Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 6/22 - 6/28)

So I talked about going to Silver Sneakers training back in March.  And I told you how much I love teaching the class.  Well Monday night I got a call from someone from the company who runs the Silver Sneakers program that she was going to come out and observe my class.  I had a mild panic attack and then thanks to some kind words from my boss at the Y, a good friend & my husband, I came down from the ledge and realized I would be OK.

And they were right, I was OK.  The woman merely came in and observed my class and gave me some feedback on it.  I got a slightly above average score (4.7 on a scale of 1-7) so I was very happy.  She said I am a fantastic instructor with a great personality, I was just missing some of the key components of the program, which I knew going into the class.  I don't use the band for my class for a few reasons & that was a pretty big ding to my score (so when she comes back next year I will for sure be higher!)  And I do a few exercises that aren't "preferred" by them, but they are preferred by the students in the class and they have been doing them for months with the instructor before me.  A few of the suggestions I will definitely be adding to my class in the next few weeks.  All in all, I'm glad she came out to observe me and gave me so much feedback.

Other than that, the week was a pretty standard one.  I'm still really struggling to get to any classes that aren't my own.  I'm very close to giving up on that for the summer, between not wanting the boys in childcare too long & being VERY busy & active with them all day everyday it's a very hard goal for me right now.  I'm also struggling a little with the "summer slide" of people not coming to classes.  I've had a few classes cancel the past week since no one showed up.  I know it's a season but it still bums me out.

Here's how the week looked:
Wednesday - Went raspberry picking with the boys for an hour and did the elliptical for 10 minutes when no one showed up for my afternoon Zumba class
Thursday - Taught a one hour Silver Sneakers class, taught a one hour cardio dance class & rode the bike for 15 minutes when no one showed up for my morning Zumba class
Friday - Taught 2 one hour Zumba classes (one morning & one evening)
Saturday - Taught 1 one hour Zumba Toning class
Sunday - Practiced my new salsa for Zumba for about 20 minutes
Monday - Taught 2 one hour Zumba Toning classes (one morning & one evening) - I am still sore from this!
Tuesday - Taught a one hour Silver Sneakers class (for the observation), swam with the boys for about an hour and played at the park with them for about an hour

I weighed in this morning and I lost 4 pounds!!  That's almost all of the weight I gained on vacation.  This weekend is going to be rough since it's a holiday, but we have some activity planned so hopefully it will balance out and I'll maintain this week.  I was very excited to take the vacation weight off so quick!!

Keeping Up With...Family (Weekly Wrap 6/10 - 6/16 - Part 2)

Since we were so busy this week on vacation I broke it into two parts.  You can read part 1 here.  Let's jump back in with the rest of the week!

Tuesday (6/14) we head to the beach!!  We picked up my grandfather from his house and we all headed to Island Beach State Park.  It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed spending time with him, playing on the sand and in the water.  Zak wanted to bring home the whole beach & kept filling his crocs with sand for us to take home.  He did manage to get a little home in the bucket Great Pop gave us.  We dropped an exhausted Pop off at his house and headed to Shop Rite to restock some of our essentials and then got ready for dinner with friends.

Tuesday night we met up with some of you oldest and dearest friends for dinner.  Gabrielle and Mike hosted my family & Wendy's family for a BBQ.  We had a great time catching up, watching our kids play together and drinking moonshine.  It was so relaxing and so fun!  It's nice to have friends that you don't see often but can pick up right where we left off.  We also had some fun reminiscing over old photos from back in the day and unearthed this beauty of the three of us together our senior year of high school.  We forgot to do a recreation photo so that's on the agenda for next year!

Wendy, Gabrielle and me (that hair, OMG!)

Wednesday (6/15) we met another one of my friends at Six Flags.  Kim, Tom & their kids met us for the day to ride rides and catch up.  It was a lot of fun to see them and see our kids hanging out together.  We got to ride some of the rides we missed on Monday including riding El Toro as a family (Zak isn't tall enough so Adrian had never ridden it, but it's my favorite ride).  AJ and I also rode The Joker again.  We had another perfect weather day and had a great day together in the park.

