Holiday Weekend Photo Dump (MIMM)

Hey hey hey ladies and gents!  I’m back home from my long weekend road trip down to South Carolina!  We made it back last night after a long day of driving on Sunday.  We had such an absolutely marvelous time, though!  It went way too fast!  So I thought I’d share some of the copious amounts of pictures Scott and I took on our trip for this week’s Marvelous in my Monday post to hook up with Katie!  I’ll share a lot of pictures, with little words.

We hit the road after work on Wednesday to knock a few hours off the drive that night.  We got just outside of Indiana before we stopped for the night.  We slept a few hours, then hit the road nice and early again to get to our first destination with daylight.

We watched all of season 1 and 2 of Breaking Bad on our drive.  I am addicted!

Surprised he looks this awake!  Endless amounts of caffeinated soda were packed in a cooler.

We started getting close to the mountains and pulled over to take a few pictures.  The weather was unseasonably cool and the day before a storm had passed through.

We finally made it to our first stop shortly after noon.

The freshly fallen snow was gorgeous.  We took so many pictures! After sitting all day, we decided it was time to get our tooshies moving, so we took a hike.  It was SUPER intense.  The fact that it was all uphill and we had to contend with snow and ice on the hike made it even more laborious.  We got a really good workout in and enjoyed the beauty of the Smokies.

We hiked the Chimney Top trail.  We didn’t quite know what we were getting ourselves into.  We started off taking a lot of pictures at the beginning and then found ourselves getting completely drained toward the top.

The view was worth the climb…

Some more random shots from our trekking through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park…

By the end of the afternoon we were pretty spent.  We made our way toward Asheville, NC where we were going to try and find a room for the night.  The next morning we were planning to hit the Blue Ridge Parkway to do some hiking again.  Since most of the roads were closed due to weather/road conditions (which apparently means sunshine and no snow or ice on the roads?!), we did more hiking than driving.

 

The next picture is my favorite picture I think of the whole trip.  Something about it I absolutely love.  Scott took a picture of me taking a picture.

One guy offered to take our picture for us…which turned into about 10, from different angles.  We asked if he’d be willing to follow us around all day… 🙂

After all of our hiking, it was time to fuel up.  Zaxby’s is Scott’s absolute favorite place to go.  They don’t have any near where we live (the closest is in southern Indiana I think) so it’s a tradition for us to always go there a few times on any trip down south!

After digging in, we made our way to Easley, South Carolina to go hang out with a few of Scott’s closest friends for the night.  It was really good seeing them again, and one of his friends’ family.

Saturday morning was pretty laid back.  We did some driving and sightseeing.  We also stopped at Chic-fil-A to get a cookies and cream milkshake (another tradition when we go down south)  They had their mascot dancing outside and I dared Scott to go and dance with him.  He did it! 😀

Then we met up with a family Scott has known for years and who I’ve met a few times from traveling in the past, for lunch.  We stopped at Quaker Steak & Lube which was a pretty neat place.

After meeting up for a late lunch, we made our way to Columbia where the Clemson vs. South Carolina game was at!  We walked around the University of South Carolina’s campus for a while..then made our way over to Williams-Brice Stadium for the game.

 

Sadly, we ended up losing. 😦 😦  But we still had a wonderful time at the game.  Scott was SO appreciative of me surprising him with the tickets and arranging the whole trip.

We drove a few hours after the game, slept a few hours, then got an early start making the long drive home.  All in all, the trip was SO much fun!  It went way too fast though.   But we both had a great time with each other and I really think it was just what we needed for our relationship, too. 🙂  I’m super glad we went (and I’m also super glad I took Monday off!!!)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend and a marvelous Monday!

 

Big changes + big surprises = pretty marvelous! (MIMM)

Hey hey hey guys!  So it has been so long since I’ve had a straight up regular post.  I’ve been going full-steam ahead on this whole ‘Love Dare’ thing, so that has been consuming my blog lately.  But I’ve missed chit-chatting about other things in my life.  So for this week’s Marvelous in My Monday, which is my favorite link-up of the week, thanks to Katie, I thought I’d share some other things going on in the world of muah! 🙂

