I do have one large advantage over all of these ladies, should I choose to take it: I'm about 20-30 years younger than them. So if I can get my butt in gear and exercise like I need to, I should be able to lose more weight in five weeks than them. Should. If. We'll see.
I started stepping it up today with a 30 minute run/walk around my neighborhood. I covered somewhere around two miles, not bad for a first time. However, even though I can do the Curves workout like a beast, it has NOT prepared me for running outside, which is about 50x harder. Yeah.
So this is my plan, do 30-45 mins of running/walking (hopefully more running as time goes on) at home AND do the Curves workout five days every week until Lindsay's wedding. That's an hour to an hour and 15 mins of exercise total most days. I think it should work. I also think my body is really going to hate me for the first two weeks. Oh well! If it works and I can keep it up, I'll reach my goals that much faster and have picked up the healthy habit of working out. Then when I do finally get down to my goal weight, working out 3 times a week just to maintain will be a breeze!!
Right?
My Goal: To look something close to this again.
Chillin. 
Tired.
Slaphappy.
Really slaphappy. 
Finally asleep. 
The night we arrived, she dipped her toes in the lake and splashed around a lot. I'm really grateful for that life jacket, because the first thing she tried to do was run right off the edge of the dock.
As eager as she was the night we got there, she did not like it one bit when we made her actually get in the water.
But inside the boat was ok.
Jordan and his friend Brenden floating around the bay.
I love this picture.
Chaela and her cousin (3rd cousin?) Oden playing in the pool.
The boys playing bags. Or cornhole, if you're from OH.
Chaela getting in the middle of things, as usual.
Chaela loves her great-grandma, and I'm glad that we got to go down there so they could spend some time together.
Can't read Jacob's poker face. 
Nick's poker face isn't quite as unreadable.
Sparklers.
McFarland women.
Yeah, the boat was broken, so Jordan, Will, and Brenden went tubing with the paddle boat. Ride that wake, Will! 
Kristin and Lindsay make weird faces at the camera.
Patriotic babies! There are probably cuter pictures of this moment out there. The best one I took was foggy because I took my camera from air conditioning to the hot, humid outdoors and the lens got steamed up. Stupid camera! This was the cutest moment all week!
Crazy Hairs.
Yearly tradition of taking family pictures by this sign. Yay! We're cute!
We forced Kristin and Jacob to do it, too.
Sisters by the sign.
We found out that we can get the ear buds to stick in Chaela's ears if she doesn't move around too much. Almost as good at the personal DVD player, and if we can find some we might get her some smaller ear buds before we go down to Memphis later this month!
Hair nubs, inspired by the last time we visited Jana and she put them in Addie's hair.
See that crazy look in her eyes? That's because those are Peeps, the reward reaped by one of her very first climbing expeditions. She reached the top of the table where are Easter baskets were sitting... about a month and a half after Easter. They were empty except for those Peeps.
A small obsession with Sneetches. Or "Snitches," as Chaela would say.
