Jayden's Insightful words

As part of my exercise plan for my weight loss, I have been going for walks on the beach over the past week.  The first time we went, my niece Olivia was collecting sea-glass and Jayden helped her.  Since then, he has been collecting some for himself, with great visions of somehow fusing it all together (he had said he would use the soldering iron, but I think he needs to work on his plan a little more).  Anyway, my purpose for the walks was to exercise, burn off some calories and so for the better part, I wanted to keep up a good pace and get a bit of a sweat going.  Yesterday, it was just Jayden and I, so I gave him advance warning, that I wanted to keep up a good pace, not dawdle.  He agreed, so off we set.
     Once there, he immediately started searching for sea-glass and asked me to do the same.  I had to keep calling to him to keep up.  Once we got to the end (where we turn around), he begged me to stop for a while so he could search in the small bay that was covered in shells, so I stopped and just watched him. He delighted in digging, searching, finding big rocks and throwing them into the water and then running to escape the splash.  I sat down and started searching with him and we found some very interesting shaped pieces.  It was actually really nice to just stop for a while.  After 15 minutes, I said we needed to head off again and so off we went.  As we started back, he asked me to keep searching for more sea-glass.  After a few hundred feet, he'd found several more pieces, I had found none.  After learning this information, he informed me "Mum, if you look too far ahead, instead of where you are right now, you wont see what's right in front of you and you might miss some good stuff"  I had to wonder if we were still talking about the sea-glass.  A few paces on (at a much slower pace), I found a really nice twisted shell, with a small hole in the top section, perfect for threading a necklace through.  I would never have seen it if I had been looking further ahead instead of closer to where I was actually walking.  So I guess it doesn't really matter if I walk a bit slower and don't build up a sweat.  It's still exercise and I get so much more from watching him, really taking in what he is doing and who knows what I might find right in front of me!

Week 17

Deciding I was still enjoying the Christmas treats too much to give them up totally, I decided to cut back, rather than cut out and ramp up my exercise to balance it all out.  Lost 900gms in the process, so considering what I got to eat, it was all worth it.  Off to camp today for 5 days camp clean and have planned a fairly healthy menu and plan to continue to exercise, so hopefully next Monday will be another good loss and I'll be just that much closer to my interim goal of 20kgs by the time the kids go back to school.  currently at 16.7kgs.