Last weekend, we celebrated a great event when this kid turned 11:
Isn’t he handsome? I can’t even believe how grown up he is becoming. He still my sweet JJ, though, and he brings joy to my life every day. Even on the days when I want to throttle him. 😉
My sister came over Saturday and we did a small celebration for him. Here he with his new glow-in-the-dark mini stick. (Why does it glow in the dark? I have no idea.)
While my sister was there, we managed to get our annual family birthday picture:
Not the greatest picture, but I’ve been trying to make sure I get a family picture on each of the kids’ birthdays every year, because it’s amazing how fast time goes by, and yet you forget to take pictures to preserve the memories.
On Saturday, JJ’s actual birthday, he had a few friends over. We went to a church youth group activity, where they played indoor baseball with inflatable bats and balls (it was a riot) and then the boys came back and ended up playing street hockey on the driveway.
After that, it was off to the hockey rink for his older brother’s game. This was an important game, because it was the big “rivalry” game against the other team in our city. They make a pretty big to-do over it (it’s a small town, lol!), and they even have a trophy that they pass back and forth every year kind of like college football, with Michigan and Minnesota and the Little Brown Jug. But this…this is an actual trophy.
Picture
Yeah, I know, big deal, right? 😉 The ice rink management really hyped it up on social media, and it turned out to be pretty exciting. We were the home team, but you wouldn’t know it, since some dolt decided to schedule the game the night of our school’s winter homecoming. :/ It’s not that we get a ton of kids at our hockey games anyway, but there were absolutely none Saturday night, because they were all at the dance, of course. Meanwhile, the other school had been hyping it up on their social media channels for months, so the arena was jam-packed with well over 100 of their students. They were rather obnoxious, too, but whatever. They’re high school kids. *eyeroll* But they were pretty quiet by the time they left, since we won. 😉
I will say that the game lived up to the hype, going back and forth and finally ending and a 5-4 win for our boys. It was a real nail-biter! We were so glad that they won, because they had been on a long losing streak, and they definitely needed a boost of confidence.
After the game, Jamie hurried up and took a shower and then one of his teammates dad’s was kind enough to take him to what was left of the dance.
He only got to stay about an hour and twenty minutes, but I suspect that was enough for him. 😉 Meanwhile, Jason and I took JJ out for his birthday celebration.
He’s such a kid. Everywhere he goes, no matter what type of restaurant, all he wants is a hamburger with pickles, lettuce, and mustard (no cheese). I decided I would have a salad, because I really do enjoy them, especially when someone else does all the work of putting it together. 😉 Saturdays are usually my day to have a nice big dinner, since I run long Saturday mornings, but that morning I had only done six with my girls, because we’re in a step-back week in our half marathon training program. I took it easy on dinner so that I could enjoy a little extra beverage to celebrate both JJ’s birthday and the big win. 🙂
That is a Hawaiian Long Island Ice Tea. (Is that an oxymoron?) It’s basically a Long Island iced tea with pineapple juice, it was really good. I knew I didn’t have that many points available to me, though, so I only had half. It was hard to leave the rest there, but I was proud of myself for doing it.
The next day, we had yet another hockey game, this one a playoff game for JJ. The boys were ahead by four goals at one point, but in the end, they had to make it interesting:
That kind of excitement, I could definitely live without. 😉 But it was a good win, and right afterwards, we headed out to my mother-in-law’s to celebrate JJ’s birthday, as well as my sister-in-law’s birthday (they’re one day apart). My mother-in-law asked me to bring a cake for JJ, but I hadn’t had time to make or even buy anything, so since we were in Ann Arbor, we stopped at Zingerman’s bakery on the way out of town. I’ve heard lots about it, and also about their deli, but that was my first time there. The “bakehouse” as they call it was in an industrial area, and it was hard to find, but once we did, we discovered that they had a lot of delicious looking cakes, breads, and pastries. I let JJ pick whatever he wanted, and he ended up getting a hot cocoa cake, as seen in this picture of him at my mother-in-law’s.
Doesn’t look like much, but it turned out to be really good. It was more like a cake brownie than cake, but it was thick and filled with chocolate chunks, and for this chocolate-loving girl, it was pretty damn near perfect. JJ liked it, but he’s more of an ice cream kid, so he only had a little bit (but went back for seconds of the ice cream). Unfortunately, that left most of the rest of the cake for me take home, since my in-laws cannot eat chocolate. (That makes me so sad for them.)
Between Jamie and me, by the time I woke up Monday morning, this is all that was left:
Ugh… I was a good girl, and I did track it all, but I dipped into my weeklies, which I have mentioned before I don’t like to do, because I tend to not lose weight if I go that route. And, what a surprise:
I was up a little over half a pound this week. The cake certainly didn’t help, but another reason I think that my weight didn’t go down last week is because I was, as mentioned before, in a step back week for my training. That means I ran a lot less last week. I did try to make up for it by getting in more steps, making a conscious effort to get up from my desk several times a day and just walk once around the building, but obviously it was not enough to overcome the Hot cocoa cake. 😛 Here’s how my chart shaped up, showing the number of calories above/below goal versus the number of Smart/Fit Points above/below goal:
Regardless of all the numbers, though, I’m actually feeling really good. I feel thinner, and my pants are fitting so much better. In fact, I’m getting to that point where I am in between notches on my belt, which is kind of annoying, because it’s either too loose or too tight–I need a middle notch to make it just right! 😉 I know I just need to be more disciplined this coming week, and since I will be running more miles and I don’t have any special meals planned, I think I should have better results next week. We shall see!
Thanks for reading!
