Hello!!!

Happy Monday 🙂

Last week, I was on family vacation in Myrtle Beach and loved absolutely every second of it. I really didn’t spend any time reading blogs or writing for the blog…instead I rested, switched up my workout routine, didn’t wear makeup, allowed my hair to air-dry and took advantage of good old fashion braid, played in the ocean, attempted to “go with the flow”, and I ate dessert.  It was fabulous!

While it was great to take a break from the computer, I am SO ready to get back into my normal routine and get back to blogging.

Here is a peak at what our week looked like on my family’s vacation.

Sunday morning Brian and I hit the road to meet my family in Myrtle Beach, SC.  They actually got a head start and were there on Saturday so Brian and I wanted to get there as quickly as possible!

We arrived at The Dunes Village Resort, our home for the week, pretty late, so after getting a little tour of the resort from Mom Brian and I hit the hay so we could hit the beach bright and early on Monday.

We woke up with the sun already in the sky and the sand calling our names.

Check out the gorgeous view from our condo.

The weather was amazing the entire trip.  There was only one little spurt of rain one morning, but it wasn’t anything to worry about.  The weather was perfect for hanging out at the beach…which is exactly what we did!

We spent time at the beach every.single.day.  I love being outside-especially during the summer months, and I am so thankful that we had the chance to spend so much time outside during this trip.

Monday night after dinner, we made a family trip to Spyglass Adventure Golf for a little evening entertainment and we had a blast! David (my sister’s boyfriend) and I even ended up getting a hole in one 🙂

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And after mini golf, it was time to put on the birthday hats to celebrate my dad’s birthday.

Our special dessert was homemade chocolate chip cookies warm out of the oven topped with ice cream…oh yes! Delish.

Mom learned from some other Myrtle Beach visitors that shark teeth often wash up on shore and people can find them if they look hard enough.  Once Mom heard that, she was on a mission and we were all hunting for shark teeth every time we got on the sand.

Tuesday morning, Brian and I took a stroll on the beach and THOUGHT we found shark teeth, but when my mom showed us how easy our “shark teeth” were broken we realized we didn’t have the real thing.

And after shark tooth hunting, we head out to play a little disc golf.

David is a huge disc golf fan, so we thought it would be fun for him to show us how to play.  While it was fun, the course was a little more advanced than we expected.  It was pretty heavily wooded, with some goals over 800 feet away from the tee…and there were lots of mosquitos.  Yikes!

Honestly, the entire family had a great time playing–I think the bugs just got the best of us. (or at least me!)

Wednesday, we spent the morning at the beach before heading out to Murrells Inlet, SC, which is a historic fishing village, for a quick day trip.

We walked along a cute little marshwalk and enjoyed a delicious drink at the Dead Dog Saloon before we head out for the REAL reason we decided to visit this quaint little town.

Brian enjoyed the Bicardi Cherry Limeade and I enjoyed the Grapefruit Crush-both were delicious!

Despite the beautiful scenery and the cute and cozy feel of the town, the real reason we came to Murrells Inlet is because Mom heard about the Crab Cake Lady and knew that we had to try out these amazing crab cakes.

They are made with domestic blue crab meat and they are handmade the way the An (the actual crab cake lady) has been creating them for the past 41 years.

Her grandchildren were actually working in the store the day we got the crab cakes and made sure to tell us how to prepare them, to serve them with her famous Vidalia Remoulade, and that we can order the amazing crab cakes online.  They were all SO friendly and helpful…and we will definitely be ordering some crab cakes in the future 😉

The crab cakes were better than we could have expected and we were so happy we made the trip out to Murrells Inlet for the tasty treat.

After our crab cake dinner, we each grabbed a flash light and hit the beach for a night time search for shark teeth.

Apparently, it is sometimes easier to find the shark teeth at night because the waves are bringing them in and there is no one sweeping away the shells and other gems that the ocean is bringing in at night.

While we had a fun time looking…still no luck.

