Mother’s Day 2008 found us at Café du Monde in New Orleans eating beignets and sipping café au lait. We’d left the Lakeview District the previous afternoon with our Couchsurfing host Darryl Goodwin (and his dog Maria), bicycling eighteen miles through New Orleans, taking a ferry across the Mississippi, and spending the night in the Algiers district.
Mother’s Day morning we bicycled back through the same route, but wandered through the French Quarter on our return, stopping for the world famous coffee and beignets at Café du Monde before heading back to Darryl’s house.
Mother’s Day 2009 found us in Oak Grove, right on the Gulf in southwest Louisiana, staying with Jo Ann Nunez. By the time Mother’s Day rolled around, we’d been staying with Jo Ann for over a month and had begun to feel a part of the local community. Mother’s Day started at the Baptist Church, celebrating the first use of the main area of the church after its post-Hurricane Ike repairs.
We had lunch with Donny, Jo Ann’s son – who gifted us tickets to the Lake Charles Chorale in Lake Charles – Jo Ann and Chelsea and I drove the hour or so over to Lake Charles for the program. After an already wonderful day, we ended with dinner at L’Auberge du Lac in Lake Charles with Jo Ann’s daughter Ruby and her husband JA, stuffing ourselves on a wonderful buffet.
Mother’s Day 2010 was a completely unexpected family day right here in Delray. On Saturday Paul called, asking if we wanted to get together – I am never going to turn that offer down!
Paul and Denise and Chandler showed up around three p.m., ferrying in food. Paul got the barbecue going while Denise took over the kitchen, cooking quinoa and putting together an impressive salad.
Alex and Amanda and Cocoa showed up by four thirty, completing the family. It’s the first time the family has been all together in at least three years, and we now had Amanda to share the day with us.
Eating, talking, laughing, eating some more – the afternoon rolled peacefully along. After dinner we swam, even Cocoa. Chelsea couldn’t resist the opportunity to get a great family photo in the pool. She set up her new tripod to timed release, then ran and jumped in.
Alex kept us all laughing during dinner – he was in great form, and he continued on in the pool. During dinner we’d been laughing about our slow bike speeds, telling the family how the guys in the pace lines pass us saying, “Mornin’, ladies; Hi, ladies; Mornin’, girls; Hi ladies;” one after another after another.
In the pool Cocoa had been chasing our pool exercise ball and popped it in her eagerness to grab it. Alex picked up the pieces, pulled it over his head like a helmet, crouched down in a cycling posture, and mumbled, “Mornin’ ladies; Hi girls”. Chelsea got a hilarious photo of him doing his routine.
After the swimming pool we all migrated to the hot tub, where she got another family photo; all seven of us were in the hot tub at once.
Chelsea and I aren’t the only ones on a weight improvement program…both Amanda and Alex are in the midst of their own, too, with good success, as is Chuck, Amanda’s brother. We were really tickled to find out Sunday that Paul and Denise are doing their own program!
One of the first major alerts for me that I was truly sick in 1999 was the fact that even though I was eating perfectly and doing my cardio and workouts at LA Fitness faithfully, I was gaining in body fat while losing weight (one of the liver functions is processing fats). I’ve been interested ever since then in knowing what my body fat is, but short of joining a gym and paying to have it done, I wasn’t sure how to find out.
In my research the last few weeks I came across a highly rated set of skin calipers that measure body fat and a nifty little tape measure to do body measurements. The prices were really reasonable so I bought one of each. I’d told Denise and Paul about it; Denise was emphatic that she wanted me to test her.
So we ended Mother’s Day by lining up the family and testing body fat with the skin calipers. It was hilarious. Amanda suggested that I could earn grocery money by setting up in front of a gym and charging, oh, say five dollars, to have body fat checked. Hmmm….there’s a thought…
We’ve made an agreement to get together once a month for the next three months for dinner, a swim, a hot tub, and a measurement of body fat. I am so going to win for losing the most – I have to have some reward for starting so far behind the others.
Be sure to check out our latest photo albums in the photo gallery. It’s got our Mother’s Day photos, some photos of our bike trip up to the Boynton Inlet (can anyone identify the fish?), and a wonderful photo of Alex dressed to the nines in his new black suit, heading out to a wedding.
I’ll finish up now…we’re running low on groceries so I’m thinking of heading to Delray Fitness up the street to measure some body fat…