Disney prep

Ugh.  I just wrote half a blog post and it was basically just me whining, so instead let me summarize what it said:

-I am freaking out about getting ready for the trip and flying with the girls
-I am PMS-ing
-I am irritated that I had to be called out of Bodypump twice tonight, the second time permanently since my 4.5 year old peed on the floor in daycare.

That was much better than what I wrote.  And since I wrote the first version I've been able to take a shower with not one but TWO locked doors separating me from my children, so the world looks a little brighter now.

So!  Food!

Will thoughtfully prepared Saturday morning breakfast today since we won't be around Saturday morning to eat it then.

Great Harvest Rye bread (interesting choice, but it needed to be used up), 3/4 oz cabot 50% light cheddar, 1 slice beef bacon, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, sliced baked apples, egg

Snack was a KeVita and 1 oz cabot 50% light.

Lunch was a repeat of yesterday, minus the tomatoes.

Greens, red bell pepper, roasted chickpeas, snap peas, 1 oz feta, balsamic, 1 tsp olive oil, 12 small black olives

 Plus this:

1 rolled-up slice Applegate Organics herbed turkey breast lunchmeat

 And these:

When snack time came I was really craving a peanut butter milkshake.  Chocolate Covered Katie posted one awhile back and ever since I saw it I've wanted it.  I used to make one with sugar free cheesecake jell-o pudding powder that was amazing, but I don't use things like that anymore so I had to get more creative.  I think the result was super-tasty.

1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 2 Tbsp peanut flour, 1 large frozen banana, ice, 6 drops NuNaturals liquid stevia

It was just what I was craving, but healthy!  I am quite pleased about that because I have been battling the panicky hormonal cravings a lot the past 2 days and I am proud that I made a smoothie instead of just attacking a bag of chocolate chips.

Dinner was leftover paella eaten in the car on the way to Bodypump.

Possibly even yummier the second day

I was looking forward to finally getting to do all of release 80 (since I always have to leave early to get Emily at preschool) but alas, today was not my day (see above summary of my original post).

When I got home I was very irritated and angry, and I wanted more peanut butter milkshake so that's what I had.

Same smoothie, but now it's dark

 I was so angry I put pretzel legs in it this time.

Yum

I think we're about finished packing(!) so now I plan to relax a bit and then head to bed.  Emily has come out of her room 4 times in the past hour for the following reasons:

-Her 'gina felt crooked (?!?)
-She couldn't find the baby dragon that turned out to be in her hand
-She thought she might have to poop
-She needed to read a book for awhile

Looks like I'm not the only one who might have trouble sleeping tonight.

And yes, I know that I am lucky to be able to take my kids to Disney World.  I know we'll have fun.  I know that other people fly with kids all the time on much longer flights than I will be taking tomorrow.  But "other people do it all the time, and for much longer than I'll have to do it" is what I told myself before I gave birth the first time, and that didn't mean it wasn't the toughest and most painful thing I've ever done!

I don't know what to call my blog post, but it's done

The title of this post is what I just said to Will, and he suggested I use that as the title so I took his advice.

First and most importantly, I lost 1.8 pounds this week for a total of 6.8(ish)!  Yay for that.  I'm within half a pound of my summer weight and I felt decent then so let's hope I can keep it up this time.

The hours remaining before the trip are starting to go by very quickly.  I will post as best I can, and I've downloaded the Blogger app for iPhone so I may even be able to keep up with posting my food while I'm on the trip (WITHOUT having to pay for internet access at my hotel!).  Hopefully that can help keep me on track.  I feel like I've been eating well for a couple weeks now but I'm right back at the weight where I usually fall off the wagon and a trip at this point is a bit dangerous.  We're doing everything possible to keep our eating close to normal; getting a room with a full kitchen, having groceries delivered to our room and bringing A LOT of food with us, only planning to have 3 meals out etc.

Anyway, on to my food.

My breakfast, which I regretted later (in spin class) because it did not have very much protein.

2 biscuits Barbara's Bakery shredded wheat, blueberries, erythritol, almond milk

 Then I went to the aforementioned spin class.  It's true that the seat hurts less as time goes on...this is my 3rd week and it was much more standable.  Why is that?  I really hope I'm not developing callouses...

After spin I snacked while running errands, and although I intended to avoid coffee today (its creeping back into my life as a daily thing) I had a spare 10 minutes before preschool pick-up which is just the perfect amount of time to go through the Starbucks drive-through.

