BODYFLOW + A Special Announcement + A New Recipe

Well hello there, guys! I can’t believe I forgot to share with you some of the most important news of the weekend/my life! I was a bit on pins and needles last week, waiting for my score on my final CPA exam to come in. The score was supposed to be posted online on Wednesday, but due to some technical difficulties at the National and State boards, didn’t go up until late Friday night. I spent Wednesday through Friday constantly refreshing my Internet, hoping to see a score. FINALLY on Friday night, this is what I saw:

I got an 86 which, according to my calculations, is above the 75 passing score! So with that, I am D.O.N.E. with my CPA exams. It has been a long 10 months, but seeing that final passing score makes it more than worth it.

Now that I’ve shared my good news with you guys, let’s move on, shall we? Yesterday morning I woke up and snuggled with sweet Lou boy because it was National Dog Day! Who am I kidding? I wake up and snuggle with him every morning, but yesterday was extra reason to celebrate!

Louie and Sam are the best dogs on the entire planet, I swear.

After the cuddle sesh, I headed to the gym to complete a 35 minute treadmill workout before taking a Bodyflow class. My cardio time looked like this:

As soon as I finished my run I walked on over to the group exercise room to take a Bodyflow class. Bodyflow, like its counterparts Bodypump and CXWORX, is a Les Mills-developed fitness class. Bodyflow is a mix of Yoga, Tai Chi, and Pilates, and is made up of 45 minutes of exercise followed by 10 minutes of meditation. The stretching component of Bodyflow helped me loosen up all the tight muscles I’ve accumulated from Bodypump, CX WORX and cycling over the past few days, and helped me get to a calm place after a whirlwind week and weekend.

For lunch I whipped up a simple but tasty plate of steamed veggies, and topped it with a melted wedge of Laughing Cow sun-dried tomato cheese.

I’ve been lacking on the veggie-front, so this made me feel a little bit better about consuming massive amounts of cereal and nuts throughout the rest of the day. Sometimes I think I’m part squirrel.

Dinner

Finally a night at home in my kitchen! For dinner last night, I was only cooking for my dad and I, so I made one of our favorite dishes – Tilapia! I wanted to try something new with this fish, so I baked it under sliced tomatoes and basil. Here is my recipe for Herb + Tomato Baked Tilapia

Ingredients

2 tilapia filets
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp minced onion
1 tsp oregano
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tomato, sliced
Handful fresh basil, sliced or shredded

Directions

Preheat your oven to 400° and spray a shallow baking dish or pan with cooking spray. Place tilapia filets in baking dish and set aside. In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt butter. Add lemon juice to melted butter and mix. In a separate bowl, mix thyme, minced onion, oregano and garlic. Pour lemon butter mixture over both sides of tilapia and then top both sides with herb mixture. Place tomato slices and basil atop the tilapia, and bake for 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

The dish was fairly simple and took about 30 minutes from start to finish – my kind of week night meal! Hope you all try and enjoy it 🙂

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Freedom + Fire

FREEDOM!!! For now. I can finally say I’ve taken all 4 CPA exams! I’m in a limbo period now as I wait a few weeks for my score to come back, so it’s hard to feel a complete sense of relief since I don’t yet know if I passed.

The 12 hours leading up to the exam and the 12 hours after were certainly eventful. Upon arriving home from class Wednesday night, I obviously went straight to the freezer for some icecream. Much to my horror, I found that the freezer had been left open all day. More disappointing than the melted ice cream was the thawed out 2 pounds of shrimp I found. The shrimpies were just finishing the thawing process so my only options were to toss them or cook them at 10pm. I made a shrimp scampi pasta for Derek to take to work the next day, so the situation wasn’t a complete waste. It just wasn’t what I had in mind at 10pm before my CPA exam.

Following the impromptu shrimp scampi, we had a little accident on our hands. Derek sliced his head open in the shower and literally looked like a gunshot victim. Naturally, I went into nurse mode and handled the situation like a pro. Yeah, right. I ran away screaming. After some deep breaths I regrouped and called my mom to see if she thought he needed stitches. He didn’t and we both survived the incident – phew! (I’ll spare you from the pictures!)

Flash forward to Thursday morning. I’m sure you want to hear ALL about what I was tested on on the CPA exam, but I prefer not to reminisce any more than I have to.

After a gruesome few hours, I returned home and let out some steam by running 5 miles on the treadmill. It was gloriously relieving – I just sort of cleared my head and went. I maintained an 8:35 pace throughout, so I’m obviously setting some serious land-speed records. The rest of the day was spent sunning (with SPF, of course) and splashing with my mom and Louie in the pool!

It was quite the relaxing afternoon!

An even more daunting exam than my CPA exam took place this week. Florida residents studying for the Florida Bar exam took the test on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I can’t even imagine how difficult it was, and I’m so happy my friend Sara finally has her life back! She’s been preparing probably 25 hours a day for the past 2 months for it and I know her hard work will pay off 🙂 To celebrate, Sara and I went with our families to Eddie V’s Prime Seafood on Thursday evening.

Eddie V’s opened in Tampa a couple of months ago and I’ve been dying to try it out. The food, service, and atmosphere all went above and beyond my expectations, and I can easily declare that this is my new favorite seafood restaurant. I didn’t manage to snap too many pics, but I did get a picture of our dessert. it was on fire. Literally.

The Banana’s Foster with a Butter Pecan cake left me in a euphoric state and put me to sleep within seconds of arriving home.

Today I’m excited for lunch with my Abuela and a weekend that is free of CPA studying! Happy Friday, everyone!