Abs 'n' Arms

Hello again! It's so nice to feel like I'm on something of a regular blogging schedule again. I love this little hobby of mine, and it's a lovely treat to find time to write. Thanks for reading along. :-)

Today was a busy one. I had a doctor appointment, and Terry came with me to watch Marshall while I was in there. We also went out to lunch and then I dropped Terry back off at work before Marshall had a crazy meltdown. Poor guy. We played it pretty mellow after that.

Thanks to some suggestions on Facebook, I upped my game for tonight's dinner. As I mentioned yesterday, I was already planning to slow cook some chicken breasts with salsa, but I really wasn't sure where I'd go from there. Here's what I did:

- four chicken breasts in the crock pot with about a cup of salsa (we like Whole Foods' 365 Salsa Verde)--I spread about 1/4 cup of salsa on the bottom and the rest on top of the chicken
- cooked on LOW for 4.5 hours (ours switches to warm when the timer's up--does everyone's crock pot do that?)
- pulled the chicken out, shredded it up, and then added about a cup (maybe more) of the liquid from the crock pot to the shredded chicken (I tossed the rest of the liquid, which was about another cup); then I returned the chicken to the crock pot on the "warm" setting until we were ready to eat

My friend Kirsten suggested sweet potato and black bean burritos, but I didn't have black beans, so we made do. I opted for a salad, and Terry went with a burrito, and we loaded up with:
- the awesome chicken (so juicy!)
- sweet potato fries (sliced into wedges, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, roasted at 450 for about 35 minutes, tossing halfway through)
- lettuce
- avocado
- tomatoes
- more salsa
- pepper jack cheese (for Terry)
- crumbled tortilla chips

Remember how I don't love salads? I could get on board with this one!

I am already inspired to make tons more fun meals, so I started pinning some ideas today. Hopefully this new motivation will last!

I even felt motivated to squeeze in an upper body workout today. After a nice walk (Terry strapped Marshall into the Ergo to get him to take a good nap), I grabbed a set of dumbbells and got to it.

* - I made up this move. It's a regular biceps curl plus a hammer curl plus a reverse curl, all in a row (that's one rep).  

** - I did this one on a ball.

I loved this quick workout. My arms definitely felt fatigued at the end, but it was over before I knew it. Plus it only required a set of dumbbells and a stability ball. Marshall also thought the whole thing was pretty funny, so that's a win. I love being back to strength training!

What did you have for dinner today?

Any fun upper body workouts to share?