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Between the Storms

As my luck would have it, I was able to do all my driving between the storms. Honestly, it had to be pure luck. No sooner had I sat down comfortably on my yoga mat when the sky opened up. And when I say opened up, I mean full-on monsoon rains. Fortunately, I love practicing yoga during a storm. There is something completely soothing about practicing to the sound of falling rain. Now there were a couple of bolts of lightning that were a bit too close given the loud thunder and how vigorously the thunder shook the building. Thursday’s class is seventy-five minutes of gentle flow, so by the time, we finished our practice the storm had passed.

No sooner had I made it home when the storms again opened up. This was, of course, the case when I went to grab my coffee this morning. As I left, the storm was pulling away from our house and I hit a few sprinkles as I got to Dunkin. Fortunately, the heavy stuff held off until after I got home. I moved up my run a half-hour since my yoga class was moved up a half-hour. Consequently, my Thursday date with Curb happened at 10:00 instead of 10:30. Naturally, my legs were quite sore after the back to back days running. My foot felt pretty good, but my body was tired. Nonetheless, I persevered and logged three miles on the treadmill. Since I was heading immediately to yoga post-run, I did a truncated version of my post-run stretch routine.

Honestly, I’m exhausted. I should really just take a hot shower and go to bed, but here I am finishing my blog. Seriously though this week has been mentally and physically exhausting for no specific reason other than the dumpster fire that has been 2020. My neck and my shoulders are super tight. I’m hoping with the great work we did in Jen’s yoga class today that they’ll feel better tomorrow. My shoulder gets horribly tight since my diagnosis of Graves. Unfortunately, the tightness migrates up my neck as well. For the most part, my yoga practice keeps my shoulders and neck open. Nonetheless, I do get periodic flare-ups, which suck bananas, but I digress.

Speaking of dumpster fires, I started reading Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskells. When I say dumpster fire, I’m referring to the unmitigated tragedy that was the life of Charlotte Bronte and her siblings. Gaskell wrote the biography beautifully in the style of a novel. Gaskells, of course, was a contemporary and friend of Charlotte’s. Her biography is not only a view from the rearview mirror of their friendship but also the viewpoint of her family and friends. Some have argued that Gaskells’ portrayal of Bronte’s life was sanitized by her piety in the face of Bronte’s more worldly view. Thus far I have made it as far as the death of Charlotte’s mother. At the time Charlotte and her siblings were quite young and quite alone and often left to their own devices. Honestly, it’s amazing that three literary geniuses could arise out of such an upbringing.

I cooked another HelloFresh dinner tonight, which was Balsamic Fig Chicken with roasted potatoes. I don’t know what I did, but my piece of chicken was not great. The rest of the dinner was fantastic. Fortunately, the entire family ate the meal I cooked tonight. This is pretty significant since my Mayor has decided to be a picky eater. Tomorrow I’ll be cooking another pasta dish. Since neither service provides gluten-free pasta, so I substitute gluten-free pasta from the grocery store. Meanwhile, my Mayor cooks the delivery service pasta for his spaghetti lunch. After dinner, I swept the floor picked up the kitchen. Then the dogs and I chilled on the couch and watched It’s Always Sunny. My boys drove down to Miami to skate for a couple of hours this morning. It’s great to have them back on the ice!

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskells

*Morning and afternoon meditation

*Gentle Flow with Jenn at Open Heart Yoga

*Thought of ways to incorporate the word cove into my blog.

*Took obligatory picture of Anakin!

*Yonder look for a full product review on ny new scale

*Obedience training Anakin

*Week 5 BBG 2.0 day 2 run!!! Back at it baby!

*Took Anakin, Maya and Athena out for a walk

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Save $100 A Month

If you use shopping cart or affiliate software for your business, you’ll want to pay close attention to this article. It can save you hundreds of dollars in overhead expenses for your business.   Especially if you’re using software or services just a ThriveCart, SamCart, PayKickStart, Clickbank or JV Zoo. You’ll want to pay attention…because what I’m sharing with you today is making marketing history.

