Beach Week: How to Gain 5 Pounds in a Week!

So we spent last week on a family vacation at the beach. It's always great to get away and spend quality family time together. As I was packing I wore my pedometer: How many steps does it take to pack up a family of four? Well, with daddy's help, I ran around the house like a mad woman packing up both kids, myself, and cleaning the house. By 1:00 in the afternoon we climbed into the car. I checked the pedometer: 4 MILES! Oh it was worth it.



The weather was a bit cool, but warm enough to still enjoy playing in the sand. Yes, baby boy tried eating it.



Swam in a heated pool. Now that makes the beach in April just perfect.

Ate the most amazing food. I am completely spoiled in that my Italian mom and Greek mother-in-law are the most amazing cooks. So you can imagine the two of them cooking together, a mediterranean food heaven! Can we say YUM! So yes, if you're wondering how you can put on five pounds in one week, vacation with the most amazing chefs! It's easy. Woops!



What's a trip to the beach without frequent trips out for ice cream after dinner? Yes, this will also help with the five pounds.



Had a lot of family fun outings, like mini golf with the kids. And while driving I got pulled over!

Got a lot of rest. Though I DON'T recommend having a toddler sleep in your bed. Will be posting on that soon. But, gotta love the way babies sleep.



Saw a double rainbow in the sky! Now that made some rain well worth it! Why does that feel like a metaphor for life--taking rain (trials) to get to the rainbows (promises).



The last day of the trip turned stressful. Baby boy had an ear infection and both kids fevers and coughs. I will be posting more on the disaster at the urgent care. Both kids are doing better now, but in caring for two sick kids and returning home, I've been slow to keep up with blogging. I'll be back with more soon : )

Yet, even in spite of some sicknesses, it was still an amazing trip with lots of fun memories. In fact, when I took this picture of Daddy and little girl playing basketball, I couldn't help but think about the way I often view my life. I see so many goals to be made and many obstacles to overcome; I often feel the net is too high to reach and I'm either unprepared or lacking on my own to score; yet, I know I have God as my heavenly daddy lifting me up to reach the goals, overcome every obstacle, and enjoy the game. Vacations are helpful at putting life and what is really meaningful and important back into perspective.




Oh, and back to the five pounds I put on all week: where my normal daily pedometer count is around 14,000 steps, at the beach I barely made 6,000 steps a day! I guess life's a lot more restful for a full-time mommy when daddy is around all day long and her family is also there to help : ) Well, in the two days home where I'm back to the routine of walking my daily 5-6 miles and 14,000 steps (just in caring for the two toddlers, no not exercising on my own), I lost 2 pounds and have now 3 pounds to lose to get to pre-vacation weight. Thank goodness. Here's to healthy babies and walking!

Has anyone else ended up in urgent care while on vacation? Do share! And How do you loose weight after vacation?

Thanks for your continued voting to the top right of this post.

Posted by Laura

About Me: My breaking points ...

A sign that you're at your breaking point is when your face hits the carpet, your skin digging into the scratchy fibers in a puddle of your own tears as you cry out for a miracle. Last year this was a familiar place for me. In Friday's post, I asked you to tell me where you get your strength. Today, I’ll share where I get mine.

Only a few weeks after just giving birth to my precious baby boy, a series of sicknesses and unusual circumstances hit my family and me so forcefully I quickly realized I needed a strength greater than my own ability to get me through: 7 straight days of vomit and diarrhea hit my NON-potty trained toddler-girl where the first 6 days I cried for her, and finally on the 7th day, I cried for myself in exhaustion. Let’s skip over the surprise emergency appendectomy that sent me running to the emergency room in my bathrobe in severe pain, realizing I had no stored breast milk for baby boy and following surgery was not allowed to pick up infant boy for 4 weeks and toddler-girl for 6 weeks; pass over those two other bouts of the flu and stomach virus that again went through my house that left me begging my Urgent care doctor to just go ahead and inject me with whatever anti-nausea med available. Skip over the normal adjustments of a very strong-willed creative toddler girl who was fascinated with taking off her poop diapers and painting the crib and walls with it’s contents and a determined but exhausted mother who nursed an infant with one arm and had the Clorox wipes in the other. And of course, skip over the five times total that both cars broke down, we refinanced the house, got into a minor accident, and toddler-girl fell down the entire flight of stairs but was unharmed!

But there’s one story in the mix of stressful things listed above that would be an injustice to skip over. Let’s go straight to the part of series of events where I am crying in my room in the middle of the night, and I am completely overwhelmed: Toddler-girl had suddenly developed all the symptoms of what we later realize is Kawasaki disease: 105 degree fever, rash starting on hands and feet then all over body, sores in mouth, red eyes, we spend all night in the emergency room, FIVE different doctors, none could help. It was too early to diagnose, but if you don't treat it by day 10 (treatment means hospitalization), it affects the heart. Two days later, the symptoms are raging. I read about how John Travola's son died of heart disease and he had Kawasaki disease as a child! I read about how the research shows that kids who contract it (as it is not contagious and they are not sure how children get it but believe it is caused by a microbe) have had recent exposure to carpet cleaning or stagnant water. Just the night before Toddler-girl spent the night at her grandparents’ house whose 20-year-old carpet was just cleaned! I have never felt so overwhelmed in my entire life than to see your precious child sick and helpless and all you can do is wait on tests. The more I researched on the Internet and looked at pictures of other kids with Kawasaki, the more overwhelmed I felt as my daughter looked just like them and all the symptoms matched. What happened next is nothing short of an absolute miracle. I was completely overwhelmed with fear in my room, I didn’t know what to do, it was the middle of the night everyone else was asleep, even my husband was knocked out from having spent the previous night in the ER with her. As I’m praying, all of a sudden I went from feeling 100% anxiety to 100% peace—a peace so overwhelmingly comforting and outside of myself that I didn't feel I deserved or even expected, I just knew God was answering my prayers. As I was praying I was reminded of how God did a great miracle in my past and how I had told him I would NEVER forget that miracle. As I was praying for her, I heard Him say, "It's time for a new miracle. Do you believe I will heal her?" I had no question in my mind he was with me because there was no way in my own human strength I could find an ounce of peace. Well, within one hour of praying we checked her temperature and it was gone! It dropped from 105 to 98 degrees and the rash disappeared. That's my greatest miracle!

What got me through?
1.) Having a supportive and encouraging husband who is great at making me laugh in just about every situation, a mom who came to my rescue on numerous occasions, great family and friends.
2.) Friends who didn’t judge me for all my complaining, when I felt at the end of myself and didn’t feel like being positive!
3.) A Moms' group: a group of 2-3 other moms that I consistently met with once a week for play dates (when we were healthy). This helped me keep my sanity, knowing there were other moms going through the same struggles.
4.) This is the most important of all for me: God. I am extremely thankful for having such a supportive husband and family and friends but . . . It was many times in the middle of the night when no one else was around that I felt God meet me where no one else could. In my extreme neediness and exhaustion, I found strength beyond my own capabilities extended by a loving God who freely gives to those who ask.