El Toro selfie

Most of the kids in a balloon ride

Wednesday night we headed over to another friend's house for dinner.  We visited with Barbara and Ed and enjoyed a BBQ in their back yard.  AJ fell in love with their dog, Roscoe.  Daniel was hesitant to be around the dog at first, but he warmed up.  He even agreed to "think about" getting a dog of our own one day (this is huge progress!)  AJ was so upset when we were ready to leave and he started crying that he would miss Roscoe.  We took this picture so he could hang it in his room and remember him. 

Thursday (6/16) was the only day we woke up to showers.  I have to say we could not have been happier with the weather we got the whole trip.  Two years ago we visited and it rained the whole week.  We were miserable.  This time was just the opposite.  We had a lazy morning at the camp ground and when the rain stopped we headed to Seaside for the afternoon to spend some more time on the beach.  We ate pizza for lunch (YUM!), played in the sand & water again, played a few boardwalk games, rode the carousel and ate Kohr's ice cream.  All of my favorites in one day.  We had a great time!  And once again since everyone was still in school, it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.

Family picture - Love it!!

Zak's giant piece of pizza - and this was only half, he split it with Daniel

Enjoying some ice cream & our prize from the games

Thursday night we headed over the my Godmother's house for dinner with her, her family and my grandfather.  We enjoyed a delicious Italian dinner with them, ate way too much food and had a great time catching up.  It was another relaxing night with family and we enjoyed every second of the nice weather out on their deck.  AJ and Daniel were also thrilled to find "Teen Titans" on demand on their cable service and spent most of their night watching episodes of that.  I was glad that no one seemed to mind that they were being a little anti-social, the week was a lot for them and I think they started to hit the wall on Thursday.

That brings this weekly wrap to a close.  I'll finish up the last few days in NJ in next week's weekly wrap later this week!

Keeping Up With...Family (Weekly Wrap 6/10 - 6/16 - Part 1)

It's been two weeks since I did a recap since we went on vacation and then had vacation hangover.  I will be doing the recap of those two weeks as quickly as I can so I don't get further behind.  I may have to split vacation into (at least) two posts because we were busy.  In short I will tell you that our trip to NJ was amazing!!  We had a fantastic time visiting with family & friends, going to the beach, riding rides at Six Flags and camping.  It was an amazing week and it was very hard to leave and come back to reality last weekend.  Keep reading for all of the details.

Friday (6/10) started a little rough with Daniel having a horrible stomach ache.  He had to miss the last day of sports and art camp and was very upset about that.  Thankfully he rested most of the morning and was back up and running by the afternoon.  AJ finished up video game design camp and we were able to go in and see what he had created in the week.  His video game wasn't working right but it was very cool to see the whole world he had created on his own.  We left from there to take the boys to get their hair cut and then got home and spent the night packing up to hit the road bright and early Saturday morning.

Saturday (6/11) we hit the road a little before 9am and headed east.  The boys were champs again on the road and we only needed to stop twice in the 8 hour drive.  We made it to our campground in around 9 hours, got checked in and started to set up camp.  The boys ran around on the play ground and played mini golf while I helped Adrian set up camp.  We finished up, grabbed some dinner and hung out listening to the DJ the campground had that night.

 

Sunday (6/12) we had planned to meet my Uncle Tom and cousins at Six Flags Great Adventure for the day.  We got a little later than planned start and ended up sitting in a ton of traffic - and our campground was less than 5 miles from the park!  We finally got in, parked and walked up to see an hour long wait to get thru bag check.  I called my cousin (who was sitting in horrible traffic as well) and we made an alternate plan.  We decided to go out to lunch at Friendly's (one of my favorites!) and then head over to visit my grandfather for the bulk of the day.  Even though it wasn't what we had planned, it ended up being a nice day of spending time with family.

