Broken tea & broken records

Hello: )

Yes, I am still alive! How’s everyone doing?? I’ve had to work quite a bit of overtime lately and my days have been basically this:

7 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. = work
5:45 - 7:30ish = workout
7:30 - 9:30ish = make dinner, eat dinner, misc. stuff around the house, shower and bed

Anyways … this keeps me pretty busy and doesn’t leave tons of time for blogging! Moving on …

Bone to pick with Tazo

Okay, so I have a slight bone to pick with Tazo regarding their tea! If you’ve been reading Lesley Lifting Life for long, you’ll know that I LOVE tea and have at least one cup every day with no fail, and Tazo happens to be one of my all time favorite tea brands. One of my favorite flavors of Tazo is Passion. It’s so good both cold and hot.

Anyways … the last two containers have had at least 4 bags that are faulty. (One of the containers had just about half of the packets like that!) They either have no tea leaves in them, or completely fall apart and break once taken out of the package. Out of curiosity, has anyone else had this happen with any Tazo teas??

Of course, I will continue to drink it because I love it but, man, it’s already a little pricey so I really don’t like paying for packets that are faulty and that I don’t even get to drink! 

The Gym

While we love our home gym and are so glad we have it, lately we have been working out at a real gym just to switch things up a little and to have more options. Ha, however, we’re getting spoiled and aren’t going to want to work out in our basement now :p

I’ve loved working out in an actual gym thus far. It’s amazing how far I’ve come. When I first started working out, I was incredibly intimidated by gyms! But now I can go in an knock out an awesome workout like it’s nothing ; ) And instead of intimidating me, now all the people around me just make me lift that much harder. I love it! : )

Anyways, today at the gym we did chest. Erik is happy we’ve been going to a real gym because we ran out of plates for him to bench, ha. We only have 300 pounds of weights at home and he’s up to 365 at the moment. And I was very happy to bench 115 today … that’s a personal best thus far! : ) Hooray!

And for convenience sake, the gym we’ve been going to is only about a mile and a half from our house so we can easily come home after working out and have a shake.
So there’s a quick rundown of our lives lately. I’ll leave you with a random picture of Bubba that was on my camera.

Have a great week! : ) 

Tulips & mini fitness progress

Hello! :)

Hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day! I read many of you other bloggers V-day recaps and I enjoyed them a lot :)

Erik and I are officially having our Valentine’s Day this weekend (I have a 3 day weekend ;), but he did get me some really pretty tulips on the “real” day. Aren’t they beautiful??
Is it Spring yet?? Our plan is to eat at Skies in KC on Friday night. I’ve never been there so I’m excited to check it out! I love my husband!!  On the workout front … nothing much has changed. Rocky is still hard at work helping us … That’s all for now … thanks for stopping by and have a fabulous weekend, all!!! :D

New products & the great bagel debate

Happy Valentine’s Day! : )

Okay, so I have officially been neglecting Lesley Lifting Life, Twitter, and my inbox lately! Ha, but just to let you all know, I’m still alive and I’m still doing wonderfully ; )  I’ve just been busy with a new work schedule, helping Erik stock vending machines, and lifting.  I guess it’s just the ebb and flow of my blogging career, haha.

P.S. THANK YOU for all your nice comments about finding Rocky …. we were so relieved to get her back!
Here’s a couple new foods I’ve tried recently…

First up, a Jay Robb peanut butter bar. While his picture on front is kind of weird, I actually really liked the taste. It was a nice break from a date-based  bar! Does anyone else get tired of dates in healthy bars or is it just me?? And Zevia. I was out of the loop when it was going around the blog world awhile back, but I finally tried one. I haven’t had a pop (or soda, as some might say; ) in a really long time!  My stomach wasn’t used to the carbonation but if I was a soda drinker, this would be my soda of choice. I really appreciate that they’re sweetened with stevia!

Right now we have Hansen’s sodas in our vending machines. We wouldn’t mind putting some Zevia in them buuut it’s just not nearly as cost efficient as Hansen’s and everyone buying seems to be happy with Hansen’s.    I also ate a French Meadow’s Bakery hemp bagel this afternoon. I love French Meadows hemp breads!
I remember the first time I went to New York with Erik (he’s from NY) and realized that everyone there ate bagels sandwich style. That was weird to me! Ha, here in my part of the Midwest everyone spreads their topping of choice on each side of the bagel and eats them individually.

