Memorial day

I have lots to catch up on still, including our last minute trip to Vegas over the weekend.

But I figured I'd share pictures from memorial day. Sunday was military appreciation day at our church. It is a big event that is in its second year. This year both Frank and myself were in town to participate (I was pretty excited!).

Monday, memorial day, we went out to Coronado to play in the sand with the pups.

Goodies

I think we have a few new staples in our house. Yesterday I was in the kitchen all day baking (technically I should be in there baking cookies for our potluck at church tonight) up some healthy treats :]

First I made some healthy pop tarts (they do exist!) from mama pea over at Peas and Thank You. Mine look nothing like actual pop tarts as you can see.. sorry about the sideways picture. I rotated it but it keeps going back this way when I upload it on here.

I chose not to do any toppings to keep them sugar free (minus the natural sugars of the organic strawberry preserve.)

These are so amazing! I am very much against any store bought pop tarts because of the sugar content among other things.. but these I can get on board with :] 

Back in January I made some cinnamon and vanilla granola from Simply Sugar & Gluten Free. I was positive that I had blogged about it, but I guess that was when I had taken a hiatus due to no Internet and not knowing about the blogger app then. I had made a huge batch and took it to my military group at church.. it was a hit! I raved to Frank about it but of course he didn't care since he couldn't try it for himself. I had been saying since then that I was going to make some more. Yup, never got around to it... until yesterday.

When Keri did her grocery post I noticed that she bought coconut yogurt. She told me they make parfaits with it; berries, crushed almonds and I think she said some honey. We loved it but immediately Frank said granola would be best. Ding Ding Ding! I knew I had to make the cinnamon and vanilla granola.

This picture isn't the prettiest.. but oh man was it good!! Frank is in love with this granola, he would have taken the whole thing to work (which I'm glad he didn't!) but he's in a class this week so the granola stayed safe in my kitchen :]

The other idea for the granola that I had was using it as a cereal. We're out of stuff to juice and have to wait till next pay day to stock back up. So cereal it is for now. Lisa over at 100 days of real food always talks about how they do puffed brown rice cereal (a 1 ingredient cereal) topped with homemade granola, banana and milk (I used coconut this morning). I noticed the puffed brown rice cereal on sale at Sprouts so I decided to try it out. It was such a good, light cereal! Tomorrow I want to try the other "cereal" they do. Granola topped with berries and milk. Totally loving the healthy cereal alternatives when I can't juice.

I should mention that Frank has been loving the envirokidz cereal. Limited ingredients and much much healthier than the big name cereals (I actually just drew a blank on cereals to put down ha! Goes to show how much I eat them). If you haven't tried them you should, they are really tasty!

Time management??

Yup need to work on that thing called time management again! I'm hoping to get a group of ladies from the military ministry together to run/walk the jogging for frogman 5k (I'll post more on that later) that is going on in July. I am really excited and hope it comes together. That is also when I realized I need to get crackin' on organizing my days better. Being down to one car is no easy task. However, going into debt for a second car (or motorcycle) is a no go for us anymore.

Anyways, since I'm not sure on when I will be getting around to posting pictures from Franks families visit I figured I'd share a few that I took with my phone.

Of course since I am posting from my phone none of these pictures are in order.
The one of Frank holding up the shirt is from the true religion outlet store. I thought it was super cute.

Chickpeas and dumplings

AMAZING! It's all there is to say. You must try this recipe as soon as possible. If frank loves this, then it must be good :) as you can see we practically licked our bowls clean ha.

I'm on my blogger app so you get the whole ugly link ha.
You can thank peas and thank you for this delicious recipe.
http://peasandthankyou.com/recipage/?recipe_id=6001575

Why you should eat your veggies!!

This video is amazing! It is why mine and Frank's health is so important to me. I hope you all take the time to watch it.

Salad love

Blogging from the dog park today :] it's pretty empty so we're loving that.

For lunch I made a salad with whatever I could find in the fridge (this week is all about eating whatever is left over from the fams visit). So so yummy!!

For meat eaters topping this with grilled chicken would be a nice touch.

One thing I wished I had to add to this was avocado! Oh how delicious that would have been... Anyways, super simple and easy to throw together.

My salad::
Spinach
Hard boiled egg
Cucumber
Tomato
Flaxseeds
Pepper
Black beans
Olive oil

Back to reality

Vacation is over, Frank's family left this morning. We loved hosting them but I know after 2 weeks we all were a bit ready to get back to our daily schedules.. and their own beds for them!

Today we started a new series at church called "Exposed" LOVED it! So true and everyone can relate to it in one way or another. Have I mentioned lately how much I love The Rock? Well I do :] So happy for being able to watch live online or on my iPhone app when I'm away.

I just realized this post has turned into a random bullet point type post... hmm.

Frank and I are very proud of ourselves with how well we did with money while his family was here. We of course budgeted, but we didn't "plan" anything. We just had the money there to use and if we used it up, we used it up. Well we managed to not use it all. We have come such a long way since we were first together and stupid with our money and spending/budgeting.
We still have about $2800 (I think) left on our debt. So close yet so far away! We have been sitting around that amount for a few months now. Life came up so we haven't been able to put everything towards paying it off. All we can say is "Oh well!". We are still very happy with all we have done. I keep telling myself that because we have a few things we have to fix on the explorer this next pay check so we won't have much to put toward said debt... oh well... ha.

Because of the car issues (rather important when it is your only vehicle) we are unable to attend our churches marriage retreat. This was the year we FINALLY thought we were going to make it. Sadly it is not happening for us. I do hope to hear great things from our friends who do go.

Summer is almost here. LOVE <3

Frank and I are on a mission to hike as many new trails around us as possible by the end of summer.

Tomorrow (Monday) is our first day back to the gym in almost 2 months!! Craziness. We both have put on a few too many pounds and are ready to get our butts back in gear. We plan to start on the summer slam challenge that I did before he came home. It was so easy to follow and had great results, the only hard part for Frank is charting his eating. I'm excited to be back in training mode non the less though.

We found Better Buzz coffee shop and are hooked! Cheaper AND better than starbucks. I'm just sad that it took us almost 3 years to find them.

Listening to Pandora and snuggling with my girls is perfect :]