Thursday morning, Brian wanted to wake up early to watch the sunrise and do yoga on the beach.  Despite being a little tired from late-night family board games, I was more than ok with that suggestion!

After doing a few sun salutations and watching the sun peak out from the horizon, Brian and I wanted to take some cool yoga pictures. 🙂

Brian and I really enjoy doing yoga, but there is still a LOT of work that needs to be done and a lot of poses that we need to learn so we just have fun doing what we can do.  While I love the way the pictures look, I wanted to show you some of the photos that we took while trying to get the perfect photo.  There are usually quite a few takes before we get one that we like 🙂

At least we had fun!

After laying by the pool literally all day, playing in the ocean a bit and enjoying a delicious meal prepared on the grill by my sister and her boyfriend, we attempted to fly some kites on the beach.

I say attempted because Brian had absolutely no problem getting his kite high in the sky…

I hot mine up for a bit, but the strong winds took over and brought it down to the ground so I just admired Brian’s SUPER high kite.

After a while, Brian gave my dad a shot and my dad got the kite even higher!  He was so pleased with himself to get it up there with very little effort.  It was so cute to see him so happy flying that kite 🙂

After kite flying, Brian and I went with my parents to Original Painters Homemade Ice Cream for a little treat.

Yum! I opted for the Vanna Banana, because that is what Vanna White (from the Wheel of Fortune) gets when she eats ice cream there.  It’s a banana topped with Banana Nut and Maple Nut ice creams, walnuts, and maple syrup….it was absolutely amazing and totally worth it 🙂

Our last morning, Brian and I woke up early again to watch the sunrise and do a little more yoga.

After our mini yoga session, we packed up the car and met up with a couple of friends who happened to be arriving in Myrtle Beach for the weekend as we were leaving…crazy how the world works!

And that was the end of it.  Brian and I drove the 12 hours back to Indianapolis and while we had an absolutely amazing trip we are happy to be home 🙂

Workouts

While I was on vacation, I tried not to stress about working out too much.  I knew we were going to be active doing things like disc golf, walking on the beach, and swimming in the ocean but I was still able to squeeze a couple of workouts in.

One day I went for a super hot and sweaty 5 mile run.

One morning I did some CXWORX.

Another morning, I did my Take it Anywhere Tabata workout.

And of course we did our early morning yoga.

Food

For meals, I ate what I was craving and tried to just go with the flow as much as possible.  Luckily, I LOVE fruits and veggies and that is often what I crave.

Breakfasts were simple–bowls of fruit topped with nut butter with a hard boiled egg, oats with fruit and nut butter, Greek yogurt with fruit…easy!

Oats with Perfect Fit Protein, cherries, and peanut butter.

Lunches were also super simple…basically just plates full of veggies, cottage cheese, hummus, and anything else that caught my eye and sounded good.

Dinners were delicious!  Each night we took turns cooking for each other.

Monday night Mom made fish pouches with asparagus and salad.

We each got our own packet of fish with thyme, lemon, salt, pepper, and olives.  It was fun to unwrap and delicious to eat!

Tuesday night, Brian and I whipped up tasty fish tacos for everyone with homemade guacamole and roasted veggies.

Wednesday night we enjoyed the Crab Lady Crab Cakes.

Thursday night, the last night we were there, Brenna and David grilled up burgers for everyone and a portobello burger for me.  On the side we had grilled corn, lots of veggies, and grilled asparagus.  Yum!

I am so thankful Brian and I were able to spend this time with my family before making the big cross-country move to Denver.  We sure will miss being just 2 hours away from the Deal family while we are gone!

And speaking of Denver…this Wednesday night we head out to Denver for the weekend to scope things out a bit!

This will be my first time there, EVER and Brian’s first time to do a little site-seeing.

We plan on checking out our neighborhood, white water rafting, and I plan on taking a couple of group fitness classes in some of the area gyms so I can start thinking about where I want to teach.

I hope you all had a fabulous week last week, weekend and are ready to kick this week off to a great start!

Your Turn:

• Share one thing that is making you excited and happy right now!