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My grandparents used to live in East Troy, WI, across the street from Lake Beulah. Some of my favorite memories include being at their house, sitting on the porch on summer evenings basking in the smell of the lake and the sweet smell of flowers. Since a very young age, that smell signifies summer for me. Tonight was the first night of summer in my world. Lake Michigan is a mile from our house and the Magnolia flowers are open...it's perfect.

Not only was tonight my first night of summer, but it was the first time in a year and a half that I've run. And it felt great! The first step of Couch to 5k is to do a 5 minute brisk walk warm-up, and then to alternate between 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes of running/walking. Then a cool down walk. I was out for 35 minutes and walked/ran 2.9 miles.

Now, of that 2.9 miles, the majority was walking, but still, that's pretty good. Plus, that was my second workout of the day! Hopefully I can keep it up.

Adventures in Getting in Shape

Ugh. I used to like working out. Well, at least I didn't hate it. Mostly because it wasn't that hard. I could go on my elliptical for a half hour, watch TV, work up a great sweat, and be done. Now, it's hard. I keep reminding myself that my body has been through it's own sort of war and that my stomach has been stretched like a balloon, but it's still frustrating. So, I didn't do it.

But, here's the deal. In about 6 weeks I'm going on vacation and I'm still about 15lbs too fat for my summer clothes. Oh, and we just bought a van, so we have no money for new "fat" summer clothes. Either I'll be naked on vacation or I'll lose my weight. And really, who wants to see a naked momma with her deflated balloon belly?

Here's the plan. First, I'm going to start the Couch to 5k program. I love running and it's the easiest way for me to shed the lbs. The main issues with running, though, are time and weather. So, the days that I can't run, I'll be doing the BabyTalk workout.

The beautiful thing about running is that it will be "me time." Time that I can spend clearing my mind and feeling free. And if/when the boys go with me, it'll be great to get them outside.

The beautiful thing about the BabyTalk is that I can spend time with my boys. And, as an added bonus, we're working on sitting up, so it gives them time to practice.

Today, Patrick was napping while George and I did the BabyTalk workout. For about a half hour, George worked on his tummy muscles while I worked on mine, and I'm pretty sure that by the end, we had both worked up a pretty good sweat.

So, today was the first day of my 6 weeks to Skinny (well, at least not fat). Let's see if I can hit my goal of 15lbs off in 6 weeks!