It’s Getting Real Y’all

 

More wedding excitement tonight, and it only gets better tomorrow! 🙂

We had plans tonight to meet up with some dear family friends of ours tonight at Amato’s.

We got there about a half hour early to do some wedding work:

Enter wedding day schedule

 

These are little details that make me so thankful to have such an amazing and involved  Groom.  Zach had worked on mocking up a draft of our day of so that we could go through it together and hash out details.  Amazing 🙂

 

Cheers to getting married and an amazing groom 🙂

The family friends we were meeting got there right as we were finishing.  BUT. . . more wedding fun ensued 🙂

Ms. Mary is amazing and wanted to be involved in our big day, so she offered to do guest bags for all of our out-of-towners (which is basically everyone for this wedding!).  We are so lucky!

She brought all of her ideas so far, and we just fell in love with the details.

This will hang as tag to the bag, holding the handles together.

 

The frame will be on the outside of the bag

Our wedding colors, navy and coral

How thoughtful is that?  They are going to be perfect 🙂

After talking tonight, we chatted and decided that inside the bag will be:

• letter from the bride and groom
• brochure from Boettcher Mansion and Golden, CO
• water
• mini altoid container
• lent rollers
• chocolate

Chocolove.  Seriously, how cute?

 

It was a great night with great family :).

Seriously every moment I feel like we get a little more excited for the big day.  I can’t wait!

And that’s a good thing, because tomorrow is a BIG DAY!

Tomorrow morning we’re getting our MARRIAGE LICENSE!

It’s getting real!  I’ll be back tomorrow with a recap of how it goes!  We’re gonna be official! 🙂

Have a good night all, I’ve got some chocolate and pumpkin cookies to eat before heading to bed!

Question of the night:  Anything else my married friends or experience wedding crashers might recommend we include in the bags?

Challenge: Review

7 Days of my Strength Training Challenge : Done

For those of you who may have missed it, I started a challenge a week ago after recognizing a need to fit more strength training into my work out routine.

I sell tickets to this gun show.

For whatever reason, I am not good at dedicating days in my routine to strength training, especially when I’m in a race training cycle.

A while back, I started doing 100s, strength sessions that last about 20-30 minutes that require little space and no equipment.

These are perfect to squeeze in during lunch breaks at work or when I have some spare time at home.

But what if you can’t or don’t want to dedicate your break working out?  I understand that…

Do you have 2 minutes?  Can you dedicate 2 minutes to strength training when you find it?

• Break between clients?  Bust out a plank hold.
• Waiting for something to finish in the microwave? Do some crunches
• On hold on the phone? Bust out some push ups.

It’s simple, and let me tell you, if you do this consistently through out the day, it adds up!

And THAT my friends, is the challenge.

7 days of “fitting in” strength training.

How’d I Do?

Well, in one week I completed:

• 175 oblique crunches L & R
• 259 REAL push ups
• 125 squats
• 100 knee highs
• 980 seconds of plank holds
• 60 hip dips
• 275 calf raises
• 25 lunges
• 100 crunches
• 100 seconds of wall sits
• 200 bridges
• 50 full sit ups
• 3 minutes of pigeon L & R
• 100 jumping jacks
• 100 reverse crunches
• 100 leg lifts
• 50 seconds side plant L & R

for daily break down of what I did, I posted what I completed each day through out the week.

And this is all just while I’m bored or had a minute to spare.  Pretty damn good if you ask me!

Thoughts

I’m stronger than I give myself credit for.

Before this challenge, I had never done more than 10 real push ups uninterrupted.

I am now doing 32 uninterrupted.

Before this challenge, I’d never help a plank over 100 seconds

I added 5 seconds to my planks each day and ended up doing a 155 second plank yesterday…

Before this challenge, I would do body weight work outs in 25 rep sets.

I’m now doing 50 set reps because I know I can. 

Through out the week I found myself building upon the previous day’s work.  Like adding a push up, or adding 5 seconds to my plank.

My goal with strength training is to add reps or weights.  It shows that you are building strength and pushing yourself.  So even though I wasn’t doing full work outs, I was showing improvement and pushing myself with this challenge.  That was probably my favorite part of the experience:  seeing improvement.

Isn’t that the most important thing in motivating ourselves to work out?  Being able to see the changes and improvements?  I know for me, it’s what keeps me challenging myself on a regular basis.

Will I Continue?

Absolutely.

Especially while I’m still training for the STL half.  My body is always more fatigued than normal during training sessions so it’s hard to push full strength work outs, so squeezing it in at various points through out the day (instead of in one, continuous session) keeps me from fatiguing myself as much.

I will admit that this challenge does NOT equal a real beast of a strength work out, and I do plan to work on integrating full strength work outs into my routine where I can.  But it IS something.  I AM fitting in quick, high intensity work outs, and that is good.

I like feeling strong, and I never feel as strong as I do after busting out some real push ups or holding a plank FOREVER.

What can I say?  I like my work outs strong, just like most things in my life 🙂

The Boy Picked THAT Movie

Good Morning and Happy Hump Day Friends 🙂

It’s all downhill from here, right? 🙂

It was a nice quiet evening in our household.  We watched a really old movie with baby Mark Walhberg, We Own The Night

 

From IMDB

A New York nightclub manager tries to save his brother and father from Russian mafia hit men.

Pretty obvious movie night was the boy’s choice this evening :).  It was a little hard to understand/follow for me at times, but We Own the Night kept our interest through to the end (which says a lot because both of us have a tendency to fall asleep during movies pretty easily).

So. . . movie and cookies it was.

 

We had the light low for the movie, so you can hardly tell what it is…but I’m sure it’s no surprise that these boxed cookies made their way into our evening at multiple points.

The cookies were my fuel for this mornings stationary bike ride.

Workout 

I took my book (Divergent, getting close to finishing.  LOVE IT), and headed down to the gym for an hour on the stationary bike.

I had a slight head ache this morning, so I took it easy and just kept my legs moving.  In the end, it was

Workout for the Day: 60 minutes stationary bike ride – 20 miles

 

Nothing too exciting, but not too shabby either I guess.

Challenge

Yesterday was my last day of the week long strength training challenge.  I LOVED the entire concept, and am really looking forward to a write up this afternoon on the challenge as a whole.  So, to wrap up my last day, I squeezed in:

• 155 second plant + 10 hip planks
• 32 real push ups
• 50 calf raises
• 50 reverse crunches
• 25 squats
• 50 leg lifts
• 50 second side plank, L & R.

I’m giving myself a break from the challenge today, letting my body relax and repair a bit, but you better believe I plan on integrating this into my everyday life!  I hope you all do, too!

Have a great morning, All!