GrooveDigital software development company, owned by marketing legend Mike Filsaime, is focused on creating the most powerful, affordable and simple to use all-in-one software service that you can use to build, grow and manage an online business.  Well, they just seriously disrupted the business software market by carving off a major portion of their flagship product, GrooveFunnels, and making it completely free (at least for now).  Introducing GrooveSell.. a powerful sales and affiliate platform for digital marketers and infopreneurs to sell their products.  The software at it’s core helps you take payments and manage customers for physical products, digital product and services. It comes with a full-featured affiliate system too (GrooveAffiliate) which lets you amass an army of commission-only salespeople to help you promote and get paid for your products!

 

This easy-to-use software creates checkout pages that are designed to convert more visitors into buyers, more clicks into sales, and manage the process from beginning to end.  This is no “basic” software version either. It allows you to do some pretty ninja tactics to increase your dollar per sale. Not only can you do the usual up-sells and down-sells in your product funnel, but the software adds order bumps before purchase, and true 1-click up-sells (with and without confirmation) to your funnels. This allows you to make point of purchase impulse sales of related items, increasing your dollar per transaction of just pure profit.

 

GrooveSell also features a powerful set of tools that lets you set flexible pricing structures that are unheard of on other platforms. Need a free trial product? No problem! You can set any trial length or price you’d like. If you have an one time onboarding charge followed by a monthly maintenance fee.. GrooveSell can do that too. Want to offer two annual payments that recur every year at the same time? It can do that too.

 

You even have eight different options for recurring billing. The system will automatically charge your customers at their regular billing interval (weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, every two months, quarterly, bi-annually, annually and every two years).  It integrates with all of the major payment processors, like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net and if you don’t have a merchant account, they are releasing GroovePayments very shortly, where they will process payments for you for a very competitive percentage.  Plus, it grows with you. For bigger businesses doing high volume there’s merchant account warming and load balancing built into the system, so you can avoid getting your credit card or PayPal account shut down during major promotions.

 

With your free account you get:

 

-Unlimited products

-Unlimited product funnels

-Unlimited checkout loads (bandwidth)

-Unlimited affiliates

-Unlimited customers

-Unlimited support

-Unlimited payment gateways

 

And all of this is free. That’s right, free for life.

-no credit card required- ever

-no monthly fees

-no surprise bills

-full feature set

-every upgrade they ever do

 

Plus, there’s an incredible bonus of GroovePages Basic, which lets you build pages for up to three product funnels. So you can create a sales page, checkout page, and thank you page to deliver your product to your buyer.  The bottom line is: You can do anything with GrooveSell that you can do with any digital marketing shopping cart out there.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

How much does grabbing your free GrooveSell account save you?

 

Well let’s compare GrooveSell to the other major players in this space

ThriveCart (one time $495.00 payment)

SamCart ($49.00 per/month)

PayKickStart ($99.00 per/month)

JV Zoo (5% commission on all sales, +2.5% additional for some sales)

Clickbank ($49.95 activation fee, $1+7.5% transaction fee for each sale, and a whopping $2.50 fee each time you want to withdraw your money!)

 

Which brings us to these questions… What’s the catch? Why is it free?

 

There’s zero catch. In fact, when you get your free account, you won’t even get an immediate promotion to try and upsell you.  The software is in beta at the time of this writing, so there are some features (like support for worldwide currency) that is not yet available. Moreover, the company has assured me that all features will be ready by their launch in July 2020. Until then, the platform is still fully functional and useable.

 

GrooveDigital stated that the company wanted to give back to the community, and provide real value to people… not just a flimsy ebook or lame set of templates to entice you to join their list… but REAL value in the form of a useable product that never requires a purchase.

 

And they’ve done just that. You could build a pretty decent business using nothing but the free product you get with GrooveSell, plus your social media pages.

