News from Andrea!

Gord (my Dad), Paula, me, Stephanie, Nathaniel (my brother)

A lot can happen in a month! As most of you know, I graduated from the University of Southern California on May 15, 2009 and received my Masters of Arts in Teaching. My family came out to support me and celebrate with me!

AT GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY
Anthony, Paula, Stephanie, me

We had a wonderful time together. This is a picture of all of us (excluding the photographer, my father); which is fine because I just realized that the rest of us are on here! Anyhow, we are at the Griffith Observatory. When we arrived we were surprised by how popular the place was and soon discovered that the parking lot was closed; we had to park a ways down the road. As luck would have it, the entire walk to the observatory was uphill! Just as we passed the entrance to the parking lot, it was deemed empty enough to open up; yes, this was our lucky day alright! Ha! However, we were able to console ourselves with the fact that we had gotten some good exercise!

This blog has seen some great positive change in the last month as well!

First, Aunt Carol-Ann gave the blog a bit of a face lift, and now we are current and up to date!

Second, Stephanie has decided to join us, and she is off to a fantastic start! I’m pretty sure everyone who reads this is familiar with all the participants, but I’ll give a little introduction anyway. Stephanie is my older sister, and she decided to join the blog when she came out to visit me in CA for my graduation. We got to work right away exercising and eating healthy (well, most of the time, anyhow).

With all the excitement, I figured it was time to do a proper wrap-up for the month of May...

In the past 31 days we have put in a total of

22 hours and 40 minutes of exercise

and
lost a total of 9.0 pounds

We are well on our way to being winners by losing! Keep up the good work, team!

THE STRESS TRIPLETS!

Carol-Ann, Jeanette, and Pat at the coffee shop!


I just got back from a wonderful visit to Canada to see my mother and Carol-Ann and her family, as well as Pat who also lives in that area. What a great time we all had! I loved every minute of it.

Before I left home to fly to Toronto, Carol-Ann, Pat, and I were joking by email that we were all having so much stress (mostly work-related) that we should call ourselves the stress triplets!

Last Sunday evening the three of us got together at Artisano's, a wonderful coffee shop and eatery near Carol-Ann's, and spent a great 4 hours gabbing and at times laughing so hard that we could not see for the tears! I fear we drew a great deal of attention from other patrons, but they were very kind to us! When we started taking pictures of each other, one nice lady came over and offered to take a picture of all of us together, so here it is. I'm pretty sure that this past week has gone better for each of us because of the great fun we had on Sunday evening and the friendship and support we gave each other! The stress triplets are old enough to know that stress shared is stress divided, and the support of understanding friends is priceless!

Carol-Ann and I have certainly wimped out on weighing in this week, haven't we! I haven't even been brave enough to get on the scale to see what I weigh, let alone post it here! We really did not do too badly when I was visiting her, but since I came home I have been eating everything in sight as I try to catch up on my work.

Sometimes all my best plans are useless. I had hoped to keep up with my client's dictation while I was gone (an internal medicine doctor), and so I had my laptop with me to do just that. All was ready, and then his recorder malfunctioned! He could not send me his dictation until the night before I came home! For just a minute, I wavered in deciding whether this was yet another irritation to ruin my day, or if it was a blessing from God which allowed me to forget all my work and have fun! I decided to count it a blessing and it really was!

But...there is definitely a downside to coming back to overwhelming non-stop hours sitting at my computer trying to catch up, typing until the bones practically start poking through the ends of my fingers. I am almost caught up now, though. All I have left to do are the records for Friday's patients which he sent me last evening so...(deep breath)...I am feeling pretty good about it.

Now if I can just get my weight loss back on track...

My trip!

I'm home, and it is hard to believe that my long-awaited visit to see my family is already over!! It is hard to get my feet on the ground after such a GREAT visit with Carol-Ann and her family and our mother. They all made me feel so comfortable and at home, and we had just the best time talking, laughing, playing our instruments together, EATING TOGETHER... This was one of those visits when staying another few days would have suited me just fine, and Carol-Ann did have some of that wonderful bread left over...

It was so good to catch up with all the goings-on and interests of the family. I wish I were better with the camera, though. I seem to think of all the pictures I wish I had taken after I get home when it is much too late to do anything about it! I do have one or two and will use them later.

I came home to find that Barry had been working very hard while I was gone. In addition to taking care of Coral, he had put up the tree and added Christmas lights in four of the windows. He had also bought and assembled a storage unit (with doors) that we wanted to get for the office to help get us organized.

Speaking of the office, SOME people were naughty while I was away!

Elmo was trying to take over my computer! And Coral was laughing so hard she could hardly breathe!!! I had to chase him out of my office before he could make my computer crash! It was hard to be mad with him, though, with him so carefully dressed in his smart blue-striped shirt!

I am almost caught up with the doctor's dictation that had piled up while I was gone. He had 7 tapes for me, and 6 are done, so you know I was serious about chasing Elmo away from my computer!

Weigh-in is tomorrow morning, and I'm trying not to over-expect! Best wishes on your little get-on-the-scale ceremony, Carol-Ann!

Let's Try Gearing DOWN This Time!

We have learned some awesome things this past week. One of them being that we are much better encouragement to each other in the area of weight-loss when we are FAR APART!

It was a wonderful week sitting here stuffing our little faces with bread and bread and more bread! We have ZERO will-power when we are together! We want to pamper each other with food, it seems! Well, I guess we've finally found a good reason why it is better to live in different countries far enough away to need to fly rather than drive for a visit!

Mom and Bruce and Kinza and I just loved having you here for a few days! Mom said as soon as the front door closed, Mini dashed to the chair and leaped up to watch us out the window when we left to take you to the airport. She said when the car finally disappeared down the road, only then did Mini give in to the reality that we'd left without her and she flopped sadly to the floor where she remained for the entire hour+ that it took for us to get back home! We've joined her with the droopy puppy ears and big sad eyes!

Thanks for all the effort it took to come and try out my new scale!