First Anniversary Trip

How has it been a year already?!

Our first anniversary is this Monday, July 16! I really can't believe it has been a year already. Didn't I just walk down the aisle with my parents to marry my husband? Didn't we just have our first dance and cut the cake? Didn't 170 of our family and friends just celebrate with us? No?? Huh, could've fooled me! ;)

The first anniversary feels like one of the significant ones so I wanted to go on a trip to celebrate. Next July I could possibly be pregnant, so who knows if we could take a trip or if I would enjoy a trip. So it seemed like this was a really great time to go on an anniversary trip.

We didn't want to spend tons of money and at the time we planned the trip I only had about 3 days of vacation available at my job, so we knew a week long trip was not an option. So that ruled out anything faraway. I had been tossing around this idea in my head for months but wanted to find a Groupon Getaway or Living Social Escape deal to make it more affordable. I found one a month ago, so we scheduled our trip just a month before our anniversary! We will be leaving Saturday and spending Saturday night in Buffalo, NY. It is about a 6.5 hour drive through Canada, assuming both border crossings are quick. We will then spend Sunday through Tuesday in Niagara Falls, ON, which is just 30 minutes from Buffalo. The Groupon was not valid Saturday nights, so we had to find an alternative. ;)  It is perfect though, because a few years ago we saw a special on the Food Network or Travel channel about the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, where buffalo wings were invented. We said at that time that we should go to that restaurant someday. So now we will!

Horseshoe Falls from the Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls, ON

Tony has never been to Niagara Falls or New York. I was in Niagara Falls for roughly 18 hours on the way to New York City in April 2000 for spring break with my family. It was very foggy and we couldn't see much, and of course we didn't do much in the city since it was just a stop on the way to our vacation destination. So we are both really looking forward to the trip! I just finished our itinerary for the trip and am now moving onto the packing list.

In general, I like tradition, so I wanted us to do anniversary gifts based on the traditional anniversary gifts. The traditional first anniversary gift is paper. Since I am unemployed and neither of us could come up with something to give the other, I suggested we just give each other anniversary cards. It fits the paper theme, and a card is something Tony often forgets to give, so it will be special! I just hope he gives me a card that is from spouse to spouse and references "our" anniversary rather than "your" anniversary. For our wedding last year, I gave him a card that started with "For the man I love on our wedding day." Tony gave me a card that said, "The best part of today is knowing this is only the beginning. Here's to all of the stories, the laughter, and the love... today and every day to come." I'm not 100% sure that card was in the section of cards that wedding guests would give to a married couple, but nothing about it says "us." So I just hope he doesn't give me a card that says, "On your anniversary." ;)

Since we will be gone from Saturday morning until Tuesday night, our weigh-in will be next Wednesday instead of Monday. I am hoping all of the walking we will have to do will outweigh the extra calories we will most certainly eat. I am packing up individual servings of chips, dip, and pistachios for the car rides and while we're out and about. We will also be packing sandwich lunches in the cooler for Saturday and Sunday, so that will help.

This will also be our first big road trip! The longest we have driven together before is just 2.5-3 hours. Hopefully we don't kill each other from spending all that time in the car ;)

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Camping this Weekend and 4th of July

This weekend we are going camping with a group of 6 friends. We have camped with them the last two years and every year it is a ton of fun! We are trying a new campground this year. It is a shorter drive for all of us, which will be nice. It is actually only about 15 minutes north of my parents' house! We are going Thursday-Sunday which gives us two full days. Last year and the year before, we had rustic sites which meant we set up tents and didn't have any electricity or running water. This year at this new (to us) campground, they didn't have enough rustic sites left so we have electricity and running water at our sites. We are still using tents, and airbeds. There is no way I could sleep on the ground without my Aerobed :) Every year we tube down a local river for a few hours, which of course involves drinking. We're young adults, this is what we do! Although can we still call ourselves young adults? Three of the eight are 30/31 and the rest of us are 27-29. I guess that makes us real adults now :-\

