Happy Monday and happy President’s Day my friends.

Here’s a piece of presidential trivia for you that I learned from a running group that I’m in on Facebook. George W is the only president to have ever run a marathon!

It’s been a great Monday over here. Such a treat to enjoy a slow start to the week without early school drop off and rushing to the gym for clients. Finn and I slept in and then his dad picked him up before I headed out to teach yoga at 10:45.

In my class today at Charlotte Yoga I talked about the practice of creating margin in your life. I experienced the benefits of margin this morning when I wasn’t rushing straight from training a client at the gym to teaching yoga with less than 15 minutes in between the two. I was driving the studio and stopped at a red light without experiencing dread that the light turned red or panic that I was going to be late to teach. I experienced the benefits of margin over the weekend when I let Friday and Saturday be busy and active days but let Monday be an unstructured/unscheduled day where we didn’t leave the house until dinnertime and did whatever we felt like doing.

I am keenly aware of how much margin benefits my nervous system but admittedly bad at making space for it. It is definitely something I’m thinking a lot about as I move through some upcoming schedule shifts and changes.

It’s been a minute since I shared a weekend recap so let’s do that today! 🙂

THURSDAY

Let’s start with Thursday!

I picked Finn up from school and we did a quick outfit change (he always wants to get out of his uniform and into cozy clothes) and headed out for a haircut appointment. He always asks to go really short which works well because it looks good grown out too! Our routine is to go to Suarez after for a chocolate chip cookie. We also got some other treats to give teachers/friends for Valentine’s Day gifts.

We stopped by the gym afterwards for a quick workout and Finn said to me as we were walking in, “do you think everyone will recognize me with my new haircut?” So cute.

Here’s what I did!

STRENGTH WORKOUT 

2,000 meter row (I was only going to do 1,000 but then Finn wanted to do 1,000 together)

3 ROUNDS
10 seated TRX rows (same as a regular TRX row but you start seated on the ground with your knees bent and heels down – just a little bit of a harder variation)
10 single leg deadlifts (each leg, holding 18 lb kettlebells in each hand)
10 TRX plank knee tucks + push up
10 single leg squat to sit on box (each leg, bodyweight)

3 ROUNDS
15 kettlebell swings (45#)
10 kettlebell RDL to clean and press (35#)
10 neutral grip chest presses (30#)
10 plate overhead roll up sit ups

2 ROUNDS
10 cable bicep curls
15 cable overhead tricep extensions
20 alternating step ups (holding 18# kettlebells in each hand)

Don’t forget you can workout with me in my app. I share four workouts every week and each workout has video demonstrations of each movement.

We left the gym, stopped by a friend’s house to visit for a few and then popped into Laurel Market for a slice of red velvet cake. I’m not even a red velvet kind of girl but couldn’t get it off my mind after having a bite of it that someone brought on our hiking weekend. Seemed like a solid Valentine’s treat for myself!

Back at home, we ate dinner, chatted with Mema and did shower and stories. I love these evenings with Finn.

FRIDAY

I got Finn up and off to school and then ran to The Fresh Market to get groceries for Valentine’s Day dinner and flowers for his teacher and one of my clients.

I headed back to Finn’s school where I got to spend an hour hanging out with him in his classroom. His school was having open classroom last week where parents could come in and observe. There are so few opportunities to be in the classroom so I took full advantage. It was really nice to see him in action and get a little taste of how he spends his days. One of the biggest transitions from private preschool to the local school system has been limited access to being in the school and the classroom.

I left and trained a client and the gym and then made my way to The Health Club to teach my first yoga class! More on that in a minute – keep reading!

I got Finn’s Valentine’s gifts set out for him and then picked him up from school. He said their class “friendship party” was so much fun and he loved the gifts from me. He named the Squishmallow “Beemie Star” – last year’s Valentine’s squish got named “Beauty Sparkles Junior.” My favorite thing was how much he loved the card.

Valentine’s dinner was chicken parmesan. It was a great choice for something Finn would also enjoy. Here’s my go-to chicken parm recipe. I made a side salad with mixed greens, pickled beets, strawberries, pecans, dried cranberries and goat cheese. It was dressed with sea salt and a high quality olive oil and balsamic.

And dessert was a flourless chocolate cake. I tend to prefer fruity over chocolatey desserts but Finn loves chocolate cake. This one was 100%!!!! Will definitely make it again. Not only was it incredibly easy to prepare, it tasted amazing. The texture was perfect. I used a recipe from King Arthur Baking.

SATURDAY

I left Finn snoozing and snuck out for grand opening weekend at The Health Club. It’s a new gym in the Oakhurst neighborhood of Charlotte. You can check out this article for more info. I helped create their yoga format and train their teachers – which was so much fun! I’m thrilled to be teaching a couple of weekly classes in this gorgeous new facility.

I taught a sold out 7:25a hot power flow and then snuck in a quick workout. Here’s what that looked like:

3 MILES ON THE TREADMILL 

• 1 mile warm up at 6.5
• 5 minutes: 30 seconds at 9mph, 30 seconds at 6mph
• 2 min recovery job at 6.5
• 5 minutes: 20 seconds at 9mph, 40 seconds at 7mph
• Finish at 7mph until I hit 3 miles

30 MINUTES OF STRENGTH 

4 ROUNDS
12 barbell back squats (95#)
5 strict bodyweight pull ups

3 ROUNDS
10 barbell RDLs (95#)
20 bodyweight reverse lunges
15 in and out crunches

3 ROUNDS
10 dumbbell incline chest press (27.5#)
8 weighted lateral lunges (each side, holding one 27.5# db)

I headed home, relieved my babysitter and headed straight back out for Finn’s basketball game. They put on a strong showing! He’s been participating in a church league basketball program this winter and it’s been really fun to see the boys progress from hot mess express to actually playing a basketball game!

It was such a rainy, cold and gross day in Charlotte on Sunday so after showers and lunch we decided to go to a movie. We stopped by Target first to get a few things for the house and then saw Paddington In Peru. I know Finn is standing next to a Dog Man sign but he asked me to take a photo of him with it haha. Paddington was soooo cute and we ate alllll the popcorn. We went to one of those fancy theaters with reclining seats and seat heaters and it was so cozy. A perfect rainy afternoon.

Back at home we ate dinner and played Uno for about an hour before bedtime. This resulted in so many laughs. Finn is at such a fun age.

SUNDAY

We had a much needed lazy Sunday. I got eight solid hours of sleep which was so needed. I got a lot of things done around the house – laundry, cleaning, tidying – and Finn did a lot of play, coloring and show watching.

The weather finally cleared early afternoon. We were all happy to see the sun and to get some fresh air. I always give Finn the choice of ride, walk or scooter and he usually ends up doing some sort of combo.

We did venture out of the house around 6p for an outing to Optimist Hall. It’s a big food hall with over 20 restaurants and retail businesses. There’s a little bit of everything – ramen, dumplings, sushi, burgers, pizza, smoothies, Indian, Ethiopian and more! Finn had nuggets and fries from Boxcar Betty’s and I had a vegan platter from Enat Ethiopian. It’s been a couple of years since I had Ethiopian and I like it so much. It felt fun and relaxing to do a Sunday evening out knowing we didn’t have early school or work on Monday.

We watched Ice Age Collision Course and called the weekend DONE! It was a pretty good one, don’t you think?

QUESTIONS 

Where could you create more margin in your life? 

Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day? What did you do? 

Best kid’s movie you’ve seen lately?