Freedom Challenge - Week 2 Results and Awards!

Cades Cove Loop Road - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

We were on BICYCLES when we came upon this cute bear family lumbering across the road!

Scary, but exhilarating!

Not long after I began writing this blog, I started seeing Blog Awards pop up on blogs I was reading and I remember thinking, "how cool, wonder if it will ever happen to me?"  Well, yesterday it did!  Not once, but FOUR times. 

I am certainly honored, but slightly overwhelmed.  Thank goodness, it is the same award.  Here are the rules:

1) Thank the person(s) who gave you this award.  A huge thanks to GeorgiaBe, Deb, Lori and Karen.  I hope you gave me this award because you saw something in my ramblings worth continuing to read!! I hope it's not my last award, but you four will always be remembered as my FIRST! 

2)  Share seven things about yourself.  I will do this in tomorrow's post.  If I did that today plus my required reporting of Freedom Challenge results, it would be way more information on me in one day than you'd ever want to know!  LOL!

3) Nominate 15 newly discovered blogs.  This one I promise to do, but may have to do it in increments.  I'm such a newbie myself, finding 15 will be a challenge especially since the four who just nominated me would probably be on that list.  I'm going to make it a personal challenge to discover 15 that haven't received an award lately. 

4) Let those 15 know they've been given an award.  Will do!!

On to FREEDOM CHALLENGE - Week 2................................

I have to report right up front that I did absolutely HORRID on my stated goals.  But I scored some NSV's that seemed so effortless, I feel as if the week as a whole, was a resounding success and totally FREEING!  However, in the interest of full disclosure, here are my week's results:

1) Walking is my form of exercise. Since 2006, I have worn a pedometer, kept a log and averaged 10,000 steps per week. I'd like to increase that goal to 12,000 steps per week.  For the second week in a row, I did not meet this goal.  This is so bizarre, it is laughable.  Until last week, there had only been four weeks in 2010 that I did NOT average at least 12,000 steps.  Now I've gone two weeks in a row.  There were reasons (an extra day of recovery from procedure on toe and a 11 mile hike that got canceled), but bottom line is I didn't meet the goal.

 

2) I want to begin planning menus in advance. I will plan menus three days this week and increase it by one day each week, so that by the end of the challenge, I'll be planning a week in advance. This goal I did meet and am enjoying the menu planning process.  I am doing this on Monday mornings.

3) Along with goal #2, I will find and try at least one new recipe each week and post a picture of it on my blog. I did not meet this goal.  Just let other activities get in the way.  I actually did FIND the recipe I was going to make, so I'll use it this week.

4) July 30th is my birthday. I will eat nothing with white sugar in it until that day (and maybe not then).   At a dinner party Saturday evening, dessert was served directly to each guest and it would have been awkward to have declined.  I did not eat it all.

5) This is a "just for fun" goal since you asked that our goals be unrelated to weight loss.  I'd like to weigh 155 or less by my birthday. This is my 55th birthday (EEK!!) and I think it would be cool to be at or below 155 on my 55th birthday. I'm already very close, so this should be a easy no-brainer. I believe I will meet this goal.


I am really enjoying being a part of this challenge.  I think my favorite part is checking in on the blogs of the other participants. Haven't gotten to all of them yet, but I'm getting there.  My hope is that we'll continue to support each other long after this challenge is over.  Bet that's kind of what you had in mind, isn't it Deb??