It was a hot weekend and I was supposed to spend it with my best friends in Mississippi. That didn’t quite happen. I prepped my food, filled a cooler, packed the car with my best friend and godchild and we set off. But there was a problem: traffic. The traffic was horrible and we stayed in place for so long we had to turn around and head back to Texas. Sitting in traffic is not the best place for a 2 ½ year old cutie.

What did I pack in my cooler? Watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, carrots, honey dew, chocolate milk (for after my run), overnight oatmeal (for two days), egg white muffins (for two days), a black bean/quinoa/power greens mix and some shrimp “fried” quinoa (that deliciousness will be hitting the blog this week). I was ready for any situation. I had snacks, breakfast and lunches ready. I planned to enjoy good dinners with my friends. I decided this time to pack all the food because when I’m traveling I tend to eat a lot of salads from Subway in Mississippi. I didn’t want to come back from another trip not wanting to see a Subway salad every again. It was really for the good of Subway. I forgot to take a picture of my carrier cooler, but have no fear I will be going out of town again this weekend. I’ll be packed and loaded.

Instead of having all of my best friends in one place for one weekend, I only had one so we celebrated girl style by going to get pedicures on Saturday. Sounds fun, right? Do you know how many crazy looks they were giving me because of my runner’s toes? If you don’t run, you don’t know that sometimes you have black toe nails or no toe nails or cracked toe nails and calluses. I always politely explain to the nail technician I am a runner and in my case, please don’t touch my big toes unless you are going to paint them. Regardless of all that, it was nice to have some foot relief and spend some time with my oldest friend!

Saturday morning was filled with finding healthy alternatives in the form of quinoa bars (coming to the blog very soon) and pancakes. Willie wanted to try something different and he’s really trying to learn in the kitchen. He made these pancakes which were very good. I regretted eating breakfast before he made those little pancakes. It was very unfair that he had those suckers cooking when I came back from my run.

People say there is no such thing as a bad run, but when you’re having a bad run it’s hard to think of it that way. I woke up an hour later than I wanted which through me an hour behind on everything. I didn’t get out into the world until 7:30 am to start a run that I hoped would be 10 miles. Along the way, I started scaling back the run to 8 or maybe 7, but I could only make it 5 miles. At mile 5 I wasn’t ready to hang it up yet, but I knew I couldn’t keep running. I walked another mile for a total of 6 miles. Let me tell you folks, it’s FREAKIN’ HOT and HUMID in southeast Texas! I kept letting the heat defeat me and in all honesty, we all probably should let the weather tell us when enough is enough. I was kind of bummed out about my shorter and SLOWER run. I realized that is the furthest I’ve ran in the heat! Yes, I ran the Rockwall Patriot Half Marathon on Memorial Day but it wasn’t quite this hot. In fact, that race felt like a crisp fall day compared to Saturday morning. It wasn’t a bad run after all. I just need to stop being so hard on myself. It’s the overachiever in me I tell you.

Even though I didn’t get to spend the weekend celebrating my best friend’s birthday in Mississippi, it was nice to spend time with my other bestie and godchild. Plus, Willie got to spend a little time too! We’re not parents and we only had a small fraction of the time of watching our godchild, but parenting is exhausting! SNAPS to all the parents out there in the world. It really is the hardest job in the world!  She really wanted a cupcake so I took her to get one.  She didn’t really eat the cupcake though because there was so much frosting on it.  She never realized she didn’t make it down to the actual cake.

Everyone on twitter has been talking about iced coffee this weekend so I’m attempting to make my first iced coffee ever. It’s kind of like when I watch Gilmore Girls all I want to eat is breakfast for every meal. Twitter friends have gotten me curious about iced coffee. I hope it’s delicious.

What did you do this weekend? Did you spend any time outside?