My new Fitness Blog!!

Well guys, a lot has happened in the last few months. I’ve graduated from my masters program, we’ve moved, and I’m getting ready to start a job in the “corporate world”. However, one of the things I’m most excited about it my NEW Fitness and Health Website, launching today! It’s called Rosy Cheeks Fitness and I’m very excited to share it with you guys! It is going to be a website focused on health and fitness articles, home workouts, healthy recipes and more. It is going to give me a chance to utilize all of my education and the skills I’ve gained over the past 4+ years as a fitness professional. This does mean I most likely won’t be posting on here, which is a bummer, but I”m hoping you will all follow me on over to this new site!!!

Here’s the link:
http://rosycheeks-fitness.com/

It’s still a work in progress so keep an eye out for lots more posts and information being added over the next few weeks!!!
Thanks so much for following my little blog, I really appreciate those of you who have continued to read about my life and even take some of my fitness advice! I really hope you can get a lot out of my new website!!

<3- Jenna

Reflections on the Crossfit Open and Becoming a Big Girl

Well hello! So here we are, finished with 3 weeks of the crossfit open. Last time we talked I was just getting ready for the first week. So here’s my thoughts on the open so far.
1) The open workouts are tough, probably more mentally than physically in a lot of ways
2) Cardio….The first two open workouts were very cardiovascular based and as I have been getting stronger I have also sadly been getting a it slower…
3) I still have so much work to do if I want to be one of the best, and I’m not fully sure that’s even what I want anymore
4) It’s definitely been a good learning experience but I’m kind of ready for it to be over…5 weeks is a long time to be in competition mode and I’m ready for some calm and stress free workouts!
So that’s kind of where I’m at with the open right now. Overall I’m doing okay, I’m 132 out of 5,239 in my region and in the world I’m 1,536 out of 65,893. So putting that into perspective I’m in the top 3% for my region and the top 2% in the world. So that’s pretty cool. Unfortunately to make it to regionals I want* to be top 43, or in the top .8 % so I’m not there yet!

On a positive note I got the chance to go up to Chicago and visit my good friend and training partner Paige, who’s going to law school there. Her Crossfit gym does a fun mock competition on Fridays during the open and she invited me to come participate. It was so much fun!!

I took the train to the city, and it was actually my first time riding a train, can you believe it?

I also ended up taking a taxi for the first time, so basically I became a “big girl” on this trip! We also walked to all the places we went in the city and that was a nice change of pace from my usual driving everywhere back home. It made me realize I may like living in a big city after all!

Not to mention this is a pretty nice view to wake up to!
When we were walking back from the gym, we came across this bar and I just had to get a picture!!

What do ya know, a bar just for me! Somehow we didn’t get ANY pictures of the two of us from this trip, which is a major fail. However, I had an awesome time and it was definitely a nice change of pace and a nice mini trip to finish off my spring break!

Now it’s back to the normal grind of work, teaching and studying!

Some serious grading going down there! I also had a second phone interview with a job I really like, so I’m hoping it went well and I hear back with good news soon! If not,I guess I’ll just keep applying and I know eventually something’s going to work out! Gotta stay positive!
I am happy to report I’ve managed to keep my eating pretty healthy during all this chaos, which is really important, even more so when your under a lot of stress!

I’m also happy to say running will be making a re-appearance in my life now that the weather is finally getting nicer! I can’t wait to get out there and pound out some good miles! I also think I’m going to try to run the U of I half marathon towards the end of April as my first race of the season. I won’t have a lot of time to train though so we’ll see how I’m feeling!

Hope you guys are having a great week!

Tell me about your first train ride! How old were you? Where were you going?

Bar burn is real people and first week of the open done

Well first off thank goodness I am done with week one of the Crossfit open! I did the workout twice, the first time was awful but luckily it taught me a lot about what not to do and the second time went much better. In case you aren’t as Crossfit obsessed as me, the workout was 10 minutes of as many rounds as you can of the following: 30 double unders(jump rope passes under the feet twice in one jump) and 15 snatches at 55lbs. I ended up getting 7 rounds plus 23 double unders so 338 reps total. I felt pretty good about this number, until I saw some of the other beasts in my region got above 400 reps….sigh….but I am not going to get down on myself because I still did well and there’s 4 more weeks to go, so plenty of time to move up and kick some butt!

