Life keeps moving on, whether you're ready or not...

It seems appropriate to start this post with WW news, as I have been doing previously. Fortunately, it is good news! I have steadily been losing over the last few weeks. I can attribute it all to tracking my food, going to meetings, and exercising regularly. When you follow the plan, the weight comes off - what a novel concept, right? Here are the numbers:

Weight: 143.4 pounds
Pounds lost (since last post): -3.4
Total pounds lost: 18.6 pounds
Pounds to lose: 18.4 pounds

One of the reasons I've bee able to stay active is that I am back in karate again. It's good to be back. I really like challenging myself. This past weekend Jennings and I went to the annual winter camp in Fort Walton Beach. It was a good time, like always, but it was extra special this time. Jennings got his black belt!

We also both competed in self defense and ended up doing pretty good. Competing in the black belt division for the first time, Jennings got fourth place. I got third place in my division. Also, the most fun part of the weekend is always doing karate in the water:

Tuscaloosa dojo after karate in the water

Normally, I would be mortified to share this picture online (ok I am still a little mortified), but I am putting this on here to show my weight loss progress. This is our dojo last year:

I am not proud of how I was looking back then, but I am happy to say I am working on it. I hope next year I can show another picture and I will be at my goal weight!

In other news, I did complete the houndstooth cookie challenge some weeks back. Thanks to some help from my friend Nikki and a surprising amount of patience, I churned out 16 dozen of these:

My customer in Huntsville was very happy with them, and she told me that only 2 or 3 cookies broke in the shipping process, so that is great news. This whole experience marked the end of my etsy shop, Blue Bird Baskets. I sold off the rest of my basket inventory and closed it down. In some ways it is sad, but in other ways, it is a chance for me to focus on the many other exciting things going on in my life right now without this nagging feeling that I am being wasteful with all the stuff I'm not using.

So, in closing - what exciting things are going on in your life right now?