What a day

What a jam-packed day.  My swim went awesome this morning, even though I wasn't too excited about getting in the water when it was about 60 degrees out.  It made me feel a little more confident about the triathlon.

After swimming, I enjoyed a new flavor of Chobani.  Strawberry banana.  It was 2%, so it was a little creamier. I wasn't a big fan though.  The banana tasted fake, would rather just have plain yogurt and add my own fruit in.  Guess that's the way it usually goes though.  

Later in the morning my sister-in-law came up with her little boy Beau.  He's my favorite nephew!  (And only nephew but who's counting)

Tyler and Beau got up close and personal.  

We decided to have lunch at Chuong Garden, since that's Katy's favorite. Since it's only a block or two away, we walked.

Hubby was a gracious gentleman and carried both babies until his shoulders nearly fell off.

I enjoyed some cashew chicken and a crab rangoon.  Couldn't eat it all because it was super spicy.  I drank so much water that I didn't have room for all the food.  Maybe that's something I need to do a little more often...

After a very busy afternoon in the clinic, hubby grilled up some pork ribeyes from Fareway and I made up some little spinach side salads.  Mine had spinach, arugula (mixing it up!), banana peppers, green pepper, cucumbers, pumpkin seeds, feta cheese and poppyseed dressing.  Felt great to finally eat salad again.

I only had one of these! And not even all of one.  I had to share.

I bought a watermelon last night while grocery shopping and decided to cut that bad boy up.  I don't remember where I read this, but there was an article on a blog that I read about how to cut a watermelon.  I always thought the way I did it was ok, but now I can get it done in no time!  I feel kind of stupid that I didn't know how to do this in the first place.

Step one: slice the watermelon in wedges.

Step two: make vertical cuts along the length of each wedge.

Step three: slice horizontally across the wedge and drop pieces into container.  

Step four: run knife along edge of wedge to get rest of watermelon out.

Seriously, how did I not know to do that?!  It saves so much time.  

Oh yeah, and another big accomplishment for the day is that Tyler tried squash again.  He tried some last night but it was only kind of successful, but he did so good tonight that I thought I'd mention it!  He made a huge mess, but managed to get some in his mouth.  This was just Gerber squash, haven't made any other food ourselves except avocados and rice cereal.  

It was also Tyler's 5 month "birthday".  5 months ago I was in the most pain I've ever been in, but experienced the most joy I've ever felt.  We just feel so blessed everyday to have him in our life.  Love you little guy!

Back to normal, kind of

I'm glad we got Monday out of the way.  I knew it would be crazy, and it was.  So crazy that we didn't get to grocery shopping until about 6:30 at night.  At least I was well-rested for the crazy day, Tyler finally went back to sleeping all night.  Think he just missed his bed, I don't blame the little buddy.  I did too!

Yesterday morning was just a bowl of pineapple Chobani with some organic coconut on top.  I didn't take a picture because A. you've seen it before and B. it was a pretty boring picture.

Speaking of boring pictures, my lunch yesterday was nothing too great either.  We didn't have any produce in the house (or a lot of time), so I had a quick open-faced turkey and sharp cheddar sandwich on some wheatberry bread.  With a side of organic blue corn tortilla chips.  I did dip them in to some salsa, which is not pictured.

I did manage to sneak in a small snack sometime during the day-had one of these little treats.  Love Larabars, they have very few ingredients and are mostly dates, nuts and other dried fruits.  I've never tried the gingersnap cookie until now, and I really liked it.  If I closed my eyes and really pretended, I could imagine it was a real cookie.  (Not really)

Like I said, we had a super crazy day.  I didn't even finish my charts last night.  We were pretty lazy after going to the grocery store, so this was our supper.

Just this, a whole roasted chicken.  No sides or anything.  I should have taken an after picture, because we demolished this.  We peel the skin off but also try to use every other bit of chicken.  At least we saved a little bit for lunch today.


