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Three questions Thursday and a giveaway

Wahoo! It’s Thursday evening which means I get to entertain my old friend, Charlene, tonight for our favorite shiritaki italian dinner, tomorrow is Friday, and then Bo and I head up to my family’s place in Manchester Center, VT! I’m so excited to see my family! But, Thursday also means it’s Three Questions Thursday! Here they are, straight from good ol’ Iowa Girl. Similar to Iowa Girl and the other bloggers out there, I love learning about my readers, especially the lurkers. According to my most recent blog data, i’m getting around 75-100 visits a day so i’d love to get to know everyone!
  1. Do you have any summer vacation plans you’re excited about? So far we have two trips up to my family’s place in Vermont, one trip down to Savannah, my bachelorette party down at the shore, and then enjoying everything this amazing city has to offer in the summer. I have summer hours in my new job which means I get off at noon on Fridays! I am hoping to catch some matinee shows and events with friends!
  2. Would you rather live in a place with seasons, or somewhere that’s warm or cold (if you’re into that!) all year round? I absolutely love seasons! I grew up in Savannah, Georgia where you had HOT and cool. There was no in between and we only saw snow 2 times the first 18 years of my life.
  3. Is your car clean or messy? My car used to be pretty messy at times because I would live out of it when I was living between NYC and Philadelphia. But, I am not a messy person by nature and it drove Bo absolutely crazy!

GIVEAWAY

As promised guys, we have a fabulous and tasty giveaway this week! The amazing folks over at Sonny and Joes want everyone to have the opportunity to try their products. Therefore, they are offering up TWO of their wonderful sampler packs to lucky winners! You can see our review of their products here, but needless to say we have loved every flavor we’ve tried so far and will definitely be buying them again soon!

Two lucky readers will win a sampler pack from Sonny and Joes including 6 different flavors of hummus!
How to enter:
1) Leave a comment below telling me the best movie you’ve seen lately either on DVD or in the theater!
2) Add me to your blogroll or follower and let me know below
3) If you don’t have a blog, leave me a comment letting me know
4) Follow me on Twitter. Earn 2 bonus entries for tweeting about this giveaway! Healthyhappier is my twitter name or search by email aerudolph@gmail.com
The contest will end next Monday, June 8th at midnight! Good Luck!
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It’s National Running Day!

Happy National Running Day!

I’m looking forward to a great fun run this evening with the wonderful Ashley from Culinary Wannabee. She invited Bo and I to join she and her friends in the NYRR Young Professional’s Committee and Team for Kids Fun Run and Happy Hour. This should be a great opportunity for us to meet some fellow runners and enjoy the park on a weeknight. It’s rare that either of us workout in the evening so tonight should be a nice change. In NYC alone, there are 8 different group runs today to honor National Running Day!

Today’s events have made me realize how much my life has changed over the last few years. I only started running four years ago. Four years ago I weighed 190 lbs and had never been able to run for more than a minute or two in my life. I was always that kid who avoided the mile run test like the plague and blamed my poor athletic endurance on exercise enduced asthma. Don’t get me wrong, i’m sure many people suffer from this, but I now know that I was not one of them. I was just lazy and overweight. The summer before my senior year of college I decided I wanted to change things. Per my mom’s suggestion, I left my ego at the door and joined my first WW meeting while I was an intern in Philadelphia. After my first meeting the leader suggested that I start by not only tracking my food but also moving more. I was in shock. Who was she to tell me I needed to move more? For over a year I had been waking up bright and early to workout at the gym. But, back then, workout meant 30 minutes on the elliptical and nothing else. Clearly that plan wasn’t working. I decided right then that I wanted to be a runner. I’d always envied my other friends who participated in 5k and then proceeded to sport their shirts around campus.

Coincidentally, as I look back at my WW book and journals, I realized that four years ago yesterday I stepped on the treadmill ready to run. I started by running for 30 seconds and walking for 30 minutes. The next day I ran for 1 minute and walked for 29. I kept with this until I could run at 5.0 for 30 minutes. I was so proud when that day came! I was finally becoming a runner, or maybe I should have more properly call myself a jogger. Regardless, I loved the feeling and the pride that accompanied my new found elliptical replacement.

Over the course of this week i’ll continue my running story and hopefully news about my next running goal. Bo and I have both signed up for the 2009 ING NYC Marathon lottery and find out TOMORROW if we received bib numbers! I’m so nervous and excited!

I hope you have a great day and use today as your inspiration to baby step your way to jogging. One minute of running is headway in the right direction. If you need, use Missy for inspiration as she is starting down the path of becoming a runner and is doing a great job!

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A hummus so hot it makes you sweat

Good evening!

What a great evening it’s been! After a long day of meetings I was so excited to come home to not one but TWO packages! That amazing Danica sent us a wonderful Annie’s Natural sampler pack filled with Mac N Cheese, barbeque sauce, and dressings! We can’t wait to sample these over the next few days. The other package, was from my new best friends, Sonny and Joes! They sent us six different flavors and tonight Bo broke into the first hummus, Hot Enough Hummus.

A review from Bo: 
So after a long day, when I clearly didn’t eat enough, finding Sonny and Joe’s Hot Enough Hummus waiting for me at home was a welcome surprise.  I know its been a while since I’ve made an appearance (sorry about that) but this hummus was enough to draw me out of hibernation and back into the woods.  Now, I enjoy spicy food (I’m not a culinary masochist or anything but I think that spice adds flavor and plus it releases endorphins) and this hummus, with its layer of hot pepper tappenade, was seriously the best pureed chick pea that I’ve ever had.  The coolness of the hummus was perfectly balanced by the red pepper spice and it was only the fact that I had scallops on the stove to catch my attention that I didn’t eat the entire container (plus, that would have made me an unhealthy bear).  So, that leads me to the point of this whole diatribe: I rate Sonny and Joe’s as a definite bear.  Have a great night and I look forward to the next time I venture forth into the woods.

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