 

While the folks at GrooveDigital hope that one day you’ll decide to upgrade to the full suite of tools that comes with GrooveFunnels (which includes an email service, membership sites, video marketing, a helpdesk, calendar, and all the tools you need to manage and grow a robust business), GrooveSell and GrooveAffiliate are yours to keep for free, forever.

 

All you need is your name and best email address.

 

Oh, there’s also an active Facebook group. The company keeps out the spam and off topic posts, and instead ensures a community of users that share ideas and information. We are all learning and growing there together.

 

Whether you already have a shopping cart service and looking to reduce your monthly bills, or your just getting started with your online business and your budget it tight… you’ll want to check out GrooveSell. Do it today while it’s still free.

 

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World Pancreatic Cancer Day

Today is World Pancreatic Cancer Day and across the globe we’re uniting to improve patient outcomes for this deadly disease. Pancreatic cancer is the only major cancer without significant improvement in survival rates of the past decades. Our patients, our friends and our families deserve better.

Thankfully, I have plenty of purple to wear. I started the day rocking my Minnesota Vikings shirt (Skol Vikings!) It is awesome when you can support your team and an amazing cause at the same time. I went to my 12:00 yoga in an nice purple Gaiam top and my favorite Gaiam yoga mat (also purple.)

I’m hopeful as the general public becomes mor aware of the disease that our collective voice for more research will get louder. We need more dollars out against the disease if we are to unravel it’s secrets i.e. early detection methods and a cure. PanCAN has been hard at work the last twenty years increasing awareness and research. I’m excited with that the next decade will bring us in terms of research. Nevertheless, our voices cannot be quieted until we have found a cure.

You can support PanCAN’s mission in honor of World Pancreatic Cancer day and in my friend Debbie’s honor by donating here.

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Today Was A Dream

Today was a dream of a day. Since I’ve left the corporate life behind me, I’ve been enjoying my time with the kiddos and family. It’s been amazing to be able to spend time with my family without worrying about professional repercussions.

Today was a dream day that started like most others: my yummy Dunkin in my hand and some quality time with Jake and the puppies. Ordinarily, I’d go for a run or rollerblading in the morning, but there was not time for that today. Plus my legs were sore from running two miles yesterday for the first time in months.

The weather was absolutely dreamy. Chilly in the morning and absolutely perfect, with almost no clouds in the sky, the rest of the day. It was the perfect day for lunch along the intracoastal waterway in Fort Lauderdale. One of my favorite hockey moms lives in Miami, so this was the perfect meeting place.

I hadn’t been to Blue Moon Seafood Co in ages, but it was just a good as I remembered. We started with some wine, baked brie and calamari. The baked brie was served like a cream puff on a pool of coconut cream and apple chutney. It was simply amazing! The calamari was just as good.

Our main courses, were just as scrumptious as the appetizers, but I forgot to take a picture before I started eating. Since I’m trying to minimize my gluten intake, I opted for the spinach and blackened shrimp salad. I’m not quite sure what happens in their kitchen, but it might be wizardry as that was the best salad I’ve ever had. Meanwhile, Jodi was enjoying their mahi mahi entree. Honestly, it almost felt like a crime for food this good to be but one get one free. Thankfully, it is two for one special, so I can afford to go back more often.

After lunch, we stopped at Dunkin to grab some coffee and talk shop. My girl has been using Melaleuca products for awhile and invited me to join. As many of you know, the past year has been a struggle as I’ve dealt with autoimmune thyroid disease. I’ve found that my body has grown increasingly sensitive to certain food and chemicals. I’ve been looking for a good option to replace some the products in my house and this was the perfect opportunity.

I actually placed my first order this evening and can’t wait for it to arrive. I’m hopeful that these beauty and household products won’t send my body into autoimmune hell. Standby for the product reviews.

Unfortunately, we had to cut coffee short as my parents plane was landing early – like way early. The jet stream was clearly in their favor today. Picking them up was quick albeit it took me awhile to find them. Usually they wait inside for us, but they decided to wait outside. My mom definitely made up for the airport snafu with the tumblers she picked up for as a Caribou. As you can imagine, anyway my parents come to town is a dream day.

