Dinner and day 2

I am definitely not a chef, I can cook a few meals, the fave ten as my family likes to call it. Well really I can cook more than that but one night when my family was making fun of my cooking we came up with a list of the ten meals that my mom made growing up that my sister and I can both cook now.

To me its hard to come up with new things to cook. Yeah, yeah, I know how in this day and age with cookbooks, the Internet, and a little thing called Pinterest  which is a plethora of delicious looking photos with recipes attached on how to recreate them, can I have trouble finding things to cook?

Well a lot of those recipes call for odd ingredients that normal people dont have just hanging around in the cupboards. So I look for easier recipes with normal ingredients but most of our meals look just like this

Meat and vegetables, add a little seasoning and bam! A meal is made! It's pretty easy, doesn't require much prep, cooks for an hour, and dinner is ready. 

This is also day two of T25 and the speed workout was pretty awesome I specifically likes the stretching in between the moves. I think that really helped the soreness. 

Recipe- all adjustable add more chicken or veggies if you have more people to feed. 

Preheat oven to 350

2 chicken breasts (or how ever many you want) 

1 cup carrots 

1.5 cups of zucchini 

2 cups whole green beans

1/2 cup chicken broth if you have it. Water works as well.

2 tablespoons minced garlic (1 for each chicken breast.)

Original Mrs. Dash seasoning (however much you want.)

-Chop the zucchini into bite size pieces 

-you can cut the beans and carrots if you want 

-put all veggies in a baking dish

-pour in the chicken broth or water

-season chicken breasts with Mrs. Dash and garlic

-I put more garlic on my veggies because I like garlic

-place seasoned chicken breast on top of the veggies

-cover with foil and bake at 350 for an hour 

BAM! Easy healthy dinner! Remember every oven is different and eating raw or undercooked meat is not advised so check yours before you serve. Enjoy!

T25

A friend of mine is a beachbody coach and she and I often talk about our fitness journeys and how far we have come as well as where we want to go. She talked me into buying T25 and shakeology well; actually I was looking to buy something off of the Black Friday/Wednesday because it started on Wednesday.

                    Although T25 wasn't on the sale she gave me a deal that I just couldn't pass up. So here I am starting T25 and drinking shakeology. I have to admit that the first time that I made the shake I made it with water, too much water. When it recommends 8-12oz stick with 8 you'll thank me later. The second time I made it I made it with almond milk instead of water and I stuck to the 8oz.

I ordered the chocolate bag of shakeology and I think it's pretty alright when I mixed it with the almond milk. It will take some getting used to but I think that I can handle it. I also made some cucumber, lemon, and mint detox water in our old Brita water pitcher. It's also pretty refreshing.

          Especially while actually doing the T25 work out. Not counting that I spilled my first glass but hey no one needs to know that. The second glass was just as delicious. The first day/video was cardio and I think that I did pretty well for not having exercised in a very long time.

 I am realizing that weight loss doesn't mean that you are fit. I expected to have a lot more endurance for having lost as much weight as I have. I’m actually about 16 hours post workout as I'm writing this at work and my thighs are actually starting to hurt.

           I am looking forward to doing the workout tomorrow and then really stretching after maybe the kids and I will even catch a class at the YMCA while Ron sleeps. I feel like I have been really burnt out on work lately and I am excited to have two days off from work, more like two and a half days off really.

 I have some crafts planned for the kids and some dinner prep to work on for the next few days and of course I have tons of laundry to fold, as always. I am very much looking forward to just wearing some sweats and hanging out with the kiddos. Maybe I'll even catch up on some shows that I have let get by me since I started this new schedule.

Can I brag for a minute?

This is our amazing, smart, wonderful, evidently empathetic, 5 year old. Do 5 year olds know what empathy is? Let alone how to show it? She is really great she amazes me with all that she knows everyday and how easy going she is with her brother and how she approaches life. She will be an amazing young woman.

Thanksgiving, Christmas trees and Sparkle!

We had a great thanksgiving day with an amazing feast prepared by my mother in law. After the feast we sat down for a rousing game of LIFE, well not really rousing but it was fun. The kids really got into it and helped us spin for our turns and move our cars. They really thought it was funny when I landed on twins twice as well as having one single child and them not all fitting in my little car.

And the best family photo for the day. Ronnie was grouchy, it's not flattering for any of us but oh well I'm still crazy about our little family!

I was lucky enough to be off Thanksgiving as well as the two days previous. I had to return to work on Friday night for two nights. Work always ruining the weekend! This is the beginning of my yuck rotation so in between work days I was only off one day…Sunday… ..which we filled up! 

We went to Hurd Holley Farm where we picked out and cut down our Christmas tree. The kids loved being out on the tree farm, trekking through the woods, and posing for pictures. I do have to say that I was able to take some pretty nice pictures while we were there.

 

This beauty came home with us for the front door! ------>
 

We also swung by target and picked up some things for our tree because we weren’t exactly sure how well our lights were going to work this year on the tree they are pretty old. I’ve never seen so many choices for Christmas lights in my life! Indoor, outdoor, twinkling, flashing, green cord, white cord, regular bulbs, LED’s, big and small. Oh my! You’d think we were picking out a college for Evee with all the time we spent there looking and reading about all of the different styles.

They are some good looking guys wouldn't you say?

Finally we agreed on some bought them and got the heck out of Target before we went broke. It turned out that the three boxes of LED lights we purchased was not nearly enough for our ginormous tree. So we ended up having to use some of our old lights as well. Luckily some of our old non-LED lights still worked and I was just able to use those instead of running back out to Target.
 

So on with the decorating! Its really rather interesting to decorate with a 3 and 5 year old because they are just tiny compared to the tree. All of the decorations that they place are all in one spot and not above a few feet off the ground. Ron and I had to do a little ornament moving but it was a fun experience with the kids. Ronnie kept declaring "That's awesome!" about everything. It just melts my heart when they see something new that they are thrilled with. It brings such pleasure to me to show them something new. 

On December 1st Sparkle our Elf on the Shelf made her return journey to our house for the Christmas season. Look for future posts about all the antics that she performs around the house.