Weigh In (11/21)

Saturday's weigh in went great!

I'm down another 2.8 pounds, and I feel like I am firmly in the 230's--I also got another 5lb star, which is always fun :-)

Saturday's meeting was all about how to handle Thanksgiving, and owning your decision whether you intend to maintain, gain a pound or two, or continue losing through the holiday. Last year, I planned on maintaining my weight over the holiday, but I wound up actually losing a little! I fully intend to follow the same strategies I used last year, and I'll share those with you tomorrow (I'm seriously excited about that post!).

Saturday was a pretty slow day after the meeting... we did a whole lot of lounging around, thanks to the rainy weather.

On Sunday, I got up and went for a run. I'm planning on doing the Crescent City Classic 10k in March, which is 6.2 miles--so I figured I need to start increasing my mileage. Today I went 3.25 miles!

Anna over at Losing My Puppy is always sharing photos from her walks, so I decided to follow her lead and share some photos from my run (technically, I took these last week but I did the same route today). Today (and last weekend) I ran along the Lafitte Greenway, a 2.6 mile pedestrian path that links several neighborhoods from Mid-City (where I live) almost to the French Quarter. We are fortunate to live half a block from it, so it's easy for us to enjoy a walk without have to dodge the crazy drivers :)

View of downtown 

Have you heard of the Little Free Library? You purchase the little house and
put it in your yard and fill it with books, and people can borrow or keep books, or add books to it.
I was excited to see one on my walk!

My shadow, and a long, straight portion of the Greenway.

Lindy Boggs Medical Center, which was abandoned after Katrina. Several projects had been planned for it and fell
through, and as of May 2015, there was some dispute in litigation over it. It's super creepy, and is a huge
eyesore in an otherwise well-developed, booming part of the city. 

Some interesting graffiti; that creepy goblin hand showed up in several pieces of graffiti along this route.

After my run, we decided to walk to Parkway Bakery for lunch--we got a fried shrimp po'boy, fried pickles, and alligator sausage & turkey gumbo. YUM.

Karinne's great-aunt made the backpack for her, specifically to hold coloring
books/paper, and crayons/colored pencils. 

Ryan really didn't want his picture taken... I'm pretty sure he's mid-"no" here.

What did you do over the weekend?

Frugal Fall Fun in (Mid-City) New Orleans

It's finally starting to feel a little like fall in New Orleans--this week's high temperatures are all in the 70's (yes, it's really November). This is the kind of weather where the last thing I want to do is stay inside all day!

We've been trying to really cut back on our spending lately; Marc took a slight pay cut when he accepted his new job (will get a raise after a 90 day probationary period), and we acquired a car payment (grrrr!) when the transmission on our van went out--so things are little tight (tighter than normal) for the next couple of months. That being said, I've been trying to come up with some ways for us to have fun as a family without breaking the bank... basically, I need a pool of ideas to draw from when we're sitting around doing nothing!

We live in a great location in New Orleans--we live in the Mid-City area of town, and we are walking distance to the Mid-City Library, City Park, lots of local shops and restaurants--all within a few blocks! There's also no shortage of festivals going on around the city, most of which are free.

Some of the ideas I've come up with for the upcoming weekend...

• Go to City Park and play on the playground, feed the ducks, and get beignets at Morning Call. New Orleans' City Park is one of the oldest and largest urban parks in the US, and it's also home to the oldest live oaks in the world, dating back something like 800 years! 

• Walk to the library and pick out some new books or a movie
• Be explorers in our own neighborhood

Took this before Halloween; love these grand houses!

• Check out the New Orleans Book Fest this Saturday - held at City Park next to Big Lake
• Pack a lunch and visit the zoo, insectarium or aquarium (we have an Audubon family membership--one of Karinne's birthday presents every year from Marc's parents). I'm pretty sure we'd still get it even if it wasn't gifted to us every year--we use the heck out of that membership!
• Walk around the French Quarter and check out all the different street performers around Jackson Square. This never gets old!
• Visit the bookshop around the corner from our house--there's always something fun happening there! It's very geeky and kid-friendly, just how we like it :) They have regular board game nights, events like "Dungeons & Dating" (yep, a bunch of singles go and play D&D), and it's locally- & woman-owned, so of course we have to support it! 

As you can see, we're pretty low-key and don't require much to keep us entertained. I think our favorite thing is to go to the park and read while the kids play! (Pro tip: Stick to the fenced-in playgrounds so the kids require minimal supervision!)

