Random: 10,000 Steps

We all know we are supposed to get 10,000 steps a day for our health. Over the summer I did a pretty great job of getting my 10,000 steps each day. On the days that I hike, I hit the 10,000 easily. Other days I find I need to take two separate walks to reach that goal.

I feel happier and healthier when I do it consistently. After several weeks of making the 10,000 steps daily I can start to feel my body changing little bit by little bit. Plus I feel the pride of making time for my health day after day.

Just recently I’ve been averaging a little over 7,000 steps a day. That’s 3,000 or so fewer steps than I averaged over the summer. It doesn’t really sound like that extra 3,000 could make a big difference but I definitely feel it. We’ve been extra busy with soccer and cross country and band and taekwondo over the last weeks and it is easy to let my health goals slip in the process of getting everything else done.

A few things really help me do the work consistently – a hiking or walk buddy (someone who is expecting me to show up so I’m not tempted to skip), listening to podcasts or fast paced music on the days I walk alone, a husband willing to take that second walk with me even if it is after dark by the time we can manage it and I really like using my Fitbit to track steps.

I like all the Fitbit badges and being able to see an actual record of my daily steps. At some point I’m going to need to switch over to something newer than my current Charge 2 but for now I’m fine. I got a Fitbit to track my steps in July of 2016. Since then I’ve earned lots of badges. Here are four of my favorites so far:

I earned both the Castle and Trail Shoe Badges in November 2017 as we hiked out of the Grand Canyon as a family.

Since then I’ve earned the Cloud Badge in February 2018 and the Monarch Migration in September 2018.

Random: Galaxy Trucker

We are a board game family. The more complicated and long a game is, the happier it makes the older boy. I don’t mind a super complicated game sometimes but I find I don’t have the mental space needed to stay chipper during an extra long game all that often during the summer. So this summer I instituted a new family tradition of playing a 3-player Galaxy Trucker on Friday afternoons! I figured that way we could play a long, involved game to make the older boy happy at least once a week and I wouldn’t have to learn all new complicated rules each time we sat down to play a game. Plus I’ve yet to win at Galaxy Trucker so I hoped that playing it repeatedly would eventually help me get better at it.

It sounds simple. You build a ship by grabbing components and properly placing them next to other components on an empty ship board. That isn’t hard, right? Except you need to grab the components before the other players do, you need to finish your ship before the timer runs out and you need to be certain that all the bits go together properly or you might loose half (or more) of your ship during the spot check before you even launch into space.

This is one of my best ships. You want guns. You want people. And you want engines. Other things are good too. But really if you have those three things and can keep them, you’re doing all right. It isn’t perfect and it definitely isn’t the prettiest ship. But evidently my standards are low for intergalactic travel.

The game says “The game ends after Round 3, once all the rewards have been collected and all the penalties paid. Add up all your cosmic credits. If that number is 1 or more, you win!” It took longer than I would like to admit (a surprising number of bad things can happen to your ship during the three rounds through space – meteoric swarms, smugglers, pirates, slavers and so on…..even simple, friendly open space can be the end of your ship if you somehow lost all your engines before the empty space), but I had actually ended the game with more than 1 credit before this summer.

This is one of my ships after many of those bad things happened one game. I’m not going to lie – this can be pretty demoralizing. Especially if the other ships breeze past all of the bad things due to a combination of better design, planning ahead and luck.

The rules go on to say “Of course, the player who has the most credits is a bit more of a winner than everyone else.” I am never the person to end with “a bit more of the credits”.

This is the most credits I’ve ever ended a game with. 60 credits!!! I was very proud. I still didn’t win that game. Maybe someday….

But I did get to spend hours and hours with my teen and tween this summer hanging out together. So I’m going to count that as a different kind of win.