Eating more veggies and Evan's favorite place

One of my goals these days is to eat more vegetables.  I scarf so much fruit down (last week I ate 2 pounds of grapes in two days), which I don't think is bad, but I hardly ever eat any veggies.  Like none.  Sometimes I eat carrots and I eat cabbage in my eggs, but that's about it.  I'd really like to start incorporating more veggies into my meals, particularly lunch and dinner.  Maybe eventually I'll get veggies into my breakfast, but I'm not quite ready to go that far yet.  So, my first step in this plan was to actually buy vegetables!  On Friday, Evan and I walked (or ran, since I tend to turn any opportunity into a running opportunity) to my doctor's office so I could get my TB test read (I got a TB test last week but then totally forgot to actually get it read - so this was actually my second test).  On the way out, I spotted a Farmer's Market in the parking lot.  Perfect!  Since I had been at the doctor's and needed ID, I had my money with me (normally I don't carry my wallet on runs) so I could actually buy things.

This is what I ended up with:

Instagram: @mapleandmud

Some carrots, really, really sweet tomatoes, and string beans.  I also bought an Australian Crystal Apple Cucumber, which is a rare heirloom seed.  The guy selling it said that it tastes similar to honeydew.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know what it's like.

The string beans are purple and green, but when you cook them the purple ones turn green.  It's funny, but at least lets me know when they are done cooking.

Instagram: @mapleandmud

I sauteed the string beans in coconut oil, salt, pepper, and garlic.  They were pretty tasty.  I even cooked extra and brought some in my lunch today.  The tomatoes are good to snack on because they are so sweet, but I've also been eating them in salads too.

After the farmer's market we headed to the playground, of course.  The playground is always on our agenda when we are out for a run.  I feel like it's only fair that after sitting for an hour in the stroller Evan gets a bit of time to run around.  He loves the playground, until someone else shows up.  It's funny really - he'll be playing and running around and then the second someone else shows up he wants me to pick him up.  Randomly, our friends came to the playground while we were there and he totally clammed up.  After about 15 minutes he got enough courage to go play though, so that was good.  He loves this little yellow car.

He rocks it back and forth so fast.  I love this playground because it's fairly simple without too many large structures that he could fall off of.  Plus, it's often completely empty.

The see-saw or teeter-totter (not sure what the appropriate name is) is a great thigh workout for me because Evan likes to go up and down but I have to be sitting on the seat or he gets mad.  I tried to just push one side down, but that didn't work.  Of course not.  I need to be sitting and working my thighs.

The rest of the weekend was spent teaching golf, watching my nieces again, and getting household chores done.  While watching my nieces we made Power Packed Fruit and Veggie Muffins.  I found the recipe on Pinterest and decided to try it out.  They turned out really good and all the kids liked them, even though they saw me put broccoli and zucchini in the batter.  The only problem was they really stuck to the muffin baking cups.  The recipe noted this and suggested using parchment muffin baking cups, but the girls really, really wanted to use pretty baking cups.  So, we used the pretty ones and all the muffins stuck.  I did notice that when I put all the muffins in a zip lock baggie and the moisture kind of built up a little, the paper got damp and peeled off much easier.

Yesterday I didn't get a run in because it was pouring out in the morning.  I may have gone in the rain, but I wasn't going to make Evan go in the rain.  I was bummed because on top of running, the hubs and I had a date to go golfing together.  Oh well, hopefully we'll go next week instead.  Instead we put our bed back together, cleaned out a few closets, and did a lot of laundry.  Fun times people!

That was my weekend - nothing spectacular but still a good time.  This morning I got up to do PiYo Sweat but the DVD machine wasn't working very well so I only go 15 minutes of it done.  I guess better than nothing - but, I could have used those extra 15 minutes of sleep!

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What was your best moment this weekend?

Do you say see-saw or teeter-totter?

The Big Move

Before we get into my weekend, I just have to mention that a lady sitting two rows in front of me has on a fur coat.  I am hoping it's fake fur (do they make real fur anymore??), but it still seems weird.  Who wears fur coats anymore, fake or real??  And to work??

So, we moved.  We are officially in our new apartment.  And it was definitely painful getting here!  I took Friday off to pack and get ready but I had Evan with me and he made it quite difficult.  Then he had a doctor's appointment at 1pm and we didn't get out of there until 3pm and then it was 3:30pm before we got home and half the afternoon was lost.  Luckily my friend Karin came over for a couple hours in the evening (before heading to a Christmas party!) to help pack up more of the kitchen and then she came over at 8am on moving day with her daughter to help pack up the pantry food.  

