Healthy Tipping Point

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Current Celebration:  Oh – so much to celebrate this month!  We just finished hosting the Husband’s amazing grandparents (all the way from England).

And on Thursday, the Husband’s high school friends and their children are coming to play for the weekend.  Yay, visitors!

Current Confession:  My dogs are getting really chunky because they do so much “cleaning up” after Claire eats.  I may need to stop being lazy about it and pick up those banana pieces myself…

Current Product Find:  I haven’t tested this out yet, but I bought this totally awesome key organizer for my FIL for his birthday.  I saw a video of it on Facebook and was like – OMG HE NEEDS THAT (he has the biggest key ring I’ve ever seen).  Hope it’s as cool in real life.

Awesome, right?

Current Plan:  Tackle a huuuuuge part-time project for the next six weeks, do an Olympic triathlon in August, and enjoy as much summer sunshine as possible.

Current Book:  I’m reading Sisterland right now.  So far, I really like it.  It’s by the same author of American Wife, which I adored.

Current Purchase:  I checked my Amazon orders for this one… The last four fun things I bought on Prime were Henry’s birthday presents (a PlasmaCar and Magnatiles) and two books for myself (I Am Legend and A Walk Across the Sun).

Current Drink:  The La Croix sparkling water obsession continues!

Current Holy Moly:  After two years of crazy scribbles, up-and-down slashes, and no shapes except the odd half-completed swirly circle, Henry suddenly – without any sort of warning – busted out this drawing of a person.  I was totally floored and actually shed a tear.  It was incredible!

Current Show:  Season 3 just ended, but the Husband and I were totally into Silicon Valley on HBO.  It is truly one of the most hysterical shows on TV.  Watch it!

Current Want:  I love my kids, but I would really love to go on a beach vacation with just the Husband and myself.  Probably not going to happen for years and years… Par for the course, I suppose!

Current Obsession:   This totally awesome concealer from Urban Decay.  It’s lightweight and smooth and doesn’t sweat off easily.  And it blends in really nicely.  I don’t wear a lot of makeup, but this is becoming my go-to item when I do!

Thanks to Tina for this fun blog post idea!

What are your “currentlys”?

Fun vitamin review and a chance for you + a friend to win a trip to a day spa!

I always forget to take my vitamins – unless the Husband physically hands them to me (which he does, more often than not <—what a guy!).  That’s why I was so excited to try these Olly vitamins, which are exclusive to Target.  Actually, my whole family ended up joining the “Olly For All” experiment over the past month, as I bought The Perfect Women’s Multi for myself and the Kids’ Multi+Probiotic for Henry.  I also ordered Restful Sleep for the Husband and myself.

Verdict?  Um – yummmm.  It’s easy to take your vitamins when they taste so delicious.  Each vitamin is a chewy, sweet gummy (even the ones for adults).  Over the last month, Henry has truly BEGGED for his daily vitamin.  Sometimes kiddie vitamins have ingredients like artificial flavors, sweeteners, and colors, but these (and the adult version) are free of that stuff.  There’s a small amount of sugar, but I think it’s decent tradeoff for a kid (or an adult…) actually wanting to take a vitamin.  Right?

The Restful Sleep one was interesting to test out.  Based on what I’ve read, there are mixed feelings about melatonin supplements.  Ultimately my concern is not becoming dependent on a supplement for sleep.  But my sleep has really, really sucked recently, and the few times that I felt desperate enough to take these gummies… HOLY COW!  They really work.  I was groggy and ready for bed within minutes.  And I actually stayed asleep, so – I was pleased.  It’s not something I would want to take every single night, but on those off-nights that I really needed it, I was thankful!

Last, but not least…

Enter to win the SWEET BLISS Sweepstakes.  The grand prize for the sweepstakes is a Day Spa package for a lucky winner & a friend, a 6 months supply of Olly Vitamins, and a personal wellness consultation with Olly’s resident nutritionist! 100 runner ups will receive an Olly product of their choosing.

Enter to win here.  Good luck!

This post was created in partnership with @OllyNutrition.  Thanks, as always, for reading sponsored content. I really appreciate it.

First of all, thanks so much for all the kind and supportive comments on yesterday’s post about training.  I really was surprised by and appreciated the remarks about how I’m doing better than I think I am… I needed to hear that!  Sometimes you just need to have someone say, “You can do it!”  So – thank you!

Fun recipe coming at you!

(Claire’s cute neon flower dress is on clearance right now!)

As mentioned a million times, we’re in the middle of a heat wave and it is HOT AS HELL outside.  Like – 99 degrees hot.  So I felt compelled to make the kiddos some ‘ice cream’ to help them cool off.  Claire gave it two baby thumbs up!

This is a twist on the famous Banana Soft Serve.  But super simple – all you do is blend frozen bananas and frozen cherries.  That’s it.

Cherry Banana Ice Cream

Ingredients (serves three):

• Two frozen ripe bananas (remove skin and slice before freezing)
• 1 cup frozen cherries
• Optional:  Chocolate chips or drizzle of melted coconut oil

Directions:

• Combine bananas and cherries in food processor or high-powered blender.  Blend until smooth.  Serve immediately.

