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July 12, 2014

Who am I?

Good Morning!

How was your Friday night?  Mine started out with a really great WORKOUT when I got off work.  I originally planned on doing a Kickbox class, but I got off later than expected.  I’ve really enjoyed circuit workouts lately to help get me back to the gym!  They’re challenging and always different!  Today I warmed up with a 25 minute treadmill walk.  I did the walk before realizing that it was created by The Skinny Student who I actually met at Blog Elevated this past year!  We didn’t get to know each other very well, but she was so sweet and I enjoyed following her blog when I got home!

skinny-student-treadmill-workout

{source}

When I finished that, I had worked up a nice little sweat.  I went on to do another Peanut Butter Fingers circuit workout {NO surprise!}  This one was TOUGH though.  I was a little nervous going into it because she said it was a workout to “kick her butt and leave her dripping in sweat.”  Well if you have read even half a post from Julie, then you know this girl is fit!  I’m working my way there, so I figured it’d be a tough one.  I was entirely correct.

cant-stop-wont-stop-circuit

 

{source}

 I only completed one set, even though it says to complete two.  I wasn’t exactly “dripping” in sweat, but I “dripped” sweat.  Which is a huge accomplishment for me because sometimes I don’t think I sweat enough – compared to others who workout anyways, then again… I shouldn’t be playing the comparison game!

dripped-sweat

There’s the proof.

I’m hoping I’ll be comfortable enough to create my own workouts soon so I won’t be using everyone else’s! haha Right now, it’s nice to have these resources though!

Yeah, I know it’s not much, but it’s a start.  While I was at the gym, my mom asked me if I wanted to get pizza with her and my dad.  Originally I said yes, but then I thought about it and realized that I didn’t make great decisions about my food throughout the week and I really wanted something healthy, so I changed my mind and made a smoothie.  WHO AM I??  Really, pizza is my favorite.

The smoothie turned out great though!  One of these days, I’m actually going to make a pin-able recipe for y’all w/ legit measurements.  After all, that’s what a good blogger does… *sigh*  Let’s cross our fingers for that very soon!

  • a cup or so of orange juice
  • 3 handfuls of frozen blueberries
  • 2 large handfuls of spinach
  • couple dashes of flax seed
  • 3 big scoops of honey vanilla greek yogurt
  • 1 big scoop of almond butter
  • 1 little scoop of cocoa powder
  • 1 little dash of milk for extra liquid

smoothie-drink smoothie-pour

When I made the decision to skip out on pizza, my first thought really was… WHO AM I?  It got me to actually answer the question for myself… which could have been really scary and unpredictable!

There’s the person I am and then the person I want to become.  The person I am is constantly changing in order to find the person I want to become.  I want to become a person who cares more about my health and long-term living, than that large bag of Reese’s.  I want to become a person who chooses integrity and class over outbursts of anger.  I want to become a person who lives to be 100.  I want to become a better friend, family member, blogger, girlfriend, fitness guru, and healthy/vegetarian eating expert.

Surprisingly, I’m becoming the type of person who turns down pizza for a smoothie.  The smoothie is a lot better for me in the long run.  That doesn’t meant to not indulge from time to time, believe me, I did this past week.  That’s why I felt a smoothie was in my best interest.  I’m noticing small decisions I make that are helping me become the person I want to be.  I think the ideal person I want to be will continuously be evolving as well.  You don’t want to get to a stopping point, realize you’re where you wanted to be, but then make no further goals.  I want to constantly be learning, growing, and improving!

It was important for me to join a gym because I knew I wouldn’t take my fitness to the next level if I didn’t.  I need that motivation on a daily basis.  It was important for me to become a vegetarian in January because I knew the leap I wanted to make, but continuously provided excuses.  It was time to stop making excuses and just do it.  It was important for me to change my blog because I lost interest in my old one.  If I wanted to be a better blogger and potentially use blogging as supplemental income, I needed to stop waiting and finally make the change.

So the question: WHO AM I?

I’m usually the person failing at one thing or the other, but I’m also the person striving to succeed, striving to learn, striving to grow, and striving to become a better version of me than I was yesterday.

I hope to do that through this blog, through fitness, through healthy eating choices, through service, through love, through compassion and understanding.

I am not always the person I want to be.  I look back at a particular instance and I’m ashamed of the choices I made or the anger I let control me, but every day is a new day and I’m so thankful for the opportunity of forgiveness and a fresh start!

