Happy thoughts!

ooops...I forgot to do my Happy Friday Blog, so I will do it now.

I want to try to focus on one thing, but I am going to start buy pointing out some smaller things. First, I want to say I am extremely happy with my progress this week. After hitting a plateau for nearly two months, I am losing weight again! I have lost THREE pounds since Sunday. There are three things that I have changed this week that could have caused this. 1. I started taking One-A-Day Metabolism Vitamins. 2. I have stuck to my 1250 calorie meal plan 3. Jillian Michaels.
I guess I could also add in that I have been forcing the water this week, too.

The second thing that makes me happy is YOU. Yes, you, my blog readers and bloggers. We all have different stories and different struggles. Some of you have much longer journeys to make than I do, but I couldn't have made it this far without YOU. You are all AMAZING people! So don't give up, keep blogging and keep commenting. This goes out especially to Sarah, Nathalie and Brooke.

AND the thing I want to focus on today is WALKS. I love taking walks and I am itching to get out and start my walks again. Last Spring, when my daughter wasn't even walking yet I would bundle her up (it stays pretty chilly here until about June) and take long walks. This is how our days went:
Wake up, breakfast, get dressed, leave to take a walk (about twice a week we would start by stopping at the Library). About a half a mile from my house is Lake Minnetonka, one of the biggest lakes in Minnesota. Coming from the state whose slogan is "The land of 10,000 lakes" that's saying a lot. So, naturally, this is my favorite place to walk. The catch is...to get to the lake I have to walk down a HUGE, steep hill. Add in a stroller with a 20 lb baby and you have quite a workout! But it's so worth it. Once you get down to the lake there are a number of docks and the sidewalk runs right along the lake. The town is beautiful and there are usually a ton of flowers and shady trees everywhere. After about a ten minute walk down the sidewalk you come to an old Train Depot, they don't use it anymore, but they made it into a cute little museum. Outside of the train depot they have a beautiful flower garden leading up to more docks and a nice area for picnics. If you walk down a little hill you can walk across a dock to the beach. There is a small stretch of sand and the lake and a great playground. Usually this is the point Harliegh and I would take a break and play. We would walk barefoot int he sand, dip our toes in the water, build sand castles, swim (when it got hot enough), and I would push her in the baby swings. And the sailboats! Sail boats everywhere! White, Bright blue, Yellow, Red. I love sailboats. They are so....whimsical and romantic. After awhile I would put her in the stroller and we would continue our walk.
Over some more hills and a nice little wooded area, we would then be making a loop back to where we started. Across the street from the sidewalk near the lake is a cute row of little shops. Harliegh and I would sometimes stop by Ben &Jerry's for ice cream or Starbucks for a coffee and juice. Sometimes we would duck into the cutest little bookshop you have ever seen. But most of the time we would just window shop, staring longingly into all the clothes stores with merchandise way too expensive for me. Then we would make our way up the huge hill. You think it's hard going down? I can feel every muscle working on the way up.

Those are my summer walks. After this,w e would go home, have lunch, take a nap...and then do it all over again. Occasionally I would opt to walk to the other park a few blocks away (no hills). But that's it....Two walks a day almost every day from April until September!
You might think that is crazy....but that is how I lost the first 30 pounds of my baby weight. Just walking, pretty much!

So that is my happy thought for the day. Hopefully I didn't bore you. When the snow melts and it gets a little prettier I will take pics and show you. It's beautiful!