Day 79

Now I've got 2 days to hurry up and get ready before leaving for our road trip back home for an exaggerated two weeks. I'm counting the minutes I have left to get everything in order to quickly and easily cross the border, make sure we have our little conveniences (like an ice and bottled water packed cooler), and checking my maps, reservations emails, and immigration documents multiple times. I can't wait to see my old family (including family not related to me by blood), my home town, and go to the little places that hold old memories for me and recent memories for my new family. It's bittersweet really because the anticipation is so high getting excited for the journey and meeting with my family, but after a few days with them I get homesick for this beautiful country I call my new home and find myself looking forward to the return.

It's always a great deal of stress to cross the border, one Yankee and one Canuck trying to convince the immigration officers why one would want to permanently be with the other and to allow us to enter together. But we bring our papers and pray as we get there that the border crossing will be quick and painless. Once we're through, we say a little pray thanking Heavenly Father that he's allowed our family to remain together. Maybe for most people in our situation they have no problems crossing the border and don't know what our hesitation is. But this hesitation stems from the first time we every tried travelling together on our honeymoon when my name wasn't yet changed, and we didn't have the marriage licence yet. We were stuck for over an hour trying to convince the authorities that we not only belonged together but that we wanted to belong together. (They have this thing that they want proof of the relationship as neither country wants to break up families, but they don't look kindly on mail order brides either.) It was difficult trying to convince them after meeting Andrew online and dating in person only 6 months before marriage, not having the same last name at the time, and no paperwork. This is my reason for checking our documents now 10 times before we leave so there will be absolutely no problems to get us there and back.

So we will be gone until the end of September. No, I will not forget my progress to this date. The 18 pounds I've lost until now will be over 20 by the time I get back--that is my goal. We've already scouted out all the gym affiliates to Andrew's club and I will get a visitor's pass so we have a place to work out together. I can't promise I'm not going to indulge in my favourite restaurants only back home has to offer at least for the first couple of days to get it out of my system. But we're going to try to watch what we eat and make better choices. Exercising while on vacation is not new to us. We tried last year while on a week long vacation and made it one day to a YMCA. Granted, that's not a lot, but it was the only time we'd ever done something like that before and really made us feel empowered that we could do good things for our bodies even on vacation. There's the balance of not wanting to "waste" our time working out, but then again, not wanting to be lazy about our health just because we're in another place. We take our bodies everywhere we go so we shouldn't discriminate in how we treat them. They need to take us on vacation too, happy and full of energy. What a gift it is to ourselves to relax and have fun, while making it a point to feel good too.

I'm getting so excited! Time to go get everything ready!!!

Meals
1 cup saffron rice
1 cup chicken tikka masala
1 naan bread
1-100 calorie Dairy Milk chocolate bar
1 cup strawberries
2 cups of water

3 taco shells
1-100 calorie Dairy Milk chocolate bar
3 cups of water

12 inch Quizno's turkey club with mozzarella cheese and light mayo
1 bowl of broccoli cheddar soup
approx 14 salt and vinegar chips
2 cups of water

2 cups of water

Exercise
40 minutes interval hill treadmill
45 minute iron reps class

Notes:
-These last couple of days have been packed with business and in order to not overbuy food that's going to get thrown out while we're away, we've had to eat what's been at home or go out. For lunch unfortunately, we had left over taco shells and left over chocolate bars from camping so I put those together for a healthy snack (sense the sarcasm) before running off to the gym. I have no time management skills and should have prepared something before running out of time and rushing to the gym, forgetting that my tummy was empty and wouldn't do well at the gym on no fuel so grabbing the easiest, fastest thing I could see. Yuck.
-Thank goodness Aly got me to go workout. I even phoned her a half hour before our meeting time to ask how excited she was about the gym to see if I could weasel my way out of it. What the heck? I hate not going because now I'm out of the habit and it's so hard to get myself going again. But I went anyway because I didn't want to be "that" friend. I'm just lazy and over stressed with so many commitments, they gym was going to have to be last. Somehow it fit in and I'm getting things done. It's a miracle.

Day 75-78--Week 11 (plus one day)

Weight: 331 pounds; stayed even this week; -18 pounds total

Just a note about my weight--I am shocked that with NO intentional exercise, not really watching my food, and adding all the s'mores and dutch oven cherry crunch that camping this week had to offer, I didn't gain any weight. It must be because we sweat out most of the extra pounds through heat and walking.

It was 30 degrees (okay maybe 28/29 degrees) every day--so hot and a bit miserable after any activity. I also can't stand having dirty feet; I hate the feel of having dry feet rubbing against dirt, dirt in my between my toes, and just feeling not clean feet. This was really bad because I decided to only bring flip flops (which I LOVE to wear instead of being confined in runners--kind of ironic) so I spent the entire time in dirty feet which I had to keep going to the washroom to clean in order to help me feel better. Madness!

We went to a corn maze near the campsite which I swear we were walking around getting ourselves lost in for over an hour and Andrew thinks we were only in there a half hour. Being lost and not knowing your direction, on top of claustrophobia, dirty feet, and sweatiness made for an interesting time. It was fun; I was just extremely ready to be done with the maze by the end. We were with some friends which included their 3 year old daughter we call niece who didn't seem to notice any heat, dirt, or exhaustion. I wish I had that kind of ignorance--a blissful, peaceful kind of ignorance that makes the world a perfect place to be anywhere you are. We also had B with us running around barking and marking at every chance he got. He seemed to notice the heat a bit, his tongue permanently fixed to his chin the entire weekend. This was our first time bringing him camping with us and I'm glad we did. It got him a change of scenery that we're sure he was just finally adjusting to by the time we left. His breed makes him a bit protective of the pack, on guard most of the time, wide eyed at every noise and a warning bark at any passersby. The cutest thing was because he didn't have our bed to curl up to at bedtime, around the campfire the first night he circled around for snakes, dug a little hole, and curled up into his earthly makeshift bed. He usually retires around 2200-2300h every night signaling to us that it's bedtime even though that night we wanted a few more minutes enjoying the fire, so he made a bed right next to us. It's humbling how dogs can be so adaptable to any situation. We could take a lesson from them to make contentment with what you have.

All in all it was a good trip although I'm unbelievably happy to be home to my own bed that I don't have to share with another person and a dog who kick me to the edge all night, stealing my blankets--oh wait, I do--and my own shower complete with soap. As we were driving home, Andrew said he needed a vacation. I agreed. Camping is hard work. We are getting used to it though, the more we go the more conveniences we've accumulated and remembered to bring making it a little easier each time. 'And after dinner for the few hours around the campfire with family and or friends, while the sun sets and the stars begin to shine, for me, makes it all worth it. As much as I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep and the tired muscles, I can't wait to go again next year.