The questions are always optional, but especially today.  This is more for you to think through for yourself.  If you want to answer and share, I’d love to hear it!  If you’re not comfortable doing so, that’s alright too!

  • WHO ARE YOU?
  • ARE YOU WHO YOU WANT TO BE?
  • WHAT CHOICES ARE YOU MAKING TO BECOME A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF?

This morning I woke up to an excellent yoga class at my local gym (wish I could find an outdoor yoga class!) and then headed home to sip on coffee while I finish up this post.  Today I’ll be studying for my Series 6 test (bleh, investments!) and doing some yard work.  My sis is coming to town, so that’s always exciting!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Filed Under: Blogging, Family, Fitness, Food, Serious Talk, Summer Tagged With: blogging, coffee, pbfingers workout, reeses, smoothie, sweat, walking workout, yoga Leave a Comment

July 10, 2014

Pool Ready in a Jiffy

flat-tire

Good Morning!

That’s not a great sign, is it?  Apparently I ran over whatever the heck that thing is on my way home from work yesterday.  Luckily I noticed it before heading to church last night.  I was pulling out of my drive way, but felt like my front tire might be flat, so I got out and looked, but it was fine.  I went ahead and looked at all of them and sure enough my back tire was flat.

I went ahead and made an appointment last night so I could get my car in quickly this morning.  Thankfully my boss has been out of town these past few days and so I’m not extremely busy at work or I’d be a wreck right now.  I was caught up on everything when I left work yesterday.

What’s really funny is I’m picking my friend Lacy up from the airport today and she said her plane was delayed due to a flat tire also!  We’re all having tire trouble apparently.

It’s a dreary day here in Mississippi.  In a weird way, I love days like this.  I would love a day like this more if I could curl up on the couch reading blog posts and updating my own blog.  What’s your weather looking like?

me-karla-stephen

I’ll be visiting my cousin in a week & a half.  The excitement is overwhelming.  My friend Lacy is joining me and then we’ll be greeted by our friend Noelle who just accepted a job in Texas! I plan on parking myself by the pool pretty much all weekend.  In order to do that though, I need to ramp up my workouts.  I did the 30 day squat challenge a few months ago and saw a lot of improvement with that so I’m going to start that again today.  I also need to take all the ab classes offered at my gym between now and then!

Some other necessities to get pool ready in a jiffy:

  • Drink lots of water!
  • Cut back on my Sodium intake!
  • Apply Jergens Firming Lotion

30-day-squat-challenge

{source}

Besides spending the greatest quality time in the world with my sweet Cousin and her beyond wonderful family, I’ll also be attending the Houston Veg Fest!  I probably won’t attend the entire day, but I’ll be there for a few hours learning about vegans/vegetarians, listening to speakers, and trying products!  You’ll for sure see a re-cap on the blog!

Did I mention that Nick and I want to do the Goofy Challenge?  It’s at Walt Disney World and it’s a Half-Marathon on Saturday, Full-Marathon on Sunday.  The problem is, I’ve never done a marathon.  I’ve done a hand-full of Half’s though.  We haven’t signed up yet because it’s not full and I’d like to see how I feel in a few months.  To kick off our training, we’re doing a Half in Starkville on October 18th.  When I trained for the Disney Wine & Dine Half-Marathon, I planned on using this great training plan I found that was created by (or for) Ellie Goulding.  The training didn’t go so great, the longest I ended up running was about 8 miles and I didn’t have a gym membership so rainy days were a problem and I also didn’t have a good yoga class to go to or a decent DVD / floor space for my yoga.  I still believe the training plan is one of the best I’ve seen because of the heavy amount of x-training and strength training involved as well as yoga.  I’m giving it a try again for this training and I feel it’s going to flow more smoothly now that I have a gym membership with yoga classes offered and a rainy day option on longer runs that are critical to my training!

  • What do you do to get pool ready in a jiffy?
  • Have you attended or even heard of a Veg Fest?  How was it?  What can I expect?
  • Share your favorite half-marathon training plan!
  • What’s the likelihood that I’ll succeed at doing a half & full in about 6 months when I’ve never done a full?

