Day One

Day one went well. I got up early for a run as the kids had off of school. I had plans with my next door neighbor and closest friend here in Colorado to go to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo down in Colorado Springs with her and the kids. I was about 5 minutes into my run when I got a text from her saying that we should leave around 8:30….as it was already 7:30 and none of the kids were yet fed or dressed I cut my run to about 20 minutes and got everyone ready. I knew that my daughter had soccer practice that night and I could make up the time then. The day was picture perfect and we had a wonderful time at the wildly beautiful zoo. I made a liquid breakfast of a banana, one scoop vanilla protein powder, spinach, chia seeds, flax seeds and hemp. Lunch was a spinach salad with grilled chicken, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers and cucumbers. We got home from the zoo around 3 and headed off to practice at 4. After the long day I didn't feel like running in the howling wind, so decided to simply enjoy a long walk on the beautiful hilly trails by the soccer park. I've really come to enjoy simply walking. It's good for both my hip and my soul. The beauty of Colorado is like a balm ~ when I am lonely or homesick or missing friends and family I take to the trails and always come home calmer and soothed.

Friday nights are always a no cooking night, so we headed out to the country club that we joined when we moved here. It sits atop a mountain and the sunsets can't be beat. So ~ yeah ~ day one featured two meals out and a martini ~ great job with the less eating out and alcohol thing!!! :) For dinner I had this delicious red and gold beat caprese salad with goat cheese and toasted pistachios. I added grilled shrimp to it and it was perfection. Light and delicious. Stats for the day were:

22,575 steps
98 minutes of exercise (the vast majority of this is simply fast walking)
104 floors climbed (colorado hills are no joke)
9 hours and 54 minutes of sleep (I go to bed ridiculously early when Nate is out of town. One thing I am very good at is getting over 8 hours of sleep a night, looking back over the past few months I consistently average 8 and 1/2 hours/night)

I woke up this morning and weighed in at 126.7. Clearly that must just be water weight or some weird fluctuation.

Today was a day off of exercise as we had three soccer games and a lot of errands to run for the week ahead which is full of birthday parties and volunteering at the kids school. I'm preparing a big feast tonight of alaskan king crab, crab cakes, a caprese salad and corn on the cob.

I've been thinking a lot about how the weight gain affected me. I knew I gained weight. Honestly, I didn't care. I was so busy caring about everyone else, that it simply didn't matter. There were (and are) so many more important things in life, that 10 pounds or so just were at the bottom of the list. I'm kind of proud of myself for this. There was a time in my life where this would have just been the.worst.thing.ever. Now? Eh. It happens. You know what really matters? Helping my kids transition to a new home 2000 miles from all of their friends and family. Planting the seeds of our new life here. Putting on my bikini this summer at the beach and then the pool with a grin and not being ashamed of a single thing about myself. Eating pizza and being happy. Tasting and living and enjoying all of the new things in our new home. Hiking and enjoying being strong. Prioritizing spending each day with my kids, who were going through the biggest transition of their little lives so far, instead of shoving them in a gym childcare. I'm proud that I prioritized those things instead of my weight for the past 6 months. It's OKAY to let things go for a time. And now, it can be okay to focus on taking off those happy pounds in a healthful way. I'm ready, now. I'd like to go into this upcoming surgery feeling as healthy and fit as possible as I do believe that it will help facilitate an easier recovery. I'm ready to focus more on me, instead of on everybody else, as I am confident that everybody else, including the house, are in a good place. It's a good feeling, rather than feeling like drudgery, I feel excited about it. That tells me that it's time to do this.