Drinking involves calories, of course, which means this weekend will be tough. I've been saving calories the last couple days so that if I go over Thursday-Sunday, it hopefully won't affect me that much. I am planning on snacking minimally or not at all. The way our group does meals is that everyone signs up for one meal and then brings enough food to feed the group. This means we eat good meals instead of hot dogs over the campfire at every meal :) We are bringing pulled pork for one meal and bratwursts from 20th Century Market for the other meal. We are also bringing Jello shots for tubing ;)  So this weekend will be a struggle since I don't normally drink my calories, but hopefully I can stay at or under my daily calories, or at the very least keep my weekly calories at or under the total weekly amount.

On our way back home on Sunday, we are going to stop at my parents' house. My sister who lives in Charleston, SC will be home for a whole week and I haven't seen her in 6 months! Since I don't have anything to do in town next week, I will be spending the whole week at my parents' house, which will be great. As I mentioned before, they live on an inland lake so I plan on spending a lot of time on the dock relaxing and spending time with my sister. My other sister who lives in Chicago, IL will be there Wednesday-Sunday next week, so I will get to spend a lot of time with her as well. My eating should be fine since my mom always cooks healthy, well-balanced meals. She also has been really supportive of our weight loss efforts and every time we visit, she keeps wrappers of food she cooks with so we can see the nutrition facts and scan them into our MFP food diaries. The biggest obstacle will be drinking (it's a holiday!) and desserts, which will most likely be infrequent but still available at least a few times. However, I am feeling pretty confident I can have small amounts of dessert and keep things in moderation.

Since I will not be home from tomorrow afternoon until Sunday evening, July 8th, I will not be able to do a Monday weigh-in next week. Tony will be home with the scale, so he might do it. He is not sure. I think he should, but it's up to him. If he does, I will do a Monday post with his progress. My parents have a scale of course, but scales are not identical so my results will not be 100% accurate. I will probably weigh myself on their scale on Monday morning and again the following Sunday morning to see how I'm doing on their scale, but I won't be publishing the results until I'm back on our scale on Monday, July 9th.

At the very least, I will try to do some kind of post next week! Thanks for following our progress and keeping us accountable.

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Our Weekend in South Haven, MI

As I mentioned in a previous post, Tony and I spent June 1-3 in South Haven, MI. We had a fantastic time! The only bad part of our weekend was all the calories we consumed :(  We stayed at a B&B that served amazing breakfasts so it was very hard to stay under calories, even with the amount of exercise we got. But we still logged every single morsel of food and we are both confident we ate less than we would have if we hadn't been logging. We were consciously thinking about our calories all day every day, which helped keep them down. Although the ice cream on Saturday was probably a bad decision in hindsight, but you have to live a little sometimes, right? :)

I'm going to share a few pictures as I share what we did during our visit to South Haven.

We stayed in a Queen Deluxe room at the B&B:

We went to the lighthouse at the end of the pier both Friday and Saturday nights to watch the sunset on Lake Michigan:

Friday (so cold!!! 48 degrees and windy)

Saturday (much warmer and actual sunset)

We walked through the Festival of Cars and ran into Tony's uncles, Jim and Jeff, showing off their 1965 Ford Mustang. They are the ones who got Tony into Mustangs when he was a kid [gee thanks, guys!! ;) ]

Tony with his Uncle Jim (Tony's mom's younger brother) and the Mustang

We tried to go on the Friends Good Will ship on Saturday, but they canceled all of their Saturday sailings due to the wind and high waves. So we toured the Michigan Maritime Museum instead:

 Tony standing inside the Evelyn S., a ship that is displayed out of the water

I'm a better height for that ship ;)

We went on the Friends Good Will ship on Sunday afternoon:

 The ship at port before we left

Tony on the ship while we were out on the "high seas" (Lake Michigan)

Looking back at land

Tony went on this ship back in 2005, when he was 24, and never felt seasick. Now that he is almost 31, he got a bit queasy and lightheaded during the sail. Thankfully, there was a very nice couple who gave him their extra (and not needed) chewable Dramamine tablet, and all was well! We were so thankful that this other couple we had never met before actually came prepared! Next time we will bring the seasickness medicine and ginger pills we have leftover from our October 2010 cruise.