Moving day was the opposite of fun.  We have so much stuff!!  But in reality we don't...we only have enough stuff for a two bedroom apartment.  How can it seem like a lot??  It's not like we have a house full of stuff...thank goodness.  For some reason moving day was slow and long and overwhelming.  Ivan had a friend from work come help him move the heavy items and then Karin helped and my friend Allyson bought us lunch and helped clean the old apartment in the evening.  At one point though, Ivan's friend had left and my two friends had left for afternoon engagements and it was just Ivan and me (luckily my sister had offered to watch Evan and Dolce) and it was 4:10pm and the truck had to be back by 5pm.  We were at the new place and had an entire truck-load of stuff that had to be unloaded in 40 minutes. With just us two (and I hardly count because I am a wimp).  We did it in about 45 minutes...in the snow that turned to rain.  It snowed for a while but nothing stuck to the roads (but it did stick to our stuff), so at least it wasn't miserable driving the truck around.  But all our stuff got wet and we were soaked and it was freezing.  Good thing Allyson is a smarty and had told us to buy plastic to put on the carpet so we didn't track mud and snow/rain into the new place.  Good plan!!!

After returning the truck we had to pick up the kid and the dog and borrow my sister's car to make a few more trips.  While Ivan was making trips I was cleaning.  Karin and Allyson joined me again and we got to work scrubbing bathrooms, washing walls, vacuuming, mopping floors, cleaning kitchens, emptying fridge food, etc.  It took a while but we finished around 11pm.  And we were so exhausted. And tired of cleaning.  But since I'm nervous about getting my deposit money back I wanted it to be as clean as possible.

That was the dining room...I was trying to keep Evan entertained with wooden spoons and bowls.  Dolce just hung out.

Here's the living room.  Evan is still having a ball running around the empty space making soup.

I think the apartment is way cleaner than it was when we moved in!  I even steam cleaned the carpets!

And now our new place.  It's nice but there are boxes everywhere and Dolce had a hard time trying to find a place to sleep.  He decided to sleep next to our bed.  We made some progress yesterday though.  I unpacked the kitchen (or what I could of it, it's so tiny I need to buy a cabinet to put my food in because there is no pantry.  This took practically all day but I eventually found the stove to make dinner (eggs with ham).  I then moved on to the bedroom and got my clothes in the drawers and closets and then organized my bathroom.

Then I made lunches, washed dishes, and went to bed...because I have to work today.  

Things are looking good in some places, like the living room.

And some places need a lot more work, like the other side of the living room!

I hope you don't have to move soon and when you do, you don't do it in the middle of winter and you maybe hire movers.  And if you are lucky, you hire packers and movers!

Random Thoughts on Thursday

I don't have much to say today so I though I would just throw a bunch of random thoughts at you.  And maybe I'll throw in some random photos too.  Nothing like a bit of randomness to get us through a Thursday, right.

~ I didn't fall asleep until almost midnight last night.  I got home from class around 10:45pm, made lunches, washed dishes, washed my pump, got ready for bed, and then couldn't fall asleep for a while.  After thinking so hard for three hours in lab, it's hard to shut my brain off.  

~ On Wednesday after lecture I did two hours of work before crawling into bed and then I slept in until 8am.  It worked out really well because my mind was sharp from doing a billion conversion problems and I knew it would take me a while to zonk out.  So instead I started my work day early and then went to bed. I got a decent amount of work done before bed and then slept a little late.  Win-win.

~ One of the reasons I was late last night was because I met an old,old friend after class.  Andy and I waited tables at Riccutti's and then Luna Bella back in the day.  Like way back in the day...over ten years ago.  We used to be super good friends and he even came to visit me in Atlanta when I was in grad school.  Now that we are both married with kids we never see each other.  The last time I saw him was three years ago at his surprise bday party.  However, we both have class on Wednesdays that go until 10:20 so we chatted for a short while after class.  It was fun to catch up.

~ For my husband's bday my nieces made him a bday card.  My husband actually nailed it to the wall. And not a hidden wall, nope he nailed it right next to my large Ansel Adams print above the fireplace.  Definitely front and center of our living room.  

~ I haven't put laundry away in two weeks.  Both hubs and I are grabbing clean clothes from the hamper.  Hubs keeps complaining about how wrinkled his are.  I don't seem to care.  This weekend I swear I am going to catch up.

~ The photographer who did our family shots sends us photos every once in a while from our photo shoot and I love them.  I am so happy we went with photos instead of a big party.  The photos of Evan are priceless.  I just hope the photos of me turn out and I stood up straight in them.  My posture has been atrocious this past year.

Serious cuteness!

~ I am reading a book called Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm about a woman who quits her cushy job to learn about shucking oysters on an oyster farm.  It's for our family book club and I am learning so much about oysters.  Except I hate oysters so I can't appreciate the author's love of the mollusk (Are oysters mollusks?  I'm too lazy to look it up).  

Ok, enough randomness for now.  Hope you are having a wonderful Thrsday!

