Meeting Tony Romo and other randomness

Yes, I met Tony Romo last week.

Ohmygoodness, isn't he adorable?!

My older brother is getting another dog so that his sweet lab Ruby (who started out as our sweet lab Ruby many years ago, long story) isn't so lonely.  His other lab Georgia passed away a while ago.  Anyway, Ruby's new buddy is Tony Romo, the great dane.  This puppy is 5wks old here people!  He is going to be HUGE!

A couple of days ago day by the time 10am rolled around I was tired of being asked "Can we play the Wii?", "Can we watch a movie?", and "Can I play on the computer?" so I instituted a no screens day.  It was fabulous.  Although my 6yr old did think he was going to die at first.  "If I can't do any of those things then there is nothing to do!"  Seriously son?  These things weren't even an option me when I was a kid and obviously I survived.  The good news is that within a reasonable amount of time they all got over it.  We had that 6yr old making cookies (thankfully it was a cool stormy day), kids playing Lego games, dress-ups, a game of soccer, and all sorts of other random goodness that lasted the rest of the day.  I have a friend who does Technology free Tuesdays and I'm thinking it's time to institute that here!  A few days of being lax with these things and the kids seem to have forgotten how to actually play.

Please wear a helmet when you ride a bike.  My younger brother got hit by a car recently while riding his bike.  The driver didn't even see him, so no slowing down.  She hit him hard enough to send him flying over two lanes-thankfully devoid of traffic at that moment!  Miraculously he got away with broken ribs, whiplash, a hip injury and lots of scrapes and bruises.  He was certainly being watched over!  The kicker is that he was hit so hard that his helmet blew off his head upon impact.  Can you imagine if he hadn't had it on?!  I know none of us wore them as kids, but wear one now.  And be the mean parent who makes your kids wear them.  Please.

I started a new fitness challenge.  I am participating with a group doing the new Shaun T. (of Insanity fame) workout called Focus T25.  I needed some cross training and strength training to sprinkle into my marathon training, and though I love P90x, I just don't have enough hours in the day for that right now. I figured I could throw in a 25min workout a day and it would be a fabulous little supplement.  

Except it's kicking my trash. 

I have sold myself this great lie that because I can go out and run 16-20mi on a Saturday morning without worrying about it that I'm in good shape.  Nope.  I may have good endurance right now, but I am feeling every weak spot in my body with these workouts.  And there are a lot more than I care to admit.  Not to mention the food side of things.  Yikes.  I love food so much!  Though I really do eat fairly well most of the time, cleaning up my eating and cutting out any extra junk has been a little challenging.  I'm stuck in that place of really wanting it just because I can't have it.  I hate that place.  60 days of this will do me good.  

I still need to recap Ragnar.  And that incredibly amazing half marathon that I ran with my ten year old last week.  Still blown away by that boy!  I know, if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you already saw a bunch of pictures, but there are more.  There's always more!  After that all you non-running people can breath a sigh of relief because there is nothing else race related on the schedule until the Hood to Coast trip in a month.  One month!!  Can't believe it's so close!

I just found out the blog has been nominated for Circle of Mom's Top 25 Big Family Blogs again this year.  If you would love to humor me and vote for it, feel free to go HERE and click on the little vote circle next to Random Thoughts From the Zoo.  There's only two days left to vote, so go crazy and vote today AND tomorrow.  Live on the edge!  No signing up, signing in, giving info...nada.  Just click and done!  No exciting prizes or anything for landing in the Top 25, but I'm at #28 right now, and, well, since a handful of votes bumps me up like 5 spots, that would be awesome wouldn't it?  

Did you win the Nuun?  No?  No worries, next giveaway is coming up in just a couple of days!  Something new that I found recently and love, you'll love it too.  Promise.   All of you.  

I'm going back to the basement now.  Aaron's position at work is changing which allows him to now work from home.  Beyond excited for that!  Not to mention the extra 2hrs he will have in his day now that he doesn't have to commute.  A little nervous he'll get sick of being around all day every day, but super excited to have him here.  Him working from home means he needs an office in which to work, which means we have been rearranging kids and repainting bedrooms and most importantly-cleaning out!  Painting is all done, kids' beds are moved into their new rooms, but everything else they own is packed into the family room right now.  It's astounding.  And ridiculous.  I took pictures.  I may share them.  Or I may delete them so I can pretend my house never looked the way it has for the past few days.  Now I have to go back down and start digging through it and making a few ginormous piles to donate and toss, and smaller piles to keep.  Seriously, how do we end up with so much stuff?!  It may honestly take me the rest of the week to sort through everything.  But it will be such a fabulous end result that it's totally worth it, right?  

Happy Monday!  I hope your house is significantly less messy than mine is.