So here we are, 5:30am on Tuesday.  Finishing up the blog, pumping, feeding a child and after that a quick swim.  Today is the last day the pool is open, so better get one more swim in before the triathlon.

The last day the pool is open is kind of sad, means that summer is coming to an end.  Honestly, I don't even know where summer went.  We were always on the go, and when we were home it was too hot to be outside anyways.  I hope this isn't a trend for the rest of my summers, I'd like them to slow down so I can enjoy them more!

Home sweet home

Home sweet home.  I feel like I've been gone forever.

Today was a little rough.  Didn't get to bed until about midnight, then up at 4 am with Tyler.  He just wanted to get up and eat some more, then play.  We didn't hit the road until about 11, so we just skipped right over breakfast and started lunch.

An old college fav- Qdoba nachos.  I like to pile on the salsas-3 different kinds.  Shredded cheese on top, but no sour cream or guac.  Underneath are black beans, chicken and a cheese sauce.  And deliciously salty tortilla chips.

I did get a little cat-nap in when we got back, but not a long one.  Did some laundry, unpacking and kitchen cleanup.

Supper was left-over Harris pizza, from Thursday night?  I don't remember, they're all a blur.  No groceries=crap for supper.

Oh my gosh, forgot to tell you about the big dinner last night.  Palmer always has a big party at the end of homecoming, with a catered meal.  You get all you can eat buffet, all you can drink, and there is a HUGE dessert tent.

Pretty much the only reason I go to homecoming every year is for the bananas foster.  I'm not kidding.  There's something so good about cut-up bananas heated up in a caramel-y sauce dumped over cold vanilla ice cream.

No picture to prove it, but I was very disappointed.  To save time, they just cut the banana in half and then split it, dumped it in a saucepan and poured the premixed caramel sauce + rum over it, heated it for less than 10 seconds and poured it over melted ice cream.  I know they did it because the lines were so long last year. I even confronted one of them after I was served the substandard serving.  I still ate it, but went back for another and the guy cut it up special for me because I complained.  Still wasn't as good because they couldn't pour the rum in and flambe it like they were supposed to.  I'm such a psycho.

I did get a picture of the main meal, but only after I had demolished the veggies on the bottom of the plate.  The rest of the plate consisted of a hard as a rock whole wheat roll, potatoes, baked chicken, and prime rib with a blackberry and cherry sauce.  The prime rib was sooo good, I went back for another plate of just the meat and sauce.  I was sweating after it.  Meat sweats.

The spoon was my main utensil because I grabbed two spoons and no fork.  I was too hungry (and lazy) to walk all the way across and grab a fork so I just cut stuff with a plastic knife and ate it with a spoon.

No beverages for me, since I was driving.  Just water.

So here we are, Sunday night, back to work tomorrow.  Back on track with eating, and getting ready for the last couple days before the triathlon!

Whew.

All done. I can't believe how hard it is to be a student again! So much sitting. At least I learned some new stuff.  Not so much today, but the other classes have been great. Let's see if I can even remember what I had to eat yesterday.

Breakfast was more fresh pineapple and oatmeal with dried blueberries.  Also slipped in a handful of fresh ones when I first woke up.

Lunch at the expo was kind of weird. Had a brown rice and beans dish with cut up sweet potatoes. I suppose that was the vegetarian option. Then they had sandwiches. With yucky bread. I had an open-faced turkey sandwich.  They also had some salads, not sure what kind but one was just a letttuce salad with avocado as a dressing. That is easy enough to do at home.  Dessert was a piece of cheesecake, which I normally don't like, but this one was yummy. It wasn't super rich, which was nice.

Supper was at Buffalo Wild Wings. Split a pepper jack wrap with chips and salsa with Audrey, and had 7 boneless wings. And 2 Bud Light Limes.  That was a poor decision because I was already dehydrated since I forgot to grab a water in the later sessions. Felt yucky this morning. 

Today we stopped at Panera's for breakfast- power breakfast sandwich and a mocha icy drink to keep me awake. Sorry no pic.

