Fall 2012 Sweataway: Day 1

Happy Fall Equinox, Jewish New Year, etc.  Whatever you call this lovely season where the days are still warm and the leaves get pretty...we have plenty to celebrate here at Team Matson:

• This Sunday, we sent off the last of Jared's med school secondary applications!  We've only been prepping for this round of applications for, like, 10 months.  We started the secondary applications in June and have been able to submit one each for the thirteen schools to which Jared applied.  Now we're just waiting for a final letter of recommendation to be submitted, and then it's on to interview season! 
• We both PR'ed on our Paleo Baseline WOD retests! (I beat my previous time by almost a minute.)

• After much suffering (not sure whose was worse...ours or the suffering of those who had to put up with us), we won our box's Paleo challenge!  Team Matson tied for first and split the prize money.  (lululemon, here I come.)  I intend to write a post soon recapping our caveperson experience and results, but for now, here's the money shot:

• God has been exceedingly gracious to us, and we've found that through His mercy and guidance, we actually like each other more now than we did when we were dating.  Crazy!

Once a quarter, we like to take a few days for a mini vacation.  Sometimes, depending on work schedules, holidays, and budgets, we don't actually go away.  We stay home, unplug from the world, and enjoy our local scenery.  The main point is that we are focused on enjoying each other's company.

In May, we went to Portland for the Rock 'n' Roll half marathon, so we were about due for the next little excursion.  We coordinated our work schedules to see what days we could both take off, and then we pulled out our "Best Places to Kiss in the Northwest" guidebook to figure out where we wanted to go.

We came up with a few options and finally settled on a trip to Mount Rainier and booked the Sunrise Guest House at Almost Paradise Lodging.

As usual, when making our plans of how to spend time, we wanted to factor in great food and great workouts.  Jared took the helm on the food and dug out about 20 cookbooks and offered me some options for meals and desserts. 

I scoped out a few CrossFit gyms in the surrounding areas so we could be sure to get our WOD on!  Jared also wanted to go for a trail run at Mount Rainier - I love hiking but it's not quite hard core enough for him, so slow trail "running" has been a great compromise for us.

Sunday ended up a little stressful.  We had intended to finish the final secondary application on Saturday...but we both kinda forgot about it.  Between church and the application and a classic Meghan 3 hour packing fiasco that involved a load of laundry and several loads of drama, we got started much later than we'd hoped to leave home.  We even had to stop on the way to fill up our cooler with groceries (thank God Trader Joe's is a chain)!!!

Getting closer...

Eventually, after Lucy (our adorable but inconsistent GPS) tried to lead us down an old gated dirt road, we made it to Almost Paradise around 6 in the evening.  I can't tell you what time it was exactly, because I had left my phone at home.  Nope, not a packing mistake.  We decided we would take zero calls over the weekend...and that meant no texting, either.  I figured it would be more freeing and less tempting if I just left the hell-beast behind.  (It seems no one broke a limb or caught rabies while we was gone...apparently the world can go on without us.  Who knew?)

You'll see this main house/lodge when you pull in.

We were greeted upon arrival by Dugan, the owners' sweet dog.  I am not a dog person (probably from years of people saying, "Oh, he's very sweet" before their pet jumps on you, slobbers on your face, or actually bites you), but this guy was really a sweetie.  No barking, jumping, or anything.  Just friendly and cute.  He was followed by Carol, who runs the place.  She greeted us kindly before inviting us in to do a little paperwork.  Afterwards, she led us around to our guest house, the Sunrise Guesthouse.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed at first.  From reading the BPTK guidebook, I had pictured us being in a little cabin off in the woods all by ourselves.  I believe this is the case for one of the cabins, but some of the guesthouses are actually like condos within the main lodge. The view above of the main lodge is from our parking space:

You can see the back of "our" sauna on the right

So I realized almost at once that, even though our area was enclosed with its own fences and such, as far as total privacy, it wasn't what I was expecting since if we were talking loudly in the outdoor area, anyone in the driveway could probably hear us and vice versa.

