Wednesday Random Thoughts

The school year is well underway and my head is spinning, spinning, spinning with my own personal projects and deadlines and the fact that I must remember that today is "Pajama Pants" day for Homecoming Spirit Week, while tomorrow is "Hat" day. It's all very busy and important, you know.

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Right now I’m planning my third 5-day Clean Eating / Exercise / Shakeology Challenge, so if you, or anyone you know, want to jump in, hit me up. It's October 3-7, and you'll get some fantastic recipes, meet some fun people who are doing the challenge with you, and see just how good you can feel in five days of clean eating and exercise. It's $25 if you're local, $32 if I have to ship the Shakeology packets to you (I accept PayPal).

I think if you asked my previous challenge participants what they liked best about the experience, it would be that they had a guide to tell them exactly what to eat and when. I'm hoping that graduates of the program can take that concept with them into the future. I can't begin to tell you how important meal planning is if you want to maintain a clean diet. If you leave your meals to chance, it's just too easy to pull in the drive through and get something quick and terrible for you.

Sitting down each Wednesday night and planning meals for the week is not one of my favorite activities, but I know that if I don't do it, I'll have to have mini-planning sessions every day of the week, and lack of planning means wasted time and energy because I'll probably have to go to the store more than once throughout the week. Taking 20 minutes to think about what I want to fix, writing down a menu, and then writing a grocery list saves time, my sanity, and all of our waistlines. It's essential. Do it!

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Our family likes to camp. Not long after we were married Zach and I bought a pop-up camper from a sweet old man who had generously left it stocked with everything we needed to camp in comfort -- a microwave, pots, pans, plates, a coffee maker -- the works. We took that thing all over Texas, to Arkansas, and we even dragged it to the Grand Canyon the summer before last. We had some good times in that camper.

Sentimentality aside, if you’ve ever had a pop-up camper you know that they are a colossal pain in the tail. Each camping trip was bookended by 45 minutes to an hour of wrestling with an aging, persnickety camper and a tense, annoyed husband. I remember the time when, in a hurry, Zach forgot to unhook the clips before he tried to crank up the camper and broke the…the…I don’t know what he broke, but the camper would not crank up. It was not a happy situation.

So we’d been thinking about finding something else when we saw that some dude a mile down the road had this for sale. Behold, the A-Liner.

Have you seen one of these things? I have to admit that when Zach suggested that we go check it out I did it only to humor him. But then we saw how cool it is! It’s just like a pop-up camper, but it's smaller and lighter, and the sides are hard, not canvas. You can put it up and down in literally less than a minute. It’s awesome!

Little did we know when we bought this camper that there are a legion of rabid A-Liner fans out there with blogs and websites dedicated to the adventures they have with their A-Liner.

We have to do some modification to the kids’ beds before we can use it, but you can bet we’ll be out there just as soon as it’s ready. The kids refer to it as the "Triangle Camper," and for some reason it makes me grin whenever I look at it.

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This past Saturday was the annual Homecoming parade in our town, which signifies the start of CANDY SEASON! We’ll have a basket of candy on the fridge from now until Christmas, I’m sure.

 

Drew was jumping up and down and told me that it was the best day ever.

 

The only saving grace of all that free candy is that I’m able to siphon off some of the booty and use it for my giveaway Halloween candy. Is that cheap and/or tacky? Oh well.

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Can someone tell me what happens in the bathroom when I’m not supervising teeth brushing?

I’m not sure I could get the bathroom mirror that dirty if I tried.

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What mailing list do you suppose I’m on that Restoration Hardware decided I was a good candidate to receive their 615-page catalog? I’m guessing it wasn’t our new subscription to A-Liner Today.

Don’t get me wrong, their stuff is beautiful, but I just don’t see myself spending $1,850 on an end table or $2,750 on a chandelier.

 

Thanks for thinking of me, though, Restoration Hardware.

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Workout of the Day

Insanity: The Asylum: Back to Core