I never thought I'd...Thursday

Have you ever done something that you never thought you'd do? Yeah, me too.

Actually, this is something I never thought my husband would do, but I think that still counts.  It's my blog, so I make the rules.

Last night, after dinner and after giving Evan a bath I randomly asked Ivan if he'd help me clean the bathrooms. They were super disgusting because it is so hard to find the time to clean them. Hubs totally shocked me by saying yes! I could have rolled over in happiness. So we got to work. I sprayed them down and cleaned the sinks and toilets and hubs cleaned the shower and bathtub.  Great deal because I hate cleaning the bathtub and shower. And although hubs hates to clean, he is really good at it and scrubs with all his might, so the shower and bathtub are now spotless.  Or at least they were last night.

For the most part, hubs and I have divided the chores. I think I have way more, but at least he does something. Especially now during the summer when it's hot, hubs comes home from work utterly exhausted. Working outside in this heat is tiring so he often comes home and naps.  I am tired after work too - commuting and working my brain all day is tiring too, but in a different way.  So I let Ivan get away with less chores. And let's be honest, Ivan doesn't care quite as much about cleaning the house. His jobs are to take out the trash, take out the recycle, wash the car, and vacuum.  He does these things regularly so I don't have to nag him about it. If the trash is stinky and I want him to take it out, I just tell him it's stinky and he says he'll take it out.

That's why I was shocked he said yes about the bathrooms. Who likes doing the bathrooms?? No one.  But let me tell you, it went way quicker than it does when I do it by myself.

And then he went back to this:

Watching soccer.  The World Cup qualifying matches are on so it seems like every day is another big soccer match.  The picture above was actually from Tuesday. Honduras was playing USA. That's a big day in our house! I rooted for USA and hubs rooted for Honduras. I have no idea who Evan will root for in the future.  USA ended up winning 1-0, but it was still a good game. Yesterday we watched Japan vs. Italia.  We were both rooting for Italia, or course, since I am part Italian.

While the game was on Evan entertained himself with a box.

He was really excited.

He played until dinner. Then it was bath and bedtime.

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What chores do you have around the house? What chore do you hate doing?

Do you watch the World Cup Qualifying matches? What's your favorite soccer/football team?

Organizing my Life

Remember how I said that one of my New Year’s resolutions commitments was to be more organized?  Well, I tried it for an entire week, so I thought I’d report back to you.  I was quite happy with how it went and it definitely made my life a LOT easier.

Last Saturday I made a list of all the recipes I was going to cook during the week.  Then I looked at each recipe and assigned days to cook them based on time and simplicity.  Then I wrote down how I could “prep” the recipe to make it even quicker.

On Sunday I prepped pork for the week (Tuesday’s dinner) and made a crock pot meal (Monday’s meal).   Here is all the stuff sitting in the crock pot, waiting to be cooked.  In case you’re interested, this was Crock Pot Picadillo from Gina over at Gina’s Skinny Recipes.  It was yummy and Ivan loved it too.

Here I am prepping the pork with Evan in the Ergo.  Try not to be too jealous of my beautiful kitchen and lovely profile.

This helped out immensely.  I knew what we were having each day and I usually just had to boil rice or mix a sauce really quickly.  It was so nice being organized and having food choices be fairly easy.

During the week, I mapped out all the things I needed to do when I got home from work.  And I wasn’t allowed to relax until I did them.  Here is the long list of things:

1. Cuddle with Evan
2. Start laundry – diapers
3. Start dinner
4. Give Evan a bath
5. Feed Evan
6. Put Evan to bed
7. Finish dinner
8. Eat
9. Wash up dishes
10. Prepare/pack lunch for the next day
11. Wash bottles/pump
12. Stuff diapers for tomorrow
13. Pack diaper bag
14. Hang wet diapers up to dry
15. Get ready for bed
16. Go to sleep

Yes – it is SO much stuff to do.  And it pretty much takes me from the time I get home (6:30pm) until the time I go to bed (10pm) to finish it all.  Sometimes I just want to sit down and watch TV, but I know if I don’t get it done I’ll be up all night.  And sometimes at 10pm, I want to crawl into bed and read part of my book.  However, then I remember how tired I’m going to be at 4:30am and I decide that I can survive reading on the bus instead.  I am not sure what I’m going to do once classes start.  I’m not sure where I’ll fit studying in, in my busy schedule.

However, it has really helped having the list of things to do and just getting them done.  I haven’t assigned my weekend cleaning detail yet, so I have to work on that.  Although I did take my Christmas stuff down (finally) and emptied a box in the living room that I hadn’t unpacked yet. 

Also, my husband would prefer we eat before 8:30pm every night so I might try and make the food a day early (i.e. make Tuesday’s dinner on Monday).  I’m not sure if I can do that, but I’ll try and see what happens.  It is definitely much healthier to eat at 7pm than at 9pm!

