That was fun!

I took a hooping class with my sister Lisa today. What fun, and what an intense workout! I was sweating up a storm by the time we were done.

Yes, I am talking hula hoop here. The self-proclaimed "Mayor of Hooperville" was on hand to give 15 of us instruction on hooping. After a stretch, she taught us how to keep the momentum going, how to keep it up and get it back up (no comments from the peanut gallery), how to change direction, hoop on our hands, and even pass ourselves through the hoop. I had a blast, so much so that I ordered a hoop. Hopefully I won't break anything in my house when I hoop (it does run away at times from my enthusiasm, or maybe I'm projecting...) Already I feel complaints from muscles I have long since forgotten, and I am expecting bruises on the tops of my hands from the hand hooping.

The class reminded me that I love the challenge of learning movement, that I have trouble doing two things at the same time (walking while hooping, for example: hard...) and if I remember to add music to exercise it becomes much more like play than "work". Added bonus: I found the title to the elusive Jack Johnson song I heard once and could never pinpoint. Yay me!

And now for something completely different: a goal

With 2 short months until my 30th high school reunion, I have been trying, without much success, to climb back on the wagon. I'm all about talk and no do, but this time I might have a good idea. I found an interesting run/walk for October, and I'm going to sign up for it. It's a 10k walk over the Columbia River. Jason seems leery, but I think it's doable.

Activity is usually the last to happen for me and first to go once I get off track. What I'm missing is finding something I enjoy doing. Failing that, I'll take a goal or something to work up to. I can walk. During our meeting last weekend, the leader was talking this up. It is true: walking is cheap and easy and anyone can do it. She also suggested climbing stairs. I found out that I can only climb my stairs at home for about 2.5 minutes. Surely a summer of training will not only make the 10k doable, but lose me some weight, too.

I also am trying to not fall into the same things that end up sabotaging my motivation. My friend just rejoined WW, and we used to have this thing that after the meeting we'd workout, and then go to Starbucks. Needless to say, we weren't just having point-free coffee. So bad launch to the week. This time, instead of eating there, we're going to get a low point coffee and walk around the neighborhood by the WW meeting. Hopefully this will help both of us start the week on a more positive and helpful foot.

I'm on Facebook now!

So I think I'm going to put the kid-related stuff there instead of here.

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

Today was Ethan's party. It went pretty good. Had one no-show and one non-responder; 2 sets of parents stayed. The last kid is still here, but she was Kyra's friend assigned to kid wrangling, and she arrived late, so no biggie.

The lightsabers were a big hit, as were the inflatable ones for the little sisters. 2 kids took us up on the offer to wear a costume, so we had a storm trooper and a jedi knight.

I'm very disappointed to say that the cake looked fine despite being custom-designed. Yes, that is a strange comment, so I'll qualify it. Ever since I discovered the Cake Wrecks blog, I've been scheming for a situation where I can trick a decorator into messing up our cake order so I could send the resulting hilarious photos to Cake Wrecks. This even seemed tailor made for such a screw up, considering the bakery did not have a Star Wars-themed cake on hand. They did have a Darth Vader head (and as it turns out also an Anakin Skywalker head) so we agreed on Vader on top of a Star Trek cake. I was rather hoping it would be horrible. As it is, there were some inexplicable orange swoops surrounding Vader. Not sure what they represent, but not really that funny either. I'm sending a picture in anyway because you can never tell.

Danya wields her lightsaber while sharing a bean bag with Alba.

Ethan's new Luke Skywalker costume was cool but a bit big (hence the missing arm?? Not sure what he was doing here....)