Filed Under: Disney, Family, Fitness, Nick, Races, Summer, Training, Travel Tagged With: Disney, flat tire, half-marathon, marathon, running, squats, Veg Fest, vegan, vegetarian, wine & dine Leave a Comment

July 8, 2014

I high-fived a Tumble Monkey!

You are in for one heck of a Disney re-cap, so buckle up!

Not only did Nick & I travel to Gainesville to visit his brother and sister-in-law, but we also made our way to Disney on Saturday!  Since the trip down is only about 2 hours, it was the obvious choice.  I’m sure by now, most of you are aware that we know how to squeeze as much as possible into a Disney trip!  This past Saturday was NO exception!

We woke up around 5:45am so we could be out the door by 6:15am.

We stopped for gas and some McDonald’s breakfast (My first choice was Starbucks, but they weren’t quite open yet).  I ordered a egg & cheese bagel.  The guy in the back thought I wanted chicken on it and I saw him actually place the chicken ON MY BAGEL, then take the chicken off my bagel, wrap it up and give it to me.  Although that was frustrating, I don’t want to waste food, so I ate it – I was just annoyed.  Some of you may not understand why that is, but if you’re a vegetarian, then I’m sure you get it.

Anyways… onward and downward toward Orlando we went!

We arrived at around 8:30am and it seemed a lot more crowded than I originally anticipated at that time, but we hustled through the crowd, go our bags checked, and scanned our Magic Bands.

MAGIC KINGDOM

Magic Kingdom was our first stop for the day.  They always do a spectacular opening show in the morning and Nick had never seen it, nor had heard that it existed, so he was pretty excited about that!

magic-kindgom-opening-show

The characters rode out on the train to wave us all in.  Anna & Elsa were there!

The second we got in the park, we ran to the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train!! It wasn’t open when we visited in May, so we were both really excited about finally riding it!  It wasn’t a big thrill, but it was a lot of fun and the animation was superb!  At this point, I expect nothing less of Disney.  Somehow our timing throughout the entire day was spot on!  They did open the park about 10 minutes early though.  We were out of the mine train by 9:10!  We were on our way to Splash Mountain when I saw the Peter Pan ride.  I’ve only been on it once or twice, but I remember loving the animation in it and you literally feel like you’re flying in the clouds above the rest of the world.  We hopped in since it wasn’t even a 10 minute wait.  Nick didn’t remember riding it before, so I’m really glad we decided too because he enjoyed it a lot!

We finally made our way to Splash and waited maybe 5 minutes.  After Splash Mountain, we hit up Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  The wait time said 20 minutes, but we literally walked straight onto the ride.  Like I said, our timing was spot on.  What we assumed happened (after seeing a thousand little 15 year old international kids) was that they all went on Thunder Mountain first, while we were on Splash.  They increased the wait time to 20 minutes.  They all finished as we were walking to Thunder and headed to Splash.  Basically we bypassed all of them which was awesome because honestly… those tour groups from overseas are my worst nightmare at Disney.  That’s another story, for another day from my Housekeeping Days at Disney!

Once we finished Thunder, we ran to the other side of the park – Tomorrow Land!  We wanted to ride Space Mountain since it was still pretty early.  Unfortunately, we had a bit of a wait, but it’s not so bad because they have games throughout the entire line.  I got front seat and that spot can be scary!  I felt like I wasn’t really sure if we were going to run into something the entire ride.  If you’ve ridden Space Mountain then you know it’s pitch black!

We were going to ride the People Mover until we learned that it was closed for refurbishment.  That’s one of our favorite rides, so I look forward to seeing what they change!

We stopped for lunch at Cosmic Ray’s Café in Tomorrow Land.  Nick got the burger & fries.  I munched on some of our snacks and nibbled on some fries w/ ketchup.

At this point, we decided our time at Magic Kingdom was over and we were ready to head out to Animal Kingdom!

ANIMAL KINGDOM

I had been looking forward to Animal Kingdom ALL WEEK!  My absolutely favorite thing is the Festival of the Lion.  When we were there in May, it had been closed for refurbishment.  They were moving locations.  I wasn’t sure if it was opened back up yet until my friend David told me it was!

Our first stop was Mount Everest though which is my favorite ride.  We always do single-rider because there is barely a wait time.  You could stand in line for 50 minutes the regular way, but it took us about 10min. to do single-rider.  After that, we headed for the Festival of the Lion King show.  We waited in line about 30 minutes, but I was fine with that – we got great seats!   The show was absolutely spectacular (as usual).

