hOmaha

How's the Abs in April -- Plank Challenge coming along, friends? I, for one, forgot to plank on the second day and had to do two planks yesterday -- with help, of course, from a certain little girl kitty.

Every time I try to workout, she is right there with me, rolling around like a madwoman. If I'm doing sit-ups, she's on my chest, if I'm doing push-ups, she's rubbing against my face, and if I'm planking, she's right underneath my boobs.

So helpful, that one.

Tonight, I'm in Omaha with my sister, and since both of us are getting our butts kicked with Abs in April, we decided to plank together.

Fifty seconds + burning abs = quality sister time.

I'm feeling a lot better today than I was yesterday, but I'm still not feeling perfect. After last night's post, one of my friends emailed me and told me that Fifth Disease was going around, and after doing some research with the CDC (I sound super scientific and legit, huh?), I think that's totally what I have.

This totally bums me out. While it sounds like I'm not contagious anymore since I'm in the rash stage, I'm going to keep myself away from my nephew tomorrow -- just in case. It just might kill me.

Nothing super exciting happened today. (No news is good news, I suppose.) After work, I headed home to pack, ran some errands (gas station, grocery store, Juice Company), rocked out on a really nice road trip with my sister, and cooked us dinner in Omaha. Now we're just waiting for our parents to come home from their wild and crazy social event to spend time with their out-of-town children. Wahhhhhhhhh.

Breakfast: I totally spaced on taking a photo, but you've seen it before: Blueberry Scrambled Eggs. Yum.

Lunch:

Because I was too busy being a lazy, sick bum last night and made Paleo Oatmeal instead of "real" dinner, I didn't have any leftovers. So, while I was making my Blueberry Scrambled Eggs this morning, I also whipped up a mix of sweet potato, jalapeno, avocado, and chicken sausage to bring for lunch. As always, it was delicious.

Snack: I ate lunch at 10:45 today (darn school schedule), and I knew it would be a while before I would eat dinner because I had to wait for my sister to get to Des Moines and then for us to drive to Omaha. So, I grabbed a green juice from The Juice Company and ate one of the Simple Squares I got from Campbell's yesterday:

Here are the ingredients: organic cashews, organic almonds, organic honey, organic unsweetened coconut, organic vanilla, sea salt, organic ginger. It was amazing, and I know I'll be grabbing some more for when I need a quick somethin' somethin' and am tired of Larabars. (They will also be perfect for traveling, so I'm sure I'll stock up before St. Louis next weekend and Atlanta later this month.)

Dinner:

I knew that my parents had something going on tonight and my sister and I would likely be on our own for dinner, so before I left for Omaha, I ran to Dahl's to grab some shrimp, and I packed that with some asparagus, garlic, and crushed red chilies to take with us.

When we got to Omaha, I set to cooking, and about 10 minutes later, dinner was ready. (We also stole some Brussels sprouts side-dish concoction from my parents' fridge. I think it was basically Brussels sprouts and caramelized onions, but I'm not sure. Hopefully it was Whole30-approved; it was definitely delicious.)

As always, my Chili-Garlic Shrimp was awesome -- and Whole30- and Erin-approved. :)

I'm off to chill for a bit -- and hopefully get 100% better overnight so that I can cuddle a baby. Please cross your fingers for me!

I hope you all have a lovely Friday night! Stay tuned for Five Favorites bright and early tomorrow!

Plays Well With Others

Hello friends!

First, if you missed it, I posted my recap of Jillian Michaels' event this morning. Check it out. :)

I am a lot more cognizant tonight than I was for last night's post (which I am terrified to reread, so again, I apologize if it was a hot mess). You can thank me later.

Today was an excellent day.

I did not wake up at 4:30 as planned to get buff, but oh well: I made up for it with a really good run after school (more on that later).

I have to tell you about lunch today. It cracked me up. I've told you before about this particular student I have: RU. She transferred to my class halfway through first semester, and she and I did not get along at all for most of that time. Every time I saw her in the hall, I would smile and say hi to her in a super cheerful, obnoxious manner (trying everything I could to get her to crack a smile), and she would sneer and stomp into the classroom. She hated me. I don't know what the heck happened, but all of a sudden RU started hanging out in my room all the time, making conversation, joking with me, etc.

Recently, she has been coming into my room during lunch with a few of her friends (all of whom, I'm proud to say, are going to be joining the marathon group that starts in two weeks). She usually checks out what I'm eating, sneers (can't get her to stop completely after all), and says, "What is that?!" Today I told her that it was chicken meatballs and that they were good but very, very spicy. She said, "Good. I like spicy" and went into the drawer where I keep my utensils, grabbed a spoon, and then asked if she could go heat up my lunch next door. And then ate it.

She didn't finish it during lunch, though, and asked me to save it for her for after school. I set it back in my lunchbox, where I figured I would take it home, but sure enough, she was back at 2:35 and finished "her" lunch.

Crazy girl.

She also took a series of pictures of me, half of them before I realized what she was doing:

I really like this one, though (call me self-absorbed, but hey, it's my blog, and a little good self-esteem never hurt anyone):

It was a pretty good hair day, especially since I didn't wash it and
instead loaded it with baby powder to absorb the grease. HOT.

As I said, RU and all of her girlfriends (there were four total in that crew and two others who hung out with me during lunch -- and one more with RU after school) are going to be participating in See-Us Run Des Moines, and I could not be more excited.

Let's chat about my run: the same friend/coworker (BB, we shall call him) and I went out again today, and I was scared that I was going to embarrass myself since my legs were actually a bit sore from Monday's workout. I did a pretty good job, though, and instead of running the entire 2.4 miles, we did a three-minute run and one-minute walk for the entire 25 minutes. We were still going at a pretty nice pace, only a minute or so off of Thursday's speedy jaunt. And, despite going fairly quickly, we were able to carry on a great conversation throughout.

When I got home, I did the first day of Gina's Abs in April: Plank A Day challenge.

Who's going to join me? You still have about three hours to get your 30-second plank done for the day. Or, if you're reading this on Wednesday, just do the first plank now and the second one in the evening. :)

After all of that working out, I was pretty hungry, so I whipped up a (somewhat) quick and (really) delicious dinner, and now I'm sitting here, about ready to head to bed so that I can get up bright and early for kickboxing.

Breakfast:

Today I made one of my favorite breakfasts: Blueberry Eggs (four eggs, half a box of blueberries, a sprinkling of coconut aminos, a dash of cinnamon, and a pinch of black pepper).

Lunch:

Today for lunch I (or excuse me, RU) ate leftover Buffalo-Ranch Chicken Meatballs and sauteed asparagus. (I actually ended up bringing about 1.5 servings of meatballs with me, so it was totally fine that she ate a few of them. I was definitely not starved for more food -- and honestly, she may have been.)

Dinner:

Tonight, I made a variation of Brittany Angell's Paleo Bacon Carbonara. Instead of yellow squash, I used spaghetti squash (I don't have a spiralizer, so I thought this would be easier). I didn't have peas, so I chopped up sugar snap peas to add to the mix. After everything was done and ready to go, I mixed it up in the bacon grease. (YUM.)

Aside from having to cook the spaghetti squash for an hour prior to making it "spaghetti-like," tonight's dinner came together very quickly and easily. It's definitely going to be added to my "quick and easy" repertoire of recipes.

Also, it was very, very good. I was worried it wouldn't be too filling due to not a whole lot of protein, but I guess the gallons of bacon fat are really satiating. :)

G'night, friends!

Who's joining me for the Abs in April: Plank Challenge? What was your menu/workout for today?