Thankfully since their plane was early, I was able to make it home in time to make my 4:00 yoga class. I just joined Open Heart Yoga Studio in Boynton and it’s absolutely amazing. Wednesday’s class is all about loosening muscles and improving strength and mobility. If ever there was a class designed for me, it is this one. I simply love it. Fortunately, I was able to share the experience with my mom today. I knew it would be the perfect anecdote to the stiffness that comes with flying.

Our night ended with Sal’s pizza and family time. That’s right not only do I have my parents in town, I also had all three of my boys home tonight. It’s like a lunar eclipse of a blood moon it happens every 3,543 years. I’m just happy to have the family home especially since Jake leaves on 20 days for the Air Force. We even hit a landmark as the Mayor is finally taller than his Grandma. All in all, in the immortal words of Sponge Bob, “It was the best day ever!”

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One Week

It’s been one week since I left the office for the last time.  So many emotions and so much fun has been had over the past seven days.  It’s not that I’m not sad to move on or anything like that, but I choose to embrace the madness and the excitement of moving forward. That isn’t to say I don’t have tough moments, but by and large I’m feeling good!  I started my first week off with a brilliant session at the salon with my girl Daniela and Jenja.  Nothing makes a girl feel better than a fresh hair cut and a nice brow wax.

Sometimes I’m Sweet
And Sometimes I’m Sour

During the intervening days, I had the occasion to meet several former colleagues and friends for lunch and drinks.   A fantastic time was had by all.  As an aside, I went to Farmer’s Table for the first time for lunch.  The food and service were absolutely brilliant.  Fortunately, Farmer’s Table’s menu had several amazing gluten free options.   I quite enjoyed the spasta with meatballs – spaghetti squash with marinara and chicken meatballs.  It was absolutely amazing.  I can’t wait to go back.  The next day, I had an amazing meal at Taverna Trela in Delray.  This meal was equally amazing.  I thoroughly enjoyed my steak, mushroom and onion rice bowl.   Another menu with some great gluten free options.  I look forward to going back there as well.

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Friday also brought a doctor’s appointment, where my doctor noted how much happier and relaxed I looked.  My blood pressure was pretty freaking phenomenal too.  They see me all the time there on account of the regular bloodwork I need to get down for the thyroid, so it was encouraging they noted the change.  It was also encouraging that my thyroid is starting to approach the normal range!  Yes – victory is in site my friends.

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The weekend brought happy hours, another massage and some mini golf.  I thoroughly enjoyed my blueberry martinis at Burt & Max’s.  The lettuce wraps were pretty freaking good too.   Of course, the Chipotle at the end of the night was pretty good.  Admittedly, it was the first time I’ve had Chipotle in years.  I enjoyed the steak tacos on a hard shell.  It brought back memories of driving across the University of Minnesota on game nights to get to the only Chipotle close to our house because it was the best thing since sliced bread. Now that Chipotle is on every corner and they’ve had a couple e-coli scares, the novelty has worn off a bit.

Sunday night we hit the mini golf course with J&M2 also known as Jake and Mel.  .  Even though we went in the evening, it was still hot as hades on the course.  By the time we finished, I felt like I had been sitting in the sauna for an hour in my jeans.  Fortunately, the club house had the same temperature as the Baltic Sea.  In 5 seconds flat, I went from near heat stroke to hyperthermia.   If I’m being honest, mini golf isn’t my sport, but we had a blast.  I’m also declaring victory having ended a mere 13 above par.  Over previous efforts, this represented a serious improvement in performance

Meanwhile in Minnesota, the boys are living their best lives with their cousins.  They’re having a blast hanging out with their cousins and chilling on the boat with their Uncle J.  The Mayor loves tubing with his cousins, while Goalielocks is enjoying fishing the Minnesota lakes.  He caught a nice sized large mouth bass on Lake Minnetonka Sunday.  Last week, their cousin X and his soccer team were playing in the USA Cup in Blaine.  Needless to say, given the heat indices in Minny last week, I’m thrilled my boys play hockey.  I’ll never be sitting by a sideline in an 115 head index.  Suffice to say, if you asked the boys, they would tell you there’s no better passage of summer than one spent in Minnesota.