First and foremost, I had previously talked about a certain surprise that I was working on for Scott.  Now I can finally talk about it.  I didn’t want to talk it up if I ended up not being able to follow through.  Sooo Scott is a HUGE Clemson Tigers fan, the college football team from Clemson, South Carolina since he went there.  They are doing really good this season (9-1, 2nd in their division!) and their last season game is Saturday, November 30 (the weekend of Thanksgiving) and they are playing South Carolina….which are their biggest rival.  So I got this brainstorm idea that it would be really cool if we could go down there for a game and since we have some days off for the holiday, we could make use of that time off.  I looked up flights, and SHEESH…the cheapest was about $450 a person!  No way, jose!  So then I decided that it would be really fun to plan a road trip!  And make it a real road trip, too…just paving our way, taking our time and doing things along the way, and ending up in South Carolina. Then, I realized I needed to get the tickets first before all this planning could happen.  So began my search…

I was shocked at how expensive the tickets were!  But eBay had some options that weren’t too crazy expensive.  So began my experimentation with eBay.  I have never purchased or attempted to purchase anything on eBay.  But, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.  So, I jumped right in.  I set up an account and placed a bid on two tickets!  I actually felt really stupid initially because I didn’t realize the bid didn’t close for over 3 days and the more time that passed, I was worried the higher the ticket prices would be if this didn’t work out.  But, I held my breath.  Thursday FINALLY came around.  I was at work, the bidding was to close around 9:15 and I was coached on how to ‘snipe’ and act a minute before the close of the bid to place my final bid.  Pressure was on…but….I WON!!!!!!!!  I can’t tell you how excited I was!!! 😀

Saturday, the tickets came via USPS certified mail.  Thank goodness I was home when the mailman came because I needed to sign for it!

Now the planning begins!  The whole thing is going to be a surprise!  I only told Scott to make sure he leaves the whole Thanksgiving weekend open.  As it gets closer, I’ll tell him we’ll be taking a road trip.  Just before we leave, I’ll tell him we’re going to South Carolina, just to get away for a bit and go somewhere warmer.  I think I’ll hold off telling him about going to the game for as long as possible.  I thought it’d be kind of fun to come up with some “clues” to give him about what we’re doing Thanksgiving weekend, where we’re going, etc. just to make it fun and keep him guessing.  But we’ll see if I’m clever enough to follow through!  I am SO excited!  I can’t even imagine how he will respond when he finds out!!! 😀

So, on to other news…aside from the excitement of planning this surprise, I’ve overall been feeling pretty miserable lately, physically.  I’ve had the worst stomach pains lately, along with some headaches almost every day this past week.  Granted, I’ve always had issues with my stomach, but the last week or two has been taken to the extreme.  I don’t really know what set it off, but has made my days almost unbearable.  At times, my stomach will start feeling better, but it always comes back again later in the day, no matter what.  It literally sucks the life out of me.  All I want to do after working all day and feeling terrible is to come home and lie on the couch.  It seems that is the only comfort I get.  I’ve went to the GI doctor before in the past, and nothing was noticeably wrong…so I don’t think I’d gain any ground by going to the doctor again.

My eating habits have been all over the place for so long.  Since the outset of my eating disorder, I’ve either been restricting on a regular basis, or binging at night, and I think that is severally messed up my digestive system.  I already had stomach issues before my eating disorder took root, and I think I just exasperated my problems.  It’s kind of scary to think of the damage I did to my body.  I don’t think my body knows what a normal eating patterns are.  It doesn’t know how to process what I give it when I feed it.  I’ve been doing so much research on different foods that could be contributing or causing me my issues.  I’ve looked into the Paleo Diet.  Felt it was too restrictive.  I’ve looked into “the Elimination Diet” which is pretty comparable to the Paleo Diet.  I’ve contemplated trying to go Gluten Free.  I never could commit because they all felt too restrictive to me.  But now, I need to make some SERIOUS changes.  I can’t keep living each day like this anymore.  Especially with things seeming to get worse.

Then, something jumped out at me.  I can’t quite recall how the thought even came to my mind, but when it hit, it stuck.  Artificial sweeteners. 

I realized just how much I consumed on a daily basis.  Before I even got out the door for the day, I’d have coffee with Sweet ‘n Low and sugar-free creamer.  Both containing sugar-substitutes.  Admittedly while I was in the depths of my eating disorder, I became addicted to popping sugar-free mints and candies on an obsessive-scale to help ward off hunger pains.  That habit never left me.  So every single day, I would still continue to eat sugar free mints…a lot of them.  Again, all containing artificial sweeteners.  Then, since I hate plain old water, I would add flavored packets to my water bottle, at least twice a day.  My Greek yogurt for breakfast?  Artificial sweetener.  Drinks before bed (diet soda, typically) all have artificial sweetener.  Every day is filled with it.  Day after day.  Week after week.  Month after month.

