I'm here!

I know, it's been forever. I have been a bit scattered- working out twice and/or subbing or taking barre every day last week (I did win a 3 minute plank challenge in my Wednesday early morning OTF class and beat the most obnoxious man in the world next to me and that was such a highlight I almost blogged about it alone; I had a brief and glorious flashback to competitive swimmer me and it was exhilerating), then we had Take Your Kids to Work Day which was wonderful and fun but also resulted in me drinking a margarita at 6 p.m. and writing a semi-philosophical post about my career path that will be finished but isn't yet because I had to go to bed and now I'm not in a philosophical frame of mind, then my mom came to visit on Saturday and we had non-stop fun, and then tonight we sold our TV room couches because we're having my new sectional delivered tomorrow and I don't have anywhere to sit and type. I'm in my bed right now and my laptop is very uncomfortable straying so far from its usual spots on my desk or the TV room side table.

But things are full and busy and wonderful. My mom's visit was particularly great. She arrived Saturday morning just in time to attend my barre class. She totally held her own, thanks to her daily crunches, push-ups, and long power walks through the greenbelt behind our house (do not go on walks with her and expect a leisurely ramble filled with conversation; it's just sweating and panting the whole way), and we capped off the class with a multi-course lunch at Chadra that involved an obscene amount of feta cheese and bread.

From there, my mom decided to take the kids out to the movies to celebrate Landon's top five finish in the science fair (yay!) so we called our nanny over for Cora and headed off to Movie Tavern after a stop at Walgreens for the requisite Mike & Ike's, peanut m&m's, sour patch kids, and gummy bears. And also something for the kids. My mom and I might also have packed half a box of cheez-its in my purse so we could pour them into our popcorn. We also may have consumed the entire large bucket. We have really strong feelings about movie snacks.

Jungle Book was awesome and the weather became beautiful so we ordered our favorite pizza (because obviously we were still hungry; barre is hard) and ate outside with wine and lots of kid play time. After the kids went to bed James had a ton of work to do (summer swim lesson registration has begun!), so my mom asked what time our local discount stores closed and google told me TJ Maxx closed at 9:30 p.m. and Ross partied all the way until 11 p.m., so we grabbed our purses and dashed out the door at 8:30 p.m. leaving behind a shocked and baffled (and probably relieved) James with his 200 emails and a TV now devoid of dance movies or musicals.

My mom is a ninja unicorn magic shopper and we found many things including a four-piece luggage set for her that the sales person used to delighted us by Russian-doll nesting all the suitcases inside each other just like she'd only bought one! We were immensely tickled by this as we proudly strode out the store with our one giant suitcase that was weirdly heavy and expensive.

Maybe I like maxi dresses after all?

But the most giggle inducing moment was when my mom was trying on her giant stack of clothes and exclaimed, "Oh I just love this jean jacket! All my other jean jackets have gold trim!".

Because who doesn't have MULTIPLE jean jackets with gold trim. As it turned out, she meant finishings- like buttons, but I'm still concerned at her number of jean jackets and the fact that some of them might possibly be trimmed in gold. For the rest of the shopping trip I would excitedly exclaim that I needed this new dress/shirt/skirt because "all my others have gold trim!" At 10:30 p.m. in Ross, this was hilarious.

On Sunday we went on a walk with the kids and then to a brunch with gigantic mimosas. And then, 24 hours later, my mom was on her way back home, having somehow crammed a 72 hour visit in one turn around the sun.

And now it's 11:15 and I'm doing the 6:30 a.m. Orangetheory class tomorrow so I must go. I will close in our menu for the week, which I'm realizing is not all that helpful because it mostly includes recipes I made up and make on the fly, but they're all delicious and sometimes it's fun not to have to measure anything.

Sunday: Big Ass Salad (all the vegetables and whatever else sounds good- Sunday's was spring mix lettuce, romaine lettuce, carrots, orange bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, snow peas, kalamata olives, hard boiled egg, herbed goat cheese, and grilled flank steak with the best balsamic dressing); harvest wheat bread and butter

Monday: verde chicken (I make this up with chicken breasts in the crock pot + 1 jar verde salsa; cook for 4-8 hours then shred, adding more salsa and half a block of cream cheese to simmer, stirring often for ~ 30 more minutes; serve in corn tortillas with toppings- we like Monterrey jack cheese, diced tomato, black olive, and avocado); black beans

Tuesday: Copycat PF Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps; vegetable fried rice; steamed broccoli

Wednesday: enchiladas with the leftover verde chicken

Thursday: creamy spaghetti (another adapted/made up recipe: brown ground beef with onions and garlic, add 1-2 jars of your favorite jarred spaghetti sauce, after some simmering add half a block of cream cheese, after a little more simmering add 1-2 lbs. of pasta and let the pasta simmer and soak up some of the pasta sauce goodness before serving); giant loaf of garlic bread with too much garlic salt because there is no such thing as too much garlic salt.

Friday: migas (basically eggs scrambled with corn chips or leftover dried out corn tortillas, onion, diced tomato; with salsa served on top), black beans, rice, flour tortillas

Happy first week of May to all!