Updates: Dance, Marbles, Concerts, and Food

I am EX. HAUS. TED.

These past few weeks have been hands-down some of the busiest of my life.  Tons of musical gigs for me, the regular teaching and Mom-ing that I do every week, my sister's wedding, Holy Week, oh and by the way we're trying to get our house ready to put on the market so we spent six days straight painting TEN rooms in our house, moving furniture, and cleaning.  And now I have my end-of-year violin recital coming up in about two weeks, so preparations are in full swing.  It's like I finish one busy thing, and my body's like, "Okay, now it's time to rest," and the schedule we're keeping is just like, "Nope."

So, I'm gonna take just a few minutes this morning while J is watching Sid the Science Kid to just update you on a few things.  I need a short decompression!!

C had her first dance competition of the year in March, and she and her sweet little team took first place, plus earned a special judges' award!

Proud, proud, proud Mama.  And she went up there and just did it like NBD.  Not a molecule of nerves.  Very different from last year.  She is growing up so much!!

I also had all four girls with me to give M the day at home to get some home projects done.  They were all angelically good and super supportive of their sister.  They all really enjoy watching dance routines for hours at a time-- they just love it and never get bored with it.  I had a really hard time getting them to leave the auditorium to eat lunch!  Ha.

*****

Well, I'm coming back to this post almost a month later, and we've already had another dance competition.  Ha!  As you can see, the busy times have not relented!  The second competition was also great!  Here are some of my favorite shots from that day:

C also got a lot of social time with her team girls, because we were finished dancing at 10 AM and had to wait until 2:30 PM for the awards ceremony.  They were super cute together!

We all took a walk to Dunkin' Donuts together for snacks :)  I just love the bunheads!

She has such a sweet little group of girls on her team and I'm so glad they're close!

*****

In other news, the girls have been somewhat obsessed with the Marblelympics lately and had been making marble runs out of things from the recycling bin.  I happened to see a used marble run on Facebook Marketplace one day for $5, so J and I drove to the next town over to pick it up, and the fun has been never-ending since then!

The bigger girls like to film their runs, just like the YouTube channel.  I got a big kick out of this one-- they strung together a series of black and white photos with some honky-tonk music to make what they called a "Marble Western":

So cute!

Here are some selfies of me on my way to all my various rehearsals and concerts in the past weeks! (I tried to keep in touch with M and the girls by texting them selfies, haha!  I got to sing so much wonderful music, but I did get to missing my little family, being away so much!)

I recently downloaded Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen app and through my very busy times I found that getting my daily servings of fruits & veggies was really helpful in making me feel energetic.  It took some planning ahead and food prep during free time, and I certainly wasn't always perfect, but just having the app as a reminder helped me to look for the healthiest options at each meal time!  It made SUCH a big difference in my energy level!  Of course, as I do, I took a few pictures of meals in the super busy weeks:

Kale and collards, turmeric hummus, red peppers, carrots, black olives, hemp, and Biena barbeque chickpeas.  I massaged the kale/collards in this vinagrette:

I highly, highly recommend this.  It makes your greens go down like buttah.

One of my fave breakfasts of late-- banana custard oats with flax, blueberries and walnuts!

Barbeque tempeh sandwich with cole slaw & sauerkraut topping!

Vegan chili with cashew queso over roasted potatoes (kinda like healthy chili cheese fries!)  This recipe made a TON and I'm glad it did, because I basically didn't end up having to cook the entire week we were painting the house.  We just ate leftovers of this every single night.  It was that delicious.

Another one of my favorite breakfasts of late:  quick vegan waffle made from the recipe in this video (also the video from which I learned about Dr. Greger!), topped with banana, frozen cherries, and homemade peanut butter that I made with some of the peanuts that were favors at my sister's wedding. Oh, and a side of mango.  Fruit servings FTW!!!

And, just so you know I'm eating plenty of unhealthy food too, here's photographic evidence that I was stealing C's Glutino Oreos on the regular, to go along with my gigantic mugs of coffee that got me though afternoons of painting:

Lastly, a few pics of me and M singing together at Holy Week services...

We basically like, washed the paint out of our hair just in time to sing the Easter Vigil.  LOL.

I love that I still get to sit next to him in choir, just like in the old days when we were dating.  <3  <3

I think I'll stop for now since we are now on episode 3 of Sid the Science Kid!  I want to blog about my sister's wedding, but that event really deserves a post of its own, since it was so wonderful and special, and there's so much to say about it.  Hopefully I'll get to that before too long.

Have a great week, friends!