A little Friday tex-mex!

Tonight, it was just me and the boys for dinner. I needed something easy, healthy and kid/adult friendly. So I decided that it sounded like a great night for quesadillas! Yumm! I want Owen to eat what we're eating - no short order cooks here!

Anyway, these quesadillas are awesome and so easy. I warm a packet of the pre-cooked chicken (that you find in the deli case), in a skillet, usually I chop it up finer so that it isn't too chunky - but that's just a personal preference. To that I add about a half a can of black beans and half a jar of salsa, and warm through. When heated, I add about a cup to 1&1/2 cups of low fat cheddar cheese. In another skillet sprayed with Pam, I place a large tortilla and then put the filling one side of the tortilla, folding the empty side on top. Flip it when it starts to brown. If it makes a mess- no worries, it still tastes great! I still make a mess sometimes. I dip it in a little low fat sour cream.

Owen loves it, I find it very kid friendly because he like all of the ingredients and can use his hands. He seems to like dipping his food too, I've noticed lots of kids like this!

Hope you had a good Friday too! Welcome weekend!

Too busy to workout?

This morning I woke up & I'm sore.....I did Les Mills Body Pump yesterday (a group strength-training class) and now I'm moving a little slow.  It's great - I love that sore feeling after a great workout.  Sometimes fitting in exercise is really tough for anyone - not just moms.  For someone that has 1000 things going on, and who doesn't - especially during the holidays, sometimes a quick go-to workout around the house is perfect.  Sometimes I do calf-raises when I do the dishes, or a curl my baby Andrew (a perfect built-in weight, plus he thinks it's hilarious), I've tried to do curls with Owen (a wiggly 27 pounder)...that was much harder!  Do squats while waiting for the water to boil for dinner...there are so many options  Run up & down the stairs an extra time.

How about this for a good at home workout that requires NO equipment-
20 push ups
50 jumping jacks
20 squats
10 burpees (start standing, drop to a squat with your hands on the ground, hop out to a plank position, hop back to the squat with your hands on the ground, hop up to standing)
20 Triceps dips
20 mountain climbers
20 lunges on each leg
50 crunches
20 bicycles
And repeat!!  You can do it a third time if you want.

Doesn't take long - but gets your heart beat up!!

I also found these cool FitDeck cards - the one shown below is Fit Deck Bodyweight cards.  This is such a great concept - there is a deck of cards with great exercises that you can shuffle and create your own workout.  There is are several options, including Prenatal, kettle bells and for the extreme athletes there is the Navy Seal exercises.  There are even cards for kids - which could be a cool idea for a quick before dinner workout!  I personally can't wait to get the Stroller & Park exercises for more exercises to do while I am out with the kids for our walk!

It's so important to get your 30-60 min of activity per day, even getting it in 5 minutes increments is good!

Sleep.....precious time!

I have lots of mommy 'must haves'.  What makes me healthy is a great night's sleep....haahaahaa - good joke, right?  Not with a 22 month old and 5 month old!  But it's great when they sleep soundly.  One of my favorite things that my kiddos got as a gift are the stuffed animal sound machines by Cloud B, Gentle Giraffe.  Owen has his giraffe with 4 different sounds and Andrew has a sheep also with 4 sounds on it.




 They always have it turned on when they go to sleep, and I'm convinced that it helps sooth them as the constant.  We always change up the lullabies that we play in the room - but the Cloud B Sound machines are always on.  They velcro onto the crib, so I don't have to worry about it being in the crib with Andrew - since he is too young to have things in the crib.  And Owen won't lay on it and keep turning it on.  He has figured out how to turn it on before he goes to sleep though.  :)   We take them with us on road trips when they are sleeping in unfamiliar cribs.  I have gotten this for people as baby shower gifts.

See....fast asleep!

Happy Holiday Reading!

In our house, we are always reading.  We always read before naptime & before bedtime.  There are books in just about every room - and we want to encourage our boys to love to read.  This is the first year the my 22 month old, Owen, will start to understand Christmas.  So, we are starting to read some Christmas books.  Here are some popular ones that I found through my searches and from what we have  I'm sure that there are tons that I missed.  I can't wait to get & read them all to Owen & Andrew.

1. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer


    2. Fisher Price Little People Christmastime Is Here!: Lift the Flap


    3. Llama Llama Holiday Drama


    4. 'T Was the Night Before Christmas


5. The Christmas Story


   6. How The Grinch Stole Christmas


    7. Snowmen At Night


    8. The Sweet Smell Of Christmas


    9. Who's coming to our house


    10. If you take a mouse to the movies  


    11.   Santa Mouse


12. Bear Stays Up

Back to the routinue....

While, this healthy mommy forgot her sneakers over Thanksgiving!  I even had workout clothes with me.  Yikes - I never, ever go away overnight without my running shoes.  Perhaps, my subconsicous was telling me to chill out.  So, I had a break from working out, but that made today that much harder.  I took the day off, to ease back into the work week.  And started my morning by bringing the boys with me to the 9am Stroller Strides class.  Wow - it felt awesome to workout again after a week, but it was tough.  Amazing how much your body slows after only a week.

Anyway, my Stroller Strides class was a great way to start the day.  Exercise always puts me in a good mood.  These classes are a great way to exercise with the kids in the stroller, meet other moms and have a built in playground for the kids.  The classes are an hour long, and broken up with some cardio & some strength training.  What's great is that the classes are great for mommas of all fitness levels because we are using resistance bands are weights.  This is a great fitness program and you can hang out with the kiddos and not have to worry about babysitting at a gym.

Well....I'm off to a good start to the week, hope you are too.

Yummy easy Sunday!

I didn't get a chance to post this weekend, it was a little busy.  I enjoyed my weekend with family - I hope you did.  We're BIG football fans, especially Penn State football.  Scott & I made the 4 hours drive from northern VA to State College for the game, like we do every home game weekend, and met up with my sister & brother-in-law.  And my brother & sister-in-law were able to join us for the game - it was awesome because Sunday was my baby's brother's birthday, so having them sit with us was a fun way to celebrate his birthday. 

By the then Sunday rolled around, I was super tired - and lost my mind temporarily and kind of forgot that we didn't have anything for dinner in the house.  Panic!  I think we've all been there....staring at the pantry & fridge wondering what we can throw together that is nutritious and won't force me to the grocery store.  I wanted to avoid the crazy that is grocery shopping on the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving. 

**AH HA**  Then it hit me...breakfast for dinner, always a home run!

I put together an egg bake (I think that the official 'chef' term is a strada).  This is normally something I make for breakfast when we have company.  We had left over bread that we had with our Friday dinner, it was great cheese flavored bread.  I cut up the bread into small bite-size pieces into a smaller 9x9 pan, since it was just our family, 1 & 1/2 C of gouda cheese (really you can use any type of cheese - this is just what we had), and 1 & 1/2 C of ham cubed.  I beat 6 eggs and about 3 C of milk together, seasoned with dry mustard, salt & pepper and poured this over the bread.  I let this set for the whole afternoon (typically I let it set overnight) - and baked for an hour at 350degrees.  This was a big hit with my boys - Scott & Owen ate it up - I only got to get a picture after we've dung in.  I need to get in a habit of taking a picture prior to bringing it to the table!!!

Despite the fork - we did put it on plates, and didn't eat it right out of the baking dish!  This was an awesome quick dinner, as long as you think of it earlier.....who doesn't love breakfast for dinner?!?  Breakfast is our FAVORITE meal in our house! :)

Good Bye Twinkies!

Good bye Twinkies!  I feel like an American institution is gone.  Hostess, the maker of many well-known brands like Twinkie, Wonder Bread, and Ding-Dongs, has declared backruptcy & liquidating their plants because they are unable to continue to operate due to the lack of employees returning from the strike.  I haven't eaten a Twinkie in years - when I like to splurge, I tend to go for chocoloate.  But, it seems like a piece of American history is going away.  I am half tempted to buy a box of Twinkies and save them to show my sons later.  I do remember, as a kid, splitting the snack cake in half and trying to suck out the cream filling! 

Motherhood is messy!!

Isn't that the truth?! 