Walking up the little trail...hot tub on the left, sauna on the right

However, once I got over my initial surpise, I started to feel excited to be there.  Carol assured us that our guesthouse did not share walls with the other guesthouse...all the spaces between were storage space, and all guests were asked not to venture around to other areas, so that you could be sure of having your own space all to yourselves.

Plus, did I mention we had our own hot tub and sauna?

There was a burn ban on, so no campfire this time.
Note the grill in the back if you want to barbeque!

Our own sauna (post WOD heaven)

Hot tub complete with Ernie's best friend!!!

The inside of the guesthouse was perfect!  Rustic cabin flair...without being outdated or losing any comforts.

Fireplace in the kitchen

Full fridge/freezer stocked with condiments;
popcorn near the microwave

Sitting room with television (no reception for TV)
and DVD player, along with CD player and the option of
turning on outdoor speakers if you want to sing the
Rubber Ducky song in the hot tub with full soundtrack

Slippers and extra towels in the bathroom

Robes!!!

Jared made us an amazing frittata for dinner.  As usual, he built on the original recipe, adding extra spices and cheese. 

It was killer - but so much food we decided to save some for breakfast the next day!
We generally don't play board games or card games, but Jared did bring along our knock-off Jenga game.  We took turns in the midst of cooking and unpacking.

Yes, I am usually the one who makes it fall.  Oops.

After dinner, Jared decided to go ahead and bake the pumpkin whoopie pies so we could enjoy them during the trip.  Holy yum, to quote Tina from CNC.

We finished off the evening with a soak in the hot tub.  Boy, what a treat to be away from everything and just relax!


Up next...goin' WODding at Graham CrossFit.

Camping on Paleo

Hello there!

Things have been a little quiet here at TheMeghaMix, which, as usual, means things have been busy and stressful out in the real world.

One major non-busy, stress-free highlight of the last two weeks?

Camping with my momma.

Hanging up dish towel and washcloth after meals.
Happy camper in my Nike therma-fit!

My mom's been a camper long before I came into the picture.  Our family tent-camped for years when I was a kid, and at one point, we owned a 27-foot RV that we pulled around the country behind my dad's truck for a whole school year studying US History where it happened.  (Yes, I frequently geek out about Newschool Nomads - "oh my gosh it's like us except with kettlebells!")

Even when I was in college and my mom and I were both working, we would often take little trips camping just the two of us, sometimes at the very last minute.  For anyone who knows my mom or me...we are excel fanatics and calendar fiends, so an unplanned moment of life is crazy weird for us!

We realized earlier this year that the last time we went camping together was before I got married...like four years ago!  So we coordinated the time with work schedules and Jared's road trip with a friend and went last week.

Let me tell you...if you want a great camping buddy, my mom is your go-to gal.  She is super low maintenance, highly prepared, and a great sport.  (Although I'm not sure how hard it is for her to be a good sport when she always seems to win at cards.)  We got up to our favorite campground, Lake Easton, on Thursday evening, and got our tent and all the gear setup in well under an hour.

My mom was super supportive of me sticking to my Paleo challenge, and the only "treat" she brought up for herself was her diet soda...and I'm not a soda girl at all, so it was perfect!

Mom womanning the grill

The first night, I had planned on making burgers, but the burger meat was too frozen, so we had chicken sausage instead.  We sliced up bell peppers and dipped them into the pico de gallo, since the plaintain chips just didn't seem to cut it.

We had one sausage apiece, and cut up the other two for breakfast the next morning.

We spent the evening talking and playing Phase 10.  It made me miss my Grandpa Floyd, who went to be with Jesus for Christmas about a year and a half ago.  He loved Phase 10 and was SO competitive...when we were kids, we just called it the "Skip Buppa" game.