Speaking of the house, I love my house! We moved to a town called Castle Pines. It is a beautiful place, with tons of open space, beautiful parks, trails out the wazoo, a wonderful library, and fantastic schools. The neighborhoods are a lot different than I'm used to, though to be honest I'm not completely used to neighborhoods as we didn't really live in a designated neighborhood back home. We live in a gated community. The huge difference between home and here is that the homes are much closer together but they all seem to back up to vast tracts of open space. That is great for the kids, as they can just walk outside and have an abundance of kids to play with. When house hunting we looked in a more remote town called Parker where we would have had about an acre and a half, but it felt really remote. We much prefer having neighbors closer to us and a lot of privacy out back. The truth is with trails and the rockies at our fingertips, we spend time on our deck and then in the wilderness…….a large yard would just seem like a time suck. We did join a golf club called The Country Club At Castle Pines. It's all of three miles from our house, which is great. It was a great way to make friends, as I jumped right in head first to the ladies golf team. The women are great and I played team matches right away, traveling all around to play team matches. The clubhouse is absolutely beautiful and the food is wonderful. They don't have a pool or swim team, but luckily our neighborhood has a pool just about a block away from our house and we spent many lazy summer days there. We so lucked out in the neighbor department ~ we live right next door to my favorite person that I've met yet in CO, and she just happens to have two great boys who are 8 and 6 ~ they were instantly fast friends with my kids. We spent the summer together ~ my doorbell would often ring at 7 am, and the kids would flow from one house to another all day long. I was and am fall on my face grateful to have Kari and her boys. I have a group of three friends that I run with every Wednesday morning and we have a rotating party/dinner club with once a month. Our neighborhood is big on parties ~ from ice cream socials to cheers and beers to the apparently famous pumpkin rolling party (our house is the defending champions so we have big shoes to fill this october!). We found an amazing pediatrician, I love the OB I found, and I am waiting (till Dec 29, DOH!) to see a Primary Physician who specializes in Eastern/Western medicine. I get biweekly massages, we have a babysitter who is so sweet and lives literally right across the street. The kids have a great dentist and Jules has been to the Orthodontist, though she needs more big teeth to come in before we can start work. No one has been sick yet, which is wonderful. We have done so many wonderful hikes, the kids summited a 13'er, climbed a glacier (St Mary's glacier), hiked the flatirons outside of Boulder, White Water Rafted the Arkanses River in Canyon City, hiked ElDorado Canyon, Visited Estes Park, spent a weekend in Vail, saw a bear on my birthday, we have two Great Horned Owl living in our backyard, amazing Mule Deer with GIANT antlers, we have seen huge bull snakes, elk, coyotes, big horned sheep, mountain goats, eagles and falcons. In the summer we saw rainbows almost daily. The lightening is amazing. We feel connected to nature in an entirely new way. The kids are learning to identify scat and identify prints and see game trails. They can follow trails and read maps and we have all learned to respect the incredible power of the sun in Colorado. We don't often leave the house without a hat, sunblock and sunglasses. It is relentless, even at this time of year. They have learned to know which direction we are facing based on which mountains we see, and are learning the names of the mountains that we see ~ pikes peak, Devils head, the flatirons. I love seeing their ever expanding world. They can climb like little billy goats. We bought Epic Passes which give us all season access to all of the ski resorts, and got everyone ski gear. We plan to ski a lot! The kids did flag football over the summer and are all playing soccer now. I've thrown myself into volunteering at the school. I do math help every friday in Jakes class and I'm the co room parent in each kids class. I was at the school all day Thursday at the Moveathon, which raised $60,000 for the school. This Thursday I'm there again all morning for the Doughnuts with Dad and the Book Fair. It's a great way to meet friends and simultaneously help the school.

What sucks? I miss my parents. I miss my best friends. I miss the great food in the northeast. The food out here simply isn't as good. While I love our home, the architecture is different. I miss smooth walls. If you don't know what i'm talking about, google "orange peel walls". EVERYTHING is orange peel walls. ITS SO WEIRD TO ME. Everything is very BIG out here, house wise. Bigger than it needs to be, really. While I love our home, its just different. I have to keep reminding myself that it took us 8 years to get our last home just perfect (perfect for us) and we have only been here 3 months, so I need to be patient. It will come.