As with anything that’s long anticipated and filled with fun, love and excitement, I’m definitely more than a little bummed that this weekend has come to an end.

I don’t have pictures and recaps. On Thursday I sort of entertained the notion of photographing the fun, food and family but I’m easily caught up in the moment and have always had a problem with remembering to document. And by mid-day Friday, I decided not to worry about my lack of photographs and dedication to the blog and just live in the moment.

I truly did appreciate every minute we had with the family. So much love and laughter. Will graduated last night and even though the ceremony was long, it was worth it just to watch our one graduate walk across the stage.

This morning we were up early again (our families refused to leave their given time zones) and we dragged ourselves to breakfast with Will’s family. Normally I’m not one to turn my nose up at a free breakfast but I needed to be preparing for my long run and I wish I could have slept another hour and been able to eat my own oatmeal and coffee. The soggy oats at the restaurant were hard to stomach and the coffee was worse. I tend to get nauseous when I’m really tired and that also made it hard to get the food down.

I tried because my run (12 miles) needed fuel but I only ate about half. The lack of sleep increased my stress level and the rest of the morning was pretty miserable. I left for my run at about 10:30, which is normal for me but I usually haven’t been up for so long and eaten so poorly.

It wasn’t going to be pretty and I knew that.

Despite being a little warm for my liking, it was a beautiful day and I could feel the endorphins kicking in as I chugged along. Will did the first two miles with me and then I did another two mile loop before heading off into my normal neighborhoods. For some reason, probably lack of sleep, I was planning to do my six mile route and I guess I thought that plus the four miles I did before was going to equal 12. Probably around mile 8 I realized that’s not how the math works (duh) and that I was only going to be making it to 10 miles. The thought of adding another two sounded terrible more because my motivation was non-existent than because I felt fatigued. I actually felt pretty strong throughout this entire run and I wish I could have gotten my mental game behind the effort as well.

But I don’t feel bad about cutting back the milage. I did what I could today and that’s all I can ask for on any day. A smart workout is the best workout!

Post-run I tried to regain some of my one weekend day to accomplish tasks but after a quick trip to Target I had to lay down and take a pretty substantial three hour nap. I finally feel human again. What a difference some sleep can make.

Dinner consisted of my favorite way to eat refrigerator leftovers:

There’s a bed of quinoa under there and it’s topped with tomato sauce, cilantro pesto hummus, tomatos and carrots, pinto beans and half an avocado.

We did a dinner and a breakfast at our house this weekend and those two meals left us with lots of random leftovers. We’re out of everything I typically eat but because our fridge is packed, I can’t bring myself to buy groceries just yet. So this week will be about using what we have. I also need to dig myself out of my food rut and I think this will help inspire me to get creative.

Unfortunately the cupcake cake was mostly thrown away today. But I also kinda knew it would. My other baking effort this weekend was a quick, no yeast cinnamon roll recipe that actually earned the words “I will compare all future cinnamon rolls to these.” They were actually entirely eaten before I coud get a photograph of the final product!

Here’s they are before baking:

Because they were so popular, I’m going to make them again this week (a vegan version though) and that recipe will be coming up in the next couple of days. I’ve got to give my self something to look forward to with the excitement of this weekend behind me and gooey cinnamony baked good seem just the thing!