in my neck of the woods 3.7.13

yesterday was the most glorious of days...there is no moment where it is nicer to be a teacher than on a snow day. i know that most grown ups might still be able to work from home or use unscheduled leave (ps this was a concept i'd never heard of until moving to dc but...isn't this just basically required pto? seems dumb to call it anything else), but snow days for me mean i don't have to do a lick of work and it is the very best. i got to spend some quality time with my netflix account, my dvr, the treadmill in my apartment complex and my runner's world magazine. it was glorious. there hasn't been a ton of excitement going on this week besides my snow day, but since i got to watch the today show yesterday and i saw my man al roker a lot, i decided i'd share with you what's been happening "in my neck of the woods".

i tried out a new recipe for overnight oats on tuesday morning using the container of chocolate almond milk that i've had in my pantry for a while. i made chocolate peanut butter overnight oats and they definitely need a little bit of tweaking before i'm ready to post the recipe, but if you want some dessert-style oats, stay tuned for these because they were definitely a chocolate bomb in my morning. 

i have five graphing calculators in my classroom that i'm trying to encourage my 8th graders to use so that they can go to high school at least knowing how to turn on a TI-83. i turned on one of them tuesday and found this message on the screen. glad to know they're exploring some of the other features...

my quest bar shipment came! oh i was so excited to have this package slip in my mailbox and i did a happy dance a la caitlin when i collected the box from my leasing office. also, as if i didn't already love the people at quest enough for creating these bars, they send you a 13th bar when you order 12! a baker's dozen! yes, these bars are expensive. yes, i could just save my money and i know for a fact i can make my own tasty pre-workout snacks, but you know what? these are so good i just don't care. treat yo'self.

sometimes dinner just looks disgusting...this is a fact. most of the time when dinner looks like this i snap a picture and then quickly delete it, but sometimes the dinner tastes SO good that it doesn't really matter what it looks like. this was one of those times. i finally made the meatballs i've been planning on making all week and i'm glad i did. skinnytaste rarely disappoints and didn't this time either. i served them over a big plate of spaghetti squash with sautéed mushrooms and a roll on the side. oh and a healthy dose of crushed red pepper. i have a couple servings in my fridge and i froze half the recipe so that i can have a quick italian meal on hand some other night when i'm not feeling the long cooking process.

speaking of pictures that should be deleted...alex and allison have been keeping me text busy while i've been running on the treadmill this week (all of twice, but still) and they always tell me i need to join snapchap. i'm not going to do that because i think i'm too old for it but this was my attempt to showcase how happy i was to be back running in a snapchat style photo. my head looks huge from that angle (clearly i have much to learn about the "gym selfie"), but so does my smile! i think it's pretty obvious how happy i am to be running pain free. 

snow day celebration included the return of a much beloved breakfast from the days of yore. inspired by katie, this was one of the starts of my breakfast ruts from a while back and i haven't craved it in a long time. i have been all aboard the sweet breakfast train lately but i decided to hit up the sweet potato bin at whole foods the other day and i'm glad i did. such a taste delight. 

what's been happening in your neck of the woods?

<3