You know, I’ve heard people say that as you get older, you become more relaxed and laid back about certain things. I haven’t found that to be true, so much. For me, I was young and naive (read: stupid) and that led to a certain fearlessness that I miss so much now. I can’t say anything particularly traumatic happened in the last 15 years but as the years go on, I feel more anxious, more fearful about mortality (my own and my kids), generally less at ease.

Lately I’ve had to face some of my anxieties head on. A few days ago I sat outside on my patio and watched Noah swim in the pool, alone. This was a hard one. I was ready to jump in, fully clothed, to save him at any moment. He was darting back and forth through the water, flipping around, laughing and splashing and I was ready so sure was I that he would drown at any moment. He made it out in one piece, a few hours later. I had a headache.

Yesterday we were all in the pool together which generally brings down my anxiety level at least a bit. I was diving into the deep end, doing a little handstand on the bottom and flipping around to come up to the surface when I NAILED my head on the edge of a Bilibo floating by. It hurt so bad that I instantly feared I might pass out right there in the deep end before I could come up to the surface and probably my family would not notice soon enough because as busy as I was keeping on eye on all of them, no one was keeping an eye on me. Oh the drama! In that split second I considered that this could easily be another story of an accidental drowning death - a variation on the “hit head on bottom of pool” story. But I saw the light (the sky this time) and came to the surface where I writhed in pain and whined and complained until I dragged myself out of the pool a half hour later. I am still in agony today, jacked up on pain meds (ok, Motrin but that counts right?).

Ok so it wasn’t such a brush with death but it still hurt like hell and I have the agony to remind me of it all day today.

Have you heard of Wii Fit? I’ve been watching for it to hit US markets since it was released at E3 last year. Its been mysteriously quiet to reach the US markets with an elusive every-changing release date that has moved three times in the last month alone. Filed under “things I did before my husband lost his job” would be to prepurchase Wii Fit along with two other Wii games that I am pretty sure will be difficult to find later this summer: Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Rockband. This was a smart move on my part for several reasons, the biggest being the impossibility of finding this game in stores right now along with the lack of cash reserves to spend on frivolous purchases. Ha.

So all of that said, its here. Now. How cool is it? Pretty darn cool.

The balance board: this thing is so cool. And totally fun. It measures your every shift in balance, weight, etc. I love how wii has made the entire body part of gaming. It will be so exciting to see what other games come out that use the balance board. There are already cheerleading, skiing, boxing and a few other adventure games coming out that will utilize the balance board. Also if you aren’t the small motor skills type or have younger kids, like me, that aren’t quite coordinated enough to use the Wii controllers, maybe the large motor skills involved with using the balance board will be more up your ally.

First things first: the Body Test. You do this daily. It measures your weight, posture, balance and compares it to your gender, age, and past results. It calculates your BMI and your fitness age and graphs the changes over time. You also set weight goals here - to gain or lose pounds in a two week or one month period of time. You can also track your away-from-Wii activity for a full snapshot of your daily, weekly, etc activity.

Ok here’s where things go south. You have to pick a Mii which, if you don’t know, is a character you can create that resembles yourself. I took great time to create a Mii in my likeness. So imagine my surprise when, upon calculating my BMI, my Mii blew up like a gigantic fat balloon!!! Oh yeah that is super GREAT for the old self-esteem. To boot, my Mii looks not only frumpy but pretty unhappy. If this wasn’t already a reflection of how I pretty realistically look and feel these days I would be depressed. Instead it was just pretty funny. Similarly, my poor skinny kids have Miis that all shrank into pencils of their former Mii-selves. If you know its coming, it isn’t so bad, even funny! But you’d better know its coming! And if you are really not interested in sharing your fitness results with, well, ANYONE EVER then there is a feature that password protects your file from others.

Also the body test isn’t exactly kind and gentle. It is brutally harsh and honest about your skills and abilities and often even when you think you’ve done very well it will make comments about how balance, good posture, etc is obviously not your strong suit. Harrumph. There is also a small learning curve. Once you are familiar with the tests and games, you will do much better and your Fitness Age will lower accordingly. So don’t quit after the first try like I was about to do! ha.

Then you move on to the Training portion of the game. Here you can do yoga, strength training, aerobic exercise or balance games. The better you do, the more “levels” of difficulty you unlock. And the more time you spend exercising, the more “minutes” you accrue which are used to unlock new games and exercises. It is also competitive, if you’re into that, as the top 10 or so scores are tracked for each activity.

The training is much more gentle and encouraging than the Body Test. The trainers are kind and give constructive criticism instead of just berating you. Especially after the Body Test I questioned my ability to do ANY of the training activities but after trying a few I was really surprised and proud to learn that I could do more than I thought, that I was more flexible, had better posture and balance than I imagined. A LOT better! This gave me the encouragement to try new training modules that I ordinarily wouldn’t have touched. I even jogged and let me tell you - I haven’t jogged even a few feet in years. The balance games are really fun - heading soccer balls, skiing, etc. But here again my Mii just dissolves into a huge heap of sadness and depression almost all of the time, even when I think I’ve done really well.

