AFC Ends With A Bang!

Morning!


I'm not sure if it was my decision to be jolly this weekend or the beautiful sunshine that we had from Friday afternoon to Sunday night but jolly I was and it was delicious! Mayhap, I shall be jolly this week also, in spite of today's drizzle?


Because, with all good blogs/diaries, this little slice of internet is first for me, I am going to do my weekend recap again because I like to look back later and see what I was doing....so if you're bored by the antics in my world as they do not relate to weight loss or fitness, see you tomorrow! ;)


Friday night I decided to skip dinner with my mother in law and do something much more enjoyable! I trimmed the edges and then gave the front and back lawns a mow...first time since last September! I donned my gumboots, safety glasses and iPod shuffle and mowed my little heart out, it was absolutely fantastic! Now, if you think I'm nuts for my love of lawn mowing, maybe I am (and the other women in our neighborhood have told me that I make them look bad because I do and they don't...whatever!), but there have been many a year that I wished I had a lawn to mow or flowers to trim and I didn't. Now, I am beyond grateful that I do and I can and I embrace it every chance I get! This year I'm even going to buy a sprinkler and water the front lawn and fertilize it so I can have lush, green grass to mow instead of brown dust by the middle of the summer! Last year Ray wouldn't let me because he HATES mowing and if I fell off the mowing wagon he didn't want to have to do it. I guess this year he knows I won't stop doing it.






Saturday morning was the official end of AFC and it went out on a high note. 8:30am spinning class with a great instructor and then I did my hour of upper body weights, finished up with some 25lb weighted squats, some good stretching and a steam. We went out for our standard lovely Saturday lunch and then came home and got busy. I set Ray up with the pressure washer and a stool upstairs so he could clean the deck whilst remaining seated (worked great!) and I proceeded to work in the backyard. For three hours I ripped and chopped and pulled and bagged and raked. And the dent I made, while definitely noticeable via 'yard waste' was barely noticeable in the yard. Oy, the work that I will get to do this week!


On Friday night in our travels we happened upon some lovely patio furniture for a ridiculously good deal so on Saturday after we cleaned up our cleaning up, Ray assembled furniture. I took a truckload of cardboard recycling to the dump and then went and bought a bunch of bricks and brought them home. Fortunately (?) for me, Ray's injury means that I get to do all the heavy lifting and I am going to be BUFF! LOL. I carried all the bricks from the front of the house to the back, realized that they were all too large and then carried them back to the front, split them all with a sledge and then carried them aaaaallll the way back to the back and up the patio stairs.




The patio furniture is lovely with our giant offset umbrella we bought last month and we now have turned unused deck into lovely cafe-style retreat! Decorative outdoor pillows, an outdoor area rug and possibly a fire pit are to come along with some shade loving flowers to brighten it up. It's lovely now, it's gonna be gorgeous when we're done!

After all the hard work on Saturday, I thought to sleep in on Sunday however the sun was blazing and Ray thought that 8am would be a wonderful time for me to get up and take my girl Pedals out for a ride. I didn't really appreciate it in the moment but it was a wonderful idea and it was gorgeous out. I realized while I was out, that my ride coming up in two weeks might be more of a challenge that I had thought. Spinning in a studio, as hard as that is, is nothing like riding a proper bicycle outside and up hills. NOTHING! I plan to take her out a couple more times before May 15th, just to get some road time in. My saving grace is that while our home is in the hills of Coquitlam, the ride in May is actually mostly in the flats. Thank heaven!

Anyway, I've rambled on for quite long enough now, I think. The rest of Sunday was a write off for anything productive as we were out riding motorcycles and sitting on the new patio drinking beer. Jolly is as jolly does!

Happy May, let's make it A-MAY-ZING!