Our first weekend in the new house and my weekly workouts

Hi, my friends! I missed you all! I don’t think I’ve taken a full week off from the blog since its inception in late 2012. For reals. Thank you SO much for giving me that little break, because I needed it. Since we last chatted in this post, Dave, Rudy and Brady and I packed up our life in our Walnut Creek townhome, where we lived for three years, and moved to our first house together just five minutes down the road in Pleasant Hill.

In spite of having a needy dog and an infant, our moving process went pretty smoothly, and we also acquired this new succulent …

What we’ve been up to the last week

A lot! We hired movers to help pack much of our kitchen and do the heavy lifting for us, but we did the rest ourselves. In order to make things easier, we ordered and used eco-friendly plastic Zippgo boxes, so that we didn’t have to purchase and waste a lot of cardboard — something I was hoping to avoid. A couple of our friends used Zippgo with recent moves, and so that was an easy decision for us. We had one week with the rented boxes, which meant our window of packing and unpacking had to be pretty short (a cool challenge, if you ask me). Oh, and our friends watched Rudy on moving day, which was very helpful to not have him underfoot, and Brady slept on me for almost three hours in the Ergo carrier too, so I basically had my hands free.

We moved in on Tuesday afternoon and we were totally unpacked by Thursday morning. We had some friends help us mount our new TV in the living room on the first night, then the cable and Internet installation happened on Thursday — so we had a couple of days nearly off the grid, which was fine by me.

We’re definitely not done though. As of now, Brady’s nursery is fully set up and so is the kitchen, but we’re in major need of more furniture to get the rest of the house filled up. We’ll be taking our time to do that, and I’ll share some house pictures very soon (by the way, I fully intended to share Brady’s nursery from our last place and even took the pictures, but once it looked like we were moving, decided to hold off — so I promise I will share this time). But for now, let’s chat about the weekend and my workouts and a few other things.

Our first weekend in our new house

Dave took off from work last week to help with the move, but was back in the office on Friday, so that was my first day alone with Brady in the house, and we got back to our regular routine. I did a workout and we took a walk with Rudy around the new ‘hood, did some chores and then went to Target — pretty exciting stuff. I also finally cooked a lunch in our new kitchen. My usual, of course …

That night, Dave and I had sushi and caught another episode of “Stranger Things.” We’re about halfway through season 1, and although it’s a little bit creepy for me, I’m actually enjoying it. And because we now live in a house with a lot of windows, I feel like watching it was that much scarier. You feel me?

My return to teaching group fitness 

There were some more firsts this past weekend! I officially returned from my maternity leave and taught a group fitness class again — woohoo. I’m going to be teaching a regular Saturday morning Bootybarre class from here on out, and I’m pretty excited about it. Because Brady isn’t old enough for the child-care at my gym, I really can’t commit to any weekday classes at this point, so weekends it is. The class that I’m teaching is new to the time-slot, so I only had about 12 people for the first session, most of whom had never done Bootybarre before, but I’ve got no doubt I’ll be able to fill the room after a few weeks once people get used to the workout — it’s fun. 

What was it like to teach a class after about five months of not teaching (my longest break EVER since becoming an instructor more than eight years ago)? Same as always. It’s totally like riding a bike, and I felt like no time had passed since I last was on the microphone leading a workout. Although, I was definitely more winded than normal in some of the tougher portions of the class and also fumbled over my words once or twice (mom brain). Nonetheless, it’s SO good to be back!

Lots of homeowner weekend to-dos

If you thought my weekend recaps were interesting with a newborn around, just wait — now that we’re adding the new homeowner element to life — the real excitement begins. This past weekend, we went to Home Depot, hung some fixtures around the house, worked on house projects, ordered furniture online and did all sorts of fun things like that. (Sarcasm, clearly.) And Brady slept through his first trip to HD …

On Saturday, after I was home and cleaned up from teaching class, we went out on some of the errands mentioned above, which included picking up two adorable indoor plants (including Steve the succulent shown at the start of this post), and then we got take-out Thai food from a restaurant walking distance from our house. By the way, I used to have a “no take-out” food policy (except for sushi) up until Brady was born. I liked to either go out to eat, or just make food at home. Well, that has certainly changed with the addition of our little one, because we get some form of take-out a few times a week now — even more during the moving process. 

