Not much time for blogging today but wanted to share my latest discovery with you. I recently tried T Marzetti’s greek yogurt veggie dips… The come in five or six different yummy flavors and most ring in at about 60 calories per 2 tbsp serving. If you are like me, it’s hard to eat anything without some kind of a dressing or dip, especially salads. I love summer salad season and finding out what new fruit & veggie salad concoctions I can think up, but always spoil a lot of the health benefits of eating a salad, by topping them with full fat dressings or dips. I originally bought the T Marzetti yogurt dip (I tried the cucumber dill feta flavor and it is amazing!) to use as a dip for raw carrot chips and it was delicious… Once I discovered it was just as good and even better as a salad dressing, I was hooked. It’s about half the calories of my full fat dressings and tastes a hundred times better than most of the low fat or fat free dressings I’ve tried to replace them! I can’t wait to try the rest of the flavors!
Calling all Recovering Oreo-dunkaholics
Okay… So you know how people who are trying to quite smoking use the nicotine patch or chew on some nicotine gum. Well, in this afternoon’s Wegman’s adventure (and I do mean adventure complete with the hubs and both kids) I discovered Mi-Del Chocolate Snaps; the perfect solution for recovering oreo addicts gone calorie counting cravers. Mi-Del Chocolate snaps are all natural, minimally processed, peanut free, and have no trans fat. They are a semi chewy (you know what I mean… not hard and crunchy but not totally soft), delicious chocolate cookie that would easily fill the hole in your stomach (and your heart) where you used to put your oreos. With only ten ingredients and nine of which I can actually pronounce, these cookies ring in at 24 calories a piece compared to the 70 calories each you’d spend on a double stuffed oreo. I dunked them in some unsweetened coconut almond milk for greater satisfaction! The entire snack, complete with 5 Chocolate Snaps and 1 cup of coconut almond milk rang in at 180 calories… That’s only ten more than just two double stuffed oreos alone! I can’t wait to see what the kiddos think!
**All opinions are strictly my own.
I finally won something!!!
As a frugal mom, I have been entering sweepstakes, online contests, and blog giveaways for quite some time now. I have entered for everything from cars to concert tickets to free boxes of cereal. Even though I seemingly never win, I continue to enter, thinking maybe this time will be the lucky one…. Just when I convince myself I’m done giving out my name and address in a sorry attempt to get something, anything for free, I talk myself into just one more. When I consider what I have to gain vs. what I have to lose, it always seems worth it.
I am thrilled to say that as of yesterday, I finally won something!!! I have started following several fun health and fitness blogs thanks to my new #sweatpink sisters. One of them that I particularly enjoy reading, http://curls.nu/, was having a giveaway for Skeeter Snacks (see her June 9 post). She describes the snacks as Clean, Healthy, and Nut Free. I followed the instructions to earn myself as many entries as possible (I completed all of the entries I could without having twitter) and I was ecstatic when I received an email from this creative blogger, Christine, saying that I had won one of the two Skeeter Snacks prizes she was giving out. I responded to her email with my address and I am anxiously waiting to receive the snacks in the mail. I am always searching for new fun and healthy snacks for both myself and my kids and can’t wait to report back to everyone with my own review of the product!
weekend o’ fun lazies
For the record, I’m nearly passed out on the recliner typing this as our weekend o’ family fun has me too exhausted to drag myself to the computer so you’ll have to excuse me for any misspelling or if this post ends up being complete nonsense.
The weekend fun kicked off on Friday afternoon when we hooked up the camper and headed for Knoebels Campground in Elysburg, PA.
With a few complications, we ended up arriving at the campground around 5:45, so we literally parked, unhooked, and high tailed it over to the theme park for bargain night (which really was a bargain). We literally got our hands stamped with the word bargain and I’ve never felt so cheap as I did at that moment… And I’m pretty cheap. We had a blast this first night as we raced from ride to ride as fast as we could trying to get the most for our money. We ate supper in the park as we had planned and I indulged myself with a gyro. I love gyros and rarely ever get the opportunity to have them. We nearly closed down the park and arrived back to our camper around ten and it was close to eleven PM by the time we got everyone settled and into their beds. Both kids slept really well until about 5 am when my youngest TR woke up crying. I think we dozed in and out of sleep from 5 until 6:30ish when we finally gave up and decided to officially wake up.