Grande plain skim latte (half-drunk) and my fully drunk KeVita.  Not pictured: Babybel light cheese wheel

Then it was time to throw together my salad and run out the door to dance class.  Today I only allowed tasty things into my salad.  I need to recover from yesterday.  The wine worked though, I don't seem to have food poisoning :-)

Greens, red bell pepper, sugar snap peas, kalmata olives, 1/4 cup roasted chickpeas, 1 oz feta, cherry tomatoes, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar

 I am always extra-hungry when I get home from Emily's dance class so I made myself a thick smoothie and topped it with some Trader Joes High Fiber Cereal (which Emily sometimes calls pretzel legs).

1 frozen peach, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1/2 cup skim milk, ice, 12 almonds, cinnamon, pretzel legs

 I was still hungry, so I had a couple more snacks.

1/2 cup roasted chickpeas

some withered strawberries that needed to be finished up

I was excited about dinner.  I bought a frozen mix of scallops, shrimp and calamari from Trader Joes and I was going to make a seafood soup but then Mama Pea posted a recipe for paella this morning and suddenly I knew what had to be done with my seafood.  I followed her recipe, but then befouled it with all kinds of seafood and sausage and brown rice.  Sorry Mama Pea.

Few sights are yummier than a whole big pot of paella 

My serving

Oh, and I had to use turmeric instead of saffron because Giant didn't carry saffron.  Can you imagine?  I don't know how we live like this.

Once Daddy got home I ran out the door to pick up a couple things we still needed for the trip.  When I returned I was hungry again, and Will had opened a pale ale made by my dad so we shared that...

Photographed by William Randall

...and I had a second small helping of the paella.

Like my bowl?  Remy does.

After putting Emily to bed, I had a dessert snack.  I have been extremely snack-y today, which I blame on the time of the month and the stress of getting everyone ready for the trip.

2 Tbsp Sunspire grain-sweetened chocolate chips and 2 Tbsp raisins

I have a friend who just took her FOUR kids to Disney World.  I have no idea how she even did that.  As far as I can tell they're all back and in one piece too so I think she deserves a medal.

And I think I need to go to bed before I eat anything else.

Epic salad fail

The last thing I ate before bed last night was banana peanut flour ice cream, so I decided to make it a whole recurring theme and have banana peanut flour oatmeal for breakfast this morning.

1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 banana, 2 Tbsp peanut flour

It tasted a bit like those no-bake cookies and I had to keep myself from sprinkling chocolate chips over the top of my oatmeal.  Peanut and chocolate should be together, and once I am in a more maintenance-y phase of weight loss I think I will reunite them in this breakfast.

I was getting the girls all ready to head to school and then the gym this morning (and by "getting ready" I mean arguing that no, you cannot leave the house naked) when Emily's preschool called and said classes were cancelled.  I hung up and called the gym to find that all morning classes were cancelled there too and there was no childcare.  Dang it.  I don't know how much working out I'm going to be able to do while we're gone, I want to stick as close as possible to my routine for as long as possible beforehand!

Since we were stuck at home, I bumped my smoothie up to become my morning snack.

1 cup applesauce, 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt, 12 almonds, ice

 And then the salad happened.

As I've said, I'm trying to use my salads to finish up random things in the fridge, but I think I took this one a little too far.  I blanched some wilted kale and tossed that in there.  I dumped Emily's leftover salad from yesterday in the mix.  I added some recently defrosted lemon lentil salad I made God knows how long ago and stuck in the freezer to promptly forget.

Greens, kale, 6 olives, grated carrot, 1 oz humbolt fog cheese, 1.2 cup lemon lentil salad, smoked salmon, balsamic vinegar

Here were some of the problems with my salad:

-The lemon from the lentil salad was too strong when paired with the vinegar I sprinkled over everything.  Acid overload!
-The salmon in Emily's leftover salad from yesterday tasted fishier than normal which is understandable since it sat in a salad in the fridge all night but it still freaked me out so I picked it out and tossed it.
-Something else in the salad tasted like soap.  I suspect the kale, but not EVERY piece of kale tasted gross. It was like playing Russian roulette every time I took a bite except with salad.

It was so very unpleasant that I made it about this far...

Still too far

...and then threw away the rest.  Blech.

Now usually I have a pretty strong stomach, but the stakes are higher now since I REALLY don't want to be barfing from food poisoning while we're traveling to Florida.  I had started to over-analyze how I was feeling and freak myself out when I opened the fridge and saw a pitcher of our super-strong sangria from the other day.  I poured myself a glass and downed it.

Mama needs her medicine

It was medicinal, I swear.

Then I got a headache.

With my stomach properly disinfected, I finished up my awesome lunch with 2 pears.

Yes, this is the same pear twice but I didn't feel like taking another picture and they looked enough alike.

