Friday Free For All

Happy weekend everyone! Hope you all have had a great (short) week. The tough thing about the 4 day weeks is everything is crammed into the 4 days and I always feel like I'm trying to play catch up! Anyone else? 

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Labor Day

Labor Day was super low key for us..spent some quiet time with the boys and got some things done around the house like organizing my desk area and attic storage. I had a bit of coaching on sunday so that took up most of my morning. The weather here was a little bit of a buzz kill but we try to spend as much time outside with the boys unless it is pouring rain while we can before the weather turns!

                                           Participants at the Hurricane Harvey Soccer Pick up Fundraiser!

                                           Participants at the Hurricane Harvey Soccer Pick up Fundraiser!

Hurricane Harvey Fundraiser

Seeing all of the people affected by Hurricane Harvey has just absolutely broken my heart. Seeing lives lost, families lose everything and not have a home is so hard to see. Having a family myself, its devastating thinking of other moms out there struggling to keep it all together for their families and in need of simple things like food, water, shelter, diapers, etc.

I kept thinking to myself..there has to be something that we can do to help to show our support and had an idea about bringing together the community for a night of soccer where the proceeds of the "games" would go directly to Houston. I enlisted our Director of Coaching, Rob Ferguson, who set up an incredible "pick up soccer" event where youth players came and donated some money to play pick up. Any player, any club, come one, come all. We put this event together in basically 5-6 days. (Bravo, Rob)

The support was overwhelming with so many young players coming to participate, as well as volunteers coming to help in every way possible. Canisius and Buff State sent players from their collegiate programs to support and hang out with the kids. Sahlen's (obviously) donated hot dogs available for purchase and proceeds also went to the cause. The event was incredible- I can't tell you how amazing the vibe and atmosphere was. THANK YOU to everyone that attended and donated! As of now, we have raised over $4,000 for the Hurricane Relief efforts. The WNY Soccer community sure did rise up to the occasion and a big pat on the back to all of the WNY Flash Academy and Sahlen Sports Park staff that helped us make the event a reality. Our thoughts are with everyone in Irma's path and we are praying for all of you down south! 

My go-to night snack

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I don't know about you guys, but whenever the cooler temperatures roll around, I CRAVE COMFORT FOOD (and sugar). 11 months postpartum and I'm still trying to lose those last dang 5 lbs :P #thestruggle

Its been about 2 weeks since I've had the self control to stop having my bowl (or two lol) of nightly granola. I love granola and although there are certainly WORSE things I could be eating, the portion size that I have been eating is basically for two people, lol, and the sugar content in that is just....yeah. not ideal. My replacement? some Quest Peanut Butter Protein Powder mixed with Chobani plain greek yogurt.

I find that its sweet enough (the peanut butter flavor), and filling enough with the protein content of the yogurt as well as a 1/2 scoop of the powder. Its low sugar, and lower carb. If you like peanut butter, I definitely recommend trying it! I also have done this with different flavors of protein powder (vanilla) and it was pretty good. This gives you FLAVOR without the added sugar content of the flavored greek yogurts! 

Have a great weekend everyone! 

xo

Alex