Happy Birthday Hunter!

 Today is a very special day for my family. Today is my Nephew Hunter's 1st Birthday! 

I can't believe that he is already a year old. He has grown so much over the past year. And looking back at all of the pictures of him over the last year, I can't believe how much he has changed. 

Holding Hunter for the 1st time

 He has become such a loving and and adventurous little man. He can brighten my day no matter what the situation. I just love spending time with him and watching him grow. 

 Everyday I see him change and grow more and more. And with each passing day he looks more and more like my Brother. My Brother has wanted a Son for longer than I can remember and to see that this little boy has finally come along and completed their little family makes my heart happy! 

I can't imagine our family without him. He is the sweetest and cutest little guy. And getting to  spend the last year with him has been an absolute blessing. I am so thankful to have this adorable little man in my life. 

Hunter, you are an incredible little guy. In just one year you have done so much. You have overcome a lot and become a fun, loving and smiley little boy. I am so incredibly blessed to be your Aunt. I love you more than words could ever express and I can't wait to watch you grow more and more and see what else you have in store for all of us. Happy 1st Birthday Hunter! 

Feeling Thankful

First off, Happy St. Patrick's Day! I completely forgot it was today until I got to work and of course had not a trace of green on.  It happens. My mind has been elsewhere for the last couple of days and that is actually what this post is about. 

Let me start by giving you a bit of the back story. Sunday my friend A and I decided to go out for a really long hike. We headed up to a new trail that we had never tried before but had been recommended to us. The day started out great. We had a great hike back in and along the way we stopped a few times to have a snack and just take everything in. We had some great conversations about various things and it was just overall a good day that I got to spend with one of my best friends. 

Heading up to the trail

A looking out at the view. He has no idea I snapped this pic, haha! 

The day did however take a turn that neither of us were expecting. Long story short, a rock about the size of a baseball fell and hit A right in the face. We thought for sure that his nose was broken. So here we were probably about an hour and half back on this trail and this happened. We tried to book it out of there as quickly as possible, but the terrain wasn't easy to navigate through so we did our best to get out of there as quickly as possible. We got back to A's truck and headed back into town where we stopped at the first Hospital we could find so that we could get A's nose and all that stuff checked out. 

Sitting in the hospital. Check out my sweet sun burn!!

Good news is that he didn't actually break his nose. The cartilage and soft tissue around the bone was just swollen. We were both relieved to hear that. They told him to ice it for the next couple of days and then they released him. We drove back to town, grabbed some food and then I took him home so that he could relax and get some sleep. 

The whole situation was really scary. I know both of us were freaking out when it happened. We might not have been showing it on the outside, but I know that on the inside it was happening. But I can't help but feel thankful that it ended up the way that it did. I know that sounds weird, but things could have been so much worse and I am just thankful that we were both able to walk out of there and that we are both okay. 

Needless to say, this has been on my mind a lot the last few days. And it is instances like this that make me realize just how incredibly lucky and thankful I am. I am thankful to have an incredible family and support system. I am thankful for my amazing friends in my life and especially my friend A. And I am thankful to be alive and happy and healthy. Not everyone can say that they have those things in their life and I do. And I am thankful for each and every one of them. And I hope I never take those things for granted. 

Low Carb Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am once again on one of my low carb cycles and the other day I decided that I was tired of not being able to have the occasional sweet treat. When you are doing low carb (or ketosis as it is called) anything with sugar is high carbs. Which sometimes sucks when you have a little bit of a sweet tooth like I do. So naturally I made my way to pinterest and typed in "Low Carb Desserts" in the search bar. I came across so many different recipes. I pinned a ton of them. But one of them caught my eye. 

There was a recipe for Low Carb Chocolate Chip Cookies. The pin directed me to a blog called Sugar Free Like Me where she shared the variations of the recipe that she had found on Blondie's Paleo & Keto Journey. So after reading through both blogs and looking at the variations that one lady made, I decided to go for it. They looked good, and seemed simple enough to make, so I decided to try them.

Now finding all of the ingredients wasn't necessarily the easiest or cheapest thing. The hardest thing to find was the sugar free chocolate chips. I called around to a few stores around town and nobody had them. So I of course took to Facebook to ask my friends in my town if they knew of anywhere that carried them. 

This ended up being a huge help. I had so many people suggest places for me to look. I had planned on going to a few places on my lunch break to look for them. But I ended up not needing to because I came back into my office after going outside to take a break and there was a bag of them sitting on my desk. One of my co-workers saw my post and happened to go to Wal-Mart a little bit later and she found them there. I did however find some other ones that are naturally sweetened with Stevia that I found at Whole Foods. I think I am going to try those in it next time. 

