Freaking out!

Less than 5 days to go until the walk!  I am starting to freak out a little.  I did another 5.5 mile walk today.  They are becoming very easy to do.  It took me an hour, which means I walked at a rate of 5.5 miles per hour.  The goal for the long walk is to walk 3-4 miles per hour so I can do the distance.  I am still thinking only 13.1 and 13.1.  Only because I can tell my body is still weak from the Xeloda (chemo pills) and it won't be fully out of my system by the walk.  I am bruising very easily which is annoying but doesn't hurt and my stomach was feeling a bit off today.  I still feel very, very good, however, in general.  JLTD Baby...

I wasn't able to find a house on Carpinteria state beach so we have a block of rooms at the Hyatt and I still have my room at the Fess Parker. We are going to take the train up there from Van Nuys. David thinks I am nuts but I think I am a genius!  We take the train, play around for an hour and a half and then a shuttle takes us directly to the hotel from the station. How exciting for Abby and Leo to take a train! And for me!  I haven't done it since the last time I was in Europe.  I'm sure it's not going to be the Orient Express (as David keeps reminding me) but it is something new and different (and doesn't require being stuck in a car with a toddler and a baby for a 1.5+ hour drive!).  This is also a little getaway before Abby starts school on Monday.  Oh my gosh, she is getting big so fast!  She's not my little baby anymore.  

On a tangent on the kids....Abby is doing her refreshers from Infant Swimming Resource and despite her protesting the first two lessons she is doing awesome! She has pretty incredible breath control and is picking up the swim-float-swim sequence much faster this time.  Perhaps there is some muscle memory from last summer.  She has the every morning for the next month.  This may make school a bit of a challenge since she might struggle being tired in the afternoon... It will be 10 minutes of swimming then lunch then school. BUT she desperately wants to give up her nap so maybe it will work out.  She can go to sleep before 7 and give Mommy and Daddy some free time. Won't that be nice!  Fingers crossed. 

Leo, my beautiful, sweet, precious boy. He got his teeth last week. He cut them the day before we went to Pelican Hill. He has his two bottom (same time, poor kid) and a third on the bottom plus it looks like his top right just poked through two days ago. Oh, he is just so yummy.  He gives me the hugest smiles and is just such a joy.  What a blessing our kids are to us!!

I've raised almost $25,000 clams for this walk.  It is such an amazing feeling!!  I feel wonderful about raising the money for Avon because it supports so many research programs - including the two that I recently signed up for 1) the young women's breast cancer study and 2) the mindfulness meditation study.  

If you haven't done so already could you please sign up for Avon's Army of Women?  We need to get to ONE MILLION healthy women strong!  They send out periodic emails looking for volunteers for research studies.  If I see one that applies to me I respond, if not you forward it to someone that you think it could apply to or just delete it.  It's that simple.  

The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation's Love/Avon Army of Women is made possible thanks to a grant from the Avon Foundation for women. Their revolutionary initiative has two key goals:

• To recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all.
• To challenge the scientific community to expand its current focus to include breast cancer prevention research conducted on healthy women.

Please join in this movement that will take us beyond a cure by creating new opportunities to study what causes breast cancer—and how to prevent it.