There’s me working hard! That WOD was sneaky and definitely started to get to me! Tomorrow they will announce the second WOD and I’m really excited to see what it will be!

On the eating front there’s been a lot of quick meals happening at our house because we are both super busy! During times like this I am so glad I have a crockpot! Tonight I came home to these beauties cooking away:

These are beef short ribs cooked in a Cabernet Sauvignon wine sauce….need I say more?

Delicious…..I had them with some rice and green beans, simple and easy, but still hit the spot!

Also check out this gorgeous lululemon tank I got, I’ve decided it’s good luck because I was wearing it the second time I did the 14.1 workout and got my way better score 😉

Today in my workout I had to do 30 bar muscle ups for time, and I learned something interesting. You know how you can get rug/carpet burn from your skin rubbing either very quickly or repeatedly against the fabric? Well….that can happen with a bar repeatedly rubbing against your stomach also…

Bar burn people…it’s a REAL thing. Protect yourselves!

Finally, I’d like to share this fortune I got in a bath salt (random long story)

For some reason i really liked this…probably because I hate the idea of waiting for things to happen on their own. You gotta work hard for what you want, but also be patient. I think this applies to life in general but lately for me it applies to Crossfit, as well as my job search. As graduation nears I am realizing it’s almost time for me to be a “grown up” and get a REAL job and while that excites me, it also scares me. Sometimes I start to doubt my abilities or if I will be qualified for the positions I’m applying for. Then I remember I’ve worked hard to get here and I can do whatever I put my mind to! So here’s to hoping my 2 phone interviews tomorrow go well!!

May the WODS be ever in your favor

You know what I don’t love? Mondays… I mean there’s really nothing great about them. They just signal the start of another week, and Friday seems so far away. Plus they tend to remind me of all the things I need to get done, but don’t really want to do. Mostly because I’d rather be watching Netflix, or reading blogs about crossfit. Or food. Or more crossfit. But the whole time I’m feeling guilty about how I should be studying. Or applying for big girl jobs. Ugh. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to finally finish school and get a “real” job, I just don’t like the process. Applications are dumb. And tedious. Like why do you need to know my boss’s aunt’s sister’s name and how I plan to accomplish world peace. Okay, so maybe they don’t ask things quite that crazy, but they do ask A LOT of questions, some that I don’t understand the purpose of. Then there’s the cover letters. Don’t even get me started on those.

Source

^^ Exactly how I was feeling yesterday….

So as you know I had a crossfit competition last weekend. It’s still kind of a sore subject so I don’t want to say much about it, but basically I didn’t get to finish the competition because I passed out after the second WOD, due to the Advocare Cleanse I was on….APPARENTLY it’s not a very good idea to go on a cleanse before a competition. It will cause your electrolytes and blood sugar to plummet and you will pass out. Hard. I’m mostly annoyed with myself because I should have known better. But I didn’t really think about it. Long story short I’m off the cleanse at least until after the open. Gotta get my priorities straight and right now training is #1. On the upside, I did get a 145lb snatch and tied for first on the snatch ladder WOD. That was also a PR, until I got 150 lb the next week!

This was also a big deal for me because up until this competition I could never get myself to squat snatch during the actual competition, my body would just refuse. But during this comp it finally clicked and it was awesome 🙂

In other news, Today is WEEK 1 of the CROSSFIT OPEN people!

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The first workout will be released at 5pm on Thursday evening. Get excited. Or if your me, get super nervous and feel like puking….This is my first open, since last year I injured my back before the open and couldn’t participate, so I’m a huge ball of nerves. Mostly I’m nervous about making sure I video my workouts correctly and all that jazz so I can submit them for regionals. Now obviously, I have to do well enough to make it, but I want to be prepared for if that happens, so I have to make sure all my workouts are video taped and all the standards are met, blah blah blah. I’m also worried I will either just be terrible and everyone will beat me, or I will fall short of making it to regionals by just a few spots. Ugh. I need to stop thinking these negative things. Positive thoughts only people! Either way, for the next five weeks this will be my life.

