Monthly Archives: October 2013

STL Bound

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Happy Friday!! I hope your having a wonderful day so far. It’s gorgeous (and cold!) here in Springfield, and I’m loving it!

Right after work today, Nick, Mac, and I will load up and head out to St. Louis for a weekend at Nick’s parents house. I’m very excited! Though the anticipation is making this work day go by rather slowly… oh well. It’s already half over. 🙂

Backing up a bit to yesterday, I had a little more work to do in my kitchen before all my goodies would be ready to take along for the weekend. Frosting the sugar cookies was the final thing on my baking agenda!

photo(90)Plain sugar cookies with vanilla frosting = Nick’s father’s favorite! Mark is an easy man to please (his bday is 4 days after mine), and I had a wonderful time licking all the extra frosting off the spoon.

photo(92)I used a simple Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie mix, so they aren’t fancy but still delicious! And I actually ended up eating tons of the leftover frosting right before I went to teach 6:45 pm Jazzercise. Smart idea? Probably not. But I managed to make it through class without getting sick. 🙂

I also whipped up a batch of chocolate chip and pecan cookies for the rest of Nick’s family to enjoy. They aren’t into the plain sugar cookies as much as Mark is.

photo(91)These are like little pieces of heaven, people. Seriously.

I found semi-sweet baking chips in a Halloween variety to make these extra festive!

photo(89)And I obviously did not frost these. The chocolate chips were enough addition!

I now have 2 dozen cookies and a BIG bowl of the Halloween Chex Mix that I posted yesterday to take along for the weekend. Nick’s mom always complain that my treats are unhealthy and that I need to bring along some of my healthy food. But that’s no fun! Birthday weekends are meant for splurging, so splurge we will. A lot.

Morning Run

In lieu of me having to change up my half marathon schedule, I had a crosstraining day yesterday and taught 2 classes. So that made today my shorter run day! Yay for not having to run as far! 😛

I woke up early to the coldest morning we’ve had so far: 30° F! Woah! I bundled up in my best running layers, including a cozy ear warmer and gloves, and headed out on a 45 minute run. I tried to make today’s run a tempo run, but the cold held me back just a bit. My perfect race pace would be between a 8:00-8:10 minute mile, but this morning’s pace was 8:28 overall. I was a little faster than my run on Wednesday morning, but still not at my best. That cold air makes it hard to breath!

I made it to 5.1 miles in 43:30 and was more than ready to be back home. Today’s run was difficult to say the least. I was struggling to pick up my feet and almost tripped myself a few times. This was probably a mix of being tired and eating so much sugar all week. I’m still not feeling my best from eating so many sweets in the midst of all my baking/cooking for the weekend, so I’ll be ready for a ‘sweets detox’ starting Sunday night when we make it home!

I hope you all have a great weekend and can enjoy the beautiful weather! I’m not sure when I’ll have time to check in, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of fun times to share – talk to you then!

Messin’ with my Schedule

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Good morning! Woot, it’s Thursday!! I always love Thursdays. Every week this day brings me a sense of relief since the weekend is within sight. Love it! Plus that sense of relief invokes a good mood. No grumpy cats around here!

Grumpy-Cat-PurinaHAhahaahah. Sorry. I love that poor little cat.

I didn’t get a chance to check back in for another post last night because a lot of action was happening in my kitchen.

photo(85)Yup, that right there is diabetes in a pan. Looks yummy right?

photo(86)Halloween Chex Mix made an appearance! Other goodies did as well, but I will wait to post pictures until I get them iced this evening.

I rarely cook up these types of treats in my kitchen, but this weekend brings up good reason for celebration and goodies are necessary! Nick, Mac, and I are heading to St. Louis to visit his family to celebrate several upcoming birthdays. My birthday is Nov. 1. His father’s birthday is Nov. 4. And his brother’s girlfriend’s birthday is Nov. 8! I had to make this Chex mix and lots of cookies last night to take along for our weekend fun. Yay for a little reason to splurge!

We are leaving right after work tomorrow evening and will stay through the weekend. Hence the reason for the post title – this trip will be messin’ with my schedule. Big time.

I LOVE Nick’s family. Love them. To pieces. Really, I do. So I can’t wait to go visit and spend lots of time with them the next few days. But since I just started out on this Half Marathon training plan, this trip will put a little kink in the regularly scheduled activities. I also have to get my Friday night and Sunday morning Jazzercise classes covered for me. When did weekend trips have to become so complicated?!