I started the morning off with a 2 mile run, despite my husbands wishes for me to make this an “exercise free” weekend. After a debate about whether or not walking around the theme park actually counted as exercise (he said it did and I said it didn’t), I won, as usual (or maybe he was just sick of arguing) and was able to proceed with my usual morning run around the campground. Of the few campgrounds we’ve been to so far, this one was definitely my favorite for my AM exercise tour. Typically the campgrounds are small and I have to make several laps around to reach my minimum two miles. This campground was so large, if I weaved in and out of each loop, I was able to get to my two miles without even covering the entire campground.
The rest of the day went well as we took several trips in and out of the theme park, made some smores, colored, played go fish, and took a power nap. I’m thrilled to report that our bed time was about an hour earlier this night than the night before and was joyously preceded by some family time giggling by the campfire.
Sleeping habits were also much improved from the previous night as I returned from my morning run around 7:45 to find one of two kids had just woken up and the other still sleeping. We spent the morning having breakfast and cleaning up as we had to be cleaned up and ready to go by noon when we moved to the theme park for a family reunion. We had a wonderful and tiring afternoon in the theme park as the kids rode the park rides with their cousins and we ended with a relaxing ride on the train.
The kids (and me too) were so exhausted we slept nearly the whole ride home. I was thrilled to arrive home to my very first #sweatpink ambassador package! I can’t wait to sport my new sweatpink tank and shoelaces!
As for the rest of tonight…. I plan to continue my weekend o’ fun lazies for a few minutes longer before dragging myself to bed.
p.s. Happy fathers day to two very special dads! (my dad & my hubs)
In honor of fathers day, post something you love about an important man in your life!
dad- I love the way TM thinks I’m spoiled because of how good you treated us as kids
TM- I love the way your kids miss you when your work sends you away for the week and the look on their faces when you get back
Are Diet Drinks Making it Impossible for me to lose weight?
As someone who really struggles with a healthy water intake but refuses to waste calories on non-alcoholic drinks, I have recently heard that diet drinks can make you fat…. Is this true? I have spent the last half of my life indulging in one diet drink after another… Diet coke and Diet iced tea are typically my weapons of choice. I drink diet drinks all day long in a sorry attempt to detour myself away from the snack cabinet…. but if diet drinks are in fact making me fatter, am I really doing myself any good? I will admit, I haven’t done much research on the subject to find out if the diet drink dissers are accurate in their assumptions, but regardless, it certainly couldn’t hurt me to replace one or more of my daily diet drinks with a nice cold glass of water. I credit some of my poor water in take to pure laziness as I prefer my water icy cold and with no ice maker in the house it often seems like just too much effort to pop the ice from the tray and then refill the tray so there is ice for next time, so this week I’ve made a resolution. I bought a two gallon jug from WalMart and as of Monday have been filling it with water each morning to store in the fridge so there is always cold water on hand throughout the day. No excuses.
Specific Goal #… (I forget what Goal # I’m even on anymore…): Replace lunchtime and dinnertime diet drink with water…. and more water in between too.
Comment Below if you know the truth about diet drinks….
Roasted Chick Peas turned Roasted Chick Peee-yew.
So… every health/diet/weight obsessed, pinterest junkie has probably come across the recent recipe raves for roasted chick peas in some way, shape, or form. As a somewhat new chick pea experimenter who happened to have all of the few simple ingredients on hand, I decided to try my hand at one of the recipes this afternoon. I washed, drained, and dried the chick peas to the best of my ability. After digging out all of the leftover pieces of napkin from the drying (there were no instructions on how to dry chick peas), I laid them out on the pan and coated them with 1/2 teaspoon of each salt, black pepper, and chilli powder, then rolled them around in the mixture. (I did not use any oil, despite the recipes instructions to do so). After bathing them in the afforementioned spices, I popped them in the oven at 425 for 30 minutes. After about the first ten minutes I began to smell an awful burning smell and after a handful of negative comments from my kids like “what stinks” and “what are you burning now,” I finally decided to investigate the situation. Being the sloppy cook that I am, it looked like I had rolled a few of the peas right off of the tray, directly onto the hot oven coils… slippery little buggers, aren’t they? I shrugged it off and decided what’s done is done and let the rest of the peas cook. I took them out half way through to roll them around as it seemed like some of them were blackening on the bottom. At the end of the thirty minutes I removed them from the oven and picked out and discarded of the handful or two of peas that ended up totally charred somehow…
If you’re wondering how they came out, I’d have to say that I will probably not make them again. If you are just munching to munch they may be a good go to snack as they are very dry and you can’t eat but two or three without a drink which forces you to eat them slowly…. Learned this real quick when I popped a whole fistfull in my mouth and nearly choked trying to get them down. But… if you’re like me and looking for something to replace an unhealthy salty snack you actually down for it’s taste, you probably won’t find much satisfaction here.
