Manic Monday

So after A nice beautiful weekend ,why do we have to have Mondays..... UGH !!!! 5:30 AM wake up call I, found myself hitting the snooze button for 10 extra minutes & was finally motivated by my soon to be large cup of joe, followed by A busy morning of getting my boys up and going ( i'm so grateful this is easy for me ) I had A nice morning chat sesh with hunter while packing lunches for the littles.It went something like this Good morning Hunter,morning.... mom, did you wash my white Nike shirt and black basketball shorts ? Yes I did their hanging in your closet.k Thanks. Mom.... can I open A new bag of cereal ? Yes you can, put it in the cereal bucket.K. Mom.... can I have A piece of gum from your bag ? Yes you can. K thanks. Bye mom i'm leaving for school now. Bye Hunter have A nice day I love you. I feel A real connection here.... Threw some bagels in the toaster for the littles, and started the eggs for the hubster. Packed my lunch consisting of grilled shrimp with an assortment of veggies i.e. carrots, jalapeños, zucchini ,onion, & red bell peppers. Dashed the top with some store bought kung pow sauce and A few peanuts. I also cut up A great big gala apple for my mid morning snack.Fed the boys , read our scriptures said our prayers and we were out the door.Had A nice drive into work, so glad My morning drive was dog on the freeway free.My Mondays are always busy at work therefore my lunch is still at work. Thank goodness I had my bag of tricks where I grabbed somme beef jerky which is perfect snacking and full of protein. Kept me full I followed that with my apple.Busy afternoon once I grabbed the kids from school we found ourselves at home and doing chores.Dinner was late I spent some time with my mom so I had a bowl of pumpkin oatmeal.No pictures today it's ok though most of us know what beef jerky, apples and oatmeal look like.

Busy Day

Started my day this morning with A wonderful cup of coffee, I love coffee it is my breakfast, I'm not really A breakfast person.I intended on spending A nice relaxing Sunday morning doing nothing before getting ready for church... hahahah none of these things happened.Before I new it Flynn and I were off driving all over town collecting things we needed for our liquor store. On one of our stops in phoenix we pulled into A strip mall on 16th st and southern across the street from our phoenix store and parked in front of A store called Raspidos.This is not the best neighborhood in the world and one might think they will not make it out, you will.....during the day.Flynn left me in the car when boardem hit I got out of the car and went into Raspidos and four this.....

Where have you been my whole life.....This was the best drink ever,mango with chamoy...now if you have ever had just mangos with chamoy you know what i'm talking about.This is the drink version.It is A drink with crushed ice layered with mangos,chamoy,tamarind pieces, peanuts, more chamoy,and A tamarind stick.I was in heaven and considered this my morning snack. Don't judge it was totally worth it,and I got 1 full serving of fruit.We finally made our way to Coolidge where we put everything away worked A little and I got to hang out with my oldest son Adam.By the time we left it was 1:00 and I was starving so Flynn and I shared A small bag of pretzels. Not the best lunch choice but on the other hand we could have grabbed the flaming hot cheetoes.We found ourselves spending the afternoon working on this fun little project with the boys, A new table for the backyard.We built and stained it and I love it.

Later during the day after we were finished with the table And we were feeling hungry but not quite dinner time yet I busted out with these little beauties.No bake monster Cookie Granola Bar bites,now I know what your thinking,THERE COOKIES, but they are not cookies in fact they have no flour or sugar and it is A quick little protein energy snack to tie you over. you can omit the m&m's but then you could hardly call them monster bites.I used the mini m&m's. You can find them in the baking isle in any grocery store.The boys love these and they are great for packing in their lunch boxes as well.Heres the recipe and you can also find it on my pinterest board under Time For Snacking.

