on track for this and both of her parents want to make sure we can keep up with her as long as possible and to be the healthiest version of ourselves.

This coming weekend will be a huge milestone for Emelia. A week today she will be a teenager! It is so hard to believe that she is already almost 13, the saying the days are long but the years are short is more evident this week as our baby girl moves towards a huge milestone.

The celebrations for Emelia’s teenager birthday have already started, last weekend she had her gymnastics besties, this weekend it was another celebration, her early birthday present from us. Emelia had asked a few months ago if she could get her hair coloured/highlighted. She had shared with me a few examples, I sent the pics off to our stylist and we decided since it was a big ticket item it would be her present from us. Emelia was nervous about making the exact right decision, she looked at dozens of pictures before settling on the exact look she wanted. Yesterday we spent 3+ hours at the salon and in the end Jacyln nailed it, it looks increible and exactly what Emelia had hoped for. A happy girl is all we wanted and we are happy she is so happy.

Today we were back to the normal Sunday routine, John had to work and I had errands while Emelia was at practice. Emelia has been having a fair bit of doubts on her readiness for gymnastics but today the coach who has been training her on Sundays pulled me aside tonight and said she was so happy to see how much progress Emelia had made since she saw her train last, said she was in great shape and should be proud because her hard work is paying off. We are so proud of her!

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