If you can believe it, my stomach felt weird this afternoon!  So I made it almost all the way to dinner without a snack.  I did give in around 4:30 though.

1 oz Cabot 50% light cheddar

1/3 cup Mama Pea's roasted chickpeas

I made the chickpeas for our trip, but they will totally be gone by the time we leave.

Dinner was the girls' favorite.

Garlic soy chicken drumsticks (skinless for me) and roasted delicata squash on a floating plate

Steamed broccoli, cauliflower and green beans

The girls did not buy it when I told them the squash tasted like cake.

After dinner I suffered a little heartburn.  I blame that on the salad too.

Once I recovered somewhat, we had dessert which was a repeat of last night.

Vitamix banana ice cream with peanut flour and juice-sweetened chocolate sauce

Now I should probably stop reading about trips to Disney World on the internet and actually go pack for mine.  I enjoy the research phase of vacations much more than the actual work of getting ready.  Perhaps I should've been a travel agent.

A house divided

We got up this morning to the wonderful smell of cinnamon applesauce.  I am a big fan of chunky applesauce, but the Vitamix makes it so smooth even with the peels that we've been having it that way more and more lately.  While I made breakfast, Will blended it up.

Smooth applesauce

Last week I served penguin-shaped sandwiches at Charlotte's birthday party, but that left us with quite a few pieces of bread with a penguin-shaped hole in the middle.  So this morning we used them to make french toast.

Penguin french toast filled with greek yogurt/applesauce mixture, a bit of smoked salmon on the side and coffee

 The only thing that wasn't delicious about breakfast was the coffee.  It tasted like soap, and I said as much when I had some.  Will shrugged and said he didn't really notice anything unusual.  I kept sipping it because I really wanted to have coffee with breakfast this morning, but it was just yucky.

I was about to decide that I did NOT in fact love everything we've ever gotten from Baltimore Tea and Coffee when I poured Charlotte the cup of tea she had requested.  When all sorts of little bits started swirling around in the cup immediately I figured I had gotten a ripped teabag or something, but as I investigated I realized that it was actually the water itself coming out of our hot water tap!  Ever since Will changed the whole house filter yesterday we've had air in the pipes and strange colors in the water but we thought we'd worked it all out.  I guess we forgot that the hot water tap has a reservoir and had to be flushed separately.  This is what the water coming out of the tap looked like:

Super-nasty

 Even worse was the realization that THIS was why my coffee tasted horrible.  It was made with water that looked like this, we just couldn't tell because the coffee itself was already dark and chunky.

This, among other reasons,  is why we have a house filter.  We originally got it to take the chlorine out because we are on city water.  City water is supposed to be "clean" and is tested yearly but we still end up with all this nastiness in our filter that is jarred loose when it gets changed.  Without a filter we'd be slowly drinking everything that is caught here, which does NOT look clean to me.

Anyway.

I seem to have forgotten to eat a morning snack since I was out running errands.  I did eventually acquire a decent cup of coffee at M.O.M. though.

Coffee and an orange slice

Lunch was another "finish up leftovers" salad.  I will probably be having a lot of these so I can finish up as much random food as possible before we leave.

Greens, cilantro, grated carrots, 3 jalapeño-stuffed olives, 3 black kalmata olives, 1 oz humbolt fog cheese, broccoli, 1.5 oz salmon, hummus + balsamic dressing.

Later in the afternoon (and after a failed nap attempt for Charlotte) we headed over to Lauren and Greg's house to watch the Ravens/Pats game.  It was especially fun because Greg is a Pats fan and Lauren is a Ravens fan so that added to the tension!  They each made a soup representative of their team.

Lauren's delicious MD crab soup (and on the side 2 whole wheat crackers with homemade hummus, some balsamic roasted veggies, and sweet potato beet latkes with applesauce)

I also had to try Greg's delicious New England clam chowder.  Wish calories would've allowed me to have a whole bowl of this too!

  Lauren was kind enough to share some of her kumquats with us too, the best I've ever had!  These guys were so sweet, nothing like the tart things you buy at grocery stores around here.

A kumquat picked fresh off the tree in Greg's mom's backyard in FL

The girls, wrapped in the correct blanket :-)

3/4 of our family

Wells banana bread beer

Greg, surrounded by his friends in purple

My second beer, Heavy Seas Märzen

My second bowl of crab soup

3 more kumquats, applesauce and a Leffe blonde beer for dessert

 Of course I would've preferred if the game ended differently (SO couldn't believe it!) but we had a great time this evening nonetheless.