Source

I will keep you updated on my progress! Keep your fingers crossed for me and say a little prayer for my sanity…

What you’ve missed in my life over the past month!

OK. I know I’ve been gone. AGAIN. But we’ve already talked about my lack of blogging consistency so let’s just move on from that shall we?

So I’ve been quite busy over the last month, hence the lack of blogging! I started my last semester of grad school (hallelujah!) and have been training hard core for the crossfit open. I’ve done lots of other fun stuff in between, and I think the easiest way to recap it all is through lots of pictures….so here we go!

So for Christmas my awesome sister and brother-in-law (the one’s with the ridiculously cute redhead) got the hubs and I tickets to go see The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in Chicago with them!!! Now, for those of you who don’t know, I am *slightly* obsessed with Phantom. Like, words can’t even express my excitement for getting to see this show. So anyway, our tickets were for a show in January, so we went up on a Saturday, went out somewhere fun to eat, and then watched the show.

I wasn’t allowed to take pictures during the show, but this was us afterwards. It was A-MAZ-ING. Seriously. I actually tried to talk them into letting me stay for the second showing. They weren’t convinced. I DID however, somehow, convince them to watch the movie version with me when we got home. HA! Luckily, my brother-in-law also loves Phantom so he was actually into it like me! *Note my sisters ADORABLE pregnant belly 🙂 There’s another little man cooking in there that will be arriving in April, so excited!!

The next exciting thing I did during my time AWOL was a partner crossfit competition with one of my favorites, Stephanie! It was a one day competition in springfield, and it was a blast! While I tend to prefer individual competitions, this one was a nice change of pace and as always, an excellent learning opportunity! We also did pretty well, so that’s always a plus!

I have another crossfit competition tomorrow in chicago, but this one is an individual one. I am excited to see where I’m at and what I still need to work on before the open starts! So obviously the other thing I’ve been doing lots of is training.

 

I’ve been working a lot on trying to get my strength up and perfect some of my skills, since I lost some of that during my time off. I am happy with my progress and can’t wait to see where I go from here! Unfortunately my running has been little to none, partly because I don’t have time with all my training and partly because the weather has been awful and I can’t run outside 😦 And you know how I feel about the treadmill….

The other big thing going on right now is the Advocare 24 day Challenge I just started yesterday!!! If you don’t know what that is, you can check out their website HERE.

I had heard a lot about this product and have been wanting to try it for awhile. After doing my research, as well as having multiple friends do it and love it, I decided to give it a go! Essentially it’s a cleanse mixed with clean eating and focusing on resetting your system, just what I need! I’m really excited to see how my body changes both physically and mentally from this. I also did a BodPod to find out my body fat percentage, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with where I’m at.

I’m not quite as lean as I want to be, but better than I thought, especially considering my nutrition hasn’t been stellar and I’ve been doing a lot of building lately, which tends to add on some fat! The most exciting thing was seeing how much MUSCLE I have gained since starting crossfit! I did a Bodpod before I started and looking at those results versus this one, I have gained 8 lb of body weight, but that is literally ALL fat free mass aka muscle. In fact I’ve actually added over 10 lbs of fat free mass (muscle) so I’ve even lost some more fat and replaced it with muscle! That’s amazing! How cool is that?! My body fat as of today is at 23%, and ideally I’d like to be at 20%, so that’s going to be my goal! While I would be surprised if I reach that in the 24 days, I’m excited to see what will happen. I took before pictures and measurements, so I can compare them to my end results later! I will definitely keep you guys updated on how it’s going!

Since my eating needs to be EXTRA clean right now, there isn’t going to be a date night out for valentine’s day. Instead Chris and I are planning to cook a nice health dinner tonight and then cuddle up and watch a movie, before turning in early so we can get up at 4 am tomorrow to head up north for my competition. It might not sound that good to you, but that sounds like the PERFECT Valentine’s day to me 🙂

 

A Happy New Year and 21 Days of No Sugar!