1 1/4 cups old fashioned oats 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter 1/4 cup honey 1/3 cup mini m7m's 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips Dump all the ingredients into A bowl and mix well. scoop out A small amount and roll into balls place in fridge to set until hard and store in container or zip lock bag. I doubled this recipe and it made quite A bit. I have recently learned about PB2 for those of you who are unfamiliar with this it is powdered peanut butter.I just picked some up from the store and have not tried it yet but I will be trying it with this recipe. Basically calories are crazy low.Regular PB is 200 calories per 2 TBSP and PB2 is 45 calories per 2 TBSP.This is A great swap calorie wise and I can't wait to try it. Dinner was fantastic tonight. We had Pork carnitas. I love making this and we have it often, I have A great recipe for it but tonight I tried Nicoles and It was the bomb !!!! You can find it on her blog foodfaddyflight.weebly.com. It's A crock pot recipe so it's perfect for Sundays or just busy days in general. Set it and forget it.Minimal prep work. you will love it.

We ended our Sunday playing board games. I love time well spent with my boys. We played clue and Oliver blew it when he was absolutely sure he new Mr. Green did it in the Dining Room with the Rope. He was not even close.

It's Been A While

So I originally started this blog when we decided to take our boys to my husbands home country of India,it was difficult to keep up on this in India because of the internet (internet has changed since our trip ), so I let it die. I need to mention our trip to India was amazing this is A beautiful country and it was so great to finally meet more of Flynns family and to see where he grew up. I can't wait to go back again.Recently I have been inspired by my dearest friend Nicole and her blog foodfaddyflight.weebly.com to bring this back to life. ( i'll get to that later ) It's been 6 years so let's catch up A little. My boys are now 14, 10 & 9, they are still the loves of my life and we are busy as ever, Hunter is going into High School next year and already doing football at the High School with the freshman coaches preparing for the 20016-17 school year. I can't wait to be A football mom. Noah & Oliver are busy with scouts every week and we love it,not to mention school for all three of them and just every day hustle & bustle of life in general. My husband Flynn and I are very busy running our 3 stores. On our spare time we spend as much time as we can with our dear friends Nicole & Vj and there 2 sweet girls, hanging out with our boys, hiking, camping, boating, traveling,quading, or just hanging out with my sisters & parents.Our life is great and extremely busy.

Since this blog we have gotten to travel with friends & family to some great places and make wonderful memories we have been to Mexico, Colorado, San Francisco,San Deigo, Newport beach,Seattle, Vancouver Canada & Camping in Greer,& Forrest lakes, and zip trips every fridays with my family last summer, for those of you who are un familiar with zip tripping, it's basically day trips within your state/area that are time/cost effective, we are looking forward to this summers zip trips.Lastly not to mention 4 wheeling & quading ,here are some of my favorite pics of our adventures.

So that's just some of our travels in A nut shell, we had so much fun already I, can't wait to see whats next. So now I am at the reason I decided to start my blog again. My dearest friend has this blog foodfaddyflight.weebly.com go check it out it's great, anyways she blogs about the ups/downs of losing weight and she posts these great recipes and just the trials of losing weight. I love it. I have used lots of her recipes and they are great. I have my own struggles and we talk about it with each other and share things in general so I would like to do the same thing she is doing with her blog I just love following her. I am down 28 lbs already ( yay ) and she has been A great inspiration for me. We are the best of friends and our families do everything together so why not join her in this journey.I am also going to blog about my life in general.So my eating down falls : 1. Date Night with Nicole & our husbands.... I love date night so I try and make good choices but it usually goes right out the window when appetizers are ordered.It's A good thing date night is only every few weeks ( sometimes ) 2. Chocolate I love dark chocolate.enough said 3.Ice cream/frozen yogurt ...... enough said 4.Diet Dr. Pepper, Usually have 1 every day but the last 2 months I have not had any & I noticed A big difference however.... this week I tanked and have had 1 every single night not just 1 can A 44oz cup. 5.chips..... I don't even keep them in the house, well because everyone in this family likes chips. ( remember I have 5 boys in the house ) So these are my current struggles.The last 2 months have been salad only fresh fruits/veggies(this is A given for us we just like lots of fruits/veggies) I cook a lot of authentic Indian food which I both love and have stayed away from so it helps that Flynn & Hunter have jumped on the salad bandwagon, now I don't have to cook 2 different meals A day. Bonus the little boys love salad as well. So I am pretty excited to share my journey and daily life which is huge for me to share my struggles.