Hello dear sister!

Is today your doctor's appointment?  I feel like you told me it was Friday... if so, I hope it goes well!  Don't back down, just be clear and confident and make sure that you have a plan of action when you leave.

This morning I weighed in at 168.6 lbs and I'm pretty happy about that.  I feel like I look like I've lost a few pounds and I don't have too many more to go to get back down to my wedding weight.  This weekend is kind of a big test for me.  I've been great about eating and exercising all week, but like I've been saying, the weekends are always the toughest for me.  It's going to be a bit hectic with Aunt Susan, Ed, and Grandma all staying with us and going into Wausau for the art fair, but I'm going to do my best to be concientious about what I eat and to plan in advance.  I'm still doing that book I told you about and that has been going well.  I had borrowed it from the library and I liked it so much that I bought it from Amazon.  When it got here I started over, clean slate kind of.  I have been working hard to do everything it says and I feel like it's helping to some extent.  It definitely keeps more more cognizant of my goals and reminds me why I need to be careful of what I eat.

Last night I made some spinach ricotta roll-ups with lasagna noodles that I had seen on Pinterest.  They were SO good!  I think Seth was a little dissapointed when he realized it was spinach instead of ground beef inside the noodles, but he liked them anyway.  Pretty tasty little guys, but kind of a lot of work to make.  The recipe says that they freeze well, so making a big batch on a weekend might be a good idea so that it doesn't take so long on a weeknight.  Noted for next time!  The night before I made homemade chicken pad thai-- omg, it turned out SO GOOD!  I even modified the recipe a bit to add some more veggies (green onions and bean sprouts) and I'm so excited about the leftovers I had for lunch yesterday and today.  I loooooove pad thai, it's one of my favorites, and I'm so excited now that I know I can make it at home.  I've been experimenting a lot more in the kitchen with new recipes, especially with trying to incorporate more and different vegetables.  As sad as it is, I'm kind of like a child in that if it's pureed or turned into a sauce, I tend not to mind even things that I would like otherwise.  How sad is that?  Anyway, my Good Housekeeping magazine had a recipe for chicken and corn enchiladas with a really interested vegetable puree sauce that has kale and tomatoes and garlic and some other stuff in it that sounded kind of good and I think I might try.  I know it doesn't seem very adventurous to most people, but to me it's a big step!  Plus, with all the zucchini I've been getting out of Marilyn's garden I've been putting it in all my baked goods-- so even my muffins and cookies and such have been full of zucchini, oats, flax, nuts, etc making them relatively healthy.  I guess the point of this whole tirade is that despite not being as skinny as I used to be, I'm feeling really good right now about the healthy foods I've been cooking and baking, the new things that I've been trying, and all of the exercise I've been doing.  Weight isn't everything, after all, and I've made a lot of improvements in my lifestyle besides just losing weight, so I am giving myself some credit for all of that.

So a bunch of people just totally congregated in my office, which is why I missed your call... sorry about that.  Maybe you were calling to tell me about your appointment?  Hope it went well!  You can call me now if you want!

Love you!!!!