All For Peppermint Ice Cream

It's Monday again...which means it is only 6 days until Tiff's Wedding...ah! Don't worry, the emotional "my 7th grade best friend is getting married thing" has not hit yet...yet. Until then, I will leave you with one fun fact about me and Tiff- we once had an 8 hour phone conversation. No breaks. Probably no silences even, knowing us.

In food related news, last night Eric was finally home so I decided to cook spaghetti squash for the first time (okay, that's a lie I tried to cook it once over a year ago unsuccessfully but I decided to try again). I didn't wait until Eric was home because he wanted to eat it but rather because I needed him to do one important job for me:

Cut the squash! There is no way I would've gotten through that thing on my own! After Eric's successful cutting job, I just threw it in the oven on 350 for 40 minutes and it was perfect. No idea how I messed it up the first time. I mixed it with some tomato sauce and grilled chicken and the result was an absolutely delicious mess...

Just in case anyone was wondering what I was going to do when the pumpkin/squash obsession wore off (which it hasn't in case you were curious), I have discovered what my Christmas time obsession will be...

PEPPERMINT. It's probably not as healthy as pumpkin, but it is good for digestion and let's be honest I need a lot of help in the digestion process. I try to have a cup of peppermint tea after dinner...

In other, exercise-related, news...every Monday night I go to Spinning class with two of my amazing friends from work. Well one of them has sick children and the other just ran a marathon last week (terrible excuses, I know... just kidding) so I am left to go by myself. For years I have been a completely independent gym rat but for some reason the recent enjoyment of exercise buddies has made me so much less likely to go alone. So I decided to make a list:

Why I Should Go to Spinning Tonight

1. I didn't have a faculty meeting today so I actually had time to eat a snack, blog and then go to the gym as opposed to my usual speed changing, jump back in the car routine.

2. I also do not have tutoring tomorrow because we are having a kindergarten ice cream party. This is reason two reasons, 1 that I don't have to plan for tutoring and 2 that I am going to be eating an extra amount of ice cream haha...

2. I had a relaxing weekend and next week I am much more likely to be exhausted and not want to go after Tiff's wedding.

3. With parent/teacher conferences over I am actually in a good place as far as work is concerned.

4. If I stay here I will have to finish my engagement party thank you notes including my grandmothers which I did a long time ago but then accidentally sent to myself instead of her...I kid you not.

Why I Should NOT Go to Spinning Tonight

1. No friends to complain to during isolations!

2. New bikes make it really hard to pretend that you are on a 10 when really you are on a 4.

3. My throat is hurting probably because my poor body is trying to fight all of my kindergartners sickness at school and Eric's sickness at home- no break for this body.

Clearly that leaves 1 more in the "Why I SHOULD" category so I think I am out of excuses. Plus I have this waiting for me when I get home...

Check and CHECK.

I had a SERIOUSLY productive day today, and it was fun- which makes it the best possible kind of day. I woke up bright and early because I had blood drawn. Apparently my liver function test was off last time so I had to have it redone. I was supposed to abstain from alcohol for the past 4 weeks, but frankly I had two weddings so that did not quite happen. However, I rarely drink as it is so I am pretty sure my liver is not having problems because of my massive drinking habit. Hopefully this one will come back more normal.

After a quick snack I headed to spinning class. This class is shorter than the one I went to on Monday and SO much easier. It was nice in a way to have a break but I have to try to get to that Monday night one more often, it is so intense. I'm feeling a little bad that I brought my friend from work to that one for her first time since that was by far the hardest one I have been to. Oops. I just got Self, Fitness and Body and Soul October in the past two days so I am going to have to do some work outs that can involve magazine reading. I have a rule that magazines can only be read if I am walking on the treadmill or the elliptical or in some way exercising. Eric's school had a magazine fundraiser last year and teachers got a huge discount so we went a little crazy :)

Post work out I decided to clean the house. This summer I have been very lucky that Eric has done most of the housework but with him at football til all hours, I think this fall the housework is going to fall back into my hands so I wanted to get a head start. As much as I do not enjoy cleaning, there is definitely a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment when it's done.

