Somewhere Along The Way

Cheryl

This is Cheryl.

She is my friend and personal trainer.  I have been exercising with her for almost five years and training with her for about a year. 

She is kind, honest, and sweet.  She is also an incredibly gifted trainer who can make you hurt like no ones business.  Her daily demeanor is pretty tough, but once you get to know her you understand that she has the biggest heart in the world.  She has seen me through weight loss and weight gain. 

She is an ovarian cancer survivor. 

She completed a 1/2 Ironman for her 50th birthday in 2011.  She is STRONG.

As of today she told me that it is absolutely her mission to make me fit, thin and strong.  I can't let her down this time.  I made so many strides over a year ago, only to eat my way back to being overweight. 

I know that I have to do this for me and I want to, but I think if she puts the pressure on it will help.  It definitely will.  She's so funny.  She knows me so well.  I knew a lecture was coming.  Her lectures bring me to tears really.  She reminds me that I work so very hard, why do I waste it on food.  Last week I preempted a lecture by telling her I got my butt back in WW.  I told her I knew a lecture was coming.

She reminds me often that exercise, suffering and pain is all mental.  The mind will quit before the body quits.  It's true.  We can push ourselves to limits we didn't think we had.  Today she had me climbing at a 15% incline on the treadmill, at a speed that I thought would literally kill me.  She gave me a small break at 4 minutes in then we repeated this 4 times, every 15 min.  The rest of the workout included tons of high reps.  50 squats with medicine x 3.  Abs for 3 min x 3.  Arms and Shoulders x 3.  I was trashed as I usually am.  I need to remind myself when I want to go eat that cookie that she is always watching.  She notices everything ! 

Even today she asked me if I was sore from Boot camp last Saturday.  Truthfully I was sore from our previous meeting last Thursday and I was taking it a little easy on Saturday.  Asking me if I was sore was her way of letting me know she knew I was taking it easy.  So there's no getting away with anything less than max-effort with Cheryl. 

So I will be sore, and tired, and exhausted after each meeting with her, but that's how it should be.  One thing is for sure I've never been so strong since meeting this wonder woman.

a birthday celebration, ww, and a yummy smoothie recipe

Sunday we celebrated my father's 68th birthday.  It was also the two year anniversary of his big prostate cancer surgery.  Way to go Dad ! Still exercising, still skiing and having fun.  We travelled to my parent's home in Newport.  The party included all of our loved ones, my aunties, uncle bruce, Jim and Katherine, Bill and our kids.  Tyler and Julian had such a nice time.  Uncle Bruce plays with them all afternoon.  As we were leaving to go home Tyler pulled me aside and said Mommy this was the best day of my whole life.  I got to play with our family all day.

Katherine looks great !  She's just entered her second trimester!  She feels wonderful and looks wonderful.

And above is her first scan!  All is well.  Thank God !

On starting over, which will forever be my mantra.  I'm finally getting back into my training schedule and getting my behind back to weight watchers meetings.  Why? Because like the ad says "It Works" and it's always worked for me.  So down 3.8 pounds this week! Woo hoo!  Last week's training Feb 12-18th looked like this:

Mon: run 3 miles

Tues: spin 45 min, run 3 miles

Wed: run 3 miles

Thurs: personal training with Cheryl 60 min

Friday: 45 spin, 30 arms and abs

Saturday: bootcamp outside with Cheryl.

This week so far:

Sunday : Rest day

Monday: run 30 min

Tuesday: spin 45, run 30 minutes, swim 20 minutes

Wednesday: run River road 30 min

Tomorrow - Thurs: hour with Cheryl

Friday - spin, arms and abs.

WW was great.  We talked about stress, learned some tools about managing stress.  I have perfected what I call "checking out".  Much too often I can look at a day, or an event or going out to dinner and just throwing every thing I know about what's good for me right out the window.  I can overeat at the drop of a hat.  Too many times I let the guilt of one meal give me an excuse to eat all day, to start over the next day or the next week and continue the bad behavior.  As my trainer likes to point out, why ruin all your hard work at the gym with bad food choices.  