So excited to be a new Sweat Pink Ambassador!
must…get…back…on…track
So, it’s been a minute since you’ve heard from me. One part because we’ve been crazy busy with my husbands recent job search to improve our QOL, countless birthday, holiday, graduation, end of year parties, and our latest hobby, camping… And one part because of the embarrassing mix of junk I’ve put into my body as a result of all these festivities. The past week and a half has been consumed by a daily morning “start over” which usually lasts until about noon when I either lose my willpower or get “too busy” to track what’s going into my mouth. I guess the latest post is a serious plea for accountability to anyone who’s willing to call me out on my recent eating binges.
Must….get….back….on….track.
why do we always celebrate with food?
After yesterdays chocolate fondue binge in honor of Mother’s Day with a moms group I participate in that is housed at our church, I found myself remembering and dwelling on (nearly beating myself up over) an old weight watchers QOD (question of the day). “
When is the last time we’ve socialized without food?” I psych myself up with this question before almost every social function I attend, with anticipation that food will be on the guest list. I remind myself how much better victory feels than failure tastes and assure myself I can attend a social function without making a b-line straight for the dessert table. I know I have willpower and I know how to use it, but for some reason every time I’m left standing before a table full of tasty treats with fellow overindulgers, my willpower takes a vacay. So, once again, knowing chocolate fondue and all of its high calorie dippable friends would be waiting for me yesterday morning, I promised myself a taste wouldn’t hurt, but I would not, I repeat not, overindulge…
In a perfect world, I’d love to follow up that statement by saying that I stuck to my guns and only had a taste to satisfy my sweet tooth but… I guess if the world was perfect that wouldn’t leave us very much to write about. So I’m sure by now you’ve already guessed what actually happened. Yes, one taste of that chocolate fondue and I was reaching for anything in sight to dunk next. I’m pretty sure I would’ve eaten cardboard if it was the only thing left to lap up that warm chocolate. Even after my belly was so full, I swore my jeans were soon going to pop a button, I managed to stuff two more chocolate covered marshmallows and a chocolate covered piece of fudge into my mouth. Yes, you read that right. I dunked chocolate fudge into the chocolate fondue.
When the gathering ended and all was said and done I felt like the fattest pig on the planet and once again vowed that I will never do that to myself again. Isn’t this all wrong? Aren’t we supposed to have willpower in front of others and then misplace it when were all alone and think no one is watching? Not me. If any of you are like me then you can have great success in your own home when your all alone and not tempted by these delicious, destructive treats simply because you don’t buy them, but as soon as you step out into the world of normalcy where everyone else has not had to watch what theyve eaten for the last fifteen years, you crumble. And when I say you, I mean me.
And so here I find myself again praying for self control before heading out to my daughters preschool graduation this evening. Will I stand strong through the light refreshments or will I once again allow the tumultuous treats to take victory in sabatoging my otherwise fairly successful (so far) day?
I’ll get back to you on that…. Specific goal #3 (see previous posts)- allow myself one small indulgence from the dessert table and then WALK AWAY!
What the heck is gaga ball??
Despite the lack of sleep, super heavy meals, sparatic rain showers, missing my own kiddos like crazy, and my coming home to a lack of hotwater (don’t worry… 300 dollars and 48 hours later, warm water has been restored in our home) the weekend retreat was a BIG success!
Most of the 50-some kids arrived straight from school, exploding with energy. After getting everyone settled in their cabins, we kicked off our 2013 “R U UP FOR THE CHALLENGE” Released Time Retreat with some crazy songs. Their is not much greater joy than being surrounded by 50 fourth and fifth graders and about 12 adult cabin leaders all screaming “ROMANS 16:19 says….” at the top of their lungs.
Later we headed to supper in the Sylvan View dining hall. Supper was delicious. I filled my plate with mostly salad, however I did indulge in a piece of the homemade fried chicken and washed it all down with a large dosage of coffee (I knew I’d need it later). Don’t worry, I ended up paying for the fried chicken later in our group session when my stomach was in shambles making those loud “I really need to let something out but I’m working hard to hold it in” noises it usually does when you’ve eaten some kind of food your not so used to eating.