Happy New year! (A little late, I know…) Anyway I hope you guys all had an awesome time saying goodbye to 2013 and hello to all that’s to come in 2014!

I for one am so ready for a new year, we should be seeing a lot of changes in the Cabrera household. I am graduating from my masters program this spring, hopefully starting a big girl job, possibly(most likely actually) moving somewhere new, Chris will be going back to school, and who knows what else! Bring it on, 2014!

I celebrated my New Year’s Eve with my awesome family, we kept it pretty low key. We did make some awesome food, it’s kind of become a tradition to have things like homemade soft pretzels (my sister makes the best one!), little hot dogs and spinach artichoke dip.

We also made some awesome buffalo chicken dip this year and it was A-MAZ-ING! Seriously this stuff was so good…

Get. In. My. Belly.
We finished off our night watching the ball drop and then promptly heading to bed. We are soooo cool. Next year we will celebrate east coast time, because we have officially become THOSE people that can’t even stay awake until midnight…

Sleepily watching the ball drop…

New Year’s Day was my family’s Christmas celebration, because we like to do things strange like that. We started our morning off with a classic breakfast food in our house, monkey bread! This stuff is ridiculously delicious. It’s basically biscuits cut up and dipped in cinnamon sugar, then a cinnamon sugar/butter glaze is poured on top of the sugar-dipped biscuits and the whole thing is baked in the oven to let the sugary goo infuse into the biscuits…um yeah, it’s as amazing as it sounds.

After our yummy super healthy breakfast we hung out for awhile and waited for my other sister, brother-in-law and cute little nephew to get there so we could do our stockings and presents.

We take our stocking stuffing very seriously in my family, it’s kind of a big deal. As you can see my adorable nephew Luke is really stoked about opening his stocking.

We also had an amazing Christmas dinner cooked by my amazing sister Jessica (the one who gets to live in Las Vegas!)

That’s some serious ham action right there.

Our super fancy table, and a special setting for Luke of course!
It was sooo nice to spend time with family and celebrate Christmas together, and it made it even more fun to do two holidays in one! My family is definitely pretty awesome….

My brother-in-law David and my cute nephew Luke! Love these boys to pieces! Luckily my nephew lives nearby so I still get to see him but my brother-in-law David had to go back to Las Vegas 😦 I hate to see them go!

In other news, I’m starting a 21 day sugar detox (actually I started it today) just to clean out and reset my body after all the crap I’ve consumed in the last few weeks. I am also going to be stepping up my Crossfit training to get ready for the open, so I need to make sure my nutrition is spot on so I have the right fuel for my performance. So expect to see lots of meat and veggie based meals for awhile! Pretty much I’m going back to paleo, but I allow myself some rice and/or white potatoes after my workouts. Also for the 21 days I can’t even have natural, paleo-approved sugar, except 1 piece of fruit a day. I know it will be hard at first but I’m looking forward to all the benefits to be gained from this experience!

Today I made a yummy breakfast of sautéed ham and asparagus topped with poached eggs. It was delicious!

Then I made one of my favorite chicken recipes for dinner, Indian style butter chicken and coconut cauliflower rice! I will share this recipe with you guys soon, because you NEED it in your life!

Well now it’s off to bed, we are supposed to be getting a big blizzard tonight with lots of snow accumulation, so here’s to hoping I get snowed in and don’t have to go to work tomorrow!

Questions for you:

What did you do for New Years? Did you go out or stay in?

Do you have any special foods your family always has for Christmas or New Years?

What’s your New Years resolution?
I’m not really a big resolution girl, but if I was going to have one it would be to live an even healthier and happier year than 2013, and I also really want to have a big girl job lined up for after graduation 🙂

Ugly sweaters and family time fun

Well hello! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas! The last few weeks have definitely been pretty busy around here, hence the lack of blogging. Where to begin?

For starters I finally took my CSCS exam (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist), so that was a super fun 3 hours! I then rewarded myself with some auntie Anne’s, because we don’t have one in town their cinnamon sugar pretzels are the bomb! Plus i figured I deserved it after 3 hours of staring at a screen and answering questions that required me to use my brain. That’s asking a lot of me people!