So I’m curious …. do you eat your bagels sandwich style or individually and where are you from?? I now prefer sandwich style, as you can see, haha:
Speaking of Valentine’s Day weekend … I got a package on Friday from my Secret Blogger Valentine, who happened to be Kacy at Low and Behold. She must know me because my package included three different packets of tea, Truvia, some cute heart cutter sets, and an awesome Valentine’s Day mug (which was in the dishwasher because I couldn’t resist using it right away) I love it all!!! Thanks so much, Kacy! : )

As you can see, I dug right in and have already drank a lot of my Tazo Passion tea (it’s one of my favorites) so the container is not pictured, ha. 

What are you doing to celebrate Valentine’s Day? I think Erik and I are waiting until next weekend to “officially” celebrate because I have a 3-day weekend and it will be more fun that way ; )

Anyways, thank you all for sticking with me despite by ebb and flow of inconsistent blogging. I hope everyone is enjoying life and its many blessings!! : )

We lost our dog: the story

Hi everyone!

Yes, I’m still alive!! Ha. I would have blogged sooner than this but we had quite an emotional week! :s If you follow me on twitter, you might remember me tweeting numerous times about our dog, Rocky. In case you missed it, she got out of the backyard on Wednesday morning and was missing for more than two days.

The dogs have gotten out before but it was never a problem. Well, this time was different. Erik drove around searching and searching and searching all day until I got home from work and no Rocky anywhere. Once I got home, we drove around with our windows down yelling her name and searching some more.  As darkness approached, we decided we better make some “lost dog” posters and start doing more than just driving around.  We used this picture: We love our dogs and we were so sad! It’s a horrible feeling to have to go to bed at night knowing your dog is who-knows-where. We put up fliers, put an ad in the paper, called animal control, searched the dog pound, told everyone we knew, etc. The moment I got home from work the next few nights, we’d drive around ‘til dark putting more posters up and searching then we’d come home and realize how quiet our house was without her.

And finally on Friday, the good news came.

My mother-in-law sent out a mass e-mail to all her contacts and someone she sent it to posted it on her Facebook wall (thanks, Susan!!) One of her friends saw it, who told her husband. Two days later, this lady’s husband was in a gas station in his corrections officer uniform and a guy in the gas station asked him if anyone had lost a police dog (Rocky is a German Shepherd). The guy responded that while he’s not a police officer, he did happen to know of someone that was missing a dog fitting that description and they exchanged numbers. The corrections officer then gave the number to his wife, who gave it to the lady who posted it on Facebook, who gave it to my MIL, who gave it to Erik. Erik then called the guy who might have Rocky, Erik met him on his lunch break and sure enough …. it was her!!! We were SO happy and SO thankful that this Good Samaritan had taken Rocky and fed her and gave her water while she was away.

(sigh) … having Rocky back after 2 1/2 days of trying not to worry was a very good start to the weekend and we give God all the credit for getting her back to us!  THANK YOU everyone who helped : )
Rocky is definitely Erik’s dog and he was SO happy to have her back. He was a wreck without Rocky! 
How was your Super Bowl Sunday?? Ours was good, though we didn’t watch the Super Bowl, ha. We went to church, out to lunch with my mother-in-law, and then spent more of the afternoon cleaning the house. Working up quite an appetite and not in the mood to cook after cleaning, we decided to get some pizza.  We opted for Domino’s. Here’s how we made our take out pizza healthier:

• Ordered thin crust
• Asked for half of the normal amount of cheese

My toppings of choice were mushroom and onion (yum!!). I love Domino’s thin crust pizza. (And I probably don’t want to know how much sodium I ate!) Erik got chicken and green peppers.  His pizza came with practically no cheese at all so he just added some of our 2% cheese.
Other than that, we’ve spent much of our weekend playing with our dogs, buying them bones/toys and remembering how much we love them!

Today (Monday) is my day off and so far, I’m loving it! This morning, I leisurely woke up in a clean house and get to take my morning slow. Later, I get to go with Erik to stock the vending machines and run some errands. I don’t normally get to do this kind of stuff so I’m excited! ; )  
Anyways, I haven’t been around to say “hi” in so long … I hope everyone, old and new, has been doing wonderfully and as always, thanks for stopping by! 

P.S. The giveaway is still coming!!!!! ; )