I have this list of Disney Experiences/Memories I want at some point during my life.  One of those is to be the person they choose for the start of the show.  I haven’t made it there yet, but one day it’s happening because I’m practically a Festival of the Lion SUPERFAN!  Although that memory didn’t make it this go round, I was able to experience the greatest memory I’ve had to date at Disney.

Have you seen or heard of the Tumble Monkeys?  They’re my favorite part of the show!  Okay, that’s probably a lie… the entire show is my favorite part of the show.  Check out a video of the tumble monkey’s from my trip back in November for the Wine & Dine.

So back to my now greatest Disney memory…. A Tumble Monkey, who we have now established is the coolest thing in the world, hopped up to our seats and HIGH-FIVED US!!!! I didn’t see him coming, but he popped up, I literally SCREAMED, “OMG, YES!!!!!!!” and gave him the biggest and best high five of my entire life!  My entire day was made!  They’re like celebrities to me.  It was epic!

So after that, we did Primeval Whirl and then treated ourselves to a Vegan Donut (which is delicious!) and my fave – Mickey Pretzel w/ Cheese!

vegan-donut-disney

We wanted to do Kali River Rapids, but decided the wait time wasn’t worth it.  Before we headed on to the next park, I knew I wanted to visit my old Disney Roomie, Nicolina.  She’s doing a Professional Internship at Disney right now and I hadn’t seen her in almost 2 years!  It was a short reunion, but it was completely worth it just to hug her and hear a little about her life right now!  She was such a joy to be around during my time at Disney and I know she’s spreading that same joy to her new Disney friends & cast members!

me-nicolina-wilderness-lodge

After our mini-reunion, we took a boat to the Contemporary and then the monorail to Epcot!  Epcot was our last stop for the day.

EPCOT

We started off with Starbucks because we knew there was still a lot of the day left to accomplish.  While we sipped on that, we found ourselves in Club Cool & Nick had never known you could try the different flavors of Coca-Cola here!

nick-me-starbucks-disney

nick-coca-cola

It started raining some, so our goal was to start looking through the countries and if the rain wasn’t too bad, then hurry to the next one before it started pouring.  Luckily, it never got that bad and we enjoyed our time looking around!

Nick’s brother & sister-in-law decided to drive down for dinner and my friend got them in so we could eat at La Hacienda de San Angel & watch the Epcot firework show.  Before they arrived though, we had a fast pass for Soarin‘ and it’s one of our favorite rides because it’s so relaxing!  Somehow we managed to squeeze that in right before our dinner reservation.  I got a hefty run in from Soarin’ to Mexico though!

The evening ended perfectly with dinner & fireworks!  I also got to catch up with my old Disney friend and fellow Housekeeper, David!

epcot-fireworks

mexico-dinner

I enjoyed the veggie enchiladas and Nick & I split a Margarita.  They also served black beans  & rice for the table.

veggie-enchildas

So for the record:  We accomplished 3 parks, 8 rides, 1 show, 1 extra awesome high five from a tumble monkey, visiting with 2 special friends from Disney, 2 restaurants, 1 fire works show & one of the greatest Disney days I could have asked for!

I am a little shocked that we made it back to Gainesville safely because we were both unbelievably exhausted from this full fun-packed day!  Little side note: Katy Perry was there on Saturday as well and stayed in Cinderella’s Castle.  No I did not see her because if I had, we’d have a picture together.

Questions:

  • What is your all time favorite Disney Memory?
  • What’s your favorite Disney ride?
  • What’s your favorite Disney show?
  • I would love to know you if you’ve been able to accomplish more in a day at Disney, because you’d be my hero, so introduce yourself below!

Filed Under: Disney, Family, Nick, Travel Tagged With: animal kingdom, Disney, Disney College Program, epcot, festival of the lion king, gainesville, magic kingdom, mexican, starbucks, tumble monkey, vegetarian, wine & dine 5 Comments

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The views and statements expressed on No Bologna are my own. You are reading No Bologna at your own risk and I am not providing any type of professional advice. Unless otherwise noted, all material on No Bologna may not be used, reprinted, or published without my consent. I do occasionally have affiliated links on my blog - this does not raise the price of the product, I simply get a very small commission from the regular retail price if something is purchased using an affiliated link on my site. I appreciate any support by you in regards to affiliated links.

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