Goalielocks is also enjoying lessons with his former goalie coach from the Hawks, Coach Ryan, who is now coaching with MEGA Goaltending in Minnesota.  It’s fun for the boys to reconnect with Coach Ryan and to get back on the ice.  Since Goalielocks went on a growth spurt, we’ll need to buy him a full set of gear upon his return to Florida.  Oh the expensive joys of the hockey mom life.

Today is my father’s 66th birthday please join me in wishing him the happiest of birthdays!

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Transitions

Life is full of transitions, but when you’re a parent of teens they seem to come non-stop.  The youngest two seemingly look, sound and appear older each and everyday.  I can’t wait to see how much they’ve grown since heading to Minnesota earlier this month.  They won’t be back in town until right before school starts in early August.  Yeah, early August.  I know what you’re thinking (and you’re right) Palm Beach County Schools start schools entirely too early.  Each day I call to speak to the boys, their voices seem to have shifted another octave lower.  I’ve resorted to asking discrete identifying questions to ensure I know which one I’m talking to on the phone.

The Boys
Now and Then: 2012 and 2019

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Meanwhile, Jake is deep in preparations to join the Air Force.  We met with the recruiter as a family late June to discuss the Air Force as a possibility.  Consequently, we’re pretty excited for Jake and the future the Air Force will bring him.  As a mom, it’s brought many mixed emotions as I’m excited that he’s got a solid road map for his future.  On the other hand, my boy is leaving the nest for good and joining the military (a bit scary.)   All in all, this fall promises to bring a major transition.

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Today marks the start of new beginnings as I close out my ten year career at KHE.  It is with mixed emotions that I move forward.  I will miss the work family that I have cultivated over the last ten years, but am very excited for what the future holds.  To all of my colleagues both current and former, thank you!  To keep in touch, hit the follow button on the blog. After all, everything maybe changing, but relationships don’t have to change.

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Given this week’s transitions, I’ll be fundraising much more aggressively for the Mayor’s trip to Europe next summer.   You can find the link to donate here: fundraising link

This blog is supported by affiliate advertising.  By clicking on the link and making a purchase, you are helping to support the blog with no additional cost to you.  Thanks!

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Summer Vacation Has Started

Summer vacation has started and thus far it is taking a serious toll on my wallet and my patience. Don’t get me wrong, I do revel in foregoing the school routine in the morning. Last week was the boys’ first full week out of school. Admittedly, I felt their hot lunch bill was taking a huge toll with the multiple sandwiches/entrees and drinks everyday, but boy was I wrong. Let’s take a look at their first week home by the numbers:

  • 8 frozen pizzas slayed
  • 120 pizza rolls devoured
  • 60 juice boxes demolished
  • 14 Jimmy Dean croissant sandwiches gone
  • 12 Powerades depleted
  • 10 hotdogs enjoyed
  • 4 gallons of milk
  • A jar of peanut butter gone
  • A loaf of bread
  • 1 lb of spaghetti
  • A jar of marinara sauce
  • 1 lb of chicken
  • 1 can of black beans
  • 1/2 bag of brown rice

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I say slayed for the pizzas because one met a different fate having been dropped half in the bottom of my oven, while the other half fell to the floor. I should also mention that over the course of the week, the Mayor did cook them spaghetti with onions and jerk chicken with black beans and rice for lunch on separate days. With the younger two boys now 13 and 15, my grocery bill is sky rocketing. Both boys are growing like weeds and eating like they’ve never been fed. I might send them to summer school to bring down my food bill! This week I added some more milk and more fruit.