Later, the kids enjoyed some “gaga ball” — Apparently gaga ball is the newer, bigger, better, badder form of dodgeball. Everyone stands around in a big closed in circle that my best guess is about 6 feet in diameter (now that I think about it the game must not be that new because the Camp we were at had several wooden “gaga ball fields” built and I seemed to be the only person asking “what the heck is gaga ball”)… Anyways, everyone stands inside this circle and the object is to hit this ball around inside the circle with your hand while trying to get others “out” and be the last man standing. If the ball hits you anywhere other than the palm of your hand then you are out and have to leave the circle. The best part for me as a gaga ball spectator is watching about thirty kids all hurdle the fence at once (completely in sync) to start a new game as soon the last person has gotten out and there is only one man left standing in the circle. This is done without any prompting, they all just know what to do and when to do it. I find it humorous how we as adults spend so much time trying to get kids to follow the rules and often have no success but when it comes to a game like gaga ball, they know, understand, and precisely follow each of many rules with little to no supervision. It is really inspiring to see this group of kids communicate so well together without saying anything at all.
Later we headed to the basement of Breezewood for some good old fashioned Smore’s (we had to make them in a fireplace since it was raining outside, but everyone did a great job of making the best of the situation) and a sing along.
Finally, it was time to head back to our cabins to get ready for bed. Although we were all dressed in our jammies and ready for bed by about 10:30, you can bet the girls did not let my co-cabin leader and I declare lights out until the official 11 o’clock lights out time. Little did I know, lights out didn’t really mean sleep as I had thought. It took about 35 minutes of giggling before things finally started winding down. Lucky for us by midnight everyone was asleep and despite their very convincing threats to “beware,” neither myself or my fellow cabin mentor was “pranked” that night. We found out later the plan was to throw all of their dirty clothes into the other cabin leaders bed and their prank of choice for yours truly was to all come bombard me in my bed in the middle of the night. Thankfully, they all drifted off at about the same time and none of them were able to wake the others to carry out their premeditated, highly anticipated night time pranks.
Between the hard, thin mattress, the hot and cold flashes I kept having, the fear that my cell phone would ding and bong or something and wake all the girls, and the Sunday School songs running through my head; I’m pretty sure I got about four hours of sleep that night, if I’m lucky. The next morning we sleepily headed off to breakfast, which was delicious. Since we’ve left I’m finding myself craving more of that Saturday morning baked oatmeal they had for us. Between the hot breakfast and coffee, I was feeling much better as we headed off to our next session with Pastor L. He gave a great presentation on the four soils and after a brief small group discussion, it was time for some serious FUN!
The rest of the morning and afternoon was consumed by dodgeball, apple pie scramble (a new and improved version of musical chairs), prisoner ball (a much simpler version of volleyball mixed with dodgeball is the best way I can describe it), and the long awaited rock wall climb. The kids worked together in teams of four (one climber and three belaiers) and I was shocked at how encouraging they were to one another. They pushed each other and they congratulated one another on pushing themselves as far as they could go. My husband was also there for this part of the day as a spotter for the rock wall and it was really powerful to see him ministering to these children. He’s not the type to go preach to kids or give his testimony in a Sunday School class so I really admire him when he finds non-traditional ways he can reach kids in his comfort zone. After a bit of coaxing from my adult peers and some of the kids who know me well, I finally gave in and agreed to scale the rock wall myself. Let me say, it’s not as easy as the kids made it look but with fifty kids and a handful of fellow kids ministry volunteers watching me, I knew I had no choice but to get to the top. Ringing that cowbell that hangs about a foot above the top of the rock wall, and turning around to see all the kids and my husband cheering and clapping was definitely a proud moment for me.
Following the afternoon of fun, we enjoyed some dinner and some free play time. By then, it was time to head back to the cabin to pack our things and start getting all the kids ready to reunite with their parents. I was thrilled as I overheard the girls talking about how much fun they’d had despite the rain and the fact that we weren’t able to do any of our fun outdoor activities like boating or parachute ball and how they were wishing they could stay just one more night.
I returned home dirty and exhausted and with a minor case of PTSD from one boy who’d chased me around with worms; but I also came home with an even greater love for Jesus, the kids, the mentors, my husband, my parents (who’d helped my husband out tremendously while I was gone), and my own children (absence does make the heart grow fonder). Though I knew from the start that this coordinator position was the job that God had been calling me to do for several months before he finally knocked on my door with it, I left this retreat with complete confidence that I am in the right place at the right time.
mrs_nestler's Blog 