I went to Sprouts and Whole Foods to find the rest of the ingredients. I was able to find the almond flour and the coconut flour in the bulk section at Sprouts which saved me a ton of money. I only bought what I needed for the recipe and and didn't have to spend almost $20 on only two ingredients. The Xantham gum however was not easy to find. They had an 8 ounce bag at Sprouts for $12. But considering I only needed a half of a teaspoon for the recipe, I was not about to spend $12. Luckily Whole Foods had a small packet of it for $0.69. See, it pays to shop around. 

Once I had all of my ingredients I was ready to go! So after I got home from the gym last night and while I was making dinner, I threw these together and got them baking. I was a little unsure of them at first. The batter was a weird consistency and I wasn't sure how they were going to bake. But the batter tasted good, so I figured that was a good sign. I mean come on, if the batter tastes good, how could they possibly taste bad once you cook them?! 

I got them in the oven and once again when I went to pull them out the consistency looked weird, but I figured what the heck. I bit into one and I was completely surprised with how freaking delicious they were. I could have eaten the whole batch that I made. But I was good and I didn't. 

And guess what? They still tasted good this morning. I had one with breakfast and I actually thought that it tasted better than they did right out of the oven last night. And they were still soft. I love soft cookies, so these are just good all around in my book. 

Okay, onto the recipe. You can find the original one here on Blondie's Paleo & Keto Journey. 

Ingredients

-2/3c almond flour/meal

-1 cup sweetener (I used Swerve sweetener)

-3 eggs

-8oz Cream Cheese, softened (I used the 1/3 fat cream cheese)

-2 tbsp Butter, softened

-1/4 tsp Salt

-1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract

-1/2 tsp Xantham Gum

-1/2 tsp Baking Powder

-1/4 c Coconut Shreds (optional but amazing) I did not add these

-1 tbsp Coconut Flour

-1 tbsp Cashew Butter (optional, any nut butter will do)

-1 1/2 cups Chocolate Chips of choice (I used Hershey's Sugar Free Chocolate Chips and I actually only used 1 1/3 of a cup)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter, cream cheese, cashew butter and sweetener.

Add in eggs one at a time, mixing well in between each.

Add remaining dry ingredients (except chocolate chips and coconut)  and the vanilla extract and mix well.

Add in chocolate chips and coconut (if you chose to add this) and then put the mix in the freezer to harden up a bit (10 minutes or so)

Spoon cookies onto lined baking sheet (about 1 tablespoon sized cookies) and bake for 20-22 minutes or until the top of the cookie is no longer moist and begins to brown on the raised parts. 

Nutritional Information-Calculated using Spark People's Recipe Calculator and a little bit of hand calculation for the chocolate chips because I couldn't find them in the database. 

Servings: About 30 cookies (could be more or less depending on how big you make your cookies. I used a cookie scoop and had about 30 cookies. 

Serving Size: 1 cookie

Calories: 85.48

Total Fat: 6.55 g

Cholesterol: 26.01 mg

Sodium: 64.13 mg

Potassium: 18.13 mg

Total Carbs: 5.91 g

Dietary Fiber: .36 g

Sugar Alcohols: 4 g

Total Net Carbs: 1.55 G

Protein: 1.80 g

I hope you guys enjoy this recipe and love these cookies as much as I do. I know for sure that they will become a staple in my house! Thank goodness for Pinterest some days! 

Weekend Recap

I think I am just going to start posting my weekend recap on Tuesdays every week. That way if I do get around to it on Mondays, it will be a surprise for everyone, haha! 

Busy weekend again. It was go, go, go from Friday afternoon. And then add the time change in. I have definitely been feeling it the last two days. I could of stayed home and napped all day today. Yeah right! I wish. 

I took Friday afternoon off. I left work around 12:30 and decided to get my grocery shopping done for the weekend. Good thing I did because I would have had no time to do it any other day. I had a training session with my trainer at 5:30 and then I went home, made some whole wheat pancakes and then made a tutu for my friends daughters Birthday. 

Saturday I got up, made breakfast and then headed straight to the gym. Got a great chest workout in and then headed home to take the dogs on a walk. It was finally nice enough out to do this. And I made sure to take full advantage. I even tried running with them, but after almost getting tripped a few times, I gave up on that. 