On the way home, we decided to stop at Saugatuck Dune Rides to ride a dune buggy over some sand dunes! This was unplanned but we started talking about it on Saturday. I had been on a dune buggy probably 20 years ago as a child, but Tony had never been. We had a lot of fun:

The dune buggy

Riding down a hill

 Us at the top of a very tall dune with Lake Michigan in the background (the darker blue)

Overall, the weekend was fantastic! South Haven is now my favorite close by West Michigan coastal town. I loved it there. I told Tony that if South Haven had a Meijer store, I would consider moving there. But alas, they have a Wal-Mart and no Meijer, and that's just not going to cut it for me!! :) Our B&B, Victoria Resort Bed & Breakfast, was fantastic and we are already thinking of going back during the winter when the rates are lower and they offer special promos!

Thank you again to Tony for planning this wonderful Christmas present. I had a blast and got to discover a town in Michigan I had never been to!

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Katie's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Tony's Food and Exercise Diary can be found here.
Our weight loss tickers can be found at the bottom of every page of our blog.

Plans For The Blog & This Weekend

I would like this blog to be more than just weekly updates with the amount of weight we have lost. There is so much more to losing weight than weighing oneself each week, and I'd like to touch on that every few days. So I would like to start my first "non scale results" post by talking about my plans for our blog.

As I mentioned in the first post, we will be weighing every Monday morning and taking measurements every 4 weeks on Sundays. I will be posting our results each Monday.

The "non scale results" posts will consist of more history of our weight struggles, more information about why we're doing this and why we're doing it now, perhaps some healthy-ish recipes we enjoy, and maybe even some facts about obesity, weight loss, and food addiction (I am a firm believer in the existence of this) if I find some time to research them!

Victoria Resort Bed & Breakfast - South Haven, MI

This weekend we are spending Friday and Saturday nights at a bed & breakfast in South Haven, MI. I have stayed in a B&B at least once during my childhood but this will be Tony's first experience! I have never been to South Haven but Tony grew up just 30 minutes east, so he has been there numerous times. This is Tony's Christmas present to me. I told him I wanted an "experience" since I can buy whatever material items I like. So he came up with this great idea for a summer weekend. We are also going to go on the Friends Good Will ship, which is a replica of an 1811 sailing ship. It will sail on Lake Michigan for 1.75 hours. We are really looking forward to it!

Friends Good Will replica ship - South Haven, MI

I am a little worried about our food this weekend. Our room at the B&B has a mini refrigerator we could put jelly or lunch meat in for sandwiches for lunch, but for the most part we will be eating the breakfast provided to us along with dinners out. We will have to make smart choices. If we go to an Italian place, choose red sauce instead of cream. If we go to a Mexican place, choose items with minimal cheese. Always try to eat just half and take the other half home. Having the mini fridge should help with this.

In the past when I was trying to lose weight and Tony and I would go to my favorite restaurant, Carlos O'Kelly's (no longer in MI :( :( ), I would get my usual wet beef & bean burrito dinner with rice and refried beans on the side, and I would immediately cut the burrito in half as soon as it was placed in front of me. I would eat one half of it along with the rice and refried beans. Tony and I would share one basket of chips, maybe two if we had been good earlier in the day.

I will just have to remember all of my weight loss tricks from the past this weekend. I've been in numerous weight loss classes since I was 12 years old (more on that later); I am pretty sure I have more knowledge about eating right than the average thin person. I've just been too lazy to implement all that knowledge ;)