Weekly Menu Plan & Fitness Recap {9/27}

Good morning friends! I hope you're all having a great weekend! Ours has been absolutely wonderful full of lots of family and plenty of relaxing! I'm trying to be quiet and get this posted before the kiddos start to stir, so is better get right to it today.

Here's the plan for the week:

Menu Plan:

Sunday - Grilled Turkey Burgers

Monday - Grilled Italian Chicken

Tuesday - Tacos

Wednesday - Brinner 

Thursday - Crockpot Beef Roast

Friday - Chili Crescent Dogs

Saturday - Leftovers/Contingency Day

Fitness Recap:

Sunday - Rest (Unintentional)

Monday - Body Revolution - Cardio 2

Tuesday - PiYo Sweat

Wednesday - P90x3 - CVX

Thursday - P90x3 - Total Synergistics + 21DFX Hardcore Abs

Friday - 10.02 mile run

Saturday - 4.15 mile run

I hope you all have a great rest of your weekend!

So long for today...

Power Balls

I have a confession to make. I've been holding out on you all. I've been enjoying these delicious little power balls lately and haven't shared the recipe with you. They're so good. They're really easy to make, too. I've tweaked the original recipe a little bit to make them even easier, and in my opinion, better.

I like to grab a couple of these to eat with my eggs in the morning or if I need an afternoon pick-me-up I'll eat a couple. I also like to eat one in the morning after my workout to hold me over until I get to eat breakfast. You can change up the recipe even more if you want to.

Here's the recipe:

POWER BALLS

Source: Elinor Harris

Points+: 2

Servings: 42

3 c. old fashioned oats

1/3 c. ground flaxseed

1/3 c. chia seeds or wheat germ

1/3 c. mini chocolate chips

1 c. natural peanut butter

1/2 c. honey

In large mixing bowl, combine oats, flaxseed, chia seeds (or wheat germ) and chocolate chips. Stir until mixed. In separate bowl, mix together peanut butter and honey. Stir together until smooth. Add this mixture to the oat mixture. Stir with a spoon, then with hands. Roll into balls and place in a cookie sheet. Put the cookie sheet in the fridge for a couple of hours to allow the balls to firm up. Store in refridgerator. 

** I used my cookie scoop to measure the mixture, then loosely rolled them and placed on cookie sheet.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do! The recipe makes a lot. I like to keep a smaller container in the fridge all the time so they're easy to just grab and go.

Have a great weekend everyone! We are definitely planning to. I'll check back in on Sunday with the weekly Meal Plan.

So long for today...

Weekly Menu Plan & Fitness Recap {9/20}

Happy Sunday to you! I hope the weekend is treating you well. We have been on the go so far. Today should be more relaxing though since we are headed out on the water. We have been so busy and the weather has been so hot this year, that we have hardly gone out, but hopefully, that will change in the next month or so.

We decided to book a camping trip in November, so that will be helping me to narrow down the half marathon choices. I still feel like I'm testing my body to see if it can make it through the training. Once I see how I feel, then I'll decide whether or not I want to register. I had my long run yesterday morning and my knees were killing me the rest of the day. I'm hoping that the new shoes I ordered, plus some custom inserts will help to ease my knee pain.

Here's the plan for the week:

Menu Plan:

Sunday - Grilled Hamburgers

Monday - Leftovers

Tuesday - Out to Dinner

Wednesday - Grilled Turkey Brats

Thursday - Crockpot Chili

Friday - Taco Fiesta Bubble-Up Casserole

Saturday - Crescent Chili Dogs

Fitness Recap:

Sunday - 3.16 mile run

Monday - Rest

Tuesday - Body Revolution Workout 7

Wednesday - Body Revolution Workout 8

Thursday - Body Revolution Workout 7

Friday - Body Revolution Workout 8

Saturday - 9.02 mile run

I'm looking for advice on running shoes. What are your favorites brand and styles?

I hope you all have a great week!! 

So long for today...

Friday Fun {9/18}

Hey there and Happy Friday. It's not my Friday off from work, but I'm still determined to have a great day! I got up early and did my workout this morning and I have a laundry list of work waiting for me at the office, so without further adieu...

1. Normal Weeks - We have hit a standstill with TC's garage this week. The doors weren't ordered until last week and they take a couple of weeks to come in, so there hasn't been any work happening on the garage this week. That means that we had a pretty normal week at our house. Our evenings were (more) relaxed. Although, with the school year comes homework in the evenings and that's never relaxing for me, especially as a parent. BUT, it's still part of "normal" for us and that's always a good thing!

2. Movie Night - Along with normal, comes some of our normal weekend activities. We are kicking off tonight with movie night! TC and I had a date night where we went to see the live action version of Cinderella. Addison tends to get scared with some movies, so we wanted to see if before she did. Well, it finally came out in video this past week. Thank you Amazon Prime for delivering it to us so we can have movie night tonight!

3. Fall in the South - Being from the North, Fall means cooler temps, blankets at Friday night football games and the beautiful changing leaves on the trees. That's definitely not the case in the South. Instead, it's slightly cooler temps, lower humidity, which makes the temperature seem lower and actually being able to go outside and have some fun. This past week, the slightly cooler temps arrived. Of course, it's supposed to be warmer this weekend, but one of the great things about Fall in the South is that you can still go out on the boat without dying of heat stroke and that's on the agenda for the weekend!

4. Pumpkin, Pumpkin, PUMPKIN!! - I love a good pumpkin recipe just as much as the next guy, but I feel like we're getting pumpkin overload this year. The recipes started showing up in August and haven't slowed down since!! But, I did enjoy some delicious Pumkpin Cake Roll last weekend!

