Family Dinner Night at the Farm

Hey Y'all!

One of my favorite nights of the week is when we all get together to share a meal together. You see, we live out on *almost* 27 acres of land. In *hopefully* a month or a little over, my in laws house and my sister in laws and brother in laws house will be finished.

For now, we have been hosting a family dinner night at our house since November. I stay at home with little girl now so I thought it would be nice to cook a meal for everyone mid week. It takes some planning and prepping to make a meal for 8 people, two of which have food allergies (corn and gluten) but I have found some great go to recipes that everyone can enjoy!



We love these recipes:

We've also made burgers, meatloaf, chicken and more.


Tonight on the menu: crockpot chicken, sweet potato casserole and sautéed asparagus!


What's on your menu for tonight? I'm always looking for great new recipes to try!

Make a Change Monday

Friends,  I turn 30 in less than 4 months! In challenge with my friend, Nicole, over at Behind our Doors, and real life bestie, who will be 30 in 3 months, texted me yesterday saying she was going to get herself in gear because she wants to look and feel good on her 30th. Now I think she looks great anyways but I totally get it! That gave me the inspiration to be intentional and work hard to get healthy again.

So I'm making a change.

Here's my plan! I'm going to eat "clean" breakfasts, lunches, snacks and most of the time for dinner. I have to find good "clean" recipes that hubs, who doesn't love veggies, will like. What is eating "clean" you might ask? Well I've looked a lot on Pinterest for some good recipes and ideas. Here is an image I pulled from pinterest on clean eating for beginners.

I'll be sharing the clean eating recipes I try! Please share any good info on clean eating or recipes you have! I need all the help I can get to try to make this change!


With eating clean, I also am going to commit to this exercise plan at least for the first month and then up it a bit.

Monday-Friday: Afternoon walks with Olivia, either pushing her in our jogger stroller, having her walk with me or a combo of both. This is obviously weather permitting but even if it is yucky outside, I hope and plan to do some other type of activity. Whether it be playing a game of chase or a dance party!

M-W-F Mommy and Me yoga from youtube videos on our apple tv.

She has the downward facing dog pose down!

Apparently one of us needs snacks to get us through the "Mommy and Me" yoga session! 

Tu-Th- Either get up early or have Hubs watch/play with the baby while I get in a 30-45 min high intensity workout video either from youtube or xbox kinect or dvds.

Weekends-any activity is a bonus! We usually try to stay home for a good part of Saturday and if it's nice out, we spend lots of time taking walks out on our farm.

If y'all have any recommendations on workouts or videos, let me know! Since moving out to the country and having a toddler who doesn't like to be put in any type of nursery/child care setting,  my workouts will have to be at home/a park/ or on our farm.

Making changes are so hard. We can't do it alone.  We have to have a good support system to help us on our journey. This goes for anything.

My main purpose on making this change is to feel better about myself, get some weight off, be healthy before we try/think about having another babe and have more energy to keep up with my super active toddler.

Join me on this journey! You won't be sorry!

I plan to make this a weekly "Make a Change Monday" and once I figure out how to add a link up for anyone else who wants to join, I will add it.

Stay tuned for more!

Five on Friday-family and randomness

It's Friday, friends! Go link up with Natasha from Hello! Happiness. 

One. Our Home!

This pic was taken back in January during our "big" snow! Hah!

I am just so grateful for our beautiful home. The building process was frustrating and stressful at times-well maybe most of the time-but it was all worth it to live out on a beautiful piece of land. Of course when you build your *Lord-willing* forever home, there are some things you have to sacrifice or have to be willing to wait to make the upgrades and I am so glad we did what we did. We had planned on having a wrap around porch-my dream-and wait to build the garage/bonus room but I gave up my $$$ wrap around porch for the garage and bonus and I am so glad I did. We still have a nice front porch but having the garage and bonus have been so wonderful! I'm still planning on the add on wrap around porch someday but for now, we will rock on the front porch!

Two. This sweet girl and her love of slides! We went with a friend to Monkey's Treehouse yesterday and this girl had to try all the slides! She was brave and tried the big tube slide and loved it-as long as momma was down at the bottom to see when she came down! 

Three. Family dinner nights.