I also need to fit blogging in there too – since I didn’t get to do that all week.  We’ll see!  This past weekend my parents were visiting so I didn’t put much on the schedule.  Part of being organized is being flexible, right???

How do you get it all done?

What do you do to get organized every day?

New Year, New You

Or new me actually.  Ok, so not a completely new me since I am pretty happy with the old me.  I admit, it would be nice to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes one day, but what can I say.  I haven’t really been running much these days and I haven’t found the motivation to do the strength training I had been working on – and I ate about 3000 cookies while in Vermont.  Once I head back to work I think I will get back on track. 

But, back to New Year resolutions.  Or commitments, as Meghan calls them.  I kind of rather like the term commitments, since there is no pass/fail.  And I’d like these changes to stick.   I don’t really have too many changes I want to make, but I’ll review a few of them below.


Commitment 1

Be more organized.  This is pretty much the main commitment I’d like to make.  I used to be completely organized all the time.  At one time I was very Type A.  Then I went to Honduras, learned to relax, and can’t go back.  I don’t actually want to go completely back, because it’s so much better being a Type A-.  However, my life could use an organization make-over.  Mainly because I am SOOOO busy and there really is barely enough time to get things done.  Here are things I plan on organizing:

     a) My Apartment: Yes, things are still in boxes and bags and hidden in closets.  I just never got unpacked all the way because I had to go to Vegas for a week right after moving and then was too pregnant-tired, and then the baby came, etc.  Yeah, so many excuses.  However, I am done.  Things have to find a home in this apartment and that’s the end of the story.  How am I going to do this?  I have this plan of assigning weekends to rooms.  For example, this weekend coming up will be the dining room.  There is one big box left in the dining room and I’d like to unpack it.  The following weekend I will do the kitchen, etc.  When I’ve finished each room, then each weekend I will clean/straighten each room.

     b) My Time: I waste a ton of time just thinking about things and not actually doing them.  And let’s face it, I don’t have much time.  When I work, I get home at 6:30pm, the baby gets a bath at 7pm, and goes to bed by 8pm.  And somewhere in there I have to cook dinner, prepare lunch for the next day, wash diapers, stuff diapers, fold clothes, do laundry, wash/disinfect pump parts, etc.  Thankfully I can work from home two days so on those days I finish at 4pm – but somehow I always find it to be 6pm and I haven’t done anything.  Plus, the end of this month I am starting classes again so I’ll have class on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Even less time!  So, I really need to organize my meals far in advance – and prepare as much as I can on the weekends (cook chicken, cut veggies, etc.).  And I need a system so each day I’m doing something but not everything – Mondays fold laundry, Tuesdays wash diapers, etc.

    c) Money: This is a big one.  It is hard to organize something you don’t have.  Or don’t have enough of – we are super short on money these days and it’s about time I organized a budget.  Now that we have to pay for daycare, any extra money we had is gone, gone, gone.  If we want to still buy gifts for people, get the dog groomed, etc. we’ll have to put money away each paycheck.  I am determined to get our finances in order and not spend above our means.  I knew having a baby was going to be hard financially but the cuts we’ll have to make are totally worth it.  At least our car already broke and cost us a fortune!  One less thing to worry about!  Plus, golf starts up the end of April so I can build our small savings account back up to where it was…before maternity leave, the car, and Christmas depleted it!


Commitment 2

Be healthier.  I am a pretty healthy person, I admit.  I have a small sugar addiction, but so far a decent metabolism that allows me to eat lots and lots of candy without too many repercussions (although I’m getting old so that may change).  However, I am trying to make a few changes to improve my health.

     a) Eat a fruit or veggie with every meal.  This is hard because I pretty much hate vegetables.  I love fruit, but really need to work on the veggie side.  Yesterday night I had broccoli with dinner.  Yes, it is practically a miracle because I HATE broccoli, but I did it anyway.  Now I have a son and I need to be a good example to him – and eating vegetables is good for you.

     b) Have snacks on hand.  One of my main problems is being hungry all the time.  When I get home from work at 6:30pm, I shove a ton of food into my mouth because I’m so hungry.  I can’t wait to prepare dinner – I have to eat something right away.  This usually means a bunch of chips.  If I had something already prepared to munch on when I came home, maybe I could skip the five servings of tortilla chips.  Or maybe I will eat the prepared snack AND the chips.  It’s worth a try though.

     c) Floss my teeth.  More often.  No explanation needed.

I think those are pretty much it.  Nothing too crazy or ridiculous.  Nothing I can’t possibly achieve.  Just a few things that will make my life easier and happier and more relaxed.  Right?

What resolutions or commitments are you making for 2013?