Sunday there was no workout time. It was go-go-go all day long with shopping, groceries, laundry, etc. Maybe I did 2 miles at Target… My friend Tom took his daughter up to their pecan grove in GA over the weekend and brought us back a bunch of yummy nuts! Maybe over pumpkin or gingerbread pancakes? BTW: I saw this recipe today for pumpkin banana chocolate chip bread and I have decided it is pumpkin time. I know most bloggers have been all over that, but it’s 90 degrees here still. Not much like fall. BUT I wore my boots twice, so now I think I can eat some pumpkin yummy goodness.

Here’s me (with Ragnar friends) in boots last Sunday because I wanted it to feel like fall:

I even tried to tie on a scarf…

Monday I started the day with Yoga. When my favorite yoga teacher moved to CA, I came to her last class with an MP3 player that had a voice recorder and made an audio recording of the class. For the first time, I copied it to my laptop and did her class in my living room. Brian was on his laptop in the living room at the time and said I was breathing like Darth Vader. I guess I remembered my bandhas a bit.

At work I drew some Rubik’s cubes for a party logo. I may have made a few web pages. For dinner we made pizza bagels using Thomas’ whole wheat bagels, Ragu pizza quick sauce and mozzarella cheese.

Tuesday started off with 75 mins yoga flow. Some moms from school were there.

I decided I wanted to eat a vegetarian lunch, and made white bean hummus with some canned beans that were left in the fridge. I piled them in a whole wheat pita with romaine lettuce and stir fry veggies from this bag. The flavors blended well and it was tasty, but you can’t make it far in advance or the pita gets a wet, mushy texture.

Tonight was TV-bonding with the kids. New season starting of Glee, New Girl and Raising Hope all in a row with my favorite girls! Well, we also had some schedule planning to do for while I’m in Orlando for the Wine and Dine, and physics studying, and perhaps an hour of my own work for clients. When I called a mom of one of Wendy’s friends to see if she could spend 3 nights at their house, she said yes before she even checked her calendar. Yep, Wendy is just that fun! And she makes the omelets with spinach and salsa wrapped in tortillas. My friend was quite amused when Wendy whipped one up for her husband last time she stayed there, and he said his wife should take cooking lessons from Wendy. I think this time I’ll send her with my mom’s sweet & sour meatball recipe – she’s pretty good at making those all on her own – over rice.

I have a confession: I loved Zooey Deschanel in Elf, but I do NOT like her recorded music since.  Alice would call it “Hipster”. Meanwhile, Alice has been waking up to the country western radio station – BLECH!!! She asked me which was worse, hearing that first thing in the morning or an alarm going off. I had to think that one through, but I decided the beeping annoyance of an alarm is actually worse.

I bought this new Revlon ColorStay Aqua mineral powder. I use it as foundation. It goes on with a brush (which wasn’t fluffy enough and I substituted my own) and has SPF in it! But here’s the cool part. It’s supposed to hydrate your skin, right? It contains coconut water for instant hydration – and you can feel the wetness as it goes on. Although it has the texture of a powder, and the light coverage of a powder – I had to stop the first time I put it on and check to make sure the brush hadn’t gotten wet. It actually feels wet going on your skin! I’ve never felt anything like it, and if you want a sheer coverage with a bit of SPF I recommend it!

Tomorrow I have meetings all day long! One to see a new office space downtown, one with drinkchianow.com and one with a potential client – a dermatologist with a poorly constructed web site.

And I leave you with this: Would you rather eat chocolate chips out of the bag or peanut butter out of the jar?

My life and schedule have taken their bi-annual shift… the school year has begun! I have one daughter in 8th grade and one in 9th grade. My high schooler is now very fashion focused, but luckily still grades focused.

Wed. we had parent/student Freshman orientation, so I did not work out in the AM but I went to BodyFlow at night with a friend. Thurs morning I went to 75 mins of power yoga with B.

Friday I did my first gym workout for a long time. I took almost 6 wks to focus on yoga, and now I have 2 months left of this gym membership before I switch gyms, so I am going to make some use of it. I did 20 mins on the Stairmaster, 2 sets of flyes and presses lying on a bench with 12 lb weights, as well as bicep and forearm curls, tricep extensions – oh, woops, I just realized I forgot to work my lats. Oh well… Then I stretched and did planks, side planks and marching planks. And managed to sneak in 3 conversations since I had not been to the gym in so long and saw all my “gym friends”.

