I am getting pretty frustrated and annoyed about all this exercising resulting in weight gain. I am biking, run/walking, and swimming 6 days a week and the result has been a feeling of getting weaker and burning fewer calories and then, in spite of not eating anything horrendous (I haven't had any chocolate in a week and a half, for example), I gained weight this week. I feel as if I am working working working and then falling back several steps. Maybe it is because I added the swimming and that has put another kind of strain on my body and it couldn't hold up to another activity. I don't know -- it is upsetting though.

Today in spinning, I only burned 414 calories, when I usually burn between 500 and 550. My legs just wouldn't respond. I also ended up with an average heart rate of only 68% of maximum. That isn't much -- usually, I can manage to keep my heart rate average at about 82% or so for the class (with a high of 92%). If this keeps up, I don't know how I am going to do in the triathlons. At first, all I wanted to do was finish a triathlon. But now, as I go along in the training, I want to do better than finish. Not that I expect to set the course on fire, but I would like to finish in less than 2 hours.

This weekend, we have two birthday parties to attend. Andy was invited to a mega-party by a kid in his CCD class. This party is going to have an inflatable jumping castle, a slide, and an obstacle course. The mother was kind enough to invite Benjamin as well. This was very nice of her and sure made my life easier since I don't have to explain why Benjamin can't go and Ron doesn't have to explain why he can't go to the birthday party that Elias was invited to. The party Elias is going to is at the local children's museum. Obviously, the parents out here put alot more effort into kid parties than I do! As you know, I don't do kid parties at all. I may consider letting Andy invite a friend to dinner this year, but I am going to have to think about it. I would be setting a precedent and I don't know if I am willing to do that yet.

I am investigating the Little League options for Andy and Benjamin. Both guys are very interested in baseball and LL plays all their games at one field that is fairly close by. The other league that is around here has practices and games at a bunch of different fields and has games on the weekends. LL has all their stuff during the week -- NOTHING on the weekend. Guess which one I am leaning towards? Andy and Benjamin would be on the same team and it is Coach's Pitch level -- meaning that the pitching is done by machine. It absolutely amazes me, but both Andy and Benjamin can already hit a baseball pitched by a person. Since I have never hit a ball in my life, this is a big shock to me. I think they really like it too!