Around November, I started inviting my inlaws/sis in law/bro in law/nephew over on Thursday's for family dinner night. Since staying at home, it is nice to be able to help your family out and to be able to share a meal midish week together. My sis in law has to be gluten free due to celiac disease and my mother in law is allergic to corn as well as some other things. We have come up with some great meals that everyone can eat! I shared the links to a couple of those meal a few weeks ago. My favorite is still the chicken tortilla soup in the crockpot!


Four. Kids consignment sales.

This momma loves kids consignment sale season. Favorite things to buy/look for at the sales: holiday wear, swim suits, books, toys, SHOES, and really anything! We have snagged some cute summer clothes and some nice play shoes so far. I have my eye on a couple more sales coming up!

Five. Q and A book for moms. 

 

A five year journal. I am loving this book hubs gave me for Christmas. A question a day. Totally doable even if you miss a couple days, it's easy to catch up. *Click on the book and it will take you to amazon!*

What are you thankful for or loving this Friday? 

Run

Running-we have a love/hate relationship. I feel so good after a walk/run (or so I think I remember that feeling) but now that we live on the farm and the field is bumpy and the gravel driveway is less than ideal to run on, running has taken a back seat. Like all the way in the back of a stretch Hummer. There's a park with a small 3/4 mile loop that is paved that isn't too far from us. This momma needs to make it a priority to get out and do some running/walking! In 2010, I ran/walked my first half marathon and did 4 more after that and 3 5k's. I'm thinking of signing up for another 5k to keep me accountable. I would love to maybe run/walk one more half. My dream is do to the Disney princess half marathon at Disney World one day. Who's with me? Come on, I know one of you would be crazy to join me at Disney one day! For now, let's take a walk down memory lane and revisit my past races. I've put links to their recaps if any of y'all are interested! 

Country Music Half Marathon April 2010-recap

Women's Half Marathon Sept 2010-recap 

Country Music Half Marathon April 2011-recap

Women's Half Marathon Sept 2011-recap

Capital City Half Marathon in Columbus, OH May 2012-recap

All 5 Half Marathons in order above!

Color Run 5K-recap

5K Foam Fest-worst race :-( recap

Rudolph Run 5K -recap

Maybe, just maybe looking at all my past race recaps will give me the motivation to get back in the saddle and lace up some running shoes soon!

Teach

If you're a reader or have been in the past, then you know why my blog is called Teach*Run*Love. If you're a new reader, I taught for 7 years. The first 3 were teaching first grade and the last 4, I taught Kindergarten all at the same school. I taught the whole school year when I was pregnant except for the last 3 weeks when I was put on bed rest and then I went back in August after Olivia was born at the end of May to teach one more year. That year was one of the hardest of my life. Another post on that later...
I've thought about changing it lately because teaching and running aren't part of my everyday life lately but then I thought, I'm teaching my daughter new things everyday and I have things to share about my past teaching adventures and current (temporary) preschool adventures. 

How did she get so big? She loves "ool" (school), Mrs. Amy's preschool that I'm teaching right now while she is on maternity leave! 

For the running part, well it's been awhile. Like a LONG while since I've really ran besides chasing a toddler around. I keep saying I need to and want to get back into exercising but the actual doing it is so hard! Finding the time when your child gets up so early, inconsistent length of naps and by the time she goes to bed and I make dinner for Hubs and I (since he doesn't get home until 7:30-7:45) I'm just down right done! Trying to do a workout from a DVD, youtube or on the Xbox Kinect is pretty impossible when you have a little one either wanting to run around you or wanting you to hold her. If any of you have any ideas on how to do workouts with a toddler, let me know! We love walking outside but it's either been too rainy/wet in the field/gravel driveway or too cold. We are ready for spring minus the rain!
What are your tips for exercising with a toddler?
Any neat toddler teaching ideas?

Five on Friday

Five on Friday- Go link up with Natasha at Hello Happiness! 

1. Olivia's growing vocabulary.
Little one says new words everyday I feel like. She recently has an obsession with "Let it go" from Frozen or "got go" as she says all the time in a singing tune. When she says water, it is so cute. She pretends to go night night too and loves babies!

 

                                             source                                                            source
2. Planning trips for the summer.
We have a few trips we are starting to plan. A beach trip that coincides with Hubs and FIL's golf trip to NC and a lake long weekend with my fam!