It got pretty chilly in the tent that night...and of course there's always the fun of getting OUT of the tent to walk to the bathroom in the dark.  Good thing I had a buddy with me!

The next morning, we scrambled up some eggs and some of the leftover sausage.  You will note we are big fans of salsa...

I added baby carrots, since I'm always trying to get at least three servings of veggies per day, and I like to get one over with at breakfast when possible.  We also had some tea, and played more cards, and took a walk around the gorgeous campground.

I was still pretty cold and so we packed up so Paleo snacks (almond butter, bananas, etc) and drove to Ellensburg to get some more groceries.  It worked out perfectly...we warmed up and got to visit a local produce stand!  Health nerd freakout!!!

Among other things, we bought some incredible pluots and a purple bell pepper - I had no idea there WAS a purple bell pepper!

For lunch, we had Sopa Verde, which my mom made earlier in the week and froze.  It has chicken and spinach and tomatillos and all kinds of amazing stuff. Seriously, I could eat this every day!  And if you don't add Greek yogurt (which we usually would), it's totally Paleo!

After lunch we headed down to the beach to read.  I was surprised at the number of folks actually swimming in the lake...it wasn't very warm out.  I was glad to have long sleeves on!

When we came back, I intended to WOD it up.  I'd brought my new medicine ball along and was stoked to plan something we could do at our campsite!  My mom wasn't planning to join me, but when she heard my plan, she said, "Oh, that doesn't sound too bad." 

Our gear:

Here's what we did:

Warmup:

1. Run campsite loop (approx. 800m)
2. 2 rounds of tricep dips and air squats (10-15 each)

WOD:

• 3 rounds for time of:
• 7 pushups
• 14 lunges (7 each side) with the 14# med ball
• 200m farmer carry with water jugs
• Followed by 800m run, not for time

The final run was actually my mom's idea!

My mom totally killed this one!  She's not up to regular pushups yet, so I had her scale to full-range of motion pushups with hands on the picnic table.  She RXed everything else...and actually beat me by four seconds.  And I was hustling.

Because we only had one wall ball and one set of water jugs, my mom started with the farmer carry and I started with the pushups.  I think it made us work harder because neither of us wanted the other person stuck waiting for "equipment."

I followed the WOD with a protein shake and we went for another walk before dinner: taco salad!

Can you tell we originally hail from the southwest?  My mom brought lime for our water, and the salads were super simple with lime juice, avocado, ground beef, romaine, and more pico de gallo.  We had some bell peppers to dip in the salsa, and I drank coconut water in addition to my lime water (double-fisted Paleo).

More cards and talking...with me complaining about the inebriated college kids who showed up.  They were about three campsites down, but boy they had some good lungs between them.  Thankfully they piped down in time for us to get some sleep.

Morning found us much warmer, and chowing down on more eggs and sausage!

We also enjoyed more of the Paleo Morning Glory Muffins that Jared thoughtfully baked us before he left on his road trip! 

After another round of Phase 10, we decided to pack up camp early and spend the rest of the day down at the beach.  We cut up the bell peppers ahead of time so as to get all the dishes washed and packed.

Campsite teardown was easy and swift - seriously, don't mess with us in the Camping Olympics.

Lunch at the beach was simple...bell peppers, deli turkey, and more water!

It got warm enough that we were able to throw our swim suits on and read for hours.  I am embarrassed to say that this Queen of Sunscreen missed a few spots and got totally fried in places as a result.  Actually peeling a week later.  Eep.

All in all, it was an amazing time!  It's incredible to not have to worry about what time it is, and to get to do pretty much whatever you want, with someone you love hanging out with. 

Thanks, Mom!


In other news, Sunday night marks the end of the Paleo challenge.  Currently fighting the hubby for the lead and dreaming about donuts.

You tell me: How are you?  Had a good week?  Busy?  Stressful?  Relaxing?  A little of everything?  Do you find it fun or frustrating to stick with health and fitness regimens on vacation?