August 19, 2012

Back to School

We have finished our first week of school. The boys had a good first 3 days. Luke loves 1st grade and already made a new friend. Wilson said 3rd grade is "awesome" and is in class with his best friend! I was absolutely exhausted but have recovered this weekend. :) Luke is still recovering...he has been pretty grumpy!


Our school is still under renovation so I just started unpacking my room on Friday. I don't have students yet so it wasn't a big deal. I am happy to have a place now and am going in this afternoon to work on setting up. The main corner of my room looks something like this:

Tyler sure misses his "bruders" when we are gone to school. He starts school after Labor Day. He is so ready! I can't wait to see how he likes going to school. I think he will love it.



New recipes

Chili's Queso Dip - Have you ever had the queso at Chili's? It's good. But in a really bad for you way I'm sure. This recipe can be made lower fat and that is what I did. It call for 1 can of hormel chili so I used turkey no bean hormel chili, 1% milk, and reduced fat velveeta. It was still pretty yummy!

Crockpot Cashew Chicken- Yum. I liked this but it was a bit spicy. I had even halved the 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper to an 1/8th of a teaspoon for the boys. It was still spicy for them. I used chicken breasts ( I don't cook with thighs or tenders) and this definitely had a thai food feel to it for me. I served it with white rice and snow peas.

Sweet & Spicy Cucumbers- I have not made these yet but my sister brought them last weekend to my dad's birthday celebration. They were delicious! I would definitely make these! Yum!

Quinoa Salad - Here is the other recipe Cara brought last weekend. This quinoa salad has mango, avacado, red pepper, black beans and cilantro. It was so good!

Microwave popcorn- This is a way to make air pop popcorn in your microwave without all the chemicals and stuff that is added to microwave popcorn. All you need is popcorn kernals and a brown bag. Easy and tasty. The boys love popcorn and they thought this was really good. I melted a little butter for them and drizzled it on the popcorn and salted it a little bit.

Raw Energy bites- Just made these last night for breakfasts the next several days. Tried them this morning and Wilson and I really liked them. There are a lot of variations you can use to tailor these to your taste buds. Here is the version I tried: (adapted from fooddoodles.com)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup ground flax seed
3/4 cups oat bran
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Follow the link to see recipe directions and all of the other options for mix-ins.



5K Race

I've been running this summer, completing my Couch to 5K program. My friend Heather and I ran a 5K race together last weekend. It was an evening race and the weather was perfect!

Here we are pre-race. It was crazy busy with people downtown. During the whole run we were surrounded by lots of runners.


Post race! We make great running partners. We kept a great pace together. 
 Our stats: We placed 2,016 in the almost 5,000 finishers. 
For our age division (30-34) we were 117 and 118 out of 393 runners. 
Our official chip time was 30:46. Yay!
Our goal for the next 5K is under 30 minutes.

When I got home Ty asked me if I won. LOL!