Once I got them back home I hopped in the shower and got ready to leave. I was meeting KB for lunch and then we were going downtown to the Rapids watch party at Jack Quinn's. Even though our friend no longer plays for the Rapids we wanted to go see some of our friends that we have made over the last few years. It was fun to see everyone and catch up. And the Rapids ended up tying, so that wasn't too bad. 

After the watch party I headed to Dutch Brothers for some delicious coffee and then dropped something off at my friend A's house and then headed over to a fundraiser for a friend of mine who is going to Uganda on a mission trip. They had great food, music and some awesome raffle prizes. And a few of my other friends were there and my friend Sarah who was visiting from North Carolina came too, so we just hung out and had a good time. And the best part is that my friend reached her fundraising goal! She is actually leaving for Uganda today. So please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. 

My friend Sarah who was in from out of town. 

Sunday I woke up around 8 and got some breakfast and just chilled on the couch for a bit and caught up on The Voice. Around noon I headed to the gym to work on climbing the rope for my upcoming Spartan Race. I did pretty well actually. I almost made it to the top, but lost the grip on my feet and couldn't manage to get it back. I did however manage to get rope burn and some nice blisters on both of my ring fingers! Fun stuff! And the gym only had a smurfs band-aid! Really?!

After the somewhat successful rope climb I headed out to Red Rocks to get some cardio in. It was a muddy mess. But it was great for training considering that is what I will be running in seven and half weeks from now. I can't wait! 

I of course stopped and got coffee from Dutch Brothers again and then headed over to visit my fam bam for a little bit before I had to go meet the Husband and a few friends for coffee. It was a good afternoon. I had a lot of fun visiting with everyone and got a great workout in. We spent the remainder of our night eating dinner and watching Big Hero 6, which was adorable. 

It was a busy but great weekend once again. I don't think I will ever have a mellow weekend again. I am just not meant to apparently. Oh well, live while you can, right? 

Hope everyone had a great weekend! 

Five on Friday

Thank goodness it is Friday. This week has been draining. But things are looking up because it is Friday and I am only working a half day. Yay for an early start to my weekend! How about some Five on Friday to get this weekend started?!

1-For the first time in a few weeks the weather is actually supposed to be nice this weekend!!! I'm really excited to be able to get myself and the dogs outside for a little bit. And I need to get my car washed! And for at least the next 10 days, it is supposed to be nice out. I secretly hope the snow is gone and done for this part of the year, but I doubt that is the case. Fingers crossed though! 

2-So my attempt to get Ed Sheeran tickets failed miserably. Unfortunately I was in my Zumba certification when they went on sale last Friday and by the time I was able to get online, they were already sold out. I will just have to keep my eyes out for somebody selling their tickets for a reasonable price. 

3-My friend, who we will call A, recommended a couple of new bands to me. And so far I am absolutely loving one of them. Anyone ever heard of The Dirty Heads? I am loving the one album that I have and every time I listen to it, I find a new song that I love. The other band that he recommended is Slightly Stoopid. And so far I like them too, but not as much as I am liking The Dirty Heads. I love finding new music! 

4-I have got to start working on some Zumba routines. Sometime next month it sounds like I may start teaching my own class on a regular basis and I need to have some songs ready to go. I'm pretty excited about it actually. Every time I get up and teach I feel more and more comfortable with it and I have so much fun with it. And I think it is awesome that I could potentially be getting paid to do something that I was already doing. Just saying. 

5-I have major organization plans for this weekend. There are a few rooms in my house that need to be cleaned and organized and I can't handle it anymore. I am going to try and work on them this weekend. Hopefully I can make some progress and not get too sidetracked!

Happy Friday everyone! And I hope you  have a great weekend!

Weigh-In Wednesday

Happy Weigh-In Wednesday!!

So I am totally awesome and completely spaced getting on the scale this morning. Oops! That's what happens when you are waking up at 3:45 am to get to the gym so you can get your workout in before work. Probably a good thing though. I kind of fell off the good eating wagon this past weekend. It wasn't pretty. And I am sure the scale will flat out tell me it wasn't pretty. Probably why I need to actually get on it. Ugh! It's a double edged sword I tell ya! 

Other than eating like crap this past weekend, things are going pretty well. I am keeping up with my workouts and have actually thrown a couple of two-a-days in there as well. Tuesday was one of those, but I was okay with that. I wasn't able to lift on Monday night like I normally do for two reasons. 1) My back was still super sore from my training session on Saturday, so I figured lifting probably wasn't the best idea. 2) I ended up having to sub for my Zumba instructor. That's right! I got to teach my first official class as a certified Zumba instructor!!!! And it went really well! Everybody seemed like they had fun and we got a great workout in. Couldn't ask for anything else! 

