Halfway!!

HOLLLAAAA!!
It's been a while since I personally have blogged. Meanwhile Laura has taken blogging to a whole new level. If it wasn't going out of style due to the advent of facebook and twitter updates, I'd say she were a blogging pro...instead she might be more of a blogging ho. HA!

We are currently feeling the "halfway blues" of this program. We are tired of the early mornings, and at this point, Laura might be more sick of it than I am, which as you're well aware, is a big deal. When my alarm goes off in the morning, I like to yell out the first word that comes to my mind, without even really thinking about it. Yesterday and today, I yelled out "HATE!" I'm not sure why I do this, and certainly it's not the best part of waking up to be yelling "HATE!" but that's how I feel about 5:30am right now (as I've previously mentioned maybe once or twice). I hit snooze once, then the second time the alarm sounds I reset the alarm for 5:45. Then, I get up, move my car out of the garage, close the garage door and go lay on the couch until I hear Laura pull into the driveway. Normally, when I open the garage door to let her in, we exchange pleasant greetings and casually start the workout. The last week and a half, those pleasant greetings have turned into grunts and we begrudgingly begin the warmup without much more than a word to each other until the next hour is about done. Then, feeling a sense of accomplishment yet again, we return to chipper living as usual, only to repeat this series of events the next day.

Laura and I both had very bad weekends as far as the diet is concerned. Laura spent it up at SilverSpur for GEMS camp eating candy and I had Life Group at Dave & Gina VanKlaveren's house. Last time at Life Group our hostess, Kim Mensonides, did a remarkable job of providing low-cal and low/nonfat options for our dinner. Gina's rule for food that night?? "Bring your favorite snack to share." FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC! And what were these "snacks"?? CARB-LOADED PILES OF CALORIES AND FAT! (that tasted soooooooooo good!) Pigs-in-a-Blanket, a Bree & Garlic concoction with olive oil and vinegar, chips and salsa, and worst of all: QUESO! Those were the things I ate (besides the olives on the table), but there were also Totino's Pizza Rolls! There was no chance for survival that night!

The weekend was shot, and we had already planned to hit up El Rosal for our cheat meal on Sunday after church. We still had to do this because we hadn't celebrated the halfway point with each other yet. So of course, we HAD to eat their delicious flour tortilla chips, but we did go easy on the entrees. I had the grilled chicken salad with no dressing and salsa verde and I think Laura split a couple tacos with Mike.

Now it's back to the grind. Each week has its ups and its downs. I'm seeing big gains in my pullups right now and smaller gains in my pushups. The one-handed pushups are still out of my reach. My body just doesn't know how to do them....plus they come late in the workout so my arms are already near exhaustion. My favorite part of the week though is on Thursday afternoons when Laura and I both take a break from work and chill out with some coffee at the Queen Bean downtown. It's kind of our way of rewarding ourselves for making it another week and it's a good time to reboost our energies for the next two days.

We are happy to have made it this far, but we are also glad there is still 6 more weeks left. I don't think either of us would be happy with our results if this were it. As my sister-in-law pointed out to me today, it's only 54 more days until we go to Hawaii. I don't need to be "that guy" on the beach with muscles coming out of his neck (you know who I'm talking about!), but I don't care to be the skinny flabby guy either...and I wanna play volleyball on the beach, and play it well! Thank goodness for Plyo Tuesdays!

-chad