Remember that huge task that I got done on Wednesday?  You know the one that I marked off with a sharpie?  Well come to find out my computer ate the freaking thing and I had to do it OVER again yesterday.  I worked until 10:30 last night.  It sucked.

Tonight, I sat down at 7 to do a quick post and my computer wouldn’t read my SD card.  Two hours later and I finally got it figured out.  I seriously want to chuck my computer out the window.

Oh well.

Here’s something that makes me smile:

This morning I was in the middle of doing laundry for her and she didn’t have any socks…except for a white one and a purple one.  She rocked it 1991 style.

Man! I totally should have put her purple shoe on her right foot!  I was the queen of rocking different colored shoes and socks back in the day.  Don’t worry, the laundry was done by the time we went out and she had matching socks 🙂

We had our family pictures today and I cannot wait to see how they turned out.  She showed us some on her camera and I am really excited.  She’ll have them done in 2 weeks.  That feels like such a long time!  How could they not be good? They’ll have Lu in them.

Food

I made a seriously good (and easy!) dinner tonight.  I put 2 frozen pork loins from Costco into the crock pot this morning with 1 cup of Bone Suckin’ Sauce and 1/2 cup water and cooked it on low for about 7 hours.  I shredded the pork at 7 hours and then mixed in some of Trader Joe’s BBQ sauce and let it sit for another 2 hours on warm.  I served it on whole wheat buns.  Shaun had macaroni salad from the grocery store, Lu had peas and carrots (she ate her ENTIRE bowl of meat and veggies-she LOVED it), and I made myself a slaw. 

It seems that everyone around me is eating some sort of slaw right now and it inspired me.  I chopped up some cabbage, a granny smith apple, a persimmon and then mixed that with apple cider vinegar, agave, and pepper. It was good but I think it’ll be better tomorrow after it sits.

Normally when I make shredded pork Shaun complains that it’s too dry (he really is complimentary of my cooking-I make him sound so harsh-he’s not!).  He really liked this and said it was delicious and juicy.  I can’t wait to eat it for lunch tomorrow!

Alrighty, see you on the other side!

I got up today at 5:30 (GO ME!) and went to spin class.  The teacher had the same jokes, the same people were in the class-wearing the same clothes, talking about the same thing.  It was eerie-it was like stepping back in time a few years.  Even though people don’t change (much!) equipment does!  The new bikes ARE AWESOME!!!  It was a good class and I burned 400 calories in 45 minutes-can’t beat that!

Before class I ate half of this:

and had the other half after class.  It was okay.  I think it would be better as an oatmeal topping.  A little too coconutty for my taste-I didn’t think that was possible!

I had a hard time going to sleep last night and I slept like utter crud all night.  I know it has to do with the Grande latte I had yesterday.  Today it’s back to tea!

My sweet, loyal kitty got up with me but wasn’t too happy to be doing it:

She was asleep when I got back.

I am VERY happy for the weekend.  We’re having family pictures done tomorrow by my friend Natalie. I also have a little something up my sleeve.  Here’s a hint:

Oh and Sabrina would be so proud-I took her advice and folded laundry last night before I put another load in the dryer.  Shaun was speechless.  We’ll see if I can keep this up.  I hope so!

This is one of Shaun’s favorite things that I make-and it’s chicken!  He requested that this go on the lineup and I happily obliged.

It’s a super simple and pretty quick meal.

Here are all the ingredients you’ll need:

Plus:

For the Chicken

Ingredients:

-Chicken
-1/2 cup Soy Sauce
-1 TBSP Agave Nectar
-1 TBSP Honey

Instructions:

-Mix the soy sauce, agave nectar and honey and place then add chicken. I used a glass dish trying to be environmentally aware but I prefer zip top bags.

(I used drumsticks for Shaun, breasts for me)

-Marinate for at least half an hour but up to 24 hours. If you’re using a glass dish or bowl, make sure you flip it every so often.  With a zip top bag it is covered more easily but I still flip it a couple of time.

-Cook using your preferred method.  I BBQ’d tonight but I also live in California where it’s 45 at night in December.  You could use a grill pan on the stove or oven.

For the Rice-I made a ton-but you can easily modify this down-just divide by 3!