Last week I also got to go to my favorite sushi place ever, Ko Fusion! It’s in champaign, which is The town about an hour away from us where my hubby works. I decided to go there and we met up for dinner after he got done working. This place seriously has the best sushi ever.

This week we had an ugly sweater day at work, and I’m pretty sure I nailed it.

We also dressed up as “elves” on Christmas Eve because we are cool like that….

And of course our members felt sorry for us having to work Christmas Eve so they brought us all sorts of goodies…

I also did a really fun 12 days of Christmas WOD with my favorite training partner Paige and her sister on Christmas Eve.

Looks super fun right?? In case you wanted to try it yourself, you start with the 12 burpees, then do 11 box jumps + 12 burpees, then 10 sit ups + 11 box jumps + 12 burpees and so on until you’ve done it all!! It actually felt really good to do a longer WOD like this since I haven’t done anything like that in a while, and it definitely helped having these two awesome ladies to do it with!

I am definitely really glad to be cross fitting again, I didn’t realize how much I missed it! I’m very happy to report I am feeling great, and it turns out I didn’t even lose much of my strength or speed over the last two months off, so there’s still a chance I can do decent at the open, not to mention I’ll just be less frustrated trying to get back to where I was.

Oh how I missed this!

As far as Christmas goes, we spent both Christmas Eve and day with Chris’s side of the family up in Chicago, so we headed up there as soon as I got off work on Christmas Eve. We did his dad’s side of the family on Christmas Eve and his mom’s side Christmas Day. There were lots of presents, laughs, food and good times.

The Christmas dinner was amazing, although it confirmed a very sad fact for me. For a little while now I’ve been getting really really sick after eating, but it only seemed to occur when I ate beef or pork. So I started paying attention to how my body was reacting after eating those meats and confirmed my body now also hates pork and beef. So that’s fantastic. Looks like it’s just chicken, fish and ground turkey for this girl!

For Christmas presents I got a lot of beautiful jewelry from my MIL, some great gift cards from my BILs and their girlfriends and a new iPad air from Chris (you know, since I shattered my old one…) Chris also got me a fun, sweet gift that I’ve been wanting for a long time now but totally forgot about, which is an air popcorn popper! I was so excited he remembered I wanted one! So it will be popcorn galore around our house for the next few weeks…

We aren’t celebrating Christmas with my family until New Year’s Day, and my awesome sister and brother in law are visiting from Las Vegas, so I still have that to look forward to as well!

I’ve also been working on my crochet skills, and made this beret style hat that I’m pretty proud of! I’ve actually been super crafty lately, and busted out my jewelry making skills to make these bracelets for my MIL and brother in law’s girlfriends.

And because I know your super worried about if I’m still running…fear not my friends! I was still able to get in a couple good runs this week, one being an awesome 4 miler that consisted of 400 meter sprint repeats with Paige and then a nice easy 6 miler today. It was such a beautiful day and I just couldn’t turn down the chance to get out and run!

I’m hoping to get in 3 good runs next week and get back on track a bit, since I did slack off a little this week. Overall though, I’m pretty pleased with my training and where everything is headed!

Questions for you:

What was your favorite gift you got for Christmas?
I would have to say so far my iPad, but my air popcorn maker is pretty cool too!

Do you travel to see family for Christmas or stay in town?
Since we got married we’ve pretty much always traveled somewhere

How did you do on your health and fitness this week?
I did pretty good, didn’t eat too much junk and was able to still WOD or run almost every day!

Our 5 year wedding anniversary weekend celebration!

Well our 5 year wedding anniversary was a HUGE success!! We had the best time and amazingly all our plans worked out as intended and we didn’t get too lost (just a little lost one time…but it all worked out). So all in all, it was an absolutely perfect weekend 🙂

We ended up staying in downtown chicago at hotel indigo, because I found a really good deal online (of course).

It ended up being a really nice, cute room and a great location!

So friday night we went to see Elf: The Broadway Musical at the cadillac theater and it was really good! The performers did an excellent job and it was a really cute show.

