Checkmate!

This year Amanda joined the Chess Club at Liberty Intermediate school. She practices a lot, playing against her friends and her mom, and she has improved dramatically since she only started at the beginning of the school year. The Chess Club meets twice a week and the members practice with each other.

This Saturday they had their first tournament. Amanda did really well. She ranked 14th out of 53 in her division. She won two matches, lost two matches and the last one ended in a stale-mate. We were really proud of her! Her next tournament is in January.

See all the pics HERE.

Blogging my weight loss journey - Month 10. . .and a half. . .THE DETOUR

Okay, I needed the kick in the pants to write this month's blog post about my weight loss journey. (Thanks Shea!) I was really depressed about this last few months. I have taken a HUGE detour on the weight loss journey, and I am having a very hard time getting back on track. I am not happy right now. I am upset with myself. I don't feel good. I get headaches. I am tired. Why would I purposefully make myself feel this way?

I do not understand why when I start to stray off the path that it means that I should go running as fast as I can in the other direction! After school started I got thrown off my exercise schedule, and so slowly I started to eat the wrong foods, but rather than just maintain where I was, I went completely off the deep end and ate everything in sight!!! ARG! Seriously! What the heck is wrong with me? Why can I not control what I put into my mouth?

I am telling you the answer right now - IT IS AN ADDICTION!!!

I have to treat food the way that a recovering alcoholic treats alcohol. Can a recovering alcoholic have just one drink? No! Can I just have one cookie? NO! I can't, because in my mind one cookie is the open door to eat as many cookies as I possibly can. Why? I will never know. But, with me that is the way it is. Lots of diets tell you that you have to splurge every once in a while, but I can't. A splurge leads to a surge, and I have to stay as far away from that as possible.

Hello, my name is Lora and I am a recovering foodaholic.

I have to accept, no matter how painful it may be, that I cannot eat chocolate chip cookies. I cannot eat ice cream. I cannot eat candy. I have to accept, no matter what my brain may tell me otherwise, that food is fuel. Food is not friend, just fuel. (Say that with the voice of the sharks from Finding Nemo.)

I whine about how unfair it is that I can't just eat whatever I want and that I have to work at this forever, i.e. I can't lose the weight and stop working at it. I have to do this forever. Well, if the doctors told me that I had a fatal, incurable disease, but that I could stay alive indefinitely by not eating chocolate, don't you think I would do everything I could to stay alive? I wouldn't be willing to risk my life by eating chocolate. So why am I so willing right now?

Satan is trying to kill me, and he is doing it with food. That sign is on my refrigerator. Currently it is buried by Katie's drawings and school lunch schedules, but after I post this it will come back out to the front.

Okay, I am getting more and more energized the more I write! So, gulp, here is the current stats (I have to accept the consequences of my actions):

weight gained: 13 lbs.
inches gained: 18"

Goals for the month of November:

*Pray like crazy for help every single second of the day!!!

*Exercise, even as little as twenty minutes, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Get up earlier on the days that I have to!

*Write down everything that I eat! Get back on course with the five meals a day! PORTION CONTROL!!!

*Get back down to the weight I was in August!

This is a journey right?! Sometimes you run into hazards along the way. As long as you are going in the right direction, you will eventually get to where you are going. Sometimes you go slow, sometimes you go fast. I will get there. I have already lost 41 pounds. I have already reached many of my goals. Granted, I have to meet several of them again, but I will. If you sit on the side of the road feeling sorry for yourself, you are not going to get anywhere.

I am going to get back on track. My name is Lora and I am addicted to food. I will overcome that addiction! I will be fit! I will be healthy! I will be strong!

By the way, it is good to have road signs and AAA to help along the way, so all of you out there feel free to be my road signs and say, STOP! WRONG WAY! SLOW DOWN! CAUTION! when you see me eyeing that piece of pie or a cookie or telling you that I am off track like that makes it okay. You don't have to be the police, just a positive, gentle reminder. Thanks!

The good news: I have still lost 28 pounds and 39.25". I have not returned to where I was before. I am facing up to my mistakes and getting back on track. Back in the right direction.

Butterfly Road Trip

This year we "hatched" some butterflies, and Katrina's favorite DVD is Little Einstein's Big, Huge Adventure, in which they meet a caterpillar that eventually changes into a butterfly and migrates to his "butterfly family reunion". Our friends, the Kaufman's "hatched"some butterflies too. So, when we heard that we could see the butterflies at the Butterfly Grove in Pismo Beach, we planned a road trip to go see them!

We left early this morning, driving through the farmlands of the Valley and then up into the foothills of the Coast Range. It was a cool, autumn day, but clear and sunny! Gorgeous! We did a lot of geocaching along the way. We found some caches that we had not found before and also stopped at several caches that we knew that the Kaufman's would like.

As we got into Pismo Beach, we went to the Butterfly Grove. That was so neat! The count for the day was 7500 butterflies! Wow! The butterflies were absolutely dripping from the trees. There were some flitting here and there, but most were just hanging out. We got there just in time to listen to the docent talk about the butterflies and their life cycle and their migration to and from the Grove. One thing that we learned that we did not know was that the butterflies that lay their eggs there and that move on do not ever come back to the Grove. It takes four or five generations for the butterflies to come back, which means that the children of the butterflies that leave there will never see this Grove. Yet, their descendants all know to go back there. That is amazing! We will definitely be coming back here again!

After the butterflies, we drove down to Santa Maria to visit with my Gpa Marshall. He recently moved to a retirement home there, Santa Maria Terrace. The girls played with Gpa's walker and we got to visit with him for a little while before he had to go down for dinner.

Afterwards we went to dinner at a restaurant in downtown Pismo and then walked out onto the pier and then we got back on the road to head home. As we left, it began to rain, so our timing was perfect!

Date Night!

This weekend Kevin and I went out on a triple date with our good friends Eddie and Cory Molloy and Steve and Andrea Kaufman, to celebrate Steve's birthday. We went to the Yosemite Falls Cafe for dinner. We laughed a lot, ate some delicious food, and took some great photos! The staff of the restaurant even came over to sing to Steve and brought him a special ice cream sundae. After dinner we went back to the Molloys for a movie and root beer floats. It was a lot of fun! It is so nice to spend time with good friends!




Andrea Kaufman, Cory Molloy and Lora Nehring lookin' smokin' hot!



Lora and Kevin