Life is hard sometimes..

I'm bad at posting this stuff, but I think I can do it more often if I try.  I really think that it helped me when I was in losing mode before and I really have zero creative outlets with my life.  Since I haven't posted since late August, I figured it was time for an update!

I really tried to get back into the groove in September.  I even ran a couple of times and tracked here and there but nothing really stuck.  To say the least, I was the least committed to the program as I have even been from September to December.  My lowest weight during this journey was about 236ish in June.  When I weighed in last Tuesday (first "real" day back on the program in about 6 months) I weighed in at 248.  It was a  real wakeup call and I am back to being fully committed to the program and doing the things that made me successful before.  I've lost about 1.8 lbs in the last week and look forward to my next weigh in.

That said, life is freaking hard sometimes.  A previous post chronicled my crazy summer, but I'll summarize anyways and add a bit more to it!

• The wife and I moved in with her parents to save money (she bought a condo at the height of the market that we are stuck with)
• She had foot surgery and we found out a couple of days later that she was pregnant.  Honestly, we had stopped trying so it was really a surprise.
• Work started again for us and my lovely wife coached cross country this year.  With the foot, pregnancy, and getting home late a lot more responsibility fell on my shoulders.

Just when life was starting to get "normal" for us again (as normal as it is to live with parents.. thank goodness they have a big house) big things started happening.

• Our original plan was to be with her parents for about a year to save money for a down payment on a house.  After trying to refinance her condo and learning that it really wasn't going to do us any good, we decided it was time to let it go.  Obviously, our timeline at her parents house had to be extended a little bit and we changed our focus.  We decided to make our temporary living situation a tad bit more semi-permanent.
• Even though the foreclosure thing is not something we ever really wanted to do (we rented out the condo for almost 5 years) and hoped that we would be able to fix the situation, it was good to finally come to a decision and have some clarity about our future plans.
• We also found out right around this time that kiddo #3 is a girl.  Yippee!  Our first two are wonderful and precocious little boys.

After figuring out the condo thing and laying out a plan, we were doing pretty well.  I still wasn't tracking as much as I should have been and I really wasn't running but life was pretty good.  We had settled into a groove and her parents house was feeling a little bit more like home.   And then it hit us..

• My father-in-law (and his family and friends) goes dove hunting every year over labor day weekend.  When he got home, he complained that he wasn't feeling well.  Everyone kind of assumed that he was trying to pass a kidney stone based on the pain that he was having.
• A couple of weeks went by and he still wasn't feeling better.  He decided it was time to visit a doctor. Scans, blood tests, and everything else started.
• One of the scans found a blockage between his liver and pancreas that wasn't allowing bile to drain.  He started to go jaundice and lost a bunch of weight.
• He was quickly admitted to the hospital to try to insert a stent into his pancreas to allow the bile to drain.  Hospital couldn't get it in and he had to have a billiary bag put it  until things were under control.
• Was sent to a better hospital to try and get the stent in again.  This time it was successful.  While the doctors were in there, the did a biopsy on the growth.
• At the end of October, we got the news we didn't want.  The growth indicated that he had pancreatic cancer.

For those that don't know, pancreatic cancer is bad news.  According to most accounts, by the time you detect it, it's almost too late.  The survival rate is terribly low.  The good news is right now that he is doing chemo and with his stent he is doing much better than he was in October.  He has a scan again in a couple of weeks, so we will learn more.

Needless to say, I got off track with the cancer and the holidays.  I had a wonderfully bliss December that included indulging in lots of fatty foods and copious amounts of craft beers.  I think most of the twelve pounds that I gained probably happened in November and December.  

Life is bound to get crazier in the next couple of months, especially since we will be bringing home a new bundle of joy in a few weeks.  I decided it was time to start tracking again because it was one of the few things that I could control in life right now.