The Girls' 1st Race!

Fitness is a large part of my life. It has been for the past 10 years or so when I lost almost 40 pounds!

I would love to pass along to our girls the love of exercise and teach them to love being healthy and physically active.  

{Note: I do NOT want to teach my kids that being "SKINNY" equates to being healthy. I will probably never be skinny/model thin and that is perfectly fine with me!}

So, when the girls' gym coach told us about the Red Nose Race, we signed up right away! Our city had a hugely popular adult marathon and some local businesses sponsored a smaller race for the kids to participate in the same weekend. 

 Warming up before the race. It was a cool morning, but turned out to be a nice, fall day!

 Elle at the starting line.

 Our family:)

 My husband ran with Ce Ce and I ran with Em. For some reason, she didn't feel like running with the bigger kids.

 Elle crossing the finish!

Our little athletes:-)

What ways do you incorporate fitness into your lives?

We would LOVE to hear about it!

Blessings,

Aria:)

Helping Others

Matthew 5:16 

"In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." 

This is one of my favorite Bible verses!  It really speaks to the reasons WHY we, as Christians, are to perform good works. NOT for our own personal gain or glory, but so that GOD may be glorified!!!

This weekend, our family participated in a 2-mile walk to raise money and awareness about Juvenile Diabetes. We put it on our Fall Fun Festivities List, and are so happy to have been able to complete this event!

  Friends of ours have a daughter the same age as our oldest with Type 1 Diabetes. It is life-changing. We chose to participate in this walk in honor of them and we had a really fun time doing it:)!

 There were LOTS of people involved and the weather was absolutely GORGEOUS for a midwestern fall day!

 Me, with a local news anchor.

 We had so much fun on this huge slide:)

 Our sweet love, Ce Ce, having an apple. I just praise God for our children and pray for their health daily.

 It was such a gorgeous day,we decided to spend it at the park after the walk.

 It was the perfect day! Our girls learned what it means to really help others and we had such a wonderful feeling being with so many others who shared a common goal. We are praying for our friends and all children with diabetes. We hope you will join in the effort. Please check out The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's website for more info!

Blessings,

Aria:)

"Shared Food Has No Calories"...

My husband absolutely LOVES Italian food! He could eat spaghetti and meatballs every.single.day and be in heaven:-) Me, not so much. It's not that I do not like pasta with tons of cheese and sauce, it is that I know that I will instantly gain 5 pounds if I do not work out even MORE after eating it that makes it less desirable for me. 

That being said, I do not cook Italian foods that often. Truth be told, my husband makes a killer lasagna! So, when I do break from our healthy eating trend and make something special--I go all out! You have been warned. This is NOT normally on our menu and won't be again for a very long time, but boy is it DELICIOUS!!!!

****If you are on a diet....don't look....trust me, you will kick yourself for even peaking. You will dream about this dinner. I know, I am getting hungry just thinking of it:)****

This was my very first attempt at stuffed shells. I think they turned out pretty well. Hubby says  "I out-did myself on this one!" That's a pretty good review, I'd say.

 It really was pretty simple. I used some ricotta as well as cottage cheese, spinach, ground turkey, onions, eggs and grated parmesan and shredded mozzarella cheeses for the filling. Oh, and extra cheese and sauce on top:-) I told you it is not the diet version, lol. 

As you can see, I used a ziploc baggie to pipe the filling into the shells. One additional tip I would offer is to cook the shells about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes LESS than what the box calls for and shock them in cold water. This way they stay firm for filling and get fulling baked in the oven.

Now, for the BEST part of the meal. Oh, my!! I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing this CHEESEY garlic bread is! Maybe because I haven't had anything but whole wheat bread in so long, but it is truly amazing! Sinfully good. I found the idea on a blog by a woman who is a true inspiration to my heart. You can find it here. I started with it and tweaked it a bit to suit our family. I added some garlic to the cheese and also italian seasoning in the cheese and on top of the bread. It was AMAAAAYZING!!

Elle did a wonderful job helping me. She had so much fun stuffing the cheese into the bread!

 Did I mention it was CHEESEY!??

 See what I mean??? Oh, it is divine!!

A MUST-TRY recipe!!

 Of course, we had to have our fruits and veggies first. Elle did some fraction work while de-seeding the cucumbers for salad:)

 When Em finally woke up from her nap, she was happy to join us in the kitchen!

Everyone LOVED it!!

And, now to explain the title of this post. I heard long ago that "shared food has no calories" and it is certainly true! I am known for feeding friends and family and giving away tons of food to our neighbors. So, I made an extra batch of stuffed shells and baked some banana bread to go along with it and blessed our elderly neighbors with it---they LOVED it, too:) {Even though I think I heard my husband's heart break just a tiny bit as he was walking it over to their house, LOL. He wanted to keep it all in the house for him us to eat, LOL!}

Now, back to my carrot sticks...:-)

"Cookies For the Cuties"

Our girls decided they wanted to do a community service project to demonstrate God's love in action. Our action word for the week is "GIVE," so the girls chose to go visit some elderly residence at a local Assisted Living Facility. We even named our project "Cookies for the Cuties." It was a difficult task to find a facility that would accept home baked goods as many have the policy of only accepting store bought items. But, God was in this project and sent us the perfect person to arrange this with!

We baked a bunch of very delicious cookies from scratch and hand-delivered them with a huge smile and listening ears. It was such an amazing experience for our entire family! We will certainly do this again and encourage all of you to get out and bless someone else! You will be richly blessed in return!!

I also shared this post on The Preschool Corner and No Time for Flashcards.