Monday (6/13) we finally made it inside Six Flags and there was hardly anyone there!  The NJ schools were still in session most of this week so we had very few people in the park while we were there.  We were pretty much on and off every ride we wanted to ride.  Zak continues to not be interested in the big rides, even though he's tall enough to ride them.  He spent most of his time in Safari Kids and Bugs Bunny Land.  Daniel rode The Dark Knight coaster twice, once with me and once with Adrian.  And AJ was the most brave and dragged me on rode the new Joker coaster.  We only had to wait about 30 minutes, which was great for a brand new ride.  We had a super fun day riding just about everything we wanted to ride and headed out of the park around 5:00 so we could head on to our next destination for the day.

Daniel, Zak & Dad on the swings

Ready for "The Dark Knight"

Zak loved these planes!

The Joker!!

Monday night we headed to my Uncle Tony and Aunt Joan's house for dinner.  We enjoyed hamburgers and hot dogs and sides, then ice cream for dessert.  They live right on the water and it's always so nice to sit in their yard and relax.  The boys enjoyed playing with the rocks in their yard since there is no grass.  They thought those and the shells were great fun.  It was a nice time to just catch up with my Aunt and Uncle before calling it a night.

I think I'll call this post done since it's getting pretty long and the rest of the week is just as busy.  I'll pick up the vacation recap tomorrow!!

Keeping Up With...Food (Menu Plan 6/27 - 7/3)

After taking a month off, I'm back to menu planning.  This month started with a lot of quick meals (salads, sandwiches, pasta & tacos) and then eating whatever we had to clean out our fridge before vacation.  There was some meal planning on my part but nothing really exciting to share.  We did a great job of cleaning out our fridges before we left but then came home to nothing to eat so this past week was a lot of scrambling to figure out what we were eating.

But now we are restocked and got a CSA bag on Thursday.  I'm planning our meals around the veggies we got in that bag and some of the meat I have in the freezer to try to keep our grocery bill down.  I'm also keeping the meals quick and easy because we are having a fantastic & busy summer and I don't want to have to spend all day in the kitchen.

Our vegetables from the CSA bag this week were really fun!  We got strawberries, beets, turnips (both red and white), snowpeas, kale, swiss chard and lettuce.  I can't wait to experiment with some of these new to me veggies!  We also went and picked raspberries at a local farm this past week so I froze most of those for smoothies this winter.  I will probably freeze some of the strawberries too, I prefer to do that than buy frozen fruits for our smoothies.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Monday - Sausage & Chard Soup and Salad
Tuesday - Meatloaf and Turnip Salad - this salad sounds delicious, can't wait to try it!
Wednesday - Veggie Stir Fry (using the snow peas & some turnip greens) with Shrimp and Egg Rolls
Thursday - Roasted Chicken with Turnip Casserole - we have turnips from before vacation as well so I'm trying to use them all before they go bad
Friday - Chicken & Bean Bake with Kale Chips
Saturday - Having friends over for dinner, will probably just order pizza
Sunday - Pasta and Salad

Water Flavor - Mango

Food Prep - I made the grocery list on Saturday (very early for me) and will start my shopping today.  I already hard boiled eggs for lunches and cut up fruit for snacks.  Later today I hope to make the turnip salad for Tuesday.  I also plan to make beet hummus with a recipe from the farm that does my CSA either later today or tomorrow.  I will snack on that with peppers & cucumbers throughout the week.

As always, I'm linking up with Laura at Mommy, Run Fast.  Go check out the other blogs on the link up for some more yummy recipes!  It feels so good to have a plan for the week and be ready to go!  Have a great week!!

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 6/8 - 6/21)

As I mentioned two weeks ago, I was on vacation last week.  While we actually had very good WiFi at the campground I chose to leave my laptop at home so I could unplug a little.  So I didn't have access to this blog to update last week.

We had a very active vacation since we were camping.  There were always camp chores to do.  And you have to walk to the bathroom.  Plus we did a lot of activities with they boys.  It was way easier to stay active on this vacation than our trip to Dallas. 

