Happy Monday friends! I spent the weekend in a healthy mix of productivity and leisure and I feel like I am ready to go back to work this morning. Ah, the power of a good weekend! Here is my Nourished Life Gratitude List 2018 Week Three. 
It has been sweltering here lately. Too hot to go out running until well after I get home from work, or too hot to go running anywhere but the gym. But, on Monday, a cool change swept through and the afternoon was the precise perfect running temperature. I slipped on my shoes, cued up a running workout (I’m trying out Aaptiv at the moment and I love it!) and took off into the afternoon. I covered 6 kilometres and came home with a huge smile on my face. I was grateful for the afternoon, grateful for the run, grateful for my body re-learning how to move with intensity after all it has been through. Monday was one of those runs that reminds me why running is one of my favourite ways to celebrate my body and move through the world.
On Saturday evening I picked Casey up and we went out for dinner at Fromage the Cow! We have been waiting to go to this interesting little restaurant/fromagerie since it opened and we finally made it. We indulged in the four course chef’s choice degustation menu and were pleasantly surprised with each course. We had caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella; grilled peach salad with brillat savarin (side note: I’ve never tried this cheese before but it is amazing! Kind of like a less intense triple cream brie); gorgonzola fondue; and for dessert the colourful creation above which was cherry white chocolate gelato and green apple sorbet with sesame brittle. It was such a great evening. Casey and I have had so many culinary adventures over the years and I am grateful that we get to continue sharing our love for food, and our love of talking non-stop no matter where we are eating! 
I spent a large portion of Saturday morning clearing out some of the stuff I still have stored at my parent’s home. I took 15 (!) bags of rubbish to the dump on the way home, and I still have more boxes to go through. I clearly have been a hoarder from a young age. I’m grateful to my parents for letting me hang onto all of this stuff until I was finally ready to let go. I am realising that sometimes we hold onto pieces of our self from the past that no longer serve who we are in the present. In order to truly embody the person we are in the present we need to thank our past selves for surviving, for learning, for thriving, and then we need to let them go to live in the past where they belong so we can move forward and keep becoming more of the self we were meant to be now. I am grateful that I have finally learned this lesson. As someone who has always struggled with change (I used to cry on my birthday as a child because I couldn’t believe I was getting older) I am grateful that I am learning that the only constant is change, and sometimes it brings greater adventures and rewards than we could have imagined. Also, amongst the boxes I found this cute green monkey toy and Penny was very happy with her new toy when I got home. 
For the past few weeks I have been promising to give myself a ‘Sunday off’ where I don’t give myself anything to achieve during the day other than what pleases me. So, this Sunday I walked to and from my favourite yoga class, took Penny for a little jaunt, ate a delicious breakfast, and ensconced myself on the couch all day with a pile of library books. I made it through two deliciously creepy novels by Jennifer McMahon. While I am not a horror fan I don’t mind a ghost story every now and again and these two books delivered just what I was looking for. I was grateful for a day filled with reading, napping, and puppy snuggling. It was just what I needed and soothed my introvert soul.
Okay friends, now it’s your turn to tell me what you were grateful for this week! I’ll be back on Thursday with a post about what I have been reading lately so I hope you will join me then.