Good morning and happy Friday Eve! I haven't post much this week because my plate has been extremely full and my to-do list way too long. I'm hoping that with the long weekend, I can catch a little bit of a break and get caught up on things. So, this lack of posting will cease soon and I have some new content for you guys. I'm planning to see a lot of movies this weekend so definitely expect tons of reviews.

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend! Here's my #weekendinreview

Friday
Friday felt a bit chaotic for me, though I think it was just me being all in my head. First off, the weather was absolutely beautiful. I didn't get a chance to snap a picture because I missed my morning walk due to an early morning conference call but oh well. I was a bit stressed out on Friday because I had so much work to get done before I could really start my weekend so was head down for most of the day. I left home about 3:45 to pick up the boys from daycare and then get home to make pasta salad for the BBQ on Saturday. I also managed to check out a few apartments for my brother-in-law and his wife since they are going to be relocating up here in the next few months. Yay! I was totally drained by 8pm so I called it an early night around 9:00pm - which is so rare for me because I NEVER go to bed early on a Friday night.

Saturday
Saturday morning started out with all kinds of plans. The weather was awful - lots of rain, thunderstorms, etc. Hubby was off at a business meeting for most of the day (gotta love a man that works hard) so the boys and I hit the streets in the yucky weather to run some errands. First stop was Lowes for lightbulbs for the patio.

My neighborhood Lowes.

Let there be light.

Blinds for the win and super affordable

 Hubby and I have been wanting to redesign our closet since right before out wedding so we always take a look at closet organizing systems to see what's what. I think we're both finally realizing what we want and can hopefully add that to the list for 2018.

Organizing system

Once we made it back home and the kiddos were settled, I whipped up my famous greek pasta and baked beans for the party. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the salad (waaahhh!), but I did snap the baked beans, which received rave reviews from everyone at the party.

Baking away in the oven

We headed out for the party at a decent time but ran into some bad weather that delayed us but it didn't matter. We made it safely and had a blast with friends. Here are a few pictures of the food because I refuse to post any pictures of parents having way too much fun. All I will say is everyone was very lively, drinks for flowing and there were lots of arguments about basketball and football fantasy leagues LOL

 Have you ever had a Slap Sauce? OMG this stuff was good. It's a mustard-vinegar sauce that you can use for a number of things. I will have to do a review on this stuff because we fell in love with it at the party.
 It went perfect on top of brats fresh off the grill with caramelized onions. So freaking good!

 My friend, Kat, has a home garden and everything is growing so well. Don't these look amazing? All freshly picked too.

 She also introduced us to Deep Eddy's which was amazing. This was the grapefruit flavor and it is now on my list of items to keep stock. Do be warned though: this drink will sneak up on you. Which is probably why the picture below be describes my Sunday.

Sunday
I pretty much spent Sunday nursing a hangover. Listen, when you get a babysitter and can hang out with your spouse without the kids, you will go hard too. Nonetheless, I still managed to get out and run some grocery errands and then head out to the movies to see "Transformer: The Last Knight" with Hubby and our oldest.

All-in-all, it was a good weekend. How was yours?

Image Source

We saw "Transformers: The Last Knight" this weekend and it was pretty good. I can't say it was the best of the franchise, but it was good. Let me set the scene for you:

This movie starts a few years after the last one with most of Chicago destroyed and a new government agency called the TRF (Transformers) created to eliminate all Autobots and Decepticons from the world. At the same time, the world can't seem to understand why all of these transformers keep coming to Earth. To make a long story short, Optimus Prime becomes brainwashed by his creator (I thought we knew who that was?) and everyone is in search of staff given to Merlin (yes, King Arthur's Merlin) that can control the future of the universe, so to speak. While this isn't the most intriguing storyline, it was ok. I did feel a bit reaching at times but its a movie about giant robots so what do you expect.

I don't want to give away all of the details so I'll just list a few points of interest:

• I love how they tied all of the previous movies together into this one. Even to the point that you see some familiar faces but we also meet a bunch of new faces. 
• There were some funny moments but there was also a bunch of corny ones too. 
• The CGI was good but it was a bit too much at times that it really looked fake.
• We meet a lot of new robots in this movie too, which is always good.
• It's nice to hear the origin story of the Transformers in general. But, why was Optimus so easily brainwashed?
• I thought tying things back to King Arthur was an interesting spin. I would have never saw it coming. 
• Mark Wahlbeger's character is still the same and worthy of being a knight, which I thought was cute. 
• Vivian was...interesting. She looked EXACTLY like Megan Fox's character so it literally felt like the first movie all over again. Even Mark was giving me Shia moments at times.

Knowing that next week is going to be a crazy busy week for me (the end of the month always is), I'm getting a jumpstart on this week's meal planning. I'll probably do my grocery shopping today (Saturday) and get everything together tomorrow. 

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When I started blogging almost 9 years ago and walked away from it 4 years ago, you couldn't have told me then that I would come back with a vengeance. I started blogging during my first pregnancy and it became an outlet for me; a place to let it all hang out without fear of judgement and ridicule. Of course, this was before the age of social media, but I digress.