And this is just oatmeal....imagine when we have spaghetti for dinner!!  Then Owen can get food everywhere, including mommy, daddy and baby Andrew.  Sometimes I feel like dinnertime is messier than a Gallagher show, and we need to wear rain slickers.  :) 

 

Anyway, you know you are a mom when you get really excited about something that gets all this clean.  It's a successful day is Andrew is in the same outfit for the entire day - it's a rarity though.  There's usually a blow-out sometime during the day, causing the need for an entire change. 

 

So today, I'm sending a sincere THANK YOU to Fels Naptha.  It has saved me hundreds of dollars in new baby clothes.  I have gotten clean every mess that Owen & Andrew have created.  Awesome!!  And even some chocolate, coffee or wine stains - that may or may not have been on my clothes.   Oops!

 

It's pretty old-school looking:

And it's usually on the top or bottom shelf, one lowly little line item in the supermarket.  It's really affordable too - I just paid $1.69 at my grocery store it.  We swear by it!  

 

So from this messy mom, errr....I mean this mom with messy kids...have a great Thursday!

 

What's for dinner, Mom?

Isn't this the question that many moms dread?!  Well, this week it appears that I've been craving comfort food.  I had a terrible head cold on Sunday into Monday, and I'm just starting to feel better.  So, what tastes best when you don't feel good - chicken noodle soup!  So, when I'm that one with the cold - I'm still the lucky one that makes the soup!!  :)  Our whole family loves my chicken noodle soup.  This soup originated from one time when Scott didn't feel good and we didn't have anything in the house ready to go.  We did have leftover roasted chicken - and bingo, the easiest, yummiest chicken noodle soup was born!  Next time, I'll take pictures to share with you but we ate it all too fast.  Even my 22 month old loves it. 

I love making my own soups because you know what is going in there.  You can use low sodium chicken broth to control the salt levels.  For this, I simply saute onions, celery & carrots in extra virgin olive oil until they get nice and tender.  I add the precooked chicken to it to heat it up, and then I add chicken broth.  I add corn to the soup as well - this was for Scott when he was sick, it's his favorite.  He actually told me once that he would know if I was upset with him because I wouldn't add the corn! :)  Once it's boiling, I add egg noodles.  I then add dumplings - nothing fancy, just right from the Bisquick box.  This was for me - because I love dumplings.  Really any carbs....I never bought into the low-carb fad.  This really thickens up the soup.  I let it simmer on the stove for about 1/2 hr and it's ready to go.

Tonight, we're having meatloaf & baked sweet potato fries....I told you it was a comfort food week.  I'll have to finish up with pot roast or stew!  And then go for a nice long run to balance out the food!

Happy hump day - hope you have as yummy a dinner as we're hoping to have!  :)

Are you there world? It's me - Suzi!

Remember that book - 'Are you there God?  It's me Margaret'.  Yea, I vaguely remember the book, but the title stuck with me.  Wondering if anyone is out there in cyber-space.... 

My very first blog posting - there are so many things I could talk about, it's hard to choose.  Perhaps the best is why I started this.

It was pointed out to my by my own mother recently, that in my monthly sets of pictures that I send out to family, that there were very few pictures with me included in them.  I thought about this, and went through my recent albums.  Sure enough, I was usually the one behind the camera.  I remember looking through old albums of my childhood and noticing that my mom wasn't in many pictures at all.  I wanted to have pictures with her there too.  So, I am changing this behavior - my husband and I are going to be in the pictures.  While the pictures of the boys are very cute and we'll still take TONS of those, I want to be in the pictures with them.  I might have a few more pounds of baby weight to loose, and I might not have my hair done & makeup on.  I might have sweats on, and not my nicest clothes.  But, I'm here and I want pictures of me with my family every step of the way.  My kids don't care what I'm wearing or if I have my glasses on or if I have food on me from my toddler's mealtime.  So, I want to chronicle our life as a family.  I want to entertain with our stories, educate with interesting facts, recipes, and products I've found, and encourage other moms - our roles as moms are hard enough! 

A healthy mommy focuses not only on eating well and exercise, but living a well-rounded life - fun activities for the kids, date nights with my husband, etc.  A healthy mommy is one that focuses on her priorities, and for me that is my family and being happy.  This is where I am truly irreplaceable, and want to be known for doing my best.   

Here are my priorities & my loves:  (notice I'm in the picture!)