Meathew and Stellaphante

One of my nicknames in recent memory has been 'Meathew' (a deviation from Matthew of course). This is obviously because I eat a ton of meat. Growing up we always planned our meals around meat or pasta. Vegetables have always been an afterthought.

Thankfully I married a very supportive woman, Leigh, who has introduced me to many wonderful foods. Would you believe that I never had a peach, avocado, sushi, spinach, blueberry, grapefruit, and the list goes on and on. I was the guy that went out to eat and did not have to look at the menu, I knew I was going to either get a big old steak and potato or Chicken Parmesan! I thank Leigh for all of the support that she has given me getting me to this point in my life and for the support she is giving me while taking this 'Engine 2' Challenge together. I love you Leigh...

Another interesting parallel is the elephant. Before our daughter was born we decided to go with an elephant theme for the nursery. We decided to not find out the gender of our baby and figured that an elephant theme was gender neutral. We referred to her as 'Babar' prior to birth. We have so many elephant pictures and nicknacks from our travels to Orlando (dumbo) and more importantly to India while she was in the womb.

Well, we had a daughter and we named her Stella. (12/28/2010). Stella just turned one and I can certainly say that she has something to do with the inspiration to lose weight and lower my cholesterol. Oh, and back to the Stellaphante nickname, because of all of the elephant paraphernalia, Stella's uncle Brian began referring to her as Stellaphante!
:-)