Saturday is our rest day (we get one a week), so we had to fit in a workout on Sunday. This wasn't really hard for me, since I was home with the girls all day. Christopher was working 10am-10pm and had the car. He was going to work out in the morning before going to work, but didn't get to it afterall. Weekends are rough on our routines.
I got up around 12:30 as normal and planned on doing my workout as normal, but then I had a great idea. I had the girls get dressed and into walking shoes, and we headed out. I knew from using runkeeper.com that Sav Mor grocery store (which is where I always get produce and many other things on my list) is only a little over a mile from our house if you walk through the neighborhood behind the elementary school. It was a beautiful day, and a walk would feel great, and I decided it would be my cardio for the day. Maybe a little mixing it up would help in my weightloss and getting toned up.
We walked down the road to the new connector road they just put in last year, complete with nice wide sidewalks. It's such a blessing. It goes over the hills between us and town. At the top of the hill if you turn on a little road to the right, you come in the back entrance to the elementary school. If you keep going instead of going up to the school, you end up in an apartment complex. I think it's one of those low-rent project ones. It's a really nice neighborhood though, with playgrounds and landscaping and lots of big shade trees. On the other end of the complex is the road that goes up the hill to my bank, and divides the apartments from the big shopping center. It used to be KMart and Ingles way back in the day, but now it's Tractor Supply and Sav Mor with a high-end furniture/decor store in between them. We decided to walk on to the next shopping center next to it, across another street. It now houses a cash advance place, a game store, the now-closed theater, Staples, and Big Lots. We walked all the way down to Big Lots where we got the girls Power Ades and I got a big bottle of water.
Christopher's KMart is directly across the 4-lane from Big Lots, so I *could* walk to Kmart and get the car sometime if I ever needed it for some reason I guess. Runkeeper says it's exactly 1.5 miles from my house to Kmart's front door. The problem is crossing the 4-lane. Even with a red light, it's still dangerous. I'd sure not do it with kids. This town is really not pedestrian-friendly. We lucked out that we can walk where we do without getting into much any traffic at all. We live right where we can come in the backway to everything on our side of the 4-lane.
On our way back, we stopped at Sav Mor and I got an avacado and some tortillas for the black bean veggie tostados. I don't know how I missed putting those on my list before, but I was glad to be able to "run" out and get them easily. We also got some strawberries and rhubarb for our surprise dessert for Christopher. As we walked back past Tractor Supply, I got a big re-usable shopping tote bag (didn't think to bring one with us) and a 6-pack of tomato plants they had marked down to $1. That was a great deal! The girls took turns carrying the heavy tote back back home, and I ended up with it the last half mile or so. And it';s all uphill to our house after we cross the hill between us and town. You kind of cross the hill in one spot, walk up the road a bit, then walk back up the hill to our house. There's nothing but a briar-filled field between our house and the new road, so we have to walk around. It's fine though. I needed the cardio. Boy, was I sweating by the time we got home! I definitely got a workout. The tostados that night were so yummy!
On Monday, Memorial Day, Christopher was off work (Hooray!), so we got up a little earlier than normal (well for me anyway) and loaded the Explorer up with towels, a quilt and lawn chairs, then headed to the lake. It's a little over a half hour away by backroads. Wish it was closer, but at least we have it at all. So many of the public swim areas have closed, and this one is still free! They have a special swimming area with trucked in sand, the big orange depth rope thing and big orange buoy things dividing us from the boats. I love just sitting and watching the boats. We counted 21 around the swim hole at one time. There was a guy sitting on the grass playing guitar. That was nice. I wish it had a little shop like the one I went to when I was a kid. It sold pizza and had a juke box that piped music down to the beach which was actually all sand even out of the water. This one we go to now is just sand in the water with grass on dry land. I remember hearing J Geils Band songs played over and over on that juke box the last summer I got to go before it was closed down.
The water was SO cold. BRRRrrrrrrr! We knew it would be. The damn hadn't let the water go up til recently, and it had rained pretty hard recently. Besides, the weather hadn't been very warm for long. In fact it was just barely above 80 when we went with a cool breeze. Once we finally got in the water and almost used to it, it made it easier to just stay in the water. Getting out, in the breeze was just too cold to think about. Finally the sun came out from behind the clouds and it warmed up nicely (outside the water anyway). After what felt like 2 hours in the water, Christopher and I got out and sat in the sun to dry off. He still has such a nasty sunburn. He didn't think to reapply his sunblock when he got out of the water. It'll turn to a tan anyway, which is what he wanted.
While we were in the water, he and I had decided to do some of our cardio workout since it was so much easier to move in the water. We did the knee raises and I could get that leg way up so the knee was out of the water (which was above my waist). We tried doing the kicks, which was hard with the resistance of the water, so we figured it would be helping the workout. When I went to climb the stone steps to get out of the water, I could barely pull myself up. I could REALLY feel gravity hit full force. Christopher had actually done his Sunday workout early Monday morning, so we were both due to be doing the strength training workout for Monday.
By the time we got home, we considered working out for a moment, then decided we were too worn out and sore from swimming. I don't know how the girls were even still awake. They were in the water a good half hour or more longer than we were. We started immediately on getting dinner prepped and cooking. We had two small lean steaks I got on mark down, as well as spinach parmesan turkey burgers for us, as well as hot dogs for the girls. Oh we also grilled corn cobs in the husks. Made baked home made potato wedges and sweet potato fries and a salad. For dessert we made a low-sugar strawberry rhubarb crumble and had light vanilla ice cream with it. Oh it was SO GOOD!
It was a really good day and the girls kept commenting on how much fun they'd had and how good the food was. What was nice was that it was just the 5 of us. The teens really had a great time swimming and playing together in the water. They made some great sisterly memories that day. Zoe had fun with us til we got out then made a slew of friends as always. There are always several dozen kids there. I miss sitting there, listening to the guitar player and the speed boats and seeing all the boats on the water and the people having fun, and my kids having a wonderful time.
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