Books, health food and dreamers. :)

Hellooooooooo!! I've missed you guys since... umm, Friday? Seriously, I missed you! Insert collective, "awwwwwwww," here :)

I was going to do an In My Mailbox post today, but to be completely honest I am embarrassed at how miserably I am failing at not buying books. I bought 11 last week. Yes, you read right. ELEVEN. One of them is a set too, so if you count the books in the set it's more like..... 19. In my defense (yes, I am justifying this) I got a TON of good deals and all together only spent... ok, nevermind. I just added it up and it's not that good. It's over 50$ and that is still ridiculous. Especially for someone that doesn't even have time to read lately.... Sigh.

I'm still thinking about the IMM post though.... maybe for Tuesday. ;)

Since Friday afternoon I have been go, go, going which is kind of funny considering I was fretting Friday morning about having absolutely no plans laid for the weekend!

Friday afternoon started like any other with Happy Hour (like how I make that a proper noun with capital letters...) at our favorite place, Saints restaurant and bar in West Des Moines. We have decided that this place is officially the "ex-boyfriend bar" as I have seen two guys there now that I have dated and my other friend saw one this weekend. We don't care though, they're not running us out of there. It's still our place. ;)

So, after happy hour one of my friends had a date, so my other friend and I headed to Boston's to meet her hubby and some of his friends for a couple more drinks. It was an early night because I was planning on getting up early to participate in an event the School of Education participates in called Books and Bagels with the I Had a Dream Foundation. Here is me with the "Dreamers". I had a such a great time at the event! What a wonderful charity.
Before we left Boston's on Friday night, my friends hubby's friend (following me? lol) gave us free tickets to an event downtown at Hy-Vee Hall on Saturday called the Hy-Vee Whole Experience. The event is to showcase the organic and natural food selections that are available at Hy-Vee. There were tons of booths with vendors talking about their products, well known individuals in the area speaking, and even celebrities! Shawn Johnson was there in the morning, but we missed her. Darn! ;)
Right away when we walked in we were handed a re-useable shopping bag. My friend and I looked at each other and was like, are we getting food to take home?! Sweet!

We got to walking around to all the vendors right away. I don't think we missed a single one. There were so many products there! We walked away with full bellies and lots of food. Here's the swag I walked away with...
Notice the big bag of BBQ chips already opened? Yeah, I couldn't help myself. I cannot be trusted around BBQ chips...

I got a sample of Chia seeds, some individual sized bags of chips, cereal, Pepsi Max, Cliff bars, Lara bars, Luna bars, Gatorade, Vitamin water, Propel, magnets, coupons.... I also got a loaf of bread that somehow didn't get pictured! Oops. It's the 45 calorie bread from Sara Lee, which is what I eat on a regular basis so it was awesome to get a loaf for free!

Look how small this Pepsi Max is! It's about 8oz, which is perfect for a small craving of pop! (That's Lexie in the background!)
We had such a great time at this event! I know we will plan on attending again the next time it's in Des Moines. I guess this was the first year they had it here, but they've had it in Omaha and Council Bluffs before.

After leaving the convention we wandered next door to a dance competition. We couldn't help but sit and watch the girls dance and reminisce about when we were that little. Our costumes weren't that skimpy though.... My goodness! No pictures of that... lol ;)

One our way back to WDSM we got to talking about health food stores in our area. We just got a Trader Joes recently and we are getting a Whole Foods later this year. My friend had never been to TJ's so I told her she had to go! We decided to just go right then and finish up our grocery shopping since it's already started with all our goodies from the health food convention!

I found these massive bananas at TJ's and even though I didn't need bananas, I just had to buy them... They're the ones on the left (obviously), I wanted to picture them with regular sized banana's to show you how huge they are!


Today two friends of mine and I headed two hours east of here to the Tanger Outlets for a day of shopping. We just got home about an hour and a half ago and I am wiped out! I wore a pedometer all day and I can't believe how much we walked! I'm going to wear one everyday and if I haven't made it to at least five miles I'm going to get my booty outside and get to five miles asap (well, this is the plan. Fingers crossed I follow through. Hold me accountable, ok?)

I am off to finish my laundry and get ready for the week. I still have a chapter to read in my Arts Integration book for class tomorrow and I have no time to do it during the day. Uuuuuuggggh.

Have a great Monday everyone! :)

Do you shop organic or pay attention to preservatives and other "fake" stuff in your food?