I like to add coconut oil to ours – the key is to melt about two tablespoons first, and then slowly pour the melted coconut oil into the blender as it blends.  It will freeze up into little “chips” and adds an interesting texture.  Plus – healthy fats!  If you put a scoop or two of semi-solid coconut oil into the mix, you’ll just be left with too-big chunks.

Book a Week

I’m playing catch-up! I have two Book a Week reviews for you.  I read two books in three days last week – WHOA.

Week 18:  The Vacationers

Amazon Synopsis:  “Here’s the funny thing about family: there’s no one you love more than your relatives, and yet they’re also the people who push your buttons the most. Emma Straub has captured this dilemma in her pitch-perfect second novel The Vacationers. The Post family’s vacation to the Balearic island of Mallorca is one fraught with jealousy and quiet secrets. It’s an anniversary for parents Franny and Jim, who are making amends for some rocky marital misgivings; their son Bobby and his much-maligned older girlfriend Carmen have a financial favor to ask; and high school-age daughter Sylvia has made it her mission to lose her virginity to her Spanish tutor. The novel is warm–not just for the sunny beaches that surround Mallorca, but for the compassion and humor that Straub imbues in her characters..”

My thoughts:  I tore through this book.  It was an interesting peek into the complex relationships in a family, and the characters were drawn so well that I felt like they were real people by the end of the book.  It’s a great beach read, but not super light and fluffy.

My Ratings: 3 out of 5.  For a summer book, it was smart and thoughtful. But I didn’t feel like it was a life-changing novel.

Week 19: Saving Grace

Amazon Synopsis:  “Grace and Ted Chapman are widely regarded as the perfect literary power couple. Ted is a successful novelist and Grace, his wife of twenty years, is beautiful, stylish, carefree, and a wonderful homemaker. But what no one sees, what is churning under the surface, is Ted’s rages. His mood swings. And the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted’s longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, the house of cards begins to crumble and Grace, with dark secrets in her past, is most vulnerable. She finds herself in need of help but with no one to turn to…until the perfect new assistant shows up out of the blue.”

My thoughts:  I thought this book was predictable but fun to read regardless.  You know where it’s going by the plot summary alone, right?  Dark and twisty for sure. BUT – it was still a fun and fast read.  Again, a good beach read.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.  Like The Vacationers, this is an awesome read for a holiday.  Fast-paced and intriguing.  I only wish the ending included more revenge!

All of my Book a Week reviews. 

Morning! How goes it?  The heat wave in Charlotte continues (we reached 99 degrees yesterday) and it feels like I spend my days running from one air conditioned space to another. Can’t stay outside too long!

In fact, I didn’t even try to go outside for my swim.  I did 1250 yards in the indoor pool and was thankful that my back wasn’t being roasted.  I’ve been really good about sunscreen this summer but my skin is still getting so tan.  The older I get, the more concerned I am with the effects of sun damage, but it’s so hard to not end up red with all my outdoor workouts.  I need to buy an adult-sized rashguard like my kiddies wear to the pool!

Speaking of workouts…

While I was swimming laps yesterday, I was thinking about training for this Olympic triathlon.  It’s in a month and a half or so, and I already know that no matter what I do between now and then, I’m going to be undertrained.  I’m trying reeeeeally hard to make it up, but I keep running into scheduling issues. 

I work part-time, run the house, and take care of two littles all day – it’s harder than you’d think for me to find a solid hour or hour and a half each day to dedicate to training.  Heck, it was occasionally challenging to find the time before I had children, so I’m not sure why I find this time crunch surprising now.  Perhaps if Claire was older, it would be easier, but I struggle to coordinate long workout sessions with her naps.  I also experience bad Mom Guilt (which I am normally great at avoiding) if I put Henry in gym childcare after he’s already spent half the day at camp… Ugh. 

I really, really believe in parents finding time for themselves, even when their kids are young, but the bottom line is that, I can’t find ENOUGH “me time” to really make this training work.  It’s such a time suck, and there’s a million other things that I have to do.  One of the things that I normally love about triathlons is splitting my workouts between the three sports, but that aspects of training is killing me this time around – especially when it comes to cycling outdoors, which feels impossible to coordinate with the kids and my husband’s work schedule.

I know that Claire is still so young (and, truthfully, I’m still sooooo tired).  I did similar length races when Henry was a baby, but with two children – it feels really impossible for me! I really love sprints, and part of me thinks that I should’ve stuck with that length this summer!  Live and learn, right? 

Anyway, I hope I can survive the upcoming Olympic.  I’m not willing to back out.  There isn’t a shorter distance that I can drop down to, and it’s part of a fun girlfriend getaway for me and training buddy Brandi.  But I suspect the actual race won’t be pretty, which is a little disappointing, as I had it in my head that I was going to try to beat my course record from 2011.  Guess I’ll just have to do what I can until then and pray really, really hard on race morning that it all comes together!

Speaking of races, I finally updated my Race Recap page. 63 recaps – that’s a lot of races!

If you’re time-crunched and race, what’s the longest distance you can comfortably make room in your schedule for?  Have you ever committed to a race and really struggled to find the time to train?  I felt a similar way when I did my Half Ironman before Henry turned one, and I’ve long said that I won’t do another 70.3 until my kids are teenagers (if ever!).