Another fun thing from Saturday? One of our new neighbors came over to introduce herself and gave us a warm apple pie, fresh from the oven. I mean, so sweet. She was very friendly and has lived in the neighborhood for a long time, and she made us feel quite welcomed. We had the pie the next two nights with vanilla ice cream, and it was delish.

On Sunday, we slept in (after some broken sleep throughout the night thanks to little Brady), and were all four snuggling in bed until around 10 a.m. Like whoa! I can’t imagine the last time I was in bed that late, but it was much needed.

Speaking of sleep, the first couple of nights with Brady in the new house were ROUGH. But, we’ve been trying him out in his crib in his nursery, which is right next to our room, and so far things are progressing nicely. Cross your fingers for us. Oh and this guy is growing like a weed at 16 weeks now …

The rest of the day included a run for Dave and a gym trip for me, at separate times, of course. I spent almost an hour at the gym, which is pretty long for me, but about 20 minutes of that included talking to people whom I hadn’t seen in a while. The other 40 included some incline walking on the treadmill, foam rolling and two circuits using the TRX, Roman chair and back extension machine. I haven’t used a lot of machines postpartum yet, and it was a nice change of pace for me, and I’m hoping to be sore tomorrow. 

I also picked up some Jamba Juice treats for us on the way home, and I tried the Apples ‘n Charge superfood smoothie, which was super hearty and delicious. Thanks to my friends at Jamba Juice for sending the gift certificate!

The rest of the day included some more house to-dos and a visit from Dave’s little sister, Gwena, who came up from Santa Cruz to hang with Brady and check out our new house. She also took a couple of pictures for us in our backyard, and yes, our house is very blue. Love it!

Overall, we’re already pretty darn comfortable in our new digs and are very happy to have a place to call our own. With the move behind us, I’m looking forward to getting back to my routine and definitely being around here on the blog more often. 

Also, thanks for your input

Thank you SO much for everyone who took the time to take my survey. If you haven’t yet, there’s still time (just click here). I’ll be going through all the responses later this week and will share some of them with you. And CONGRATS to India D. for winning the collagen giveaway too. 

My postpartum weekly workout recaps

Switching gears a bit, I owe you guys two weeks of workout recaps, and here they are …

At 14 weeks postpartum …

• Monday: 25 minutes of BODYATTACK at home, 30-minute walk, 11 a.m.
• Tuesday: 45 minutes of BODYPUMP at home, 30-minute walk, 12 p.m.
• Wednesday: 20 minutes of barre at home, 30-minute walk, 11 a.m.
• Thursday: 20-minute weights circuit at home, 30-minute walk, 12 p.m.
• Friday: 1-hour walk, 10 a.m.
• Saturday: 20-minute weights circuit at home, 30-minute walk, 12 p.m.
• Sunday: Rest day

At 15 weeks postpartum …

• Monday: 20 minutes of barre at home, 12 p.m.
• Tuesday: Rest day 
• Wednesday: Rest day
• Thursday: 30 minutes of barre at home, 5 p.m.
• Friday: 20 minutes of barre, 15-minute weights circuit at home, 20-minute walk, 12 p.m.
• Saturday: Taught 1-hour barre class, 11 a.m.
• Sunday: 40-minute gym session including 10 minutes of incline walking, foam rolling, mobility warm-ups and three sets of 15 Roman chair leg curls and back extensions with a 10-pound plate, followed by three sets of 15 TRX rows and TRX chest presses, 2 p.m.

As you can see, this past week was much lighter with workouts and walks due to the move and the rain, and that’s totally okay. I’m still feeling stronger with each workout and hope to focus on more weights in the near future. Oh and I’m totally happy to be back to teaching too!

Hope you have a fabulous start to the week! I’ll see you back here soon, peeps!

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Questions of the day

When was the last time you moved?

Take-out food … yay or nay?

What was the best part of your weekend?