3. New recipes.

Chicken parm sliders

chicken tortilla soup 

chicken and cheese quesadilla pie

4. Family. I absolutely love my family. My hubs and little girl are my world! I love how much she loves her mommy and daddy and how she shows us her love. I love how she fold her hands to pray and how she says "may-man" for amen. My heart turns to mush when I see Hubs snuggle up with little girl to watch "let it go" for the 7 millionth time or takes her out to shoot "ball ball".  I wish I was able to see my parents and brothers/sis in laws more often but the drive to wv is still a little hard on Livi/Mommy. Especially if daddy can't come with us. We love to FaceTime with Grammy (woo woo/woof woof) and papa j. But in all honesty, she wants to see Tanner, the golden retriever. I'm so incredibly proud of my brothers. My brother Jacob has a fantastic job working for the Toyota plant and my brother Adam is in his rotations for PA school and will graduate in August. They have given me two sisters that I love so much! I adore the family I married into, as well! I do get to see my inlaws everyday! They are building a house right beside us and my sis in law, bro in law and nephew are building beside them. I love how much they all love on Olivia and take care of us too! Olivia loves her cousin, Ze, so much! It is adorable to see them laugh together.



5. Fun with friends.
I am so blessed with some wonderful friends! From my girlfriends who keep me sane and we can pick up where we left off if it's been awhile that we've gotten together to my friends who also stay at home with their kids to give us play date breaks, adult convo, and lunch dates out.

What would be your top 5 things that you love or are thankful for this Friday?

I'm BAAAACK!!

Hi! My name is Tiffany! I'm back!
I've been off the blog world as a writer for a long time now but I'm ready to try to make a comeback!
My last post was over a year ago about Olivia's birth story. I also just realized I had several posts started about the day we found out we were expecting Olivia and a 6 month in post but I might just keep those as drafts. We are almost 20 months in and I'll post updates about my sweet, joyful and crazy toddler! 

A lot has happened since then. I'll make a bullet list to update y'all!
*Taught kindergarten for my 7th year teaching Olivia's first year of life.
*That was an incredibly hard year of trying to balance it all while nursing/pumping.
*We started building our house on the farm September 2015.
*I had a kidney stone attack (for the first time) December 2015 and then had surgery to put a temporary stint in in January 2016. Both painful/uncomfortable.
*We moved into our forever home on the farm at the end of Feb 2016.
*Derek took a job at Rotogrinders in Nashville in March 2016.
*Olivia's first Easter!
*My official first Mother's Day!
*The end of May brought the end of the school year and I took off my school teaching hat and put on a new stay at home Mommy hat which I wear with so much gratitude and joy, even on the hard days!
*We celebrated Olivia's first birthday with lots of family and friends for a little lamb theme!
*We had play dates, zoo trips, lunch dates, 2 trips to WV over the summer! She loved the pool!
*Olivia also started walking in July!
*We celebrated our nephew/cousin's birthday over the summer at a park!
*We had a Fourth of July cookout at our house, celebrated my 29th birthday and Derek and I celebrated our 7th anniversary with a fancy dinner at Kayne Prime steakhouse!
*We had lunch dates with daddy in Nashville a few times, went to the library for story time, went to the discovery science center in Murfreesboro, the Williamson co fair, an indoor swimming pool with a kids zone.
*A Labor Day trip to Moorehead KY to meet Olivia's great grandparents at a family reunion (Sandy,Derek's mom's, parents), Mommy and daddy had a night away in Nashville for Daddy's work event for the kick off of NFL season!
*We had a couple different sets of friends come and stay with us this year at our new house!
*we hosted our 5th annual family fall festival! It was a huge hit! So much fun!
*We went to Chattanooga to a cabin to celebrate GiGi's (MIL) 60th birthday!
*played at the park, went to trick or treat at a few libraries, we were sick with the stomach bug so no trick or treat and no pumpkin patches this year. :-(
*Went to WV for Thanksgiving!
*had a wonderful Christmas season with seeing the lights at Opryland, visiting santa, decorating our home for the first time for Christmas, reading a Christmas book a night to count down to Christmas, advent season at church, a super fun Christmas morning for our sweet girl (although I battled a sinus infection for the few days before Christmas and on Christmas Day), went to wv for a few days after Christmas and my parents came back with us for the new year weekend, we hosted a low key nye party at our house!

The start of 2017 has been snowy, then warm, then rainy. Olivia and I are having fun going to Mrs. Amy's Tiny Tots preschool to teach her class while she is on maternity leave. I'll talk more about that in a separate post.

I am glad to be back and I hope to keep it up!"