Week 11
                      New Season

It has been a good week.  We had 5 days of physical activities as a family this week and it felt really good.
  
                Tuesday: YMCA
                Wednesday: Backyard Ball
                Thursday: Biking and Backyard Ball
                Saturday: Fletcher Park
                Sunday: East Flat Rock Park

The new season is here!  The weather is becoming warmer, though windy, sunny, and trees are budding and spring flowers are blooming.   We have had a lot of rain here this winter and these drier days this week have been very enjoyable to get outside and enjoy the sunshine and mild temperatures.

Family Fitness Activity Journal

This week we spent a couple of hours enjoying activities at the YMCA.  I really enjoyed doing the cardio dance class with Natalie.  It is a Zumba class and she has the funnest chorography with her songs. 

My boys love this class and they love Natalie too.  Three of my sons have participated in this class with me over the past three months and gotten to know Natalie, her assistant Mike, and several homeschool families who also take the class.    

We are in a new season of our life, just like a new season in the weather.   Our time with this class and Natalie teaching us fun dance moves to songs, will be coming to an end soon.  We have paid our YMCA fee until mid April, and then we won’t be coming here anymore.   The Y costs our family $80 a month, plus gas money, and an hour driving round trip.   Also there is an age limit of 7 and older for these classes.  Our family has three children under the age of 7 and it means we cannot do the class together.  In our family, we prefer to do activities that all of us can do together.  We don’t like leaving anyone out.  We were able to make the dance class a priority in the winter and cold weather, but we just don’t have it in our budget to continue long term.  Hopefully we will continue to enjoy beautiful weather and we should be able to get our family activity time done outside for free for the coming season.  We will be in a new season of our life soon, and will have to make lots of adjustments.  We talked with Natalie today about how much she has meant to us.  She shared that she is very fond of us too.  We still have a few more weeks to enjoy our time together and learn from her before it is over.

Next my 10 year old son and I walked a mile on the indoor track with another homeschool mom.  We enjoyed talking with her about kids, parenting, activities, etc. 

My 10 year old son played basketball and walked a half mile.  My 8 year old son played basketball and watched several bigger kids play competitive game of basketball.  He was very interested in watching these young men play the game.
He is looking forward to getting older and bigger.  Oh, why do they want to grow up so fast?

 

The homeschool mom I mentioned that we walked with today has 4 kids and three of them were at the YMCA with her tonight.   After working out, they invited us out to eat with them.  She has a sweet family!
 

We went to Neo Buritto.  I enjoyed a delicious 1/2 order of nachos.  Even though it was a half order, it was HUGE!  It was a bowl of tortilla chips covered in black beans, seasoned chicken breast, guacamole, sour cream, raw spinach, raw Cilantro, pic degio, corn and black bean salsa, and a side of pesto, etc. I left the cheese sauce off this dish to cut calories. (Next time I might leave the chips off to lower the carbs too.) But it was still YUMMY!  My boys each had burittos and a side of rice and chips.  Thank you Ellen and family for a fun time out to dinner and delicious food. I will post a review of the restaurant and link it here. It is definitely a place to check out if you are in the area.

On Wednesday, we played ball for two hours in the backyard.  It was a bit chilly, but lots of fun!  The kids set out bases and had so much fun playing in the sun.

On Thursday, we played tag, rode bikes, and played more baseball in the yard.  It was a lot sunnier, but still very chilly.  But each passing day seems a little warmer than the day before.  We are looking forward to warm weather.

 

On Saturday we drove out to Lake Julian Park as we had done the week before, but decided it was way to busy to stay.  The park was packed with families enjoying the lake and the beautiful weather.  So we drove to Fletcher Park. 

Though it was also busy, there was still plenty of open space.   This is a huge park with tons of stuff to do.   The park sits in a valley, with a creek and a pond, and you can see several mountains off in the distance to the north and east of the park.  Look at this path and beautiful sky!

 

We spent several hours walking paths (paved and gravel), exploring nature trails, a pond, and cane creek.   I am guessing by the distance and time we spent walking we accomplished at least two miles or so.   I pushed the stroller the majority of the time, over paved paths, over gravel paths, over grassy fields, and in the sand down to the creek too. I was totally tired at the end of the day.  We did a whole lot of walking!

 

We finally finished up with some time on the playground.  Besides playing on the equipment, the kids made several new friends and played several rounds of tag.  They had so much fun!

On Sunday, we enjoyed a couple of hours of play time at East Flat Rock Park.

I walked the paved path with the stroller while the children played on the playground.

They had so much fun, they did not want to leave.

 
 

Goals For Next Week

My goals for next week are the same as last week.  Yes, the same goals.  I want to continue my research about nutrition and the human body, reduce my carbohydrate intake, increase my intake of healthy protein and healthy fats, continue with the cardio dance class at the Y, play with my kids outdoors, complete two sessions of T-Tapp (which I did not do this past week), and begin some form of strength training twice this week, create healthy meals for my whole family, pray and read the bible daily.  One additional goal I want to ad is to get some organization done in the house and get ready for spring cleaning soon. 

This post will be linked up with:
Raising Homemakers 
Sharing Time

                                            

        Walk and Talk Wednesday Link Up

Please join us on our Walk and Talk Wednesday Family Fitness Journey. You can read other Walk and Talk stories from January and February and read about all our friends who have linked their stories.  I hope you will find inspiration and encouragement as you follow along on the journey.

You are welcome to leave your story in the comment section below, or if you write stories about family fitness, nutrition, weight loss, etc. on your web site you can link up. The blog hop link is open all month long, so link up as many fitness stories as you want all month long. Just be sure to grab this story link and include it somewhere on your post so others can find the link back here to read more stories of encouragement. You can also grab the blog hop code and place it at the bottom of your story too. Thank You!