I decided to return back to blogging again because I miss the community. I miss having talks with "my tribe" and others who think like me but are also encountering some of the same life experiences. Walk. Run.Repeat started out as my journal to getting healthy but evolved into so much more. Sure, I would love to talk about my struggles and challenges with losing weight, but what about all the other stuff? The family vacations, the kitchen experiments, my thoughts on my marriage, my thoughts on balancing motherhood and a career. They are all such a big part of who I am and I want to tell my story, and so, I joined SheKnows.

SheKnows Media is a leading women's lifestyle digital media company, whose mission is all about women inspiring women. I joined this network because we as women have voices and we deserve to be heard. We women are responsible for most of things that have happened throughout history and we aren't finished yet.

I am all for women inspiring women and if we can continue to come together, we can be unstoppable. SheKnows Media will allow me to join my voice into the collective voice of women content creators who sometimes just have to let it all out. I am excited about becoming a blog influencer, and hope that my content to help and inspire other women to reach for the stars and grab them.

I am mom to 2 awesome boys (8 and 2, respectively) and my husband and I are wanting to expanding our family for a third time. With our last son, we tried for a year before finally conceiving. I'm here to tell you that getting pregnant in your 30s is completely different, and oftentimes more challenging, than getting pregnant in your 20s.

The best thing you can do to prepare for your pregnancy is make sure you are your healthiest you possible. That means eating right, maintaining a healthy weight, being active and taking prenatal vitamins.

(c) 2017. Walk Run Repeat.

Prenatal vitamins are not only essential for your growing baby, but also for making sure your body has the essential vitamins missing or needed to get pregnant. I typically don't do well with tablets or capsules, but Spring Valley makes a gel vitamin that is super easy for me to get down. If you absolutely can't take capsules, there are tons of gummy prenatal vitamins on the market.

Now that we are definitely on the road to baby #3, I have stockpiled my cabinets with prenatals and incorporated them into my morning routine. Here's wishing us luck!

I'm ready to end this search of finding the perfect school for our son. I will talk about our school journey in another post and why we chose to homeschool, but right now I'm going to focus on our recent quest of finding a school to enroll him in.

School classroom

Let me start this post by saying my son does not have any learning abilities or special needs. Our decision to homeschool was by personal choice, and residual trauma from a horrible Pre-K experience (a bad teacher with no patience for 3 years old = drama!). In the last year, he has expressed interest in attending "real school" (aka public school). We aren't completely against the idea, but we definitely want to empower him to make decisions so, our journey began.

I have viewed, met, and spoken with teachers at public, private, Montessori, Christian, you name it - and one thing's for certain: every school is different. From the school calendar to the teaching method, everyone has their own way of doing things and that's pretty darn cool. In fact, we actually prefer Montessori schools over all of them but given some of the recent meetings, we're still not quite sure.

I'm sure many of you are saying, just put him in a school. Generally speaking, its just that simple but its not. We are fully involved, hands-on parents and quite frankly, schools just aren't what they used to be. You really truly have to spend time getting to know the school and especially the people that work within them. My parents were totally engaged in every aspect of my schooling all the way through college. I SO appreciate them for serving in one of the most important roles: my advocate.

We as parents forget that we are advocates for our children so it is our job to speak up when we need to it and to rally the troops when its time to put a plan in place. This next school year is going to be a dozy for us in a number of ways but I am fully committed to making the best possible choice for my little guy.

Every time I do a #motivationmonday post, I think of the Kelly Rowland song, "Motivation." Not necessarily for the lyrical content (because believe me, she is NOT talking about the gym at all), but rather the title. Any way, I digress...


This weekend was particularly motivating to me in several ways. One way was physically. After attending the Summer Slay event hosted by Fit While Brown, I am reminded of just how serious I need to take my health and lose weight. I've been slacking on this but I really need to step it up if I'm going to have baby #3 (another post about this later).

The second way I was motivated this weekend was professionally. I had lunch with a colleague on Friday and she reminded me just how much and how important is it that we as women continue to fight the good fight for equally and entrepreneurship. I could literally do an ENTIRE post on that conversation because it was so moving and resonated with me so deeply that I came home and got back to work.

And finally, the last way I was motivated was financially. My contract at work is up on August 24th and while I'm sad/frustrated/scared and everything else in between, I reminded that we should all make an effort to be financially responsible. It's made me much more focused on my next steps and really listening to that little voice inside that's saying, "everything will be alright."

What's your motivation?

Image by Me

• When you take them off, ball them up together so that they are with one another. It lessens the chances of losing one.
• When you do laundry, wash all the socks together and nothing else. If a sock is washed with a towel, there’s a good chance it could get stuck to it and fall somewhere and never be found. I only wash socks with socks.
• Have a separate hamper for socks. Don’t put dirty socks in with the regular dirty clothes. Keep them separate.
• When you buy your new packs, buy one white, one black, and one dress pack. Nothing else.

I hope these tips help you as much as they have me. Believe me, I understand how frustrating it can be but let’s avoid them going into the Black Hole of Sock death but doing these easy hacks. 

Starlight Drive-In

My son and his BFF

Shea Butter samples by Koko_Butters

Swag bags by Fit While Brown for all participants

Fit While Brown LLC

Yummy wraps by Chef J-Rod

A fresh fruit tray by Chef J-Rod

Pasta salad by Chef J-Rod

Kanetta of Koko Butters telling us about the benefits of shea butter

Yummy cake samples by the ConfectionistBakery