A big day today...

So, I've got a lot going on today. First things first. Weight. I realize that I didn't update my weight last Friday. Since I keep track, I will tell you that I maintained the previous week and stayed at 232.0. Not bad for the day after Thanksgiving. This morning when I hopped on the scale for my weekly weigh in....229.2! :) I lost 2.8 pounds this past week! So, since my 6th fill on November 16th, I've lost a total of 9.8 pounds! Yeah! My goal is to be at 225 by Christmas (with a stretch goal of 220). I have one more fill before Christmas (on December 14th) so the 225 goal is absolutely doable. My weight loss total since the beginning of May has been 76.6 pounds. Not too shabby. I know that when the scale is nice to us we are all in a much happier place so I will try to remember the big picture when that number on the scale does start to slow down again (and it will).

Secondly, my company's holiday party is tonight. Normally, we have it at a local hotel here in Bellevue (about 8 miles across Lake Washington from Seattle). This year, they surprised us and have rented out the ENTIRE Space Needle for our party. I'm super excited (as is pretty much everyone else that works here). We've had a long year and it is so great that our company is able to pay us back with a great party to get the holiday season off to a wonderful start.

To make it even better, Jeff suprised me with a hotel stay in Downtown Seattle for the evening. So, we will be having a little mini-getaway until Saturday night. As most of you know, Jeff's mom moved in with us at the beginning of November and this will be the first time that we've been able to have a date night since then. We plan to get dollied up for the Chirstmas party, enjoy the evening in our suite, do some downtown Seattle Christmas shopping on Saturday morning and then head to the UW vs. Cal game Saturday afternoon (I can't believe I'm going to a UW game when they are not playing the Cougs -- trust me, I will NOT be wearing purple and gold!). I will post pics of us all dressed up for the party this weekend sometime.

Lastly, today would have been my mom's 52nd birthday. My mom passed away back on February 6th of this year of complications from Hepatitis C. I was lucky enough to head out to Missouri this time last year and spend what would be her last birthday with her. My mom was only diagnosed with Hep C in May of 2008 and it felt like she was gone so quickly. She definitely didn't get to have the best quality of life the last 9 months of her life (she was in and out of the hospital all the time and very sick), but I'm so glad that I got to spend some time with her when she was transferred to the UW Medical Center here in Seattle for a week last September and then I went out last December to Missouri to see her. Needless to say, it's a little bit of a sad day today, but I know she is in so much better of a place than where she was those last 9 months of her life. She would be so proud of my weight loss and I'm sad that her (and my grandma) are not here to see my progress.

I was going to add some pictures of my mom but, for some reason half of the tools at the top of this are not showing up. Weird.