It's all routine

Today I enjoyed getting back to my routine.  With the sickness going around my family (first Charlotte on Thursday, then Will was felled on Saturday and is still feeling crappy today) things have been pretty thrown off.  I function so much better when I have a routine, but I'm fairly incapable of imposing one on myself.  I rely on preschool and Will to establish my routine and I seem to be able to take it from there, but when faced with a completely open day I have a tough time actually getting motivation to do anything.  I am such a procrastinator, I need built-in deadlines!

I was going to make pumpkin oatmeal with apples and raisins this morning, but I realized we were out of apples.  So I made a mental note to get some apples, and made berry oatmeal again instead.

My breakfast, being infringed upon by Will's massive pile of newspaper

Some people (including me) prefer a physical newspaper to read vs. reading the newspaper on their iPad or phone, but it sure would be nice to get rid of the mess that requires us to leave the extra leaf in our breakfast table!

I enjoyed getting back to Bodypump.  I was actually feeling it today, and went up in weight on my chest and triceps.  My Bodypump instructor probably thinks I'm a perv though, because after class while she was trying to get into the shower I was skulking around the bathroom waiting for my very moody preschool daughter to finish peeing (although my reason for just awkwardly standing there probably wasn't immediately obvious).  Hopefully she won't make me do extra pushups next time...

A Babybel light was my snack, as usual.

Lunch was a typical salad, using an Irish farmhouse blue cheese I bought at the Common Market today because Irish cheeses are 20% off this week!  It's decent, and I appreciated finding some high-quality cheese on sale (so rare!), but I probably wouldn't buy it again.  I'll leave the blue cheese-making to the French and Italians.

After putting Charlotte down for her nap I put together an afternoon snack for myself.  

Then I decided to walk outside and check out the tea party that was going on in the backyard.

Daddy was finally starting to feel well enough to go outside and enjoy the nice weather a bit.  And someone else kept trying to join the party too.

Remy actually loves coming up into the playhouse, and with a little coaxing he'll even exit it via the slide.

We haven't gotten him to cross the monkey bars or climb up the rock wall just yet.

I couldn't get a very good shot of Daddy and Emily that wasn't super-backlit, so I focused instead on paparazzi-ing Remy for a bit.

YAWN!

Ahhhhhh, scratch

Remy's I can has cheezburger? face

While I was in the backyard I spent some time admiring my herbage.  I am super-thrilled that many of the herbs on my back porch are already growing strongly, especially my chives!

I have some baked potatoes and soup I'd like to introduce this guy to

I finally got an oregano plant to establish, and this winter was so mild that it even kept putting out leaves the whole time so now we're ahead of the game.

My mint, on the other hand, has been returning with no effort on my part for the past 5 or so years, and it looks like we'll have mojitos again soon!  

Even my thyme has made it through the winter, and it appears it has even started a new plant on its own (despite the fact that the squirrels like to dig in it and have pretty much unearthed the main plant's roots).

I am really wishing I had planted some rosemary in the ground last fall...once it makes it through its first winter I'm told a rosemary plant will be strong enough to be a perennial in our area as long as it's in a sunny spot.  I love rosemary and would love to have a big rosemary plant like I see growing out of the ground when I travel to warmer places!

It was warm enough once again to eat on the back porch (we should have the patio furniture SOON), and we just ate last night's leftovers over rice.

It looks even less appetizing tonight, but it's good!

The girls were not fans of last night's dinner though, so I puréed some of the sauce with tomatoes, served it over whole wheat alphabet noodles and topped it with chopped chicken sausage and cheese.  They loved it served that way!

I've heard several views when it comes to feeding vegetables to kids.  Lots of people these days talk about "hiding" vegetables in sauces, smoothies and baked goods to get the nutrients into your kids, but I've also heard people say that you need to give kids veggies straight-up so that they can get used to their tastes and appearances and learn to enjoy them as is.  I try to do a little bit of both, and tonight was a great example of the "ignorance is bliss" principal :-)  

I had originally planned to make the girls a "Mexican cheese sandwich" for lunch, which is what I call a cheese quesadilla so that they'll eat it.  But Will pointed out that we had leftover pizza that they could eat instead, so I was left with a whole wheat wrap sitting out on a plate.  Apparently this sight inspired the same thought in both Will and I, and that was to make a warm chocolate banana peanut butter quesadilla for dessert :-)  I haven't done this for awhile, and I thought about it all day until I finally made one this evening.  

Whole wheat wrap, a sprinkle of grain-sweetened chocolate chips, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1/2 chopped banana heated in the microwave

 After I enjoyed every gooey-delicious bite, I wanted some milk.  But why just drink milk when you can add spinach, stevia, banana and mint extract to the milk and have a shamrock shake instead?

This one was much better than yesterday's.

I'm struggling to figure out what my workout schedule is going to look like going forward.  My favorite Zumba instructor has gone on maternity leave and I like the Wednesday night instructor but I'm not wild yet about the Friday morning instructor.  Plus Will is now working out on Wednesday nights, which makes getting there on time tougher for me.  I am not really enjoying spin on Tuesdays, but there's nothing that works well in the evenings...what to do, what to do?  I may try to get in a bike ride towing Charlotte around tomorrow while Emily is in preschool, but there aren't really enough hills around to make it much of a cardio workout, and I'm not sure how long Charlotte will put up with such nonsense.  I guess there's only one way to find out?