Back home safe and sound

Hi

Wow, what an insane week it has been.

We arrived home last night after having been away for five nights thanks to Cyclone Yasi.

Early last week things were looking pretty grim here

this screen dump was from early on Tuesday morning I think. By later on Tuesday Cyclone Yasi was upgraded to a catagory 5 and was tracking a little further south.

We live just a little south of cairns and by lunch time it seemed we were in the direct path of this massive system so we decided to evacuate while we could. The word from authorities was either leave now or not at all. Having been through this experience with Cyclone Bobby in  Western Australia in 1995 during which my first husband died, I just did not feel up to bunkering down and hoping for the best..

We stayed in Townsville on Tuesday night and then decided to push on a little further south the next morning as they were predicting that the cyclone would now cross somewhere around Cardwell and that areas between Cairns and Townsville would be hit hard.

Accommodation was proving hard to find by this stage as lots of people had chosen to  head south and also emergency services personel were moving in to the area. We ended up having to travel to Rockhampton (just south of Yeppoon) to stay for the night (some 1000km from home).

My husband and I felt physically ill on Wednesday night as we watch the news for any and all information. We had no idea what the morning would bring. We worried for our friends and our home.

As it turns out the area in which we live was spared with only minor damage. The areas of Tully and Cardwell ( a little further south) were not so fortunate. I am sure by now you have all seen the pictures on the news of the devastation to these towns.

We had to wait a few days before we were able to travel home as the roads were cut due to flooding and debree.

I feel extremely grateful to have been spared and my heart goes out to all the families and businesses that have suffered terrible losses. The worry of course is that our cyclone season does not end until April so there is still the very real risk of further cyclones.

We are still cleaning up our yard and unpacking all the things we had stashed away in water proof boxes and cupboards etc last week so it will be a while before I am back online proper and can come visit you all.

 

Welcome to my new followers!!

 

Michelle :-)

Blog Love

Hi

Found a fabulous new blog today.



its all about sharing the love!!

If you are like me and are always on the look out for new and interesting blogs to follow and would like to have a few more followers ( and hopefully blogging buddies) then this is the place you need to be.

Hop on over and check it out here.

Michelle :-)

Oh no, wrong way,go back!!!

Well, this isn't going so well. I had such big plans for this week :-(.

I weighed myself on Sunday and I was 75.3kg. Monday we dug the big trench and I thought "great, I'm really burning calories here" but then I went and had a lovely big lunch out with Hubby. Never mind, I figured I could really kick off my weight loss proper on Tuesday. Except I didn't take in to account just how sore I would be feeling after all that digging. 2 hours of shovelling wet slimy mud and every muscle in my body was just screaming out when got up on Tuesday morning. It was also to be a very hectic day, getting up early to get the boys off to school then an interview with the business manager at the school for an admin position there (might be starting there one day a week in a couple weeks, yay!) and then rushed home (I say rushed but it was more like a hobble back to the car,lol).

People were due to come through and view our house around lunchtime so I did the big tidy up etc and then had to make myself scarce while they had a look through. By the time they were gone and I had had a chat with the real estate agent it was time to go pick up the boys from school and I had still not had anything to eat since breakfast.

Once we got back home it was almost 4pm and I thought it was too close to dinner to eat. When we did finally sit down to dinner I ended up having a huge serve of fisilli bolognese because I was starving. I had hardly had anything at all to drink all day.

What a terrible day as far as trying to keep on track with my new goals. Sadly, today was not much better. I had forgotten (long time since I have done any real physical work or excercise) that it is not the day after but the day after that when you really feel it in your muscles. Oh boy, I could barely get out of bed. Thankfully being a public holiday I didn't have to rush to get the boys out the door and off to school.  I weighed myself before breakfast and was really disapointed to see that I had put on half a kg in the last two days!!

But, tomorrow is another day, the boys are off to school, I will have the house to myself. I will make my lunch in the morning while I am packing lunches for my husband and the boys. I will commit to doing a session on my rowing machine.

I hope you have all had a good day and thanks for stopping by here today.

Michelle :-)

First day of school

Hi

Welcome to my new followers.

Thanks so much for joining me here. Your visits to my blog will help me to stay on track and to feel accountable every day. Not that I plan to post here every day, but I will feel motivated to achieve something food or fitness wise and also in my everyday life to work towards reaching the new goals I am setting for myself if I feel that someone is coming back here to see what I have been up to :-).

Today my boys started school after the six week Christmas school holidays. It went better than I thought it would. They settled well in to their new classrooms and our youngest slipped straight in to prep like he'd been going for years. Benefits of having dropped his brother off there with me everday last year. With my eldest having Aspergers and the youngest with High Functioning Autism it could have gone VERY differently. But we did a lot of preparation with them over the holidays. It was unfortunate that the school were not willing to let us know who their teachers were going to be and which classroom etc as that would have helped a lot. But all in all, as far as first days go it went pretty well.

I even managed to keep it together,surprising really as I was sure I was going to be a blubbering mess. But having my Husband there really helped. He managed to get the day off work and come along to drop the boys off. It's really great that he as managed to be there for each of the boys first day of school. After the drop off we went home and spent about 2 hours digging a trench so that we can lay some pipes to drain away some of the water we are having a problem on our property this year. I'd love to know how many calories I burnt off today doing that!! Shame I blew it all though on the really big lunch that we went out to afterwards. We decided to take advantage of being on our own for the day and head out for a little day "date" :-).  First time we've been alone in a very long time. I think the last time we went out to lunch together was nearly a year ago and that was the first time in like seven years or something!

I had really wanted to make sure that I did something today, a first step of some sort towards putting my new plan  for this year to become  fit and healthy and more organised in to action. Here it is now just after 11pm and it is the first chance I have had to really focus on it. So I decided to start by clarifying my goals for this year a little more clearly.............

In 2011 I will (in no particular order)

Make better food choices and excercise to achieve my goal weight of 63kg and to become fitter and more flexible (I am so over waking up with a sore back everyday and having to use my toes to pick things up off the floor!)

Stop biting my nails (c'mon I'm 40 now it really is about time!)
Start menu planning to cut my food shopping bill and to provide my family with a more varied and healthy diet.

Reorganise and declutter my home so that I can become more organised and time efficient.

I will try to document my progress in these areas here on my blog regularly.

I have added a little gadget to the top of my blog to show my progress with my weight loss. I love gadgets!! how cool is that little slider!

Thank you for stopping by today and I hope to see you here again soon.

Michelle :-)

And it all starts here.......

Hi

Well, here goes..........

I have started this blog as a way of documenting and sharing little snippits of my life as I move in to a new phase.

I am going to be home alone between 9am and 3pm  Monday to Friday for the first time in 8 years as my youngest child starts school. This makes me sad. I have really enjoyed being a stay at home  Mum and I know when Monday comes I will feel very lonely. I will probably have to put the kids TV channels on in the background for a while, just till I adjust, lol, such a sook I know!

But I do have plans..............

I'm hoping I will be able to pick up some part time work this year to help out with the finances a bit and I want to get fit and lose some weight. A new blogging friend of mine (Hi Tracey) has started a blog to document her weight loss efforts so I think I will play along with her. I will do a little weigh in and record my stats here for all to see and hopefully this will help me be accountable every day and help me stay on track.

So, we shall see how I go. I hope you will come along with me. Please leave me a comment to say you dropped by and I will come visit you and say hi.

Michelle :-)