However the most exciting part of the day comes NEXT :) I BOUGHT MY DRESSSSSSSSS!!! wooooooooo! I decided to go with Dress #2 (Eric don't even think about clicking on that link, I'm serious!) which I had a more immediate love for. It was on sale today and it was already cheaper than Dress 1, so that was happy. Plus I just really felt more comfortable in it and it was more what I pictured for myself on my wedding day. I also found a beautiful veil to go with it and everything is ordered and done. I also love that Priscilla uses NORMAL sizes, so it's not like those gowns or bridesmaid dresses that I have to order twice my size. I know size is not a reflection of anything but it just annoys me anyway and I feel like its a bad marketing scheme because girls always want to feel good about themselves, duh! I also went to check on my bridesmaid dress situation. I forgot if I told you guys this, but when I looked at my bridesmaid dresses online they did not have the pink color, NOOOO. Anyway I went in today and it turns out the lady in the store mixed up luminescent chiffon and iridescent chiffon. So my dress is LUMINESCENT, not iridescent but fortunately there is still a very similar pink color so all is right in the world.

For dinner I decided to get some serious nutrients in my body. This summer I feel like I have not been getting enough veggies or meat, so tonight I decided to remedy this with some rice and beans (okay not at all meat I know). I mixed rice, black beans, carrots and peach (aka my temporary obsession right now). I have a picture but blogger is not letting me post it, what's up with that?

Time to go hang out with Eric while he is actually home. I think I already hate football season.

DRESS SUCCESS.

Today has been an extremely long day. I was at school this morning at 6:15 am because I wanted to be fully prepared for my 9 am open house where the kiddos can come meet me and see the classroom for the first time. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but ever year I am SHOCKED by how little the kids are. Not only do all K kids get bigger by the end of the year, but then in the summer I usually work with 2nd and 3rd graders, so the jump is huge. My kids seemed good so far, except for one who was literally OBSESSED with the fact that I didn't have computers for the kids in the room. However, I will say that one of the most awesome kids last year cried hysterically through open house- so I don't make any judgments too soon.

But the most fantastic news of the day is that I found my bridesmaid dresses today! Me, my mom, my sis and Tiff went into Boston for some more searching. First I tried on my favorite dress (for me) at a place I went to a couple of weeks ago. Then we went to a new place where I found what is now being called Dress #2. I am now debating between Dress 1 and Dress 2 for myself, which still feels successful because I know ONE of them is going to be MY dress. I made an appointment at the second place for Thursday because they are having a sale beginning on Thurs and I can get 10 % off. That means I have to decide by then which I like because I won't debate about it for weeks (which I do tend to do!). After finding Dress 1 and Dress 2 for myself, we looked at some dresses for my girls and found NO good colors. Finally we went back to a place we went to a couple of weeks ago because they have Watters dresses, and Watters dresses have a BEAUTIFUL fushia color that I (being a pink freak) love. I randomly pulled this dress off the shelf and Caroline tried it on and LOVED IT. And bam, that was the dress. It's not 110 percent yet because I'd like my other girls to try it, but here it is if you want to check it out. You'll have to picture it in bright bright pink haha. YAY.

I think this post was like 1 long sentence of total excitement but I am so happy to be moving in a forward direction with these dresses!

On a totally different note I went to spinning last night with one of my friends from work. It kicked my butt! Has anyone noticed that guy instructors tend to be way more intense than female instructors? I was actually a little sore today from spinning. While I always feel like it is a good workout, I'm never actually SORE!

Congrats Jake!

I have to start by saying a great big Congratulations to my little bro who graduated from high school on Sunday!!!
I look a little unhappy about the sun in this picture, but Jake looks snazzy in that cap and gown, huh? I am very proud of the last member of the Winn fam to graduate from LHS!!! For those of you who have not had the experience of my high school I will say, it is no easy task to make it out of this place alive. And Jake has made it through with style (and many ridiculous adventures). I can only imagine what college will be like for him. But as long as he is safe and happy, I will be too.

