NEVER thought I could do it!!

Last night I had a fabulous opportunity to spend some quality time with my family. For my Hubby's 57th birthday, we all went to Safari Sam's to celebrate!!  This place claims that they have Oregon’s Largest Jungle Gym. It's totally a kids fun house, but it is also fun for adults. They have a large play structure with mazes, rope ladders, slides, tubes, etc. So we had a blast chasing the grandchildren around and keeping up with them while they enjoyed the structures.

There is one part of the course that is a little challenging and it is.....Dun dun dunnnnnnn...

It's the......Black Diamond Challenge Course

This course is designed for kids nine and up and is more physically demanding. Even to get on the course, you have to scale a 4 1/2 foot padded block to enter - with no hand holds or anything. Just a block. So with my little competitive daughters encouragement, she prodded me to try it. Here I'm only 5'4" tall and the block is almost as tall as I am. Anyway I just could not see how I was going to get on the thing. So I watched her do it and of course, she shimmied her skinny butt up the block with no problem. So she's sitting up there challenging me and pushing me to try. So I thought, well ok......So I give it a running try and barely get my feet off the floor only to run into the block with a thud! Of course, she's up there laughing her head off and enjoying my moment of defeat.....I said moment.........Because that fueled me even more try it again. So I take off, I hug the block, I grab anything I can, I get stuck for a moment and before you know, I shimmied my skinny butt up the block and there I was on the Black Diamond Challenge Course!!!

I'm sure it was a sight to watch, but I did not care!!! Once I got up there, I was able to skinny through the little parts, climb up the vertical rope ladders, scale down the up and down rope ladders, which scared me a little and I was able to pull myself up with ropes, and whatever challenge they dished out. I did the whole thing following after my daughter and even took the lead when she was complaining about a rope ladder. I climbed it like I've climbed rope ladders my whole life!!

Even when I was a kid, I don't think I ever was that aggressive in getting something like this accomplished. When we were done, I was a sweaty mess and I did not care what anybody thought about it.  I HAD A BLAST!!!

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!!

That's what you get when you get physically fit!!

The other thing I did yesterday was I did an Apheresis donation. This is a 2+ hour process in which blood is drawn from a donor and separated into its components, some of which are retained, such as plasma or platelets, and the remainder returned by transfusion to the donor ~ Exciting huh? Anyway, I have not donated in a while, especially at this weight and usually when they hook me up, the machine does it thing without any problems. Well yesterday, they had nothing but trouble with me. Since I've lost so much weight, it's harder for me to stay warm and you need to be really warm for the veins in the arm to do their thing. Anyway, my machine was alarming like crazy. Finally, to get me warm, they had so many blankets and heating pads on me that you could barely see my head. Before I lost weight I would never get cold. I mean it would have to be subfreezing for me to even wear a coat. Now I'm always cold.

That's what happened, to me, since I've lost weight!

So good things are happening!!!

I have a new and great attitude with so much to look forward to!!

How are you? What new?

Keep focused!