Our home away from home - fun but a lot of work!

My eating however was pretty horrible far from healthy.  I ate like it was my job this past week and I was hungry all the time.  I think part of it was dehydration, part was being outside all the time & part was not eating very healthy food.  I'm OK with the decisions, everything was delicious!  I ate all of my favorites including Wawa hoagies, pork roll, pizza, Friendly's and Kohr's ice cream.

Here's how I stayed active and kept my exercise streak alive the past two weeks:
Wednesday, 6/8 - Taught a one hour long Zumba class
Thursday, 6/9 - Taught a one hour long Zumba class and went swimming for about an hour
Friday, 6/10 - Packed and cleaned to get ready to go.  Daniel woke up with a stomach bug so I had to cancel my Zumba class.  I planned to do something else to work out but decided if I hit 10,000 steps with just packing I would count that.  I went over 10,000 steps.
Saturday, 6/11 - Walked around the campground and set up camp which included lots of walking, squatting, carrying, etc.  Hit 10,000 steps for the day so I counted it.
Sunday, 6/12 -  Walked around the campground and played with the kids on the play ground for about 30 minutes
Monday, 6/13 - Walked around Six Flags for about five hours
Tuesday, 6/14 - Walked on the beach and played in the water there for about two hours
Wednesday, 6/15 - Walked around Six Flags for about five hours
Thursday, 6/16 - Walked on the beach and the boardwalk for about three hours
Friday, 6/17 - Walked around my aunt's campground for over an hour plus some swimming and some fun running around the water spray park there
Saturday, 6/18 - Went for a short walk around our camp ground.  I planned to go for a walk around the bay at my uncle's house too but I was really tired by this day.
Sunday, 6/19 - Broke camp which included a lot of walking, squatting, carrying, etc.  Hit 10,000 steps for the day so I counted it.
Monday, 6/20 - Taught a one hour Zumba class and unpacked about half of our stuff
Tuesday, 6/21 - Taught 2 one hour Silver Sneakers classic classes

Not surprising when I weighed in this morning I gained 5 pounds over the two weeks.  I was hoping that all of that activity cancelled out the bad eating (and I'm sure it did cancel out some!)  But it wasn't enough.  I'm committed to tracking calories, working out and eating healthy for the next five weeks before we get ready to head to Tennessee for trip number three of the year!!

Keeping Up With...Family (Weekly Wrap 6/3 - 6/9)

Dropping in quickly between packing, cleaning and shuttling everyone to and from camp with a quick recap of our past week.  We leave for vacation bright and early tomorrow morning and I'm not sure what WiFi (and my time) will look like so it may be quiet around here for a week so, but I'll be sure to catch you all up when I get back.  For now, here's how we've been keeping busy the past week.

Friday (6/3) I gave the boys a few choices for what to do that day.  They chose a trip to Easton and the splash pads there.  We started at the Y so I could teach my Zumba class, then headed to McDonald's for lunch.  After that we went to Easton where we pick up my wedding ring (it was getting a spruce up), played in the water, watched the train & got free cookies from Cheryl's for good report cards.  We finished up our day with a free Krispy Kreme donut since it was national donut day.

 

Saturday (6/4) was AJ's birthday party.  The forecast wasn't good but thankfully the storms held off and we were able to do what he wanted - play in the yard, play video games & have ice cream cake.  We had 12 kids over for the party and it was crazy and fun.  AJ had a great time, as did all the kids who came.  We were all pretty tired after the party, but we had baseball under the lights that night.  So we refueled with some Jets pizza and downtime then Adrian, AJ & Daniel headed out to the game.  Zak and I stayed home because he was having some stomach issues.  Daniel got his first hit for the season & was SO excited!!  The team lost (again) but AJ & Daniel were excited about how they played.