Lauren ALSO sent us home with some peanut flour to try, so we had to make some Vitamix banana ice cream with peanut flour for second dessert once the girls were in bed and we were settled in to watch our show for the night :-)

Yummy alone

Even better with chocolate sauce

I will definitely have to order some of this stuff!  It meets Will's crazy requirements for grams of protein per calorie so it could help give me more options for meatless dinners.

I take back what I said about Star Trek episodes about Data's feelings.  The episodes where Captain Picard pretends to be a detective on the holodeck are much worse.

Saturday, snowy Saturday

This morning I was awakened by a snow plow going by at 6ish so I knew before even looking outside that we had indeed gotten the snow they were forecasting.  And as they predicted, it was snow followed by ice which is the worst kind because then it's jagged and treacherous and you can't really play in it :-(

But luckily it was Saturday, so we had a nice warm Saturday breakfast, albeit with a few substitutions because sometimes I forget to have all the ingredients on hand when Saturday rolls around.

Whole wheat bread, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, baked apple slices, rosemary ham, 3/4 oz cabot 50% light cheddar, fried egg and decaf green

Close-up

Snowy backyard

 We had planned to meet Kim at the gym today, but due to the snow and ice there was no daycare offered at the gym.  However there WAS (expensive!) daycare offered at FISC, so we set out for there instead.  My car was encased in a cocoon of ice though, which Will was nice enough to chip through for me as I got the girls ready.

Once we got to FISC and took the girls to the bathroom about 3 times each (they don't offer bathroom service at the FISC daycare apparently) we settled in for our workout.  At the end, we both tried out Ken's new torture device/toy:

Yes, it's a foam roller.  It hurts so good!

It really did hurt but it was super-effective at loosening up sore muscles.

After the gym I sped home (and almost slid into a curb on the ice at one point, eek!) and still arrived a couple minutes after my guests...

My mom and sisters came over so we could all help stamp and stuff Krista's wedding invitations.  I fixed myself a random leftovers salad for lunch:

Greens, artichoke hearts, black rice, salmon, 1 oz feta, 6 jalapeño olives, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar

 Once the envelopes were stuffed and everyone headed home I tried to give my coffee smoothie from yesterday another shot.  Will pointed out that almond milk is not as sweet as cow's milk so maybe I needed a bit more stevia.  I also added some xanthan gum to thicken it a bit.

1 cup coffee, 1 cup almond milk, 1 banana, 4 drops stevia, handful ice cubes, a pinch of xanthan gum, 1 Tbsp cocoa powder

It was better.  Not fabulous, but better.  I think chocolate protein powder would be a good addition next time.  I don't usually use protein powder because I read somewhere (probably Women's Health) that "protein powder has no place in a weight-loss diet plan", but eh, maybe I'll give it a shot.

Post-smoothie Daddy played hide and seek with the girls, then I oversaw some painting with the new supplies Aunt Kathleen gave Charlotte for her birthday.  It was the cleanest painting session I've ever cleaned up!

I also tossed a bunch of spongy old apples into the crock pot to become applesauce.

About halfway there!

Then I realized it was already 5 and I hadn't started dinner.  45 minutes (and a smoke alarm going off) later, it was ready!

Plain-looking but yummy.  Cuban sandwich: Pork, beef bacon (whoever heard of such a thing?), spicy dill pickles, mustard, sauteéd onions and cabot 50% light cheddar.

So was the "wastebasket sangria" that Will made to go along with it.  He finished up 7 bottles (only some of it was wine/liquor) making this stuff, and it was incredibly sneaky.  After downing two small glasses that tasted just like juice it hit me like a ton of bricks!

My sangria, Will's hand

Glass #2

All through dinner our crazy dog just walked around whining and carrying a piece of leftover sandwich in his mouth.  He likes to stash food, be it in the couch cushions or in holes he digs outside, so whenever Will gives him leftovers he walks around for awhile just worrying about what to do with them.  Weirdo.

Whine whine whine...

I'm so worried

So very, very worried

Help

Oh God

After dinner Emily asked if we could all tap dance, so we put on our shoes and went to town.  All except for Will, who went to the basement to get away from the noise.  I can't say that I blame him.

Dancing with the girls tonight made me realize how much I miss tap.  My ankles have gotten weak!  I might go looking for an adult tap class again...I keep threatening to get back into it and then I never do because it's hard to find a time and a level that agree with me.  Plus I don't necessarily have the urge to don a unitard and perform in a recital or anything like that again so that kinda rules out most dance studios.

To finish out the night I had an orange...

...and we watched No Strings Attached.  Meh.  It was too long and frustrating, I found the humor to be strange and Ashton Kutcher's hair was awful.  I didn't hate it, but it was not remarkable at all.  A good movie to get you ready for bed though, so that is where I'm headed.