Chocolate-free day

Many thanks to Lyle for convincing Charlotte to sleep in her big girl bed last night!  Aside from some 5:30AM screaming because she couldn't find her pacifier (fuvvie) it went well and I actually had to wake her up at 8:20 so we wouldn't be late to Emily's preschool!  It must be the fact that she's sleeping on a BED and not a board in the bottom of the pack 'n play.

I wanted cereal this morning, but we were once again out of breakfast-appropriate nuts.  I found a couple pistachios hanging out at the bottom of our snack cabinet and they did well enough.

Nature's Path juice sweetened millet rice flakes, bananas, pistachios, skim milk

 Since Emily had her first "Lunch Bunch" day today, she ate lunch at school and it gave me an extra hour to finish Bodypump and take Charlotte to the playground to enjoy the BEAUTIFUL high 80's weather before pickup time.  ALL we did at the playground was swing on the swing.

Here she is, eating her lollipop WHILE swinging

Happy girl

After 20 minutes straight of pushing her as high as she could possibly go (and after an hour of Bodypump before that) my arms were falling off so I told her it was time to stop swinging.  I knew I pushed her for 20 minutes because we could see and hear the big clock at Westridge dinging out the hour.  Charlotte had no interest whatsoever in doing anything else at the playground, so we made our way back to the car.  I am very glad we did, because I had foolishly assumed that a big huge clock thousands of people see would be set to the right time, but when we got to the car I discovered it was 13 minutes slow!  We made it in perfect time to pick Emily up, but yeesh.  I'm glad we headed back to the car "early"!

Emily ate everything I packed her (1/2 PB&J on whole wheat, broccoli and cauliflower + hummus for dipping, 2 strawberries a juice box and a chocolate chip cookie) except for the non-chocolate chip portion of the cookie.  Not bad for her first experience eating with lots of friends and distractions around and no mom to remind her to keep at it!  It gives me hope for getting healthy lunches in her at Kindergarten next year!

I was FAMISHED when we got home because it was almost 1 and I had only had a Babybel light  (we're out of eggs!) to keep me going through the morning.  I threw together my salad really quickly from things we need to finish up with no regard for flavor combinations.  It kinda sucked, but I didn't care, I was too hungry to be picky!

Greens, teriyaki tofu, blueberry chevre, pumpkin seeds, REALLY acrid balsamic vinegar

 Back in October when I ordered my bridesmaid dress for Krista's wedding, it was tight, but I could at least get it zipped.  I really wanted to lose some weight but I figured I'd be ok as long as I didn't GAIN any.  Ideally I was thinking I'd drop a chunk of weight and have to get it taken in!

Well, I've lost about 17 pounds since then, and the dress fits like a glove.  It's great that I don't have to get alterations, but also kind of depressing that I haven't even gone down a dress size!

Anyway, since we're down to the wire I figure a bit of extra care with my eating would be a good thing to make sure I look and feel as good as I possibly can dancing in my sleeveless dress in front of hundreds of people.  So I had a lighter salad and instead of my usual huge smoothie I just had a chai tea latte for my snack.

chai tea, skim milk, 3 drops stevia

Later in the day I had some veggies, and I actually remembered to put some out for the girls too!  Whenever I prepare a plate of raw veggies and leave it out, they will eat them and it's one of the best ways to get more veggies into them.  It's just a matter of me remembering to do it!

My bowl - veggies with about 2 Tbsp hummus

 We are ALMOST through the massive amount of whole wheat couscous I cooked up the other day (I told you, I am incapable of making an appropriate amount of couscous!) and tonight I mixed it with chopped olives, sundried tomatoes, basil and some lemon juice/salt/pepper/garlic powder.  Yum!

Served with roasted lemon herb turkey breast and steamed broccoli + cauliflower

 We took a family walk around the block tonight that was actually a walk, not a jog!  Our walk slowed to a crawl though when I pointed out the outdoor rabbit hutch one of our neighbors has beside their garage. The girls desperately wanted to tromp across their yard to go see the bunny, and once I said no to that they decided we needed to just stand and stare at it for entirely too long instead.  One day we'll be able to maintain a reasonable pace on our family walks...for now it's either too fast or way too slow :-)

When we got back I intended to just have some tea and call it a night eating-wise, but the girls went NUTS over fruit and Will was in the kitchen chopping up a storm.  Once the girls were finally sated he brought me this nice little bowl of what are probably my 2 most favorite kinds of fruit so I decided it would be a lovely dessert.

1/2 peach frozen from last summer, some champagne mango

Yep.  I'm going to try not to eat any chocolate (or anything else period) for the rest of the night.  I may have to drink a couple cups of tea to do it but I'm hanging in there so far.  Those 240-calorie bowls of my little peanut raisin chocolate chip mix are delicious but not doing me any favors!