So I did some research on artificial sweeteners and was surprised by what I found.  Granted, I had heard things here and there about the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners, but I guess I never gave it that much thought, or took much time to really look into it.  But now I’m trying to find any culprits I can that may be contributing to my stomach issues.  So, I’ve decided to get rid of all of the sugar-free candies and foods, all of the artificial sweeteners, from my diet.  Maybe they’re not the reason for my stomach troubles, but they certainly aren’t doing me any good.  So this weekend, I took serious steps and got rid of all of the things I have which contained all of those nasty artificial sweeteners.

I think the ones which were most ‘shocking’ were the ‘no sugar added mixed fruit cups and applesauce cups.  I assumed that it would just be fruit in it’s natural state, only in a cup, not with added sugar substitutes.  This one was really eye-opening.  I’m still in shock from this one…

50% less sugar…but WAY more fiber.  So they pump it with ‘Soluble Corn Fiber’?!  In 1/4 cup there is 40% of your daily value in fiber.  That is wild to me!

In addition to getting rid of all of these things, I also cleaned out all of my candy and sweets.  Somewhere along the road with my eating disorder, I picked up the idea that eating sugar meant I was recovering.  So I started eating it…a lot.  That eventually allowed for me to turn to all the sugary garbage when I started binging.  I decided it was time to get rid of all the candy and sugar, since I am now going to try and incorporate sugar in a more sensible, healthy way.

It felt really good to get all that garbage out of the house.  I pitched all of the sugar-free stuff, since I didn’t think it wise to pass that on to anyone else.  I did let Scott take the ‘sugar’ bag home with him so he could have some and share with his niece and nephew.  I didn’t want to be wasteful and trash it all.

So this weekend has been an interesting one.  I’ve also decided that I am going to try to start going gluten-free and dairy-free as I know these foods can add to complications with digestion.  I did a lot of research online and educated myself about what foods I could have and what alternatives were available.  I was surprised to find that gluten-free is not at all as restrictive as I previously thought.  Nor is dairy-free.  The grocery store outings (yes, plural) this weekend were really educative and I got some really great things I’m excited about.  I got a lot of gluten-free foods and some dairy-free, soy alternatives.  I also am looking for some different healthy fats and got some new nut butters recently!  Plus, I got some natural sweeteners, too!

More updates will come as I start to really implement these changes in the days and weeks to come.  In just the three days that I’ve made these changes (cutting out the artificial sweeteners, cutting out/back on gluten, and getting rid of the dairy) I’ve noticed HUGE improvements already!  My stomach has already been feeling better.  If this is indicative of what will continue to be for me if I stay on track with this, then I am going to be SO SO SO happy and I will definitely stick to it!  After feeling miserable and barely getting through each day, I would be overjoyed to find that this could be a huge improvement and potential solution!

Since I’ve cut out the flavor packets that I always added to my water, and have cut out soda, I am drinking straight-up, plain old water.  I really really don’t like water.  But, I am willing to acquire a “taste” for it.  The last three days have just been straight up water (aside from my morning coffee) so I’ve allowed myself a “treat” each night.  I’ve been having a small glass of wine each night, just so I have something other than water and sort of reward myself for sticking to just water.  Mmm it tastes so much better now that it’s the only break in my otherwise boring drinking habits. 🙂

(Please don’t think I’m this huge boozer now!  The Moscato is the one I’ve been loving. Scott has had almost all of the missing Merlot when he came over for movie night on Saturday, other than a small sip that I tried.)  This weekend has been one of the most relaxing, calm, enjoyable weekends I’ve had in a while.  It was rainy on and off all weekend and I just had nothing really planned, which was amazing!  It was just a great weekend to have for myself.  Saturday night, Scott came over for a movie and Sunday night is the Packers game, but otherwise it was a nice weekend with myself and Dexter. 🙂

So that was my marvelous weekend and some updates in my life!  Hope you all had a fun, relaxing weekend and have a Marvelous Monday!!! 😀