5. Home Improvement - I think I'm finally done with the half-bath re-do. I touched up the paint in the vanity last weekend to make it look better. Now, I just need to find a pillar candle somewhere for te finishingg touch and it'll be done in very happy with the way it turned out and can't wait to share it with you.

I hope you all have a great weekend! I might try to get a recipe post up or you if I can get a chanc

Weekly Menu Plan & Fitness Recap {9/13}

Happy Sunday friends!! I have fantastic news for you all!! The garage is done! Well, we still need doors and electricity, but those are minor things, right? In all honesty, I'm pretty impressed that it took less than 3 weeks to put up. That was 2.5 full weekends and evenings. Not too shabby in my opinion!! I know, you were all hoping for an update, right?! Lol! And here is a picture, too!!

I had a great week of workouts and a not so great week of eating. I was in a training class for two days. They have some pretty tempting snacks back there and always have delicious catered lunches! I resisted the Philly cheesesteaks the first day and had just baked chicken and green beans on the second day. But by the afternoon of both days, I was digging into the snacks. Brushing off the crumbs and moving on...Here is what I have planned for the week:

Menu Plan:

Sunday - Slow Cooker Chicken Fajita Soup

Monday - Grilled Honey Lime Chicken

Tuesday - Mini Tacos

Wednesday - Baked Swai

Thursday - Chicken Pilau

Friday - Pasta Bake

Saturday - Leftovers/Contingency Day

Fitness Recap:

Sunday - 3.57 mile run

Monday - 4 mile run

Tuesday - Body Revolution - Workout 6

Wednesday - Body Revolution - Workout 7

Thursday - Body Revolution - Workout 8

Friday - 5.25 mile run

Saturday - 8.52 mile run

I bumped up to the next level in Jillian's Body Revolution.  I was definitely feeling it the next couple of days. Especially in my arms. She gets a bit more mean in level 7 and throws some hand weights around!! Yikes!

I hope you all have a great week!

So long for today...

Friday Fun {9/11}

Haaaaappppyyyy Friday!! Or should I say, FRI-YAY!! I hope you all had a smooth week!! It went pretty quickly for me and isn't that what's really the most important? We made it to the weekend!! So let's get things going!!!

1. Happy Patriot Day to you. It's such a somber day of remembrance. I think we all will remember where we were when the news started coming in about the attacks. I was actually in relatively close proximity to the plane that went down in PA. I was working for a digital mapping company at the time and my job was to drive all of roads and make corrections and updates to our mapping database. It was a pretty interesting job. The county in which I was working was right beside Somerset county and I was right over the border. I kept hearing about it on the radio, but I didn't get to see any of the video until I got home that evening. Such a scary day for our country!

2. I've been trying to help Fall along by having my skinny chai lattes again. It could be that it's just part of my morning routine while I'm driving Addison to school. Or, it could just be that I like them. Either way, I'm hoping that by drinking them, Fall might come a little bit quicker. Ha!

3. We have a roof (or almost half of one) on the building. Hopefully, things will go smoothly over the weekend and all of the actual structure will be finished up. Then we will have the doors and electric to do and it will be done! Yay!! I'm soooo looking forward to that day! We absolutely couldn't have done this without my dad. He has been here every.single.day. working on this. And my mom has been right here, too helping to pick up the slack with the kiddos. I'm so thankful to them both. And the rest of my family (brother-in-law, uncle, sister and aunt) has pitched right in along with TC's cousin. I'm so thankful for all of the wonderful people we have in our lives helping us. It's during something like this that you see who you can really count on. People always say they'll come help you out, but you find out who is sincere and has your back when it comes down to actually doing the work!

4. My half marathon training is still going well. I still haven't signed up for a race yet and don't even k ow which one I'm hoping to do yet. Im still testing my body to make sure my knees (and everything else for that matter) will hold out! It's actually pretty exciting for me. Once I passed the 6.2 mile mark, every long run I do is the longest run I've ever done!

5. I've signed up for the Tone It Up Fall Challenge. I downloaded the Charity Miles app to go along with it. For every mile you log with the app, a donation will be made to the charity if your choice. I figured since I was doing all this running anyway, why not help a charity out along the way? Sounds like a win-win to me!

6. These two! They're so sweet with each other. It absolutely makes my heart so happy and full to watch them with each other. I hope they are always this close!

Ok, let's end it with that! I hope you all have a great weekend!

So long for today...

WIAW {9/9}

Hey there! I wanted to do another WIAW post for you, but have been busy with a few different things. I thought about it some more and figured it's better late than never, right?!

I've been trying really hard to stay on track. The weekend was kind of a bust, but I buckled down again once the weekend was over. I'm still doing great with my exercise and here are most of my food choices from yesterday:

I started with my daily Spark and a non-fat Chai Latte, which isn't pictured.

Breakfast was eggs, oatmeal and some grapes along with my green tea:

I snacked on some tropical mixed fruit in the morning:

Lunch was a chicken chile lime burger with cracker chips and some homemade lowfat coleslaw:

I had a pretty rough night the night before which typically makes me pretty snacky. I fought this with some gum and some Slam. Definitely helped me through the afternoon! I also had some almonds with watermelon: 

Dinner was crockpot meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes and broccoli:

I consider it a huge NSV that I was able to gift my snackiness all day. Usually, I give in and eat anything I can get my hands on!!

Thanks so much to Jenn for hosting this week!

So long for today...