 

Overall we had a really nice time. We were supposed to go to dinner before the show,but ended up getting a little** lost in downtown. But it’s okay because we ended up wandering into a big german festival that apparently happens every year around this time. They had tons of booths with homemade gifts and of course FOOD! So we ended up eating some homemade pretzels, nutella puffs and hot chocolate for our dinner. So you know, the usual.

That nutella puff was the bomb. So good. So that was our friday night! Then Saturday morning we walked from our hotel to a really fun breakfast restaurant called Hash Hash A Go Go!

Yeah, their food is awesome and their portions are crazy! That is ONE giant snickers pancake, and I had an eggs benedict with mashed potatoes and biscuits and yes, that is fried chicken on chris’s plate…say what?! 

After we stuffed ourselves with all that deliciousness, we headed back to our hotel to chill, then went to the navy peir to see The Hobbit: Desolation of Smog in IMax 3D!

 

Yeah we think we are so cool in our 3D glasses….I won’t spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but can definitely say it was a good one!

After our movie we headed to oak brook plaza to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Wildfire. We have been here before for an anniversary dinner so we felt it would be upholding tradition to go there, plus Chris LOVES a good steak, so it was the perfect choice.

They do have good steak, but I’m not a red meat person. Those mashed potatoes though…oh. my. goodness. So good!

Oh and in case you were thinking, “geese you sure ate a lot this weekend…” my response is well duh. Because everyone knows calories don’t count on your anniversary weekend 🙂

After dinner my amazing, wonderful, patient husband took me to one of my favorite places in the whole world. Lululemon. If you don’t know what that is, well we can’t be friends. I am just *slightly obsessed with their clothes. I am pretty sure I own more lululemon workout clothes than normal clothes…and I’m not even embarrassed about that. 

So what’s even more amazing is I somehow convinced the hubs to try on some of the men’s lululemon stuff and guess what?!

He found something he liked!! My man with his first ever lulu purchase! Doesn’t he look thrilled? But really, he LOVES his new pants and wears them all the time, and has already asked me about getting more. 

And as if the weekend wasn’t already amazing, we ended our anniversary by Chris taking me to Tiffany’s where we picked out a beautiful heart necklace for our 5 year wedding anniversary 🙂 

My first tiffany’s jewelry!! I am one VERY lucky girl! So that was our unbelievably perfect anniversary weekend! May there be many, many more wonderful years ahead for us 🙂

On the running front, I have to admit I haven’t done any for a few days. I decided to take a few days off to enjoy our anniversary and I don’t regret it one bit. Time with my husband is definitely more important than running. Hands down. And I won’t be running tomorrow because…..drum roll….I have my first day back at crossfit tomorrow!!! That’s right friends, I get to start back at it! Granted I am going to have to take it slow and have no idea what I’ll even be able to do, but at least I get to try! 

So my plan moving forward is doing 2-3 days of cross fitting and then still do my runs 3-4 days a week. I actually think this will be a really good balance and am excited for what’s to come! I’ll definitely keep you all updated! 🙂

 

Questions for you:

Have you ever been to a broadway musical? If so, which one?

This was my very first one, but definitely won’t be my last!

Do you prefer your movies in 3D or old school?

While I think the 3D is pretty cool, it usually gives me a headache so we often opt out of it

Have you ever given or received something from tiffany’s??

 

Everybody’s working for the weekend

Oh weekends. We are always waiting(working), praying and hoping for them. Then it finally arrives, and always goes by way. too. fast. And before you know it it’s back to the boring week days. So lame. My weekends are a little different since I work Sundays, so really it’s saturdays that are my absolute favorite. This Saturday was especially awesome! My mom, husband and I continued our yearly Christmas tradition of going to see White Christmas at an old movie theater in town.

 

Thanks for taking our picture mom 🙂 Sorry my iPhone doesn’t do well in the dark….

I LOVE going to see this movie, it’s such a fun experience and really makes it feel like Christmas.

Before the movie Mom and I went to dinner at a nearby restaurant (the hubs was still working so he couldn’t come) I ended up getting some Tilapia with vegetable risotto and my oh my was it good!!