Something else that is exciting is that I signed myself and my friend up for the Spartan Sprint race that is here in May!!! I can not wait. It's the first of three Spartan races that we are doing this summer and I just wish May would get here already. I am ready to run and crawl through the mud. An oh yeah, do some burpees. If you have run a Spartan Race, you know there will be burpees. And lots of them! BRING. IT. ON!

I am going to set a few goals for myself for the next week. I am hoping that writing them down and putting them out there will help me to hold myself a little bit more accountable. So here goes. 

-Stay on track with eating for the next week. Stay under on calories and just make better decisions all around.

-Drink lots of water! I have been doing better with this, but it could be better! 

-Keep up with my interval running. I tend to get lazy and decide that I can just walk on the treadmill instead of running. 

Kind of a short and sweet Weigh-In Wednesday. I will try to remember to get on the scale next week. And I will be reporting back about how I did with my weekly goals. 

Do you have any specific goals your are wanting to accomplish this week?

Weekend Recap

I apparently suck at getting weekend recaps up on Monday. Oh well. Better late than never. 

I technically had a three day weekend, but it didn't feel like it. I took Friday off because I was attending my Zumba Basics 1 class to get my certification so that I can start teaching classes. That was an all day event. Registration started at 8:30 and the class actually began around 9 am. And we didn't finish up class until almost 6 pm. We had a short half hour lunch and a couple small breaks here and there, but it definitely made for a long day. 

It was a lot of fun though. I learned quite a few things that I feel like I can apply to my own classes when I start teaching. And the ZES' (Zumba Education Specialists) were a lot of fun. They were both dudes which apparently throws a lot of people off. But both of them could dance way better than me, that is for sure. It just doesn't seem fair, haha! But they were awesome and made the day enjoyable. And I am now officially certified! I'm pretty excited to start teaching too! I love Zumba so why not get paid to do something that I was already doing for free, haha! 

After class. Officially a certified Zumba Instructor selfie. Duh! I had to. 

Congrats to everyone!

After I was done getting my certification, I stopped at Chick-Fil-A, grabbed us some dinner and then headed home to meet the Husband. We ate dinner and then I got to work on cleaning the house because we had people coming over Saturday and I didn't want the house to look like a bomb had gone off. Shortly after I finished cleaning, I headed to bed. I knew I had to be up early the next day and I was tired. Pretty sure I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. 

I was up way too early on Saturday morning. I got some breakfast and then headed to the gym to get a quick 30 minutes in on the treadmill. Then I headed home to finish up the last bit of cleaning that I had to do before a friend of mine showed up. She's a Mary Kay sales consultant, so we did a mini facial and I actually found a few things that I wanted to buy. There Botanical face wash and hydrating cream is amaze-balls! 

After my friend left I had to get ready to leave. I had a personal training session with my trainer at 11:30 since I wasn't able to make my regular session on Friday. We did back and biceps. And my back is still sore. We went heavy on deadlifts and holy crap am I still feeling it. But it's an awesome soreness to have. It lets me know that I worked hard. 

After my session I met up with another friend of mine for lunch so that we could start talking about her wedding. I am her MOH, so we had lots to talk about. We went to Olive Garden for lunch and sat there for three hours and just talked and ate. I'm pretty sure the waitress hated us. Oh well, we had a good time. 

After lunch I went and did our grocery shopping for the week and then headed home to get ready for game night. We had a few friends over for pizza and snacks and played Cards Against Humanity. If you haven't played this game yet, you are seriously missing out. It is a blast and there is never a dull round with this game. I will warn you though, it is not for the easily offended. 

Sunday was busy too. I met up with a few of my Zumba friends on Sunday for one of their Birthdays. We went to this really good Mexican restaurant called Amanda's Fonda. Other than the food taking forever to get there, it was delicious and we had a lot of fun. While we were at lunch I was telling them about Cards Against Humanity and everyone seemed really interested in playing so we decided to have an impromptu game night. It was a lot of fun spending time with everyone outside of class. 

I ended up not getting home til around 10:30 Sunday night. I pretty much went straight to bed. It had been a long but fun weekend. But I did have to be at work the next day, so unfortunately the fun had to end. 

The only downside to the weekend was how crappy the weather was. It snowed pretty much all weekend. I wish it would have been nicer. I would have loved to have gotten Bentley out of the house for a little bit. He has been so cooped up with all this crappy weather. Oh well, it looks like this weekend might be better for that. Here's to hoping for a quick work week and nice weather this weekend!