Today's after meeting treat - a guilt free Pina Colada ! (4 points plus)

1 pkg. WW coconut smoothie

1 c. almond milk

1 c. crushed ice

1/2 c. crushed pineapple

blend

garnish with nutmeg !

 

 

Getting back to basics! Yes, scrapbooking

(Mrs. Heather, working on her projects in our basement!)

I had an epiphany at the Snowflake crop in Sturbridge last month.  Why am I not utilizing the space in the basement to have the girls over for scrap-booking?  Lots of room, well lit.  I decided at Sturbridge to put a day on the calendar.  So yesterday Heather and Ashley came over with their gear and we got to work.  Unfortunately Sara had a tummy bug and couldn't make it.  ( I swear the world is sometimes conspiring against us, every time we make a date something always comes up).

So we had lots of snacks, and called out for pizza, and did what we love to do.  Play with our paper, our photos and talk.  I worked from 3:30pm to 10 pm and worked on summer 2009 photos from Montauk.  Ashley worked on her engagement party photos and Heather, the crafty powerhouse that she is, was working on presents for friends.

Also, got two great packages this weekend! One was a blog to print book.  This blog printed.  (Sadly I can't believe I have almost two years missing, but this book is 400 pages!) I have 400 pages of our life in photos and memories printed in a hardcover book.  It's wonderful.  So many things recorded that I have forgotten all about.

Second package was a set of beautiful vintage scrap-booking papers for my next project our vacation album.  The papers are from Graphic 45. Gorgeous.

In other weekend news, I returned to boot-camp yesterday morning with my fabulous trainer Cheryl and her great gang of followers.  The weather turned out really nice.  I'm still being cautious with my foot.  (still healing from a terrible bout of plantar fasciitis). 

Everyone in this house is coughing or blowing their nose and we're supposed to head to my parents this afternoon for my father's birthday.  We'll see how it goes.

This was from our last day on Block Island 2010. Just a fav of the boys standing on the porch of the National after breakfast.

Never underestimate how much children understand.

My sons really steal my heart.

Tyler: Thanks for making me feel better Mom.
Me: How did I do that Tyler?
Tyler: By hugging me, and holding me today....that's caring Mom.

Goodness, gracious.

Happy Valentine's Day 2012

Here they are, my valentines who woke up to hearts of Whitmans chocolates and cards from Momma and Daddy. I think we surprised them.

After a wonderful pre-valentine dinner at Olio's with Jillian and Bruce and Bill I had to get up at 5am to meet my gym buddy and friend Nancy for spin and a run. Ow!

So now a coffee, a shower, errands and prepare a Valentine for my hubby.

End of the Week

A birthday party for Auntie Bonnie's grandson and our last home meet of the season at the Mystic Y. That was our weekend!

Waves

The sound of the waves here is so all you can hear. Wonderful.

We are home and Tortola was magical

Our travel day, Friday, January 27th started out at 3:30 in the morning.  We headed to Bradley International for a 6:50 a.m. flight.  The kids were so excited.  We were excited.  We desperately needed caffeine, but waited for until we got in the air for coffee.  I don't have much to say about American Airlines.  The boarding process was chaotic.  I've never seen anything so mismanaged.  The flight was a little late only because of people trying to bring the largest most overstuffed carry on luggage.

Anyhow, we landed in Miami at 9:30 am and went directly from departing one plane to boarding our connection to St. Thomas.  That flight was on time, and everyone heading to their vacation destination were a little more relaxed.