It's that time of the school year again where I start to get all my pictures together to put together a slide show of all of our pictures from the year. I just spent the past 3 hours organizing pictures, figuring out how to add music and then watching the slide show as it is now. In one of the pictures, you can see RIGHT up one of my girl's skirts- so obviously I need to take that one OUT. Of course now I can't find it, so I am going to have to watch the whole 20 minutes again to try to find it. I was going to keep working on it tonight until I finish it, but when I was googling song lyrics to find one more song for the slide show, all of a sudden porn pictures started flashing all over my screen. At that point I decided to take a break for a day or two and come back to it.
So now here I am watching the Red Sox and blogging. I am supposed to be going to the game on Thursday, so I hope the weather people are all wrong about it raining all week :)

I went to my second spin class this morning! I am a true expert now. Okay fine maybe not quite, but I felt a little less lost about the whole "take it up to 5, now 6!" talk. I did get slightly more bored today, but I think part of the problem is the GIANT clock at the front of the room. I cannot avoid looking at it, which makes time go by SO much slower. When I was doing yoga last summer I used to position myself so that it was near impossible to see the clock. I like to be able to look at it once or twice during the class, but staring at it is basically like slow torture for me. Still love spinning though, and it's going to be my new best friend this week because of all the rain!

I think I was doing reasonably well with the whole "no running" thing, however I am starting to get bored, annoyed and anxious!

Bored- of doing everything except running!
Annoyed- that everything else seems to take so much more effort to actually do than running (as in I actually have to drive my butt to the gym at 5:30 am instead of just running out the door or hopping on my treadmill)
Anxious- that my training plan says I should be running 4-5 miles and I am not running at all. How am I going to be able to do the running part of this triathlon?!

I am going to ask at Physical Therapy tomorrow how much longer I have to "rest". My knee does appear to be improving a bit, but I'm not sure if it's mainly because I am not running or because it is actually getting better and I can maybe run again. There should be a rule of the world that if you are willing to put in the effort and do exercise, you will not get injured!

For tonight I have to go because my mom has decided to call to discuss wedding dresses (which is probably my least favorite topic when I am exhausted and stressed at 8:45 at night), but coming up in Kelly's blogland: Sweet Potato Risotto Recipe created by my amazing chef fiance Eric and Kelly's stretches to keep your knee injury free so you don't end up like me!

Bikes GALORE!

I finally did it. I tried a Spinning class.
I absolutely loved it! It was 100 times more entertaining and a better work out than sitting on the stationary bike for 45 minutes! I loved how you were constantly supposed to stand up, sit down, go up hills etc. Plus the music was a perfect addition to it. This may sound dumb, but the other thing I like about it is that I am not horrible at it. Lately the only classes I have been doing are yoga, and lets face it- I do not have any talent as far as yoga goes. I know it's good for me and I enjoy it, but as my physical therapist reminded me the other day- flexibility is not my strong suit. When I go to yoga, they always have to correct me and it's always so clear how much better everyone else is than me. Normally I don't really care that much but it was refreshing today to go to Spinning, not even have the instructor pay any attention to the fact that I was new, and easily keep up with everyone :) Of course, spinning is also good because you can just casually turn down your resistance at any moment and no one really knows haha.

Speaking of resistance, I need some help from any spinning experts out there. The instructor kept saying, okay- go up to 8, already take it back to 5 etc. I get she was talking about resistance. But, there were no numbers on the resistance knob. Now, I get that it is probably a scale of 1-10, so 5 would be in the middle but you had to turn it around several times to get from 0-10, so I didn't really know where the middle is! My sister and I were discussing this later today and we speculated that maybe they meant your own 0-10...10 being the hardest you can work. But I have no idea, so please enlighten me on this. I was totally making it up today and it was obvious because people were like barely moving around and I was happily spinning away.

In other amazing news, I BOUGHT A ROAD BIKE!

I actually bought it on Tuesday but I got to pick it up today. It is SO amazing and I love it. I hope I continue to love it because it was probably the most I've spent on anything that I didn't really *need* (such as, a house, rent etc haha). I didn't buy a really fancy one, but I am just getting into it so the people at the bike shop seemed confident that this bike would serve my purposes. I am going to try it out for my first official bike ride on Saturday morning, so I'll let you know how that goes.
Of course I made sure it had as much pink as possible. I can't wait to try it out. Anyway, I hope everyone has a great Friday!