The first week of summer break is always a favorite. I get to sleep in (no more having to get to school by 7!), exercise in the morning, and actually plan out grocery shopping! Usually I run around the grocery store with my head cut off in a hectic craze pulling things off of the shelves that hopefully go together for dinner.
Not anymore! Now I can finally experiment and make those recipes I've been pinning for the past 8 months. Goodbye Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, hello healthy-delicious-homemade-goodness!
First stop, was making some broccoli salad! T's mom makes a killer broccoli salad that everyone always gobbles up so we decided to try our own version.
Going off of this recipe as a starting point, I tweaked it to be a little healthier. We swapped out the mayo and sugar for greek yogurt and honey. Then we added snow peas and cashews to the mix with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese to top it off!
We liked it so much that we've made it twice in the past week!
With summer here (along with the hot heat) we've been trying to not use the oven. We made a great stir-fry a couple of nights ago and it was delicious! One of our best yet. We marinaded chicken in teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, lemon, and McCormick Montreal Chicken seasoning. After it marinaded for 5 hours, we cooked it up and then sauteed the veggies and mixed it all together!
This chicken was dang good! Moist. Melt in your mouth. Yum.
The other thing I've loved about summer so far is exercising in the morning! I've never loved exercising at night and trying to exercise and then get to school by 7 in the morning is kind of impossible. Especially if you're not a morning person (like yours truly).
Enter summer vacation!
The Toad and I have been exercising in the mornings together and man has it felt good! For part of our exercise today, we decided to go hiking with mom, T, and Kimberly. Our plan was to hike the "Y", but they had it closed off due to the fact they were bringing the body of the missing BYU student down from where he fell (super sad story, bytheway).
Rather than head home defeated, we drove over to Rock Canyon and hiked around for about an hour!
The mama had major plans today, so in order to have her come with us, we had to start our adventure at 7 this morning. Ick. BUT we did see the gorgeous sunrise over the mountains while hiking. That might have almost been worth it.
Kimberly is one of the Toad's friends from growing up. She's also a good friend of the family- we even graduated in elementary education at the same time! It's fun having her back from her mission!
And, of course, it's always fun hiking with this handsome hunk. He's usually nice to have around. We actually hiked up to one of the little caves around Rock Canyon this time. Too bad there was a bunch of graffiti everywhere on the rock face.
Although, for picture purposes, we did like the big heart down by T's feet!
Can I just mention one more time how much I love this man of mine? He sure does put up with a lot and does a lot for me. He's one in a million!
Lady is starting to get old and isn't up for hiking as long as she used to. I used to put her in my hiking backpack all the time when I was younger. So it was only natural to stuff her in our backpack and let her chill out for awhile. She eventually fell asleep for a few minutes.
Spoiled dog.
Is my mom not the most beautiful lady you've ever met? She gets more tan than any of us (from working outside all of the time and getting her lawn to look perfect.) She also passed on some pretty awesome genes to her daughters.
And what happens when sisters buy the same shirt? They end up wearing it on the same day to go hiking... Great minds think alike! Or maybe we've been hanging out way too much this week.
Seriously though. This sister of mine has been one of my besties forever. She's seen and done it all with me. I'm pretty lucky to have her for a sister. Not everyone can say that their sisters are some of their best friends!
Why is it we can never take a normal picture?
{Matchy-matchy!}
Summer is treating us well so far! Though I do really miss some of my little monsters. It's been hard adjusting to not seeing them everyday.
However, I'm soaking up every bit of summer that I can before I start doing things for school again!
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