Gym

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For my 40th birthday I asked for a home gym to be installed in our garage. Well really I didn’t ask for home gym, I asked for a treadmill. We already had a stationary bicycle, but I wanted something that would give me an opportunity to train for distance and get a really solid workout in, even when it’s yucky or too hot to train outdoors. As we were searching on Craigslist for the treadmill we kept coming across other equipment for excellent deals. We added the elliptical at the beginning of July of last year and have used that consistently all year long. Bradley wanted the Bowflex, so last fall we found one of those for a bargain on craigslist and added that to our collection. This spring, on the side of the road, we found a stair stepping machine so of course we added that. It’s kind of funny to think about because we started out just looking for a treadmill and now it seems like we have everything except the treadmill! Ha!
The machines have been living in the rumpus room since we acquired them. It’s a big enough space to house them, but the room was intended to be our kid’s playspace and hang out zone, not their parents gym equipment storage… This spring we finally cleaned all of the leftover old building materials out of our garage from when we built our house. We realized that, for the most part, it was pointless to keep all of the extra flooring, tile and moldings in our garage, taking up space so we gave it away or sold. This past week Bradley cleaned everything out, donated the last of the dregs, put some rugs down and I was upstairs reading when I heard him groaning and grunting as he independently moved all of the equipment in there! The good news is that, in addition to having all the pieces in the right room now, we think we have a treadmill in mind now and we are going to go get one in the next few days! But even better than that was when I walked into our garage/gym a few hours after we had it installed and saw this:

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All the Lj’s hanging out in ‘the spaceship’ as it’s now been dubbed, thanks to us dorkifying our kids a little more by showing them Star Trek. As if being a bunch of Star Wars/Disney geeks wasn’t enough… Anyhow this is the new place to be in our house and our kids all day long asked us, “When can we please go work out in the gym with you again??” Keeping kids active… I’ll take it any way it comes! It’s easily their favorite place in our house at present. Seriously- they’re in the garage as I write this, playing spaceship! 🙂
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Katie at Runs For Cookies features success stories on Mondays on her blog. I know that I find it incredibly motivating to hear other people’s success stories, and, while you’re here to read about what’s happening with me, I’m sure that sometimes it’s nice to hear other perspectives. With that in mind, I would like to encourage my readers who are finding some success of their own in weightloss and/or fitness, no matter how large or small, to start sharing their stories with me so I can feature you on Tamara Shazam! I don’t think I have the readership to support a consistent , dedicated, weekly motivational post, but if you have something amazing that you did or you feel extra proud, shoot me an email and a picture with a description about what you did and I’ll try to include it in a future post.*
update: just realized that there is no dedicated email account or link to access me in any capacity! For now, comments work well (you have to click to the article proper to comment, or find me on my Facebook account and message me there.

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The rumpus room is now an exercise equipment free zone! Yahoo!
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To be clear, I will reserve the right to edit your prose as I see fit without changing the factual information, refuse to post something sent to me and to edit pictures as needed. 🙂