Belated Birthday News

Emma turned 7 on March 27th. We had a lot of fun celebrating at the Olive Garden on Friday night with Maga, Papa, Gertie and her kids. Here is our funny face photo shoot while we waited for our food.

Super Clarky-o

Hey. This is Ryan. I have first-hour planning, so I take my sweet time to get to work. I help Lish get the kids ready and then relax for a minute before taking off. Well, I grabbed some clothes for Clark today and after Lish put them on, realized what he looked like. Or more like who he looked like. That's right, Mario from Super Mario Bros. So, I slapped on a hat and sent him outside for a little photo shoot with my phone. What do you think? How does he look? And how nerdy am I?

Welcome to AA

I hesitate to write this because I really don't want to jinx anything, but I have been running lately. On the treadmill, in intervals, walk 2 minutes run 2 minutes, for 30 minutes total. Sounds lame but let me tell you why this is a big deal. I am fat. Not just overweight but borderline morbidly obese. Seriously. That is where I fall on all the charts. When I step on the Wii fit board it goes "oh!" like it is surprised. When it weighs me the music may as well be a death march. "dun duh dundun dun dun". Oh and I hate running. We have a long history and I have always hated it.

It's ok. I know it. I am tired of it. Hence the running.

I can blame it on the 4 babies, but there is a lot more to it than that. I have basically had a sedentary life style for most of my life. I did exercise sporadically through out, but never enough to make a huge difference. I would lose 10 or 15 pounds at a time then slowly put it back on with 5 or 10 more. Exercise was never a huge part of my life and never encouraged as such either.

I danced when I was young. We moved when I was 8 and so I never really started again.

I played soccer for 5 years. I was the goalie because I was too lazy to run all over the field.

I started running track once but never made it to a meet because I found out I hated running and it really hurt my knees. (I have since been to a podiatrist and found out the problem is in my feet not my knees, so now it does not hurt. Not that way anyway.)

I have big boobs. Not conducive to running.

I bought a good sports bra, I got orthodox, I bought new shoes, I have a gym membership. So now I run. I am a runner. I have done it enough times to say I am one. Not a fast one and not long distance, but a runner just the same.

I run because it is the best way I know how to lose weight. Have you ever seen a fat runner? Besides at the gym? You do it enough for a long enough time and you are bound to become thin. I figure it may take me a year, but eventually I will run all the fat off. I don't want to be 40 and fat. I figure I better start now.

How nice will that be? I will know one day. I will keep you posted on my running.

p.s. secretly I have always wanted to be a runner...I just pretended I didn't.