That night was a BBQ at school and a hot, sweaty football scrimmage. I hate sitting in the heat and getting sweat marks on my shirt, I find that so embarrassing. It’s my fault for not wearing the right top, I guess. They had portabello mushrooms as a meat-free option!

Saturday I woke up at 5:15 for the 6am run. We had 4 people do 5k and at least 4 do 10 miles. I did the 5k and then stretched a bit.One of the women ran along side me and we talked the whole time. She liked that even though my pace was slower than what she usually does I was very consistent. Since I don’t often run with a Garmin on, and she was – and checked it often, that was good to know. She was excited to hear about the Ragnar Relays we’re doing over the next few months and wants to join up. She was afraid we might not want a beginner on the team, but I assured her we were running for the fun and adventure, and not for the win!

I went home and rinsed off and helped Wendy get pretty for Temple. Her close friend we’ll call George was having his bar mitzvah. Usually I’ll stay for the temple service, just to show my support and friendship, but I don’t really know George’s family, and I had a lot of work blogging to do, so I dropped the girls off and went to the library for the 3.5 hrs I had to kill. I have not hung out in a library for a long time, and this was the main branch so it was large and had lots of expansive seating areas. I was able to find some fun books, hook up my laptop, finish some writing, and then go back to temple. When Wendy came out to the car, she had George with her. Apparently he wanted to go swimming with Wendy and their friend Victoria and his parents were OK with him leaving his own luncheon to save the 25 min drive to our side of town. I swung by George’s house so he could grab swim trunks, and we hung out in his kitchen while he changed out of his suit. George is not in the best of shape, and after spending 5 mins in his kitchen I saw tons of snacks and treats everywhere. Goldfish, Milanos, Cracker Jack, rolls, peanut butter (not the natural kind)… all over the place. When he was ready to go he offered everyone a snack for the road. I asked if he had a nectarine. He not only did not know what a nectarine was, but even after I explained it was like a peach without the fuzz he thought it was a type of fruit juice. Oy Vey! This kid needs to learn about real food! But he’s fun, and cute, and watching him with my daughter is quite hysterical. They sing and goof around a lot!

That night Brian and I were invited to a Dirty 30th birthday party. My friend knows I don’t usually drink when we go out, so she asked if I would be the DD of a van of friends as we went to naughty places throughout the evening. I drove the rented 12-passenger van and was happy to save those calories. I would have loved some chocolate though! Around 3:30am someone made a Taco Bell run, and I did manage to down a bag of cinnamon twists – I felt 16 again for a moment. And the funny part was one of the friends who had never met me thought I was the DD because I was not old enough to drink! What a nice, kind, lovely guy!! I’ve heard that I look 27, but certainly not 20!!

After going to bed at 6am, I slept thought BodyPump until 11:45am on Sunday. We got a ton of errands and laundry done. I had every intention of making felafel for dinner, but the recipe called for letting the ingredients sit for 2 hours in the fridge, which I did not read in advance, and we’ll have to make that a different night because it was almost 8pm and we were all tired and hungry. Woops. Lack of sleep made mommy screw up dinner. I apologized, Brian made cod, and all was right with the world once again. Plus, all the ingredients are mashed and ready for felafel a different night.

I was reading Parade from the Sunday paper before typing this. I learned that Sarah Jessica Parker is 10 years older than me! And I saw there is a Dannon Oikos Greek yogurt FREE coupon in the back cover. I’m supposed to make lentils for lunch tomorrow, and my friend is coming and bringing rice. Some plain Greek yogurt might be yummy with that!

Here’s a fun book I got from the library yesterday. I also got another Christopher Moore book, and 2 yoga books. I got Wendy a book that shows the same comic strip drawn/retold 99 different ways. She usually groans about books I bring her from the library, but she is enjoying flipping through this one and learning about some different art styles.

I’ll start the day/week off right tomorrow with a core yoga class! This week brings a lot of client meetings, High School curriculum night, a pub crawl I am volunteering at for My Hope Chest, and a 5k we’re volunteering at with Alice’s cross country team on Sat.

I already told you about one secret coupon – here’s another… Publix has a $2 off General Mills cereal coupon in their in-store flyer. Winn Dixie has Oat Cluster Cheerios Crunch marked down to $2.25. Since Winn Dixie will take a Publix coupon, that means $.25 Cheerios!! I think I’ll get 3 over the course of the week. Cereal seems to be our not-so-bad munchie food of choice. Maybe because I don’t buy cookie, crackers or chips! What do you like to grab quickly (besides fruit)?