Step Mile Stones, Paddle Boarding and Crazy Busy

I haven't had a week as busy as last week in a long time. With 2 weddings in 4 days, it pretty much kept all my day time, and most of my nights.
I wasn't even able to hop on the blog all week or sadly even visit other bloggers.  However, if your on Instagram I did jump on there a few times when I had a few minutes here and there.

FITNESS
Not only was it a busy work week.  But it was an even crazier fitness week!

When I mentioned crazy.  So most of you know I LOVE my Fitbit, and love competitions on it.  My sisters and I are always competing.  But last week we kicked it up a notch and I challenged them to all hit 100k steps in 5 days.
Since my sisters work for me at weddings, we spent a lot of time together this week.  Which put a whole new meaning into the competition when we were right in front of each other.

Tuesday, we were running from the trailer into the building carrying everything.  Running in place any time we had to stop and think or look at something.
Then on our down time, we had 3 hours break.  Since the wedding was out in the country we decided to hit up a local lake and relax.  The picture below was our view, and yes it was supposed to be relaxing & beautiful.

INSTEAD, it turned into no rest, and trail running on the lakeside to outdo the other....
(On the plus side, that night we hate at this fabulous country diner, and I had the most amazing Lemon Poppy Seed Cheesecake, OMG it was amazing! Thank goodness it's not close by where I live, I'd visit the place daily, LOL)

I thought Tuesday's competition was bad (in a good way), little did I know how it would get later that week.

By Friday morning, when I only had 28k steps left to hit my 100k for the week, and a wedding I knew it would easily happen.  But that's when things got borderline competition insane!
I hit my 28k by 2pm that day, and when my sister saw I was at 103k for the week she didn't like it. Of course then I didn't like that she was trying to out beat me.

We did have a 3rd member in it, but that sister made the mistake of putting her Fitbit on her daughter, for a little while Friday and well that threw her numbers out (cheating) kids have an unfair advantage, they never tire, LOL

So ya, we had 5 hours down time between the wedding set up and the evening and instead of resting we kept trying to sneak in steps.  In fact it got to bad we were in front of each other running in place face to face as fast as possible, LOL

Then when that got boring and turned into a laugh fest, in my backyard we went running figure 8's around it to outdo the other.
My legs were so exhausted by the time I made it to the wedding that night, with already 21 miles done at this point for the day.

Well I will just let these images show what happened on Friday and then you'll see what I mean about things got super crazy insane! (If your not familiar with Fitbit you earn badges for different step milestones.)

Ya....  I earned all 3 of these badges before I even went to take down the wedding that night.

We put a whole new meaning on the idea of Healthy Family Competition!

Then after the wedding, my sister was supposed to leave.  But she was worried that since it was only 11pm, I would workout crazy for an hour and beat her for the day.  (Which I would have.) So she made her poor kids stay til midnight while she and I had it out.
That's when this happened...

Ya, enough said! (She did her her 45k badge though!)
I probably could have hit 55k that day, but decided 52k steps (23 miles) was more than enough or more than I ever dreamed of hitting outside of running a marathon, LOL

Overall we both did great for the week.  But I hate to admit it she beat me with a 5 day total of 131k steps to my 124k steps.  She got ahead of my at the wedding when I had to stand and talk to people while she could run around like a crazy person taking things down, ha ha.
We are having a re-match this week and we have another wedding Friday, so this could get very interesting and probably tiring!!!

WEDDING FUN

Thankfully, I pulled off the weddings and both brides and their families were so happy and loved how it all turned out, and that makes it very much worth it!  If you didn't know, I love my job!

This week, I only have 1 wedding, so it will be a little less busy and I am looking forward to getting a little more sleep.

These are the centerpieces that I did at one of the weddings, I have to say and maybe it is because I love pink.  But I love how they turned out, probably my favorite in a very long time.  I actually literally designed them late the night before and put one together just before midnight and put the others together the next morning at the event. Sometimes my best work is done when I have less time to do it!

BEACH DAY

By Friday night I was sore and exhausted, so my sisters and I decided to wake up early Saturday morning and drive up to a local lake in northern Utah and visit my parents up where they were camped and have a beach day.

This beautiful turquoise colored lake is yes in Utah!  Most people visit the Caribbean to see waters this color, but all I have to do it take a short 2 hour drive and I don't even have to deal with the salt, this is a fresh water lake.

MY NEW ADDICTION STAND UP PADDLE BOARDING

Last year I mentioned on the blog I wanted to try paddle boarding, but it didn't happen until Saturday. Oh my gosh it is sooooo much fun, I am totally going to save up and buy a board of my own.

Did I fall?
Yes, I will admit I fell once the first time I tried to stand up.
But I did get up the 2nd time, and stayed up for nearly an hour before I was sore and went onto my knees to give my legs a little break.
When I got confident on it, I put 2 of my cute nephews (ages 2 & 4) on the front of the board and we went out and played.
Tricks?
My sisters tried unsuccessful handstands on them.  I did a somersault on mine right into the water. Paddle boards are a blast!

Loved the waves.  But as more boats came out, the waves were picking up and it was getting harder and harder to keep my balance.  I did okay with the 1 foot waves.
I went out again on my own with my sisters, and this boat came up speeding right next to me, the waves it rose behind it were like 3 feet high and too fresh and I made it over the first one, but the 2nd one wiped me out, LOL  I think the boaters did it on purpose, but who cares.  I got right back up after:)
I bet on calm waters, it's just totally easy and relaxing, I need to try that too!

I seriously am addicted to it, I could have done it all day, but they were rentals that had to be returned after a couple of hours.
I wish I had pictures, and at one point my sister says to me.  We need pictures, we need to get a camera.  We both looked at the shore and then turned to each other and shook our heads, we were having too much fun to go back and take a break to get a camera.
After, the rest of the day we just played on the beach and buried each other in the sand, having fun!

So that was my week.  I worked super hard, so I could play even harder on the weekend!  As life should be:)
But I also did some killer stepage this week, and I am seriously proud of that 50,000 step badge!  One thing that day did do, after 23 miles and my tendon was fine the next two days.  I realized I can really start bumping up my morning runs, there is no reason to hold back any more.
What does that mean?  Well, that is still to be determined...

How did your week go?
Do you live by the work hard, to play harder philosophy too?  Have you had a beach day this summer?
Do you Paddle Board?  Isn't it a blast?