Luckily, I easily got my classes covered by my fellow instructors. Now I’m just trying to find a good way to squeeze in my weekend workouts and runs while in St. Louis! I have time on Saturday morning to attend a Jazzercise class at a local center close to Nick’s parents house and to also go running. But first, I have to figure out where to run and then how to get myself there. I’m terrible at driving around up there!

I’ve mostly stayed on track up until today, as far as my training plan is concerned. I started yesterday with a nice run. I was scheduled for 5+ miles, so I awoke bright and early and told myself I would run for 1 hour and just see how far that got me.

photo(84)It was stinkin’ cold outside! I think my body was in a bit of shock, and my pace was slower than normal. But I still made it almost 7.5 miles which set me off on the right foot for the day.

Today’s schedule is where it started getting funky. I should have started today with a shorter run (around 3-4 miles), but I instead taught the 5:40 AM Jazzercise class (I switched for my Sunday morning class). Tonight I will teach my normal class time at 6:45 pm. So today has become a cross training day, and tomorrow will be a shorter run day. I’m going to wake up early tomorrow to get out there and hit it hard before this fun weekend begins! I have a 3 hour car ride after work to rest my tired body and relax so waking up early is an OK compromise by me.

Soooooo, here’s another fun roundup of my upcoming weekend activities…

  • Make it to St. Louis by 8ish PM tomorrow evening
  • Dinner with Nick’s parents
  • Saturday morning Jazzercise class
  • 6+ mile run (somewhere?)
  • Meet my girlfriend Emily for a late lunch in the city
  • Relax at home (fingers crossed!)
  • Dinner out with Nick’s whole family
  • Sunday morning shorter run

And that’s about it, folks. I know I shouldn’t worry so much about all the small details, but I love making lists and staying organized.

Have a great day, and I’ll check in with you later!

BarkBox: Halloween Edition

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Happy Hump day everyone! It’s been a beautiful and chilly day here in Springfield, and I’m loving it! Crisp, Fall days like today are my favorite. Mac will probably even get an extra long walk tonight due to the gorgeous weather. 🙂

Mac received a new BarkBox in the mail yesterday! I always get really excited to receive his package each month and see what goodies they picked out for my little man! I was even more excited than normal when I opened the box to see bright and festive colors. It was a Halloween Edition Barkbox!

image(9)Okay, that’s what I’m calling it anyways, but BarkBox did not officially call it by this name. 🙂 But it did have lots of Fall themed goodies inside. Mac was pretty excited too. He even got crazy googly eyes at the sound of mommy’s excitement!

photo(81)HA. He’s so weird.

Anyways, I was excited to see a toy and lots of yummy treats for Mac to enjoy when I opened his box.

image(2)I immediately squeaked the chevron print bear to get Mac’s attention. So he went to town chewing on that poor little fella while I sorted out all his yummy goodies!

photo(82)Tearing toys to pieces is his favorite hobby. We have many stuffing-less toys laying around the house!

image(4)I also opened up the weird looking lambs ear for him to chew on. The pack came with 2 of these luckily because he ate the first one in about 1 minute flat. Must’ve been tasty??

image(5)The cutest part of the box were these doggie Halloween treats. They come in individual packs to share, so this must be what I’m supposed to hand out to the neighborhood dogs on Halloween! Doggie trick-or-treaters are my fav, so I hope to be able to ate least hand out 1 or 2 of these adorable little treats next Thursday.

The one thing I’m skeptical about? This dry mix that I’m supposed to use to make doggie meatballs.

image(3)I’m just not sure if I want to go through the trouble of making meatballs for Mac when I barely have time to cook for myself and Nick. Basically, you add a pound of lean meat (like ground turkey) to this mix, make little meatballs, and then bake them up for your Mutt. In theory, this is very cute and he would love them. In reality, this probably won’t actually happen because mommy may be just a touch too lazy. But we’ll see… It is Mac’s birthday month after all.

Tonight we’ll have to break out the Autumn Harvest treats. I couldn’t spoil him too much in one night!

Well, I’ll see you later friends. I have another night off of teaching tonight, so I will be packing for the weekend (we’re heading to STL!) and baking up some goodies hopefully. Catch ya later!