While I still have a lot of work to do on the relaxation efforts and practicing my self-hypnosis to go to my happy place when I need to de-stress, at least the weight loss part of the sessions have helped. I'm on my own until I need a booster session, but so far - one month into this and I'm down 16 lb. I was hoping for 20 but I'll work harder this next month. December won't be quite as challenging since we won't do a huge gathering with tons of food like our son did for Thanksgiving. It will be a small simple gathering at our middle son's house for Christmas Eve with him grilling steaks on the bbq grill, so I think I can handle that okay.

We haven't been eating out as much at the casino this past month. I've tried to stick to my cereal breakfast and my fat free cottage cheese with fruit for lunch and then a light dinner. Not feeling hungry has left me pushing food away that I previously would have felt like I couldn't waste. Having always been taught to clean my plate as a child, I hung onto those thoughts for too many years. I am no longer a child, and my Mother is not here to force me to eat everything on my plate, so it's okay for me to toss it if I can't finish it. lol

Kelly and Gary decorated the small Christmas tree this past week, and I will put up the bigger one this weekend. I had to wait with it until I could get a handyman here to do some work on the living room carpet area where we had old linoleum underneath curling and creating a lump in the carpet - a result of previous dining room floor installers not securing it properly where they made the cut. The work is done, so now the tree can go up. I have no plans to decorate my golf cart for the parade this year, and not even sure we will stick around to watch the parade next Saturday. If the weather is nice, we may head out to a mall and check out the decorations.

Our potluck group that we joined a few years ago is having their Christmas party on the 12th in the evening, with a catered dinner. I managed to contact a friend of ours whose husband is a professional musician to see if he would be interested in entertaining for the event. They are driving over from Arizona City for the event and I will go early to help them set up. He has a 30 yr. career with singing and playing acoustic guitar, and has sung backup for Ricky Skaggs and other musicians, played Vegas, Laughlin and Colorado casinos and used to play at the Moose and American Legion back when Gary and I went out dancing on Friday nights. Looking forward to seeing them again.

Gary is sleeping in this morning as we have cooler temperatures now. We've been in the 60's during the day with temps dropping into the 40s at night, but luckily with all the work I've had done on this place, we haven't had the furnace kick in too much. I might get him out for a ride in the golf cart later this afternoon to go check the mail. I'm off to do my twisting on my simplyfit board for now. Till next month...........wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Sarah