What frugal activities do you like to do in your city?

P.S. If you're interested in learning more about your personal finances, or just looking for free budgeting software, check out these free financial tools offered by Personal Capital!

New Orleans Jazz Half Marathon & 5K Race Report

My first race report... can you believe it?!? When I posted last Wednesday, I wasn't so sure that we were going to go through with the race. After checking the weather Friday morning and seeing that the rain on Saturday was going to hold off until later in the day, we decided to just do it.

On my lunch break from work, I picked up the stroller from my friend and went to the expo to pick up our packets. Once I got our bibs, it finally started to feel real--we were really going to do this!

The race started at 7am, so I set my alarm for 5am in hopes of actually getting out of the house no later than 6:15.

Now, any time I'm not using my Garmin, it's plugged into my computer, charging. When I went to put it on, wouldn't know IT WAS COMPLETELY DEAD. I hadn't gone for a run in a few days, and apparently the power had gone out at some point which shut down the computer, therefore NOT charging my Garmin. I was so mad at myself--I should have checked it the night before to make sure everything was all set! There was literally nothing I could do at that point though, so I made the last minute decision that we'd just run and walk as we felt like it.

So I was trying not to freak out, but I was just a little... was this an omen of how the rest of the morning would go?! Of course the kids weren't so easy to get out of the house, and we finally got on our way at 6:30 (instead of  6:15 like I'd planned). Fortunately, we don't live far so it only took us about 10 minutes to get to our parking place (a garage about 5 blocks from the start line). By the time we parked and got the kids in the stroller, it was 6:45; at this point, I was just focusing on not freaking out and just accepting the situation as it was--out of my control.

Well, while making our way to the start line, we turned right at one point instead of left, and didn't realize we were headed the wrong direction until we'd gone about 3 blocks! It was dark and we were tired, what can I say? At that point, there was no way we were going to get the start by the time the race started, so we just did the best we could. I quickly checked our backpack at the bag check, and we made our way to the actual race. As we crossed the start line, the timer was right around 8 minutes and we were *definitely* at the back of the pack.

It turns out the race had a lot of casual walkers, so we quickly passed a lot of people and groups. Since I didn't have my Garmin, we just ran in intervals as we felt like it. I snapped this picture maybe 5 minutes or so into our race. It actually wasn't so bad being so far back; we didn't have any crowds to fight, and we could easily stop and deal with the kids as needed.

I took this after we'd already passed quite a few people

The first 2 miles passed fairly quickly, and I was feeling good. Marc was struggling a bit though, as he'd been pushing the stroller, so I took over pushing at that point. It was surprisingly easy to push, but after a few minutes I could definitely a difference. My arms were aching! The kids were whining to get out, so we finally gave them our phones and that seemed to placate them.

At this point, I'll mention that it was really really humid that morning; I'm sure that affected how I was feeling too. I mean, my arms and hands were sweating so much that my hands were slipping on the stroller handle! There was supposed to just be 1 water stop on the 5K course, but they ended up having 2 which was extremely awesome! The volunteers along the course were so encouraging--it was great to have them out there.

So we finally turned on the street to the finish line, and we were maybe half a block away--the clock was around 59:40 so we decided to give it all we could to finish in under an hour, and we made it at 59:55! Marc was in a Star Trek shirt, and I was wearing a Star Trek dress (100% cotton, which I thought would be okay because I was anticipating cooler weather... hahahahahaha), and as we approached the finish line the announcer said, "And here comes Captain Picard and... company... just under an hour!" That was fun :)

We grabbed some water, and headed to the grass to sit down for a minute. The after party had free beer, jambalaya, hot dogs, red beans and rice, bananas, and sno-balls. The jambalaya was delicious! About half an hour later, we heard cheers as the first half-marathoner crossed the finish line--that was crazy!

I gotta say, my only complaint about this race was the lack of music on the 5K course; it's advertised as having live music all along the course, but we only passed 1 truck with loudspeakers, playing (awesome) music and you could only hear it when you were within a couple of blocks of the truck. I was expecting more! All in all though, it was a really great time--and lots of people liked our costumes.

My official chip time was 51:45--not bad, all things considered! It was actually better than I'd expected, having to stop so many times to deal with the kids and whatnot--and the course is actually 3.2 miles, so that added like 30 seconds or something too, right? Oh, and we're getting medals! Apparently they misplaced a bunch of the medals, so they're mailing them out tomorrow. It was a super flat course, and a very positive atmosphere. I look forward to next year!