The best start of 27 a girl could ask for!

Geez, I'm the worst ever! For the record, I fall off the face of the Earth with my family all the time, and not on purpose! I'm just the worst about remember to call people back, send emails or apparently, writing blogs. The good news is, I've been horrible with blogging because life has been FABULOUS lately! My birthday was Sunday, March 9. A couple of days before hand, my in laws came in from Colorado. We always have a ton of fun when they are here, and of course this trip was no different. 

We went out to a great dinner at Tapped Gastro Pub in Virginia Beach, if you're in the area, I highly recommend it! We had cute little flights of beer and Vic and Misty had conspired to get me birthday cake. It only had 19 candles on it and thank God, because even that looked like too many! The place would have been smoked out with all 27, obviously. 

Us Kassels really enjoy a good night of drinks and live music at Keagan's, so we went there afterwards for more drinks and our own version of the Oscar selfie. Ours is way better, don't you agree? We had an awesome time and drank a tad too much, which Ryker didn't care about in the least the next morning. But, I got the cutest "Happy birthday, Mom!" smile the next morning:

That morning I discovered that my little baby boy could pull up on things to standing and he officially had a tooth. Now, almost three weeks later, he has two! His happy little face was the best birthday present! We left that week for our trip to Middleton Place in Charleston, SC. GORGEOUS. That's all I have to say about that! We stopped for family selfies in a cute little historic town in North Carolina...

Woke up to a crawling Ryker in our bed and some beautiful views outside of our floor to ceiling windows...

The first day we went on this amazing walk to the Middleton Place Gardens, it was absolutely breathtaking. 

The baby got to crawl around and have fun in the grass and we saw tons of sheep that were just running around the grounds! It was awesome, just the most amazing time spent outdoors, enjoying awesome views as a family. We even saw alligators! We got super close and then they would run away, which made us feel pretty bad ass, but really I was just glad they didn't try to eat us, haha!

Two days after we got back, Misty and I ran our Shamrock Half Marathon. Holy shit, that was rough, but in a great way! We were able to do so well and we kept an awesome pace for the whole thing. We finished in 2 hours and 26 minutes. The best part was that when I woke up the next day, I actually felt great! The day of I felt like my knees and ankles were broken, but after a bath with epsom salts, my nifty roller guy and some ice I felt like I was 27 and not 87. 

We didn't have any good weather for a while, so I haven't been running outside at all. But we finally got some good weather this week and Ryker and I made it outside for a two mile run. I was a little nervous about running after the race, my feet were the only thing that were bugging me all week. Sometimes my arch in my right foot gets a little messed up when I'm running a lot, but it actually did pretty well. 

I just signed up for an online coach and personal trainer, with Kyra over at theGetInShapeGirl.com. I'm pretty excited about it. Lots of checking in online and having a tailored program for workouts and nutrition. I feel like the thing I need most is the accountability and a little shaking up of my program. I'm getting pretty frustrated with this baby pooch of mine. So, time to try this out! I'll definitely be keeping you guys posted on how this goes. 

Time to get dinner prepped and get everything together for this week. Sunday is always prep day, I think tonight I'll make some taco meat for lunches. Have I shared that recipe before? Super easy, poor measuring on my part, like always, but it's amazing and makes easy salad toppings, great with plantain chips, however you want to get that delicious protein in your body to help with those gains!

Flex, Chicks and Mustaches

The Livefit trainer program with Jamie Eason has been kicking my ass! The good news is, I've been getting into Flex twice a week and I'm starting to feel like a regular, which I think is pretty cool because I'm the random in there amongst the old buff guys and super intense young buff guys. I've been using the Bodyspace App for the iPhone and I'm absolutely in love with it. When you put in your sets it has a one rep max calculator right there, along with tips and videos. I try to challenge myself to beat my one rep max, even if its only by .1 of a pound each time. 

I've got a little under two weeks until the Shamrock Half and guess how many times I've ran since the VA is for Lovers 14k two weeks ago? Zero, a big fat goose egg. We'll see how that goes. I don't even know how that happened, all of a sudden the race is in two weeks and I haven't ran for two weeks. So...time to get started back on that! 

Vic and I have an awesome vacation planned for the week of my birthday and our anniversary, which also happens to be the week before the big race. Luckily, the hotel that I found in South Carolina is super outdoorsy so I'm really excited to hike with the boys and be outside a lot. Hopefully, I can get in a few long runs while we are there too. Vic and I have already checked out the nearby gyms so that we can try and still get some workouts in while we are down there. There's that fit life, gotta find gyms ten miles away while you're on vacation!

We're still loving our eMeals Paleo plan, but after many pleading requests from Vic, I've started adding in some more carbs. I've been tracking my calorie intake and macros, and I've discovered that I have a nut addiction, mainly in the form of LaraBars. So, that obviously had to change. My fat intake was turning out to be around 50% of my calories, that's ridiculous! I've got things under control now though, I just have to really work on my protein intake. Ever since I got pregnant with Ryker, my ability to scarf down meat just hasn't been the same. For instance, tonight I made a pretty delicious Hot, Asian Chicken Thigh meal, the sauce was great, and I just couldn't do it. I forced down a decent serving and moved on. It's really just chicken, now that I think about it. I can chow down on a burger any day! Always something to improve on, right?

I promised last time that I'd try to get some evidence of Ryker crawling. He's way too slick for video taping, but here is a picture of him trying! Aren't my concrete floors awesome? Allegedly, the contractor will have the floors we ordered to us by the end of the week. I can't wait! We decided to put them down ourselves, so that should be interesting. 

It's snowing here tonight. Again. It was 73 yesterday! It was my friend Janae's birthday yesterday, so we all surprised her at Chick's Oyster Bar and enjoyed the awesome weather. It was flip flop and shorts weather, and now we're back in blankets and fires, with the heat turned up. Crazy talk. 

Jade had brought some awesome party favors, Ryker really appreciated getting to try out Daddy's facial hair. 

I'll leave you with some yummy broccoli! This might be my new favorite side dish. You can do the same thing with asparagus, trust me, it's SUPER delicious and outrageously simple. Lay down some foil and it's like the easiest clean up ever. 

Easiest, tastiest broccoli to go with any protein! Two pounds of broccoli (lots for lunches, too!), drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with lemon pepper. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, or until toasty. Yum!