Back to the pizza for a second because I fully thought they had eaten 8 frozen pizzas. After all I bought 6 Digiorno pizzas on Wednesday and by Thursday night there was only one left. Apparently, the Mayor had a slight pizza mishap with a major portion of it landing on the bottom of my oven. Importantly, the Mayor forgot to mention to anybody that this had happened. You can imagine my surprise when the room became very smoky as I pre-heated the oven for brownies. We’re still working on getting the smoke out of the house! Fortunately, it was only a lot of smoke and no fire, but the Mayor learned an important lesson: make sure you tell your parents if you drop a significant amount of food in the oven.

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While they’ve been busy eating us out of house and home, they’ve also logged some nice hours outdoors fishing. The weather has only been cooperative for them in the morning and evenings these past few days. Fortunately, the Mayor and Goalielocks have been able to take advantage of the few morning hours and fish before the daily afternoon storms fire up. Our lake in back has some nice sized large mouth and peacock bass, which my boys love to fish.

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Of course, they’ve had their share of chores over this past week. Unfortunately, they’re not as proficient in competing their chores as they are in eating their weight daily. Nonetheless, we saw some some serious progress on that front at the end of the week. Thankfully, I’m able to control our house’s wifi from my phone, so there was no wifi until all of the chores were completed.  Summer vacation has started and hopefully as the weeks go by they get better at completing their chores.  One could only hope!

 

 

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Corporate Run

Last Thursday was the annual Mercedes Benz Corporate Run in Fort Lauderdale. I was excited to participate for my third running. This year was a bit different though since I haven’t run a 5k in over a year. Unfortunately, after tearing a tendon and a subsequent diagnosis of Graves’ disease, I was sidelined for what feels like forever!

Thankfully, my doctor was able to clear me for exercise once my thyroid finally stopped functioning in February. Yay! Nonetheless, a 5k was a tall order. I trained as much as I could, but with a hypoactive thyroid my energy is nonexistent. Meaning, instead of a normal, rigorous training schedule, my body needed 2-3 day breaks in between workouts. This itself represented a massive departure from my grandiose expectations for my recovery.

I was back at my doctor’s office early last week for my six-week check-in. She made some adjustments to my medication, which should help immensely. Honestly, the effortless weight gain, the absolutely no energy, the absolute exhaustion and the absolute inability to sleep properly have gotten old. On a positive note, my blood work supports my symptoms, which in my doc’s words “means we can fix it!”  My doc is a rock star and is taking good care of me through out my treatment. Unfortunately, it’s just part of the process as we figure out the right Synthroid dosing.

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She did reiterate my ability to work out, but added a caveat about common sense. Clearly, she doesn’t know me. I did ask about the 5k, to which she responded “I hope you lose – meaning I hope you walk.” As I got up to leave, we compromised on a solid effort in the first mile with common sense dictating mile two and three.

In the end, I was nervous and excited for my first 5K in over a year. I went into the race with reasonable expectations and the hope that I’d finish somewhat respectably. As the race neared, we entered the start corral, which was huge. The corporate run had over 9,000 participants this race. Fortunately, it was a chip to chip race.  Consequently, my time was not negatively impacted by being encumbered by mobs of people behind the start line. img_0615

It felt amazing to be racing again! The first mile went pretty smooth and I felt pretty good. As I promised my doctor, I was conservative over the remainder of my race. In the end, with my foot asleep and pride swelling in my heart, I crossed the finish line. While my heart was swelling with pride, my right foot was coming back to life, after falling asleep on mile 2, as I waited patiently for my post race free beer.

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My time this race was the slowest I’ve ever logged at a 5k, but it will forever be the one that gives me the most pride. After a torn tendon, a diagnosis of Graves’ disease, subsequent treatment and no exercise for nine months, my time of 37:23 is pretty damn good! Moral of the story, winning isn’t always about getting a PR every race. Sometimes winning is not being afraid to show up and do your best no matter what cards you’ve been dealt. 

