Francesca Battistelli - This Is The Stuff

With three children to discipline and guide, a full roster of homeschool material, dinner to prepare, a house that needs cleaned, and laundry that needs to done, I am listening to this song over and over... :)

Recovery

About once a week I start to feel run down. My legs ache throughout the day. My arms are sore when doing routine activities. My calorie burn decreases. I feel like I could sleep for hours. And I start to lose a little of the joy I get from working out hard. These are all signs that I need a day to rest and recover.

What do my rest days look like? Oh they look amazing :) I get to bed early and sleep late (if 7 am is late) and I do my best to expend as little energy as possible throughout the day. I recently discovered something that makes these recovery days even more amazing.

Just before Christmas I bought myself an early Christmas present; a pair of Zensah calf sleeves. Compression socks are used to help runners recover. You can even wear them while your running. I wore them during my last long run and I do think they helped reduce fatigue and pain. I highly recommend these little beauties! They make recovery days even more wonderful :)

just awesome!

OBSESSED!!!

With this hot cocoa..... seriously....obsessed :) It is so good and I only use half the amount of cocoa.

Longish Christmas Update

We always make sugar cookies (cut out) for Christmas.

Time to decorate! It was a great time as a family!
A new little niece was born right before Christmas. Aaron and I now have 14 nieces and nephews!

Elliana and I started a new Christmas Eve tradition. I always make homemade cinnamon rolls to eat the next morning after opening gifts. We decided that it would be a fun tradition to lick the cinnamon roll frosting bowl together.

Opening their Christmas jammies and Christmas Eve!
Christmas morning- it's so much fun to watch the kids opening their gifts.

My gift to myself this year- this morning I ran 11 miles!! It's so nice to hit the double digits again :)

Here we go again!!

They did it! Last night the boys finished all their school work. They are upstairs enjoying some time together (which involves yelling and crying about every 10 minutes) and I am making more yummy Christmas treats.




On the agenda today: another batch of Oreo balls and pretzel rods. This time I'm dipping the chocolate covered pretzels in either crushed Oreos, candy cane, or dark chocolate shavings :)

(To answer the question that some might be wondering- No, I do not eat the treats I make. But I LOVE making them for my family :)

tick, tock, tick, tock

We're almost done!!! The boys are working really hard to get everything finished. Some reading, math, and a little writing and they will be DONE!!!! It's going to be a great week!!!

A Great Christmas Season-a little ramble

We have been really busy the last few weeks. We switched up our school routine and it was an awesome success. We will definitely be doing that again and again. I gave the kids their Sonlight schedules and told them what work needed to be done before they could have Christmas break. They are working like crazy to get it done.

I made these awesome treats for a few of my nieces and nephews. I am so excited to see them this weekend!! I wish they lived closer because I love hanging out with them. Elliana loves being with her daddy :)
Joshua and Asher have been playing a lot of Christmas music; which we all love.
The kids were excited to put up the Christmas lights.
We're finishing up our school work and looking forward to a relaxing break (just a few days, but the kids- and the teacher- will enjoy it!).

A few tips...

I have been LOVING my body bugg and thought I would pass on a few tips that I have learned in the past three weeks.

-Nutrition is 95% of being healthy. You can workout non-stop but if in between workouts you are eating junk; you will not change your body.

-You are overestimating how many calories you burn each day and to make matters worse you are underestimating how many calories you are consuming (I'm a healthy eater and I took out 1300 useless calories!!!). It takes a lot longer than you think to burn calories and a lot less time than you think to consume way more than you need.

-Running is the fastest way to burn calories. Even if you can only run 5 minutes or less, do it; and then transition to something else (stationary bike, elliptical, walking on an incline). Your calorie burn will be significantly higher. Running is a great way to jump-start your workout!

-Eat your salad! I love salad without dressing. I add a little cheddar cheese and meat (turkey or chicken) and it is amazing! Salad is a low calorie meal that is extremely healthy for your body (which is pretty obvious). So find your favorite way to make a salad and eat it, daily!

-You can eat whatever you want, as long as you budget it into your day. Having that yummy dessert is perfectly fine if you have taken the initiative to eat healthy throughout the day and burn your calories. And of course you can't eat it everyday (unless it is low in calories and saturated fat)

-Referring to the last tip I must share a very sad fact. Pizza is bad for you. I hate to say it; I love pizza. One of the healthiest kinds of pizza you can get is a cheese Papa Murphy's take-n-bake. One slice contains 270+ calories!!! I could workout for an hour and still not burn off the calories in just one slice! And really who eats just one slice :) Just keep that fact in mind. I still eat pizza; but I make sure my other meals are low calorie and that I get in a lot of physical activity that day.

-You shouldn't live your life around the number of calories you consume. But you should also not be reckless and ignorant to what your doing to your body. Don't complain about your weight if your consuming a ton of calories and doing nothing to burn them off. Get up and take charge of your eating and your activity. You are the only one who can make you eat healthier and exercise. There is no magic pill, exercise, or food. Dedication and hard work is all you need to get the job done.

Turning it all upside down

I decided to take the liberty that homeschool offers and completely switch up our school week. I set aside our regular schedule and made my own. We have been studying some big concepts in history and science and I wanted to go more in depth.

I made a list of the topics I wanted to cover and hit the library. We ended up checking out close to 100 books! Yesterday Joshua studied Mongolia, Genghis Khan, and Kubla Khan. Asher read many books on coral reefs. At the end of the day Joshua wrote an essay and Asher a paragraph on what they learned. They then edited their writing and put together a poster presentation.

This morning Joshua will be reading a biography about Alexander the Great. He will then write an essay comparing him to Genghis Khan. If he has time he wants to study whales and the ocean as well. Asher is tackling a stack of books on Christopher Columbus. If he has time he will also delve into Magellan. He will then write a paragraph on what he learned. Both boys will again put together a poster presentation on what they learned.

They are spending hours reading :) Throughout the day I hear "hey mom listen to this!" I do spend a portion of my day saying "read, no playing, read, sit down and read, stop singing and read, stop whistling and read..." But it's worth it :)

We are also sprinkling in some math. We can't go an entire week without doing math, that would just be crazy! :)

Training Update

The above picture was exactly how I felt this morning.

I have been taking it easy on the running for several weeks. A reoccurring knee injury keeps side tracking me. When I do a test run I get to .25 miles and my right knee starts hurting. I have been cross training like crazy to keep myself in great running shape; but the miles have been eluding me.

This morning I jumped on the treadmill, hoped for the best, and ran..and ran..and ran :) I hit 6 miles before my knee was screaming for me to stop. I LOVED running again! I hope to hit some really long runs (double digits) sometime soon. But for now I am content with 6 :)

I love this quote- so true, so very true :)

My favorite somewhat healthy dessert - two dark chocolate sugar free pudding cups and 4 table spoons of fat free cool whip. Tonight I may even sprinkle few graham cracker crumbs on the top...so looking forward to this addition :)

I needed a little motivation today...

Cool!

My friend Gail sent me this....

She takes awesome pictures and would love to take some of your family. Visit her blog for details!