The flight was uneventful, and we landed on time.  We retrieved all our luggage and made way to the taxi stand.  I knew from reading that the ferry dock was only three miles away.  There's nothing like feeling the warm air and the bright sunshine.  Once to the ferry dock we found that a Native Son ferry was leaving at 2:30pm.  Hooray, an hour earlier than I thought !  The ferry ride to Tortola was great.  We viewed the coast of St. Thomas, the island of St. John and other smaller islands.  We arrived at the West End of Tortola at close to 4pm.   The West End dock is just a five minute ride to Sebastians, where we will find the villa that we stayed in last year.  It's so great going to a place you know.  It feels like home.  The villa called Orchid has a queen size bed, a pull out sofa for the boys, a small kitchenette area, a big walk in closet, a make up mirror and sink and a big bathroom.  It's just perfect for the four of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once we got to our villa we found our bathing suits and made a mad dash to the beach for a swim.  The water was great !  After our swim we made a reservation at the Sebastian's restaurant.

During dinner Tyler fell asleep on my lap.  I almost fell asleep too.  The long travel day, the swimming, we all conked out by 8pm.

Day two, Saturday we awake to the crashing of waves against the rocks below our balcony.  We make our way down the road, a five minute walk to where the main area of Sebastian's hotel and restaurant.  There are some interesting sights on our walk.  We look for lizards, we look to see who are neighbors might be for the week.  We see and hear chickens and roosters, kitties and dogs, which by the way all look pretty healthy. We pass the old car covered by vines.  The little houses, some with funny boarded windows.

Eating in the restaurant for breakfast was a daily ritual.  I would go from having fresh orange juice scrambled eggs, fruit and homemade bread basket to banana pancakes and rum french toast.  Bill had rum french toast every day.  Tyler, plain pancakes with whipped cream and a tall glass of cold milk.  Julian tried everything!  Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, fruit, scones, banana bread, and guava juice.

After breakfast a walk was definitely needed.  We'd slowly make our way back to the villa to pack our beach bags and get in our suits.  One of our first beach destinations was Smuggler's Cove.  A beautiful and quiet cove that often has gentle waves, and great snorkeling.  It's kind of primitive, in year's past the jungle brush was the loo.  Not too fun.  This year nice clean port-o-loos! yay! 

On this beach we always gravitate towards the right end.  There is a great guy named Nigel that offers food, drink and most importantly beach gear like snorkels, SUP boards, fins etc.  Nigel sorted us out and Bill and Julian headed out.  Tyler and I jumped little waves, made sand castles and began our vast collection of sea shells.  For lunch Nigel was steaming shrimp and ma-hi ma-hi that had been marinating.  He steamed this on the grill in foil with potatoes, carrots and onion.  So delicious.

(images from smuggler's cove)

After our days at Smugglers, we'd return to the villa, take showers, make coffee, have a rest and then get our suits on and head down for another swim at the beach at Sebastian's which is called Capoons Bay.  This year we ran into three groups of people that we met last year.  One group which consisted of a surfing dad, mum and teenage daughter.  Another group that we call the Man-cation group from Greenwich, CT.  Middle-aged guys that think they can surf.  Pretty funny.  And a family that we met 10 years ago who rent a house next to the villa.  I recognized the father straight away as I had taken so many pics of him in a surfing contest. 

We adore the ladies who take care of us each year too.  There's Annie, Lorna and Patricia at the restaurant and Gleremena, our housekeeper.  This year Gleremena made us cross-stitch place mats and wrote us a beautfiul long note.  More reasons we love going to the same place.

And of course there was surfing and lots of it. 

and sunsets, the dramatic cloud images are from a restaurant that is built into the side of a mountain, called Bananakeet.  (never a judge a restaurant from it's name, we had driven by this place an number of times and it took a recommendation from other surfers for us to check it out, and were we surprised.  Four star meals, amazing views).

Our journey home was just as pretty as coming, but sad too.  We missed Stormy, it was time to go home.  We made as many mental movies as we could on the ferry ride to St.Thomas.  A bit of hassle travelling to St. Thomas due to three customs checks, but I guess we'd do it again.

My heart is full, my mind is filled with the colors of the sea, and even though New England is cold and brown, it's home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vacation

Tyler: "mommy, daddy's a dolphin"