Nature’s Promise Cheddar Puffs

Morning! Time to chat about what’s been going on in my life lately. As you guys know, April was busy busy!

At the beginning of April, I flew out to Minnesota for work. I did several different staff trainings throughout the week, but the highlight of my visit was obviously the day I got to focus on our wellness program.

Other highlights included some pretty good hotel workouts, a delicious margarita, and my first outdoor patio meal of the season.

April weekend highlights include:

My Chicago adventures, which you can read all about here if you missed my recap post.

Tim’s birthday weekend, which included dinner at The Blue Dragon, a two-hour brewing session at Hopsters, and dinner with his family at The Local in Newton.

Greek Easter, and as always, there was lots of food and our annual Easter egg cracking tournament.

Marathon Monday, which was spent with our friends Bret and Ashley in Cleveland Circle.

And finally, Slesh’s bridal shower in Connecticut.

Some other things from my month:

Pretty flowers

Worksite wellness meets office antics

Homemade pretzel night

A fun fitness focus group at Reebok Headquarters with fellow Fitfluential ambassadors

NatureBox snacks to my doorstep. I really enjoyed the three-month subscription that Tim’s sister gave me for Christmas, so I was pumped when POPSUGAR offered to send me another box through my relationship with them. I know there are a lot of subscription boxes out there, but this one is my favorite out of the three different ones I’ve tried so far. If you guys are interested, the POPSUGAR Must Have Snacks by NatureBox will be 50% off for a limited time here. I highly recommend trying it!

That’s it for April! I know we’re well into May already, but here’s what I have going on this month (a couple of which have already happened):

Blog friends dinner with Steph and Caroline
Katrina’s shower and bachelorette weekend
Bottling session at Hopsters for the beer brewed in April
Maybe finally seeing my friends from home? My childhood friend Matt just proposed to his girlfriend Katie last weekend!
Work 5k obstacle race
Mother’s Day
Slesh’s bachelorette weekend in New York
Dinner date with my friend Erin
Two free weekends, woohoo! I’m remaining non-committal for now, but I can’t decide if I want to try to escape to the Cape to kick off summer or stay at home and just relax with no plans. We’ll see!

–Let’s chat–
What are some of your highlights from April? What fun things are you looking forward to in May?

Disclaimer: POPSUGAR and NatureBox provided me with a complimentary POPSUGAR Must Have Snacks by NatureBox box. The opinions I have shared about the box are my own, and POPSUGAR and NatureBox did not tell me what to say or how to say it.

And another birthday has come and gone.

Twenty-six was a pretty fun birthday between friend fun, family dinner, and a day with the bf. I’m excited for a new year. Twenty-five did not start out so hot for me, although it did see much improvement by the end. Determined to keep that going. I’ve come a long way in a year, mentally, and I’m proud of myself for it.

BIRTHDAY ACTIVITY #1:

The first awesome part about my birthday itself was that I didn’t have to go to work. I also gave myself the day off from working out. Instead, I went to the beach. It was a beautiful day!

We packed a lot of drinks and healthy food options to munch on during the day.

Those Nature’s Promise Cheddar Puffs are dangerous. I think I could eat the whole bag! Next time, I think I’ll pack a specific amount in a ziplock baggie or tupperware instead.

I was excited to make it to the Gloucester Beaches for at least one beach trip this summer. I went to Long Beach with my family on Father’s Day, but I just love Good Harbor so much.

I loved it even more when we bought Richie’s Slush!

We spent five hours total in this:

Perfect relaxation.

BIRTHDAY ACTIVITY #2:

I treated myself to a massage. Well, actually Uncle Chris treated me to a massage. I found an old gift card to Daryl Christopher that he gave me when I graduated from college that I never used. So I booked myself a Sports Massage to try and work out some of the pain I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that I’ve been feeling in my shoulder/back/neck lately. My massage therapist told me I have one of the biggest knots she’s ever seen in my neck/back area and that is probably one of the reasons I am having so much pain in my arm/shoulder. She literally spent half of the massage on that spot alone trying to work out the kinks. My body feels ten times better today – such relief! I am still going to my doctor’s appointment tomorrow at Lahey Clinic to make sure the pain isn’t attributed to something else (please no rotator cuff injury, please no rotator cuff injury). But this makes me more hopeful that my need to teach with invisible weights this week is only temporary and just a sign for me to slow down. Working out all the time ends up backfiring if you overwork your body. But anyways – awesome awesome awesome massage. I’m going to go back in a few weeks for another session.

BIRTHDAY ACTIVITY #3

Dinner! Tim surprised me with dinner in Charlestown, which now makes sense with his clue of “It’s in an area we never go to.”

He chose a place called Navy Yard Bistro & Wine Bar.

As you can see, we ordered sangria. It was tasty!

For an appetizer we ordered a grilled flatbread that had Pecorino Toscano, Marinated Grilled Pears, and Italian Speck Ham on it.

This is what they brought out:

We were so confused as to how this could possibly be the $10 flatbread we ordered. But we ate it anyways. The hummus was good.

Then the waitress came back with this:

We quickly realized that we were both actually dumb enough to forget that sometimes restaurants bring out bread first. We laughed a lot about that! Even though I ate the “fake flatbread” (regular bread/hummus), I still dove into the “real flatbread.”

For our entrees, Tim ordered the Lobster Risotto and I ordered the Swordfish Special. I was pumped to order the swordfish because of my Restaurant Week FAIL last week. It was DELICIOUS. Hands down one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. Good job Tim!

It was cooked with corn, yukon potatoes, java beans, and some type of lemon sauce. I gobbled it right up! The swordfish was SO tender. Tim’s Lobster Risotto was so good too. It was made with roasted Tomatoes, Basil, Asparagus, and Saffron Butter.

And because it was my birthday, we ordered dessert.

Creme Brulee!

After dinner, we walked around by the water a little bit before sitting back down in the car.

The city looked really pretty at night:

And I was happy to have an occasion to wear my new dress (Target!):

MORE BIRTHDAY PRESENTS

For my present, Tim is going to pay for me to get the upgrades for Fitness & Feta! How thoughtful is that?? He also bought me a Swiss Ball Chair so I can use it at work, and one of those Power Balance wristbands that are all the rage lately. He knows me too well.

My roommates also gave me my present last night, which I’m super psyched to start using. Session 3 of bootcamp is starting up, so my new portable iPOD/CD player will be PERFECT. So will my new whistle/stopwatch. And my Panera gift card for eating after my workouts. 🙂