Sunday (6/5) was a very low key day.  We relaxed and worked on our to do list so we're ready to leave for NJ.  The kids enjoyed a lot of video games this day and also all slept in after a few very busy days.  It was a much needed active rest day for all of us.

Monday (6/6) kicked off a busy week of camps for the boys.  AJ started video game design camp, which he attended each afternoon this week.  And all three boys started VBS at our church.  While AJ was at camp, I took the other boys and got all of us signed up for the summer reading program at our local library.  We also stocked up on books and movies for the start of the summer.

Tuesday (6/7) was another day of camp for all of us.  Daniel started sports and arts camp with a few of his friends.  He played baseball and did art and loved every minute of it.  AJ had day 2 of video game design camp.  And Zak went to night 2 of VBS.  AJ and Daniel missed VBS because they had their last game of the season.  Both boys got hits again tonight and played really well.  They are excited to play fall baseball in a few months!

Daniel at Sports & Art camp

Wednesday (6/8) was more of the same, Daniel at Sports & Art camp, AJ at video game design camp and all three at VBS for the night.  But the fun difference was that Adrian and I got a fun date night while everyone was at VBS.  We went and did some shopping to use some coupons we had for stuff we need for our trip.  Then we tried a new to us restaurant for dinner - Piada.  It was really good!!  I got their seasonal Piada and I loved every bite.  We will be going back very soon!!

Thursday (6/9) was very similar to the rest of the week.  It was the last night of VBS and the boys had a really good week there!  Also Daniel was invited to a pool party after Sports & Art camp so Zak and I went to join him for that.  The water was freezing, but we made the best of it.  I was also very happy to finish up all of my errands before leaving for the week next week.

The boys with their walking sticks from VBS

Pool Party!!  The water was freezing!

Another fun week in the books for us!!  I'm really hoping this keeps up all summer, we're off to a fantastic start!

Keeping Up With...Workouts (Recap of 6/1 - 6/7)

Last week I talked about going to Zumba Gold training.  This week I had the opportunity to sub a Zumba Gold class and it was fantastic!!  I wasn't ready to do a "real" Gold class, but I took my normal Zumba songs and modified them to fit into the Gold framework.  I was surprised how much of the training stuck in my head and was modifying things on the spot during class.  I had a blast teaching and it seemed like the students had a blast too.  I got a ton of great feedback from a lot of students after class which is always nice to hear.  My goal is to get an actual playlist together after vacation and hopefully add a Gold class to my schedule this fall.

Other than subbing the Gold class, this week has been pretty routine.  We are adjusting to our summer schedule and everything taking a little longer with three people getting ready all at the same time.  I didn't get to any other classes, other than my own because we just had too much going on.  Again, right after vacation I'm going to get back to doing at least one each week.

One other big thing for me this week was finally getting 20,000 steps in a day according to my FitBit.  I feel like I have done this other days but I don't think mine always tracks accurately.  I also have had the thing die on my busiest days, which is so annoying!  I am about 50/50 with the FitBit.  I do enjoy seeing the number of steps I take each day and week and I love the challenges with friends.  But it's not really telling me anything I don't know, I'm active and don't sleep enough.  :)

Here's what last week looked like:
Wednesday - Taught a one hour Zumba class
Thursday - Taught 3 one hour Zumba classes (that's why I hit the 20,000 steps)
Friday - Taught a one hour Zumba class
Saturday - Taught a one hour Zumba Toning class
Sunday - Practiced Zumba for about 30 minutes
Monday - Taught a one hour Zumba Toning class and a one hour Zumba class

Tuesday - Taught a one hour Zumba Gold class and a one hour Silver Sneakers class

Again, not an excited week, but an effective one.  I managed to maintain again so I think I am finally out-exercising my fork.  Well I'm also being helped by the fact that I have a ton of fruits and veggies to eat before we leave so I'm eating those for snacks and meals a lot this week.  I won't be weighing in next week since we'll be away and may not be able to update the blog since I'm not sure about internet access.  But I will be keeping my exercise streak going and will update you when I'm back!!