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Lastly, I had to share this photo from last year’s race as it included Paul.   My associate director Paul was someone who embodied perseverance.  While he wasn’t with us this year physically, he was definitely therein spirit.  We miss you Paul!

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Just Another Saturday

It was just another Saturday spent at the rink. Goalielocks had five games to referee this morning while the Mayor had a marathon practice for Peewee Quebec. Today’s games were Goalielocks first travel games. Fortunately or rather unfortunately, they were mites or as we call them now U8.

For the uninitiated, hockey parent craziness seems to be inverse to the age of the kids. Meaning as the kids age, the parents tend to mellow. At U8, however, every kid is going to the NHL and every game brings an intensity from the parents you only wished to get out of your players.

It’s been awhile since we’ve been in mite hockey, but the cavalcade of cowbells quickly brought me back. I found my seat in the bleachers next to the hubby, so we could anonymously watch him ref.

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Honestly, I only made it through one game. Refereeing is hard enough because of all the rules and all the responsibilities that go with it. When you add crazy parents screaming at you and you’re only fifteen, it’s a whole different world. At least from a mom’s perspective. I think the best part is watching them scream at both refs for not calling penalties forgetting that penalties are assessed at the end of the game. I left, but my husband was quick to point out this cycle continued. How quickly people forget….

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My ref was good with it, which is why refereeing is so good for our kids. You learn so many viable life skills. On the otherhandn I headed home to take care of the laundry and grocery shopping since I had no desire Not wanting to get into a fight. Goalielocks did end up having to eject his first parent. No surprise here, but it was a goalie dad. We goalie parents are a special breed. Long story short, my boy enjoyed his day refereeing.

Midway through Goalielocks’ marathon ref session, the Mayor’s Peewee Quebec practice started. His practice ran from 11:30-5:30 with Coach Shawn putting them through two on ice sessions and off ice. I missed the practice, but the hubby was able to watch most of it.

We’re so excited that our Mayor’s been given an opportunity to play at Peewee Quebec. Goalielocks did the tournament three years ago and it was one of the best trips ever. I love Quebec City, especially old town, so I’m bummed I’m going to miss this trip. Nevertheless, someone has to hold down the fort in Florida!

The best part about the last practice before the tournament is getting all the swag. My Mayor was wearing his new hat all night! The pin bag brings back great memories for both Goalielocks and I. I know the Mayor will love trading pins.

Tonight we grilled some flank steak fajitas (recipe below) and served it with grilled onions and roasted peppers for a healthy low carb dinner. Well, mine was low carb as I used romaine lettuce as my tortilla. I know what you’re thinking, I’m taking my life into my hands using romaine lettuce and you’re probably right. The Mayor was deeply offended by our gross dinner choice, so he made himself pizza rolls.

Make it here:

Steak Fajitas:

1 flank steak

1 juice of one lime

2 onions sliced

1-2 lbs of mini bell peppers, sliced lengthwise

Olive oil

Pepper

Salt

Instructions:

If using a charcoal grill, get it started.

Onions:

Cut the onions into slices.

Coat the onions in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place onions on the grill and cook for 15-20 minutes until they’re tender.

Peppers:

Pre-heat oven to 450

Slice peppers lengthwise

Coat peppers in olive oil and season with salt and pepper

Roast the peppers for 20 minutes and remove from oven once the edges have started to turn black.

(If using regular bell peppers, I prefer to cook them on the grill with the onions.)

Steak:

Use the juice of one lime and olive oil to coat both sides of the flank steak. My hubby prefers to rub the steak with olive oil and freshly squeeze the juice over the steak. Use the salt and pepper to flavor as desired and set aside until the grill is ready. Don’t let it sit for too long or it will get mushy.

Once the grill is hot, cook five minutes per side. We cooked ours for about ten minutes and it was medium rare, which is how we like ours.

Let the meat rest 5-10 minutes before slicing at a 45 degree angle against the grain.

And then assemble. I should have taken a picture of the final product, but I ate it too quickly! It’s so simple and so good!