Lunch was pretty crappy, sandwiches, chips, salads and rice krispie bars. Hope they'll make up for it tonight at the big dinner!

Hope everyone is having a happy healthy weekend... enjoy the last weekend before the kiddos go back to school!

Greek style

Day 1 of homecoming. Actually had 2 pretty good classes, and I'm excited to get back and start implementing some of the protocols. Now about the food.

I'm not sure how the pictures are showing up, on my phone they're just tacked on the end. So the first picture is of breakfast. Had oatmeal with dried cranberries and dried blueberries, with a side of fresh pineapple. I also grabbed a handful of fresh blueberries before we left for the day.

Lunch was Greek-themed. Piece of flatbread with chicken, lettuce, tomatoes and feta. Had some pita bread and hummus on the side, along with some Mediterranean couscous.  I also had 2 pieces of baklava.  I should have stopped at 1 but it was so good.  That was the first experience with it, and I think I'll try it again someday. 

Oh and all I had to drink today was water. Lots of it.

When we got back to grandma's, I went for a quick run. Go me!  Then we had Harris pizza (quad cities style) and chocolate cake.  Good thing I went on that run.

We are off to bed since I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night.  Sorry patients, won't be in the office tomorrow, so don't get hurt or sleep wrong!

Let's try this blogger app

Here's the first phone post. We'll see how this goes.

I don't really have any new pics for today because everything was a repeat. Soupy yogurt with blueberries and a banana for breakfast. Chicken drummie for lunch with a pasta side. Harvest chicken salad and chipotle turkey sammie fromm Quiznos! So good.

Since I don't have any new pictures, I'll give you an old one. Here's what I found in Target one day.

Has a special place in my heart...takes me back to senior year at Luther. Ah the memories. What this really reminds me of is my horrible eating habits. I was probably 15-20 lbs heavier then, due to poor eating habits and lots of beer drinking. I've learned so much over the years- it's never too late to change! One cheeseball never hurt anyone though...

Smoker time!

The hubby got himself a birthday present, since I didn't get him anything.  He got one of these bad boys: 

That space pod/R2D2 looking object is the Weber Smokey Mountain 22.5" smoker.  His new pride and joy.

His first meal was bacon (apparently that helps season it) and chicken drummies.  I have a feeling we'll be eating lots of meat in the near future.

Before the picture for supper, here's the salad I made for lunch.  Pretty much same as yesterday but smaller.  The poor little spinach leaves that were left in the container were starting to wilt- finished off the package today.  Added chicken, grapes, feta, sliced almonds and poppy seed dressing. 

I realized I always post a picture of my salad before adding the dressing because it's prettier, but the poppy seed isn't bad, so here's an after shot.

Now for the meat.  Didn't get a picture of all the drummies, just the one I ate for supper.  Accompanied by some honey glazed carrots.  Which were amazing.

These carrots look way better than before- wish I would have thought to take a before and after picture.  You know when you let carrots sit in the fridge too long and they get all white and gross looking because of the chemicals they use to package them?  Well I said screw that I'm using them up.  

So I steamed them for about 7 minutes in my microwave Pampered Chef steamer, and then threw them in a medium sized frying pan.  Added a scoop of yogurt spread (you can use butter if you want), about 3 T of honey, and a sprinkle of sea salt, pepper and parsley flakes.  Stir them around for about 5 minutes.  They look so pretty now.

That's all folks... 2 posts in a day! Woo hooo!  Oh yeah, forgot to mention we lost our softball game tonight.  : (  It's ok though because they are a pretty good team and we fought back from a pretty bad first inning.  Sad that it's all over though, see ya next year team Lifetime Chiropractic!  

Just to warn you, my posts are going to be pretty sporadic this week.  We take off tomorrow after work to go get some continuing ed hours.  I'll see if I can get Blogger to work on my phone, but if I don't, you're out of luck and will have to find something else more interesting to do than read my blog for a couple days.  GooooD Luck!