I’m a really ridiculously competitive gamer, most of all with myself but also with others (as some of you who read my blog and also “play” with me on Facebook know all too well :)). Once I get a “high score” I often become consumed to beat it. Did you ever dream in Tetris? C’mon - you know you did! I dream about beating my high score in Word Challenge on Facebook or clearing the Expert level in tightrope walking in Wii Fit. So the competitive angle will be really helpful for my motivation. After three days of Wii Fit I’m already feeling that burn to compete against myself even as it relates to weight loss and strength. That just can’t be a bad thing! Often times I’ll push myself so hard that I burn myself out. The nice thing about Wii Fit is that it is graduated. Its impossible to do the hardest thing available until you’ve worked your way up by conquering the shorter, easier skills. When it comes to health, this makes so much sense and is also why almost every exercise program I’ve ever tried doesn’t work. The weather is turning hot in Texas and I just can’t get myself up early enough these days to get out walking so the Wii Fit will easily be my go-to exercise mechanism during the hot summer months ahead.

Tip: the wii comes with extension legs to be used if your balance board is on carpet. You will want to use these on ANYTHING except hard wood floor or tile. Take it from me. On day one I was happy with my given weight since it was a few pounds lower than my home scale. On day two my weight plummeted 13.5 lbs when we moved the balance board to another room. Yeah, unlikely. After adding the extension feet the weight was more accurate - and higher - than even day one. You’ll want to keep your board in the same room and use the extension legs if you want to track your progress in some sort of consistent way. I’ll be excited to track mine over the new few months.

So if you ask me, it was $90 well spent. You can spend that much on some really high tech BMI scales and this is WAY more fun than that!

So we spent the last week in Denver, thanks to some wonderful family and friends. You know how you get the free vaca if you just sit through the sales schpiel for the rental property or time share? This was a reconnaissance mission, for sure. Except the salespeople were my husband, my Dad and my friends and the vacation WAS the sales job. I went in totally skeptical because I LOVE Houston. LOVE! I think I’ve written enough to make at least a few of you barf over how much I love Houston. And my boys love our neighborhood and their friends. And even Tony who CLAIMS he was not in it for the sales job and left SAYING his heart was in Houston took approximately 2.5 days to relocate that heart for good. To be fair, Denver was always the place we would retire but I’m 33. This was not imminent. I was a tougher sell for a few reasons. First, I am absolutely phobic of heights and driving along the side of the Rockies = my worst nightmare. Plus also I’m a nervous driver anyway. And then there’s the snow. But dammit if the Rockies stole my heart too. And more shockingly, they stole the hearts of my kids who by the end of the trip were ready to pack their bags and move in for good.

But lets back up a minute to right about the place where we get off the plane. This is what we saw:

Keep in mind, this is MID-MAY!!! Talk about your warm welcome. not. I was less than thrilled. Actually I was wishing I had drank heavily on the airplane. Plus we absolutely do not even own clothing appropriate for this kind of weather. Luckily it was pretty warm despite the snow and the kids made due with borrowed gloves and I packed extra shoes for everyone.

Of the five days we spent in Denver, three were snowy. Two were in the upper 70’s, low 80’s. Seriously. Whacked OUT!

The kids had fun having massive snowball fights…..

{you have to enlarge these pictures to really appreciate}

And building a giant snowman with Grandpa….

And combining the two….

And eating snow….

And falling in the snow….

And climbing rocky snowy icy boulders that threatened their very lives….

Occasionally some elk, deer or fox wandered through the yard….

And eventually it stopped snowing….

And eventually that snow started to melt….

And we got out a bit. We went to red rocks….

We also went on a gold mine tour, visited a dinosaur nature center, toured the Coors factory (all you can drink beer! Woot!) ate buffalo, visited Dinosaur Ridge….

Let me interject here to say that we are HUGE dinosaur geeks, particularly Dalton & Teegan who both have literal encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. Talk about your living history!

When we weren’t seeing the sites, we hung out back at my Dad’s house, what I fondly refer to as The Cabin even though their REAL cabin is in Michigan. When you are at 8000 ft, though, with bear and mountain lion outside your back door it sorta feels like a cabin.

Addy played with Grandpa….

Noah read to Grandma….

Teegan cooked and had painting lessons….

And we all just sort of hung out and enjoyed the lack of oxygen

Rough life, huh?!

When it was less slippery, Addy & Noah played outside in the snow

and collected dandelions to blow (quite the juxtaposition!)….

If we had made the travel plans after the job loss we would have stayed much longer - we definitely were not in a hurry to return home. Unfortunately our tickets weren’t changeable so we had to limit our stay to a short 5 days. We all fell in love. Dalton & Teegan said they’d readily move if they could move their friends with them. You know, as much as I love where we live now and as beautiful as I thought it was, you really can’t fairly compare beauty when one half of the equation is the Rockies. Everything else looks so…well….flat. Blah. Boring. While its nice to be home with our comfy familiar environs, my morning walk just wasn’t the same.