Thursday, August 28, 2014

What I'm Loving ... Right Now

I can't believe Summer is almost over! Around here from May-August it is a succession of birthdays for us. May for David, June for Sienna, July for Forest, August for Mama. And then, just like that it's September, our anniversary month (7 years, this year). This year our anniversary happens to fall on the day of our homeschool orientation and picnic. 

August has been filled with some short day trips with Nana, exploring new parks, home projects, harvesting so much goodness from our garden, making trades with a neighbor friend, mornings with my portrait artist, 1st grade homeschool planning and organizing, and impromptu estate sale shopping,   

Forest making his "I'm afraid" face for Sienna at Gere-a-deli in Anacortes.

 Nana at Gere-a-deli.

A photo of herself. 

Mama and Forest. 

Forest, Sienna & Bigfoot in an Anacortes alley. 

Portrait artist, Sienna with her colored pencils in her pocket. 

Drawing my portrait while I sit on the sofa.

 
My portrait. The colorful oval in the front is our braided rug and the smaller brown one is Sunshine's dog bed.

Tomatoes all lined up on our kitchen windowsill ... and there's still plenty more in our garden. 

David & Sienna made a trade with our neighbor friend, Steve. Some tomatoes and zucchini from our garden for some pears, flowers and knitting needles. 

Sienna's homeschool basket. I will talk more about homeschooling in some future posts. 

On our way to picnic and go to the park, we stopped at an estate sale on our old street. I filled a bag upstairs in the attic for $5.00. Some of the books smell a bit musty and/or moldy. They are in our garage. But these two turned out to be okay.  

I also chose 3 handmade shirts from the closet in the attic to put in my $5.00 bag. A sailor inspired one. 

A pretty embroidered one. 

And, a gingham farm mama shirt. I'm not sure if they will fit me or not. I'm waiting until I wash them to try them on. I think they are all from the 1970's. I also got some Pyrex mixing bowls for $10.00, which are in the dishwasher right now. I will share these soon!

Nana finished painting Forest's dresser. When we bought it, it was a lavender color and now it's a creamy white with new knobs. It looks amazing now!

 I'm doing a woodland/forest theme in his room.

David planted grass seeds in this part of our backyard, which is just dirt right now. This is to the right of our sliding glass door. 

This is right out the sliding glass door. Hopefully, we will have grass before it is just muddy out there. Sunshine likes digging holes in our yard, as you can see. But, she doesn't dig to get out. She just digs to find herself treasures!

So, those are the things that I am loving right now, in August. We have plans to make homemade granola later today when Forest takes his afternoon nap. Tomorrow, we will be making bread (and pizza dough, of course) for next week's lunches, as we begin our new homeschool rhythm. I will be back soon to share a little more about homeschool. I hope you are soaking in your last days of summer sunshine, too before the next season arrives.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Summer of Well-Being Recap

It's almost been two months since I started running again and I feel so much stronger and healthier already. I am down 13 lbs. and today I ran 4 miles for the first time in almost 7 years. I am still a lot slower than before, but I am confident that the speed will return in time. Plus, I find it amazing that in less than an hour I can burn 660+ calories! 

A few weeks ago on my birthday weekend, we ran our first run together as a family. (All except for Forest, who was part of our fan club.) Sienna ran her first run, which was a Kid's Dash 1k. The course was a little confusing for the younger kids in the back, but she did fantastic! She ran the entire time and was so excited to get her finisher's medal at the end. 



Then, David and I ran the 5k together. The run was a mixture of grass, paved trail, sidewalks and gravel trail. This was my first time running outside and not on a treadmill. It was a lot harder to pace myself outside, but I surprised myself and did better than I thought I was going to do. Part of the way through the run, I told David to go ahead, because I felt like I was holding him back and plus, I like running by myself. I really value this time to just "go in my head" and think about all sorts of different things. 

 


 

Some things I am doing differently than before are doing a full 0.25 warm up and 0.25 cool down walk each time I run to try and avoid an injury. Also, I am drinking way more water than ever before. With two bouts of kidney stones in the past, I know that this is essential.

The things I am doing the same are following the Cool Running 5k Program. I used the Cool Running Half-Marathon Program when I trained before and was really happy with the results. I really want to work on my speed before I train for a half marathon again. We have our next family 1k and 5k planned at the end of October!

I am also eating vegetarian again and a lot of our veggies our coming from our own garden. I try to do one green smoothie a day for a meal (my version is: kale, 1 apple & blueberries).

Last night for dinner, I made homemade hamburger buns and David made salsa with all different varieties of tomatoes from our garden. Next, we must plant onions and garlic, since they are definitely staples in most of our recipes. 



I also made "Midsummer Veggie Burgers" from a vegetarian cookbook I've had for awhile called How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Thanks, Casey) They are a great way to use up zucchini, which we have a lot of right now. This picture was from before they were cooked. I will have to take another one next time after I cook them. Basically they are just zucchini, onion, garlic, corn, jalapeno and a little flour. I thought they were quite tasty and will definitely make them again.    


So, that's the recap of my summer of well-being so far. I think it's going really well so far. This week, I'm going to try and start running at 4:00 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays to prepare for when my mom returns to work in September. She has been a huge help with watching the wee ones, so I can go run.