 

We also had to have popcorn and some candy at the movie because at the theater we go to everything is $1! What a great deal!! Speaking of candy….I’ve decided it really is the best post-long run fuel…

 

Twizzlers are probably my favorite candy ever…that or sour patch kids, not sure I could pick between those two. Luckily I don’t have to!!

Unfortunately I can’t just eat candy all day, which is a bummer, but it’s not really a healthy idea, plus I think I would get sick of it and then it wouldn’t be special. So instead I try to counteract the candy with lots of veggies. And now that I have my handy-dandy super snazzy vitamix, this is happening ALL.THE.TIME.

I’m tellin ya folks, it’s magic!!! And look at all that green healthiness being liquified for my drinking pleasure!! It’s especially important I get lots of healthy greens right now for the vitamins because I am STILL fighting this dumb cold. It’s so frustrating! I’ve decided until it’s completely gone I’m going to be running inside, because I don’t want to keep making it worse 😦  I’ve also been trying to drink TONS of water

 

I’m obsessed with this glass water bottle from lululemon right now!!

You guys will also be proud of me, I’m STILL keeping up with cooking healthy dinners every night! Last night I used the rest of my homemade pizza dough to make a chicken and veggie pizza, and tonight I made a delicious healthy version of chicken alfredo that used non-fat cottage cheese and greek yogurt to make the alfredo sauce, as opposed to cream. It turned out awesome! AND, you’ll never guess what I used to make the sauce. That’s right my friends, I used my trusty vitamix! That thing didn’t just blend up all my ingredients, it actually HEATED the sauce up as well! So, so cool!

 

AND the hubby even liked this one. That’s a win win people. It will probably be my lunch tomorrow! And once again, I’m anxiously anticipating this weekend, as it is the hubs and my 5 year wedding anniversary! And we have some pretty fun plans!!!!! 🙂

 

Questions for you:

What’s your favorite day of the week? Least favorite?

Saturday is definitely my favorite, and lately wednesdays have been my least favorite because they tend to be my longest day, plus it’s just that awkward half-way through the week day that you don’t know what to do with.

What’s your favorite candy, IF you had to pick just one?

Based on my current mood, I’m going to go with sour patch kids. But that could change in another hour…

Christmas trees, broken iPad screens and a vitamix

So I’ve decided grading is the absolute worst. I had to submit all the final grades for my undergrad students last night. It took me hours and gave me a massive headache. So I can DEFINITELY cross teacher off my career list (not that it was on the list to begin with…)

Anyway, while I was busy grading my life away, my awesome Mom and sister put up my Christmas tree for me!

Pretty, isn’t is?! They did a fantastic job and I’m very grateful for their help, because I doubt it would’ve gotten done otherwise!

I also got a really awesome surprise in the mail yesterday….

Yep….it as a vitamix blender! Dreams DO come true! I am so excited, I’ve been wanting one of these for a long time.

So expect to see lots of this happening:

Tada! It’s like magic! Let the green smoothie mayhem begin!

So after all the grading stress last night, i woke up this morning not feeling so hot, but I had 12 miles on the schedule so I sucked it up and dragged my butt out of bed to get ready. Then I looked at the weather report and saw this:

That’s when I decided to do an indoor run on the dread mill…yuck. So that decision led to this disaster:

Yep…thats a big spider web crack in my iPad screen 😦 While I was running I had one of my normal clutz moments and my iPad slipped off the book holder, took a ride down the treadmill belt and then flew off the end, landing on the concrete floor screen side down. So sad. That’s what I get for running inside….sigh. So now I need to decide if I’m going to try to replace the screen or just get a mini instead. Definitely a first world problem.

On the upside I am sooooo excited for tonight! We are heading to an old theater in town to attend our annual viewing of white Christmas (the movie). And the theater always has dollar popcorn and drinks, plus they do a raffle, so it’s lots of fun!

Questions for you:

Do you own a vitamix? Any good recipes?

Have you ever broken a phone or tablet screen? What did you do?

Do you have any fun Christmas traditions?