Ingredients:

-3 cups cooked brown rice
-10 oz bag of frozen peas and carrots
-3 strips of bacon
-3 eggs, beaten
-3 TBSP Soy Sauce
-Pepper to taste

Instructions:

-Chop the bacon into small pieces (I’ve also used ham before)

-Spread evenly in a pan and cook over medium heat

until done to your liking

-Drain the fat
-Add veggies

-Cover for about 2 minutes, until just steamed

-Add rice and soy sauce and cook until warm
-Make a well in the middle of the rice mixture-this helps your eggs stay fluffy, if you just add it to the rice, it’ll stick to the rice and you won’t really get much egg flavor

-Add eggs and scramble

-Once the eggs are scrambled, mix in the eggs with the rice and season with pepper

My plate (which I enjoyed!)

Shaun said that the rice is “FABULOUS” and gives the entire meal 4 stars.

So I did it.  I got up:

and I went to the gym!  I was very blurry eyed:

But I did it!  I ate half of this beforehand:

and the other half afterwards.

I went to a boot camp class and it KICKED.MY.ASS!!!!  Holy moly. To put this in perspective when I really stopped going to the gym regularly (during my first trimester of pregnancy where the gym goers were lucky that I didn’t puke on them) I had just finished an IRONMAN.  I was one of the fittest people there.  I could go into any class (except step) and do the hardest exercises with a lot of weight and be fine.  Ummm…not today.  I know you have to start somewhere and I’m SO glad I went.  But it was SO HARD.  I had to not do some of it which was incredibly humbling.  I am going to be VERY sore tomorrow. But? It felt GREAT!  I can’t wait to wake up early tomorrow and go to spinning!  I do need to be careful that I don’t overdo though. :)  It was also nice that a lot of the same people were there and I got lots of “hi’s”.  It’ll keep me coming back :)  I know a lot of them are going to ask when I’ll start teaching again (I used to teach spin class) and I’ll have to say “We’ll see.” 🙂

After dropping Lu off at daycare this morning I debated whether I would get a Jamba Juice or Starbucks.  I decided on:

Grande Soy Sugar Free Cinnamon Dulce Latte.  That’s a huge treat for me and I thought today was a good day to give myself a treat.  Tonight I’ll prepare a smoothie to have in the morning and that way I won’t spend $4 for breakfast.

In work news, I finished a HUGE boring project that has been looming over my head for a VERY long time.  I was so excited that I crossed it off with a sharpie.

It was so nice coming into that!

Can you tell I’m amped?  I don’t know if it’s the coffee or the endorphins from the gym. I’m going to say the latter 🙂

I didn’t realize that my camera was low on batteries and I went to take pictures today and couldn’t 🙁

I do have a super cute one of Lucy and Shaun from our hike that you haven’t seen yet.

I *AM* signing up for the gym today.  I’m VERY excited.  I can’t wait!  I think I’ll go to a class tomorrow.  For sure on Friday-one of my favorite spin teachers is teaching.

To answer Cynthia’s question-I was enjoying P90X and then all of the sudden I wasn’t.  Plus-shhhh don’t tell anyone ;-)-I kinda want to start training for a triathlon again.  I miss competing, like REALLY REALLY miss competing.  So we’ll see.

Lunch is unexciting today and it makes me not want to eat-I guess that’s one way to lose weight!  HA!  I do NOT recommend Organic Bistro frozen meals.  They don’t have any junk in them but they also taste horrible.  I don’t know why I bought them (at $7.50 a pop no less!), I hate frozen meals.  I guess I thought it’d be easy and fast.  Yeah an easy and fast way to make me feel completely unsatisfied.  I like my food to taste good.  Eating healthy doesn’t need to mean eating gross.

I will leave you with one of my favorites of Lu.  She just discovered hummus-she LOVED dipping her carrot in it like Mommy.  Here she is telling me very ENTHUSIASTICALLY that she is “All Done”

She really liked it 🙂

Wow does that show my age or what?  I’ve got an 8 am meeting today so I’m working from home.  I’m not a fan of 8 am meetings but they are better than 6 am meetings (which YES I have had).  Since I’m working from home I do get to have oatmeal.

It’s cooking away:

The birdie is impatiently awaiting her portion:

(look at that CLEAN cage!)

The bowl is ready:

As is my home “office”:

I went to bed at a decent time yesterday (in bed by 9:30, asleep by 10) and when the alarm went off at 5:30 I popped out of bed and thought “I have to do that damn exercise video” and I got back into bed :(  I’m calling my old gym today to see how much they’re going to swindle charge me for a membership.  When Lu was younger it didn’t make sense to have a membership.  Now that I could get there and get home by 7 it does make sense. It’s 4 blocks away and it’d get me on the spin bike again (I used to teach there).  We’ll see.  If not, I’m going to have to get over my aversion to this video.

Oatmeal is ready! See ya!