Surprise Surprise!!

Derek turned 40 this week and being the awesome wife that I am, I wanted to be sure it was a special occassion, a birthday to remember!  So we invited all our friends and family to join us at Rhodes River Ranch for a Sunday afternoon lunch..  54 people were able to come out!!  It was AWESOME to have so many want to share the day with us and the best gift of all was the surprise arrival of his parents Bob & Nouna.. they drove up from AZ just to be there for him.  That was really special.  :)  We had a fantastic lunch, OMGosh the food super yummy.. I had some cupcakes made by our neice's friend.. she did a great job of decorating some with shotgun shells that read "40 age" instead of "40 guage"!  Clever..  and then some with ducks on them, others had edible pictures of Derek..    Derek wanted a rice crispy cake so I made that..  7 bags of marshmallows!!  I found the edible camo border and put some ducks on it and then a shotgun lighter I found..  It turned out better than expected, I was really proud of my awesome cake!!

 

His parents spent a night at our house, which was great as they were able to join us on Derek's actual birthdy for dinner out at Ixtapa Snohomish (Dereks favorite restaurant!)  Carlos brought Derek a HUGE shot of 'Tequilla Something or other'...  :)

My friend Rachel, her 40th was 4 days before Derek's so we took her out on Saturday afternoon and suprised her by buying her, her very first pair of real comboy boots!!  She grew up riding English, so she had never owned a pair of real boots.. LOL   She LOVES them, and it was so great to do that for her.  We went to school together and were friends through our 4H club, drifted apart for many years after graduating, Carrie went to school with her sisters and used to babysit for her.. we slowly rekindled our friendship and then I just barged in and demanded more time with her over this past year and we've grown as close as 2 girlfriends can get, non-sexually anyways!  lol  She has filled this void in me that I have been needing, just having that one girlfriend you can tell anything too, with no fear of being judged, someone who will be honest with you and set your ass in check when needed, support you and just be there for you.  I havent had that since Carrie died and never thought I would find it again..  I am truly thankful for my friendship with Rachel!! 

I've been on this slight mental rollercoaster when it comes to my WW success/failure the past couple weeks.  A week ago when I stepped on the scale at WW, I had a feeling it was not going to be less than the week prior, I felt that I did not make great food decisions and although I was still within all my points, it was not as healthy of a week for me and the scale reflected that with a .6 gain   :(  I was pretty distraught over it though, it really had a pretty big mental impact on me and I was more down about it than I expected to be.  In an irrational fashion, my brain was telling me "see, I knew you couldn't keep up with loosing every week, sooner or later you will start to gain again and this system is not going to work for you!"  F*ing  Brain!!  That is my biggest downfall, is myself and my own ability to convince myself this is going to happen for me.

So over this past weekend and up until my weigh in yesterday, I basically felt like I fell off the food wagon!  I certainly did not eat as much food as I would have 2 months ago, but I was having some major cravings for C-R-A-P!!  Rachel realized I was mentally hitting a wall so Monday, she surprised me with these beautiful flowers..  and a note that said "WE GOT THIS!"

I ate over my bonus points this past week, BUT because I knew I was not eating well, I did finally start using the elliptical again, to help compensate... Monday and Tuesday I spent 20min/day on it..  I was also running around a bit more than normal with this birthday planning and then Derek's parents surprising us and then telling us they were coming to our house!!  Which put me in a late night frenzy to get the house CLEAN..  Spent a few hours cleaning and got it cleaner than its been in a while, so I feel really good about that!

I was dreading the scale yesterday, my belly felt bloated, my pants felt tighter..  I'm trying to peer over the scale weight to see the readout as I'm standing there and she starts to write down a # and I'm thinking I saw a 5lb increase but apparently I couldnt see the #'s as well as I thought, because she recorded a 1.8lb LOSS!  I was shocked..  Seriously..  So with that loss, I have now lost exactly 25 pounds!!!  I was pretty happy and feeling very refreshed and positive again..