Week 2

We are on to Week 2 of eating healthy/working out and homeschooling Charlie.

I did very well last week with the eating and working out.... until Thursday. I HATE Thursdays. By Thursday, I am EXHAUSTED and just don't have much in me. I worked out Sunday to Wednesday but Thursday was a no-go. I have a few things in mind for this Thursday to see if I can improve it and I'll post on that after I see how they work.

Friday night was Girls' Night so I didn't get a workout in that day either. Today, we went to church for my nephew's baptism and my MIL, SIL and her family came over afterwards for homemade pizza and some time in the pool. We played pool volleyball for a good hour or so and had a blast. Once the kids were in bed, I headed back downstairs for a 40-minute elliptical workout.

Homeschooling Charlie was so much fun this first week! Our theme was cows so we colored quite a few cows, read a bunch of cow-themed books and sang "Old MacDonald" way too many times! He made an awesome cow out of construction paper squares and is becoming quite adept at reciting "Hey Diddle Diddle" with me. He loves projects and gluing squares together to make a cow was a perfect fit. We also studied the letter A and the number 1. This coming week's theme is the jungle and I'm looking forward to it!

We discovered on Friday night that Isaac will no longer take a bottle. I've tried before and he kinda looks at me like, "What are you thinking? The real stuff's right there!" Well, he refused for Chris, too. I fed him at 4:15 before leaving for Girls' Night. I didn't get home until 11:30 and Chris was only able to get maybe an ounce into Isaac. I've never heard him cry like he was when I got home. Poor thing! After I fed him, he did sleep through until 6am though. That was nice. I think next time we need to try a bottle, I'm going to try a sippie cup because he'll take water out of one of those. It's not too often we're apart, so luckily, it's not a huge issue. Although if we were apart more, he'd be used to it and it wouldn't be an issue!

My motivation this week will be the 3 pounds I lost last week and I'm looking forward to a good week!

Meal Plan 7/25-7/31

We did pretty well with eating last week's meals when we were supposed to, although I did discover on Monday morning that my bread machine was indeed kaputt. Luckily, my mother had an extra bread machine upstairs at her house. She happened to buy it because it was on sale for $15. It definitely came in handy for me! Thanks, Mum! I made a loaf of whole wheat bread and made 2 batches of pizza dough yesterday. Unfortunately, I totally forgot my whole wheat pizza dough discovery so that will have to wait until we run out of dough - I have 5 balls in the freezer right now.

I discovered that we prefer the Zucchini Pizza with ground beef (I buy 93% lean) instead of the ground turkey the recipe calls for. The turkey just didn't have enough flavor.

I also forgot that I was supposed to make Veggie Kabobs to go with Thursday's grilled shrimp and we had Parmesan Zucchini (yum!) instead.

So, for this week:

Sunday
Sage-and-Garlic Crusted Pork Tenderloin
Herbed Elbow Pasta (hubby brought up a box of regular elbows when I asked him to bring up a box of whole wheat pasta from the basement *sigh*)
Parmesan Summer Squash

Monday
Lemony Rotini with Chicken, Zucchini & Walnuts

Tuesday
Rosemary Shrimp Skewers
Brown Rice
Grilled Zucchini & Summer Squash

Wednesday
Easy Mashed Potato & Roasted Veggie Enchiladas

Thursday
Pork Chops & Pears (family favorite)
Tri-Color Couscous
Lemon Green Beans

Friday
Honey-Garlic Chicken
Herbed Whole Wheat Angel Hair
Honey Glazed Carrots

Saturday
Homemade Pizza

Extras
Peanut Butter Oat Bites (will try to post recipe later this week)
Light Lemon Bars (recipe calls for 1 egg and 1 egg white versus some recipes I've seen with 6 eggs; only 100 calories per bar in this recipe!)

Meal Plan 7/19-7/25

June was a pretty rough month for us between registering Chris' truck, bike and trailer and an unexpected root canal (although when is a root canal really expected?) so I've been doing a lot of pantry cooking this month.

Tonight was my first night of a real workout in way too long and I will be continuing all week. I've been telling myself I'll start the healthy eating and working out tomorrow and it never happens! So tonight, around 7:45 when I started in on the whole, "Tomorrow's Monday and a fresh start. I'll start working out then," I snapped myself out of it and got myself on the elliptical. It was a much-needed workout and I feel great! I did 40 minutes on the elliptical and followed it up with some Sun & Moon Salutations, some ab work and some stretching.

I planned mostly healthy meals for this week's dinners. We're going to need some sort of sweets in the house, too, though, so I will probably be making some Chocolate Zucchini Muffins (need to use up all that zucchini!) and maybe some Cranberry Toffee Crunch cookies or banana cookies.

Monday
Chinese Beef & Broccoli (Weight Watchers recipe from WW In No Time cookbook)

Tuesday
Basil Orange Chicken

Wednesday
Zucchini Pizza (new family favorite)

Thursday
Grilled Shrimp & Veggie (aka some of the zucchini & summer squash from our garden) Kabobs
Grilled Seasoned Potatoes

Friday
GIRLS' NIGHT!!! (so excited!)

Saturday
Garlic-and-Sage Crusted Pork Tenderloin
Parmesan Zucchini
Whole Wheat Pasta

Sunday
Homemade Pizza with Homemade Whole Wheat Crust (I attempted this on Friday and learned the hard way that our bread machine will not work when it's too hot out; I may be moving it into the basement this week to make dough and WW bread.)

Camp Cooking

We got home from the camp around 7pm tonight. Luckily, we were pretty organized in our packing so unpacking wasn't too bad. The best part was the laundry! I packed the boys' collapsible laundry bag and just put all of our the dirty clothes right in there. When I got home, I didn't have to worry about picking dirty clothes out of the clean clothes and just carried the laundry bag down to the basement. ;)

We had a nice, relaxing weekend with no cell phones, no regular phones and no Internet. We did have a TV, but only at the cabin we slept in (my mom was lovely and paid for us to have a cabin with electricity, running water and a toilet instead of dealing with the two boys in a tent) and we didn't spend much time there at all. The TV happened to be kinda nice, because it kept Charlie occupied for a bit while we showered and got ready to head down the road to the actual camp.

We were only responsible for one meal this weekend (BBQ chicken, couscous and grilled corn). Other family members took care of other meals, all mainly cooked over the campfire. Uncle Ron made some wonderful desserts (Heath Bar Cake and Raspberry Cobbler) and meals in the Dutch oven. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the recipes, but the meals were amazing! He cooked a great breakfast, Peachy French Toast, this morning and a great dinner, Skillet Pizza (which wasn't even really pizza) last night. Unfortunately, some of the camp meals were also quite greasy and sugar-loaded. Sugar I don't mind, but the grease didn't sit too well in my belly. I was looking forward to stopping at McDonald's for a salad on the ride home! LOL

I have not done a meal plan for this week yet, but I'm hoping to tomorrow. I am planning on cooking with what I have in the cabinets and freezers and GARDEN, so I probably won't do a big grocery shopping trip this week. We have a few zucchini ready to be picked and some wax beans, too. I'm looking forward to cooking those up this week!