Hey, hey, hey, hey! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Tuesday!
We’ve had the most interesting weather here lately. Today it was 75 degrees, sunny and beautiful, however last Wednesday it SNOWED all day long! It was so crazy and felt like December.
I took this picture in the morning.
It continued to snow the rest of the day and I felt bad for our poor little garden. Thankfully, Kev had put some “Walls of Water” around all of the plants he put in the ground. We had several inches of snow by the evening…….and every bit of snow was gone the next day!
It was crazy.
Since it was a nice snowy April day, I decided to have a “stay home and be cozy day” with my 5 year old. We decided to make some Healthy Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. It was fun and the muffins hit the spot.
My cute kiddos enjoyed watching them cook in the oven. I’m sure it felt a lot like watching water boil. Ha ha.
I enjoyed one of the muffins for breakfast along with a veggie/egg scramble. It was just perfect.
These muffins are so good and all of my kids love them! They also freeze very well (I just put them in a gallon Ziploc bag) and they are the perfect thing to put in the kids lunch boxes. I just pull one out of the freezer, put it in their lunch box and it’s perfect by lunchtime.
***************
I’ve told you guys I’ve had a HUGE cleaning bug lately. I really want to clean every inch of my house and throw everything away, BUT I haven’t had a lot of time to do a whole lot and it’s frustrating. I did manage to de-junk my junk drawers last week and it made me happy!
The before…
There was no organization whatsoever in either of my drawers and I could barely even close the drawers most of the time! Soooo, I chucked all of the broken/crappy things, found “new homes” for many of the things and organized everything else!
This little cutie patootie helped me too. Ha ha.
And here’s the after…
Yay. It’s so nice to be able to find things and SHUT the drawers! I’ve threatened the children and told them the drawers HAVE to stay looking like this too!!
Soooo, it may take me a few weeks/months/YEARS to de-junk the rest of my house, but I’m going to do it!
I really hate living in chaos. But, I guess I DID decide to have six kids, so chaos is inevitable. Ha.
*************************
I’ve still been doing well with my “reasonable healthy diet” and I love it. Just to recap; I’m staying away from obvious forms of sugar until my half marathon on May 16th. I’ve also been trying to load up on the fruits and veggies and other “real” food.
However, I haven’t been restricting my grains (other than white flour) and I’ve started to get a bit lax. Ya know, whenever I start a healthy goal, I seem to do very well for a week or two and THEN I always find some kind of loophole and then I abuse the crap out of that loophole!
So, this week I’ve been eating entirely too much bread and cereal! I know it’s not technically sugar, but I also know it’s not doing me any favors!
So, starting tomorrow I’m going to cut out bread and cereal too! I’ll still have oats, brown rice, quinoa, etc. I really think I should have done that from the beginning. Bread/cereal is almost as addicting as sugar to me!
I’ve learned that living and committing to a healthy lifestyle requires constant self-evaluation and adjusting. I’m always falling short somewhere and I’m constantly learning what works and what doesn’t. I don’t expect perfection from myself (ha ha!), but I do expect hard work, commitment and effort.
I know that healthy living is 100% MY responsibility and MY choice. Nobody is holding a gun to my head making me eat well and exercise…I have to chose to do it! Nobody is going to do it for me!
I’ve also decided to simplify my meals as much as possible. I’ve been trying to come up with simple dinners that don’t take me forever to make. I’m also trying to utilize leftovers.
For example, we had turkey meatloaf and baked potatoes (I had a sweet potato) for dinner last week…
A couple of days later, I made an unorthodox dinner that turned out pretty good! I cut up the leftover baked potatoes and cooked them up with some onions in a little bit of olive oil. I served them with scrambled eggs and cut up oranges.
The kids all agreed it was a weird dinner, but nobody complained! They all enjoyed it!
I’ve also been trying to load up on salads lately.
Salads hardly ever sound good to me, but they always taste good to me! When I make the effort to cut things up and assemble a salad, I’m ALWAYS glad I did!
I’m running low on produce at my house right now, so I’m hoping to make it over to Costco tomorrow to load up.
******************
I’ve been loving running lately! I wish I was faster, but I feel pretty good. My pace has been between 9:30-10:00. I don’t feel any sort of injuries and I’m happy ’bout that.
Tonight I went to a HIIT class at the gym (it kicked my butt) and then went on a 5 mile run with the baby in the jogger afterward. I was pretty tired, but was glad I got ‘er done.
I took a “beautiful” picture at the end of our run…
Yes, I look haggard AND I felt pretty haggard.
Kev and I went on a nine mile run on Saturday (it was our date night. Woo hoo.) It was actually quite fun! My body felt pretty good and strong, but I started to “feel it” the last mile or so. My feet and hip joints started to ache. It felt so good to get NINE miles in though! I don’t think I’ve run nine miles in YEARS. Yay.
We decided to drive far away, park the car and run home. I took a pic of us heading out…
We stopped mid-run to stretch for a minute, so I snapped another pic…
We look so “cute.” Ha ha. It was actually quite a peaceful run and I loved spending time with my favorite person in the world.
Ya know, exercise is TOUGH and I usually dread it, but afterward I LOVE it and always feel so great! I’ve never regretted a workout. Each week I like to PLAN my workouts and then I do my best to make sure they happen!
Well, it is getting late and I’m BEAT, so I’m going to go to bed! ‘Night! I love you all! xoxo