Tight Squeeze

Today was weigh in day.  I lost 1.7 lbs and another inch off my waist.  I LOVE IT!  Even with Winter Celebration I was still able to lose a significant amount of weight.  That is almost 7 sticks of butter.  My husband will be home any minute so now I can tell you that he's been gone for a whole week.  I thought the extra stress of not having him around would make it harder to not over eat, but I guess not.

I even squeezed into my size 6 jeans.  They were ridiculously tight, especially on my calves.  I'm so glad to be in jammies.  However, I learned long ago that elastic is not your friend when you are trying to lose weight.  I try to always wear waist bands to remind me that I shouldn't have second helpings.  I hope that soon I'll be fitting comfortably into a size 6.

I can tell you that the temptation to eat sugar has been great today.  I have had this theory that if I pig out on sugar that I will crave it more.  I ate too much sugar on Saturday and now I'm craving it again.  I have to just fight through it.  Today I ate cottage cheese to stop my cravings.  It was very yummy!

Winter Celebration

Here's the spread we had for Winter Celebration.  In the red pot is venison tenderloins that I cooked up in 10 minutes with my special pampered chef baker. I also made Ricotta, Leeks and Walnut Pizza.  I made the Orange and Cardamom Bundt cake,  I also made the macaroons in the jar and the white ones in the front right corner.

There were lots of other cookies and brownies and also a large 4 layer cake.  I didn't count my sugar intake, but I only ate one meal today.  Let's just say I probably won't be losing any weight this week.  However, I'm not going to eat more than 20 grams of sugar daily until Spring Festival.  I really liked celebrating in this way because it's like Christmas.  You just make all the yummy things you want in one day and then it's over.  In fact, my dad wasn't able to come to the celebration because he was working in the ER.  Once the party was over we took all the sugar to the hospital for them to enjoy.  I'm glad it's all out of my house.

We had sparkling water for our beverage.  The cans with paper on the top are sparkling juice, but I didn't drink those.

We were busy making Valentines for a long time. I saw some pretty cute ones.

We couldn't all fit around the table at the same time so there was lots of story telling and talking.  No one makes me laugh as much as my own family.

My mother had the idea to play musical hearts.  When the music stopped you had to do whatever was written on the under side of the heart you were standing on.  There were things like "do 3 pushups", "Sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Start" and so on.

We all had a lovely time even though my mom was ill, my baby was ill, my sister's baby was ill and my nephew wrecked his car in the morning.  I'm glad we all pushed forward and had a wonderful time.

Working

We are so busy working to get ready for our Winter Celebration tomorrow.

Sweets has decided she wants to change her name.  She's Valentine now.
She swept the floor twice today.

Super Jack really likes scrubbing.

We've been working so hard that I earned 8 POINTS today!  I'll make a special post tomorrow and tell you all about it.

Shirmp and Tangelos

Today is Orange Day!  We all wear orange and try to eat thing that are orange on Thursday.  I didn't just come up with this on my own.  I learned this through the Waldorf schooling curriculum that I use.  It is very interesting.  Here's how it works.

Sunday - White Day - the Sun

Monday - Purple Day - the Moon

Tuesday - Red Day - Mars

Wednesday - Yellow Day - Mercury

Thursday - Orange Day - Jupiter

Friday - Green Day - Venus

Saturday - Blue Day - Saturn

In fact, today I was teaching BD some Roman History.  Did you know that there are 7 hills in Rome?  On each hill they built a temple to one of the gods.  Apollo - the sun god, Diana - goddess of moon, hunting, and protecting children,  Mars - god of war, Mercury - god of business and trade, Jupiter - "the father of the gods", Venus - goddess of love.  The seventh hill was where the city was.  You will find in other languages that the days of the week are similar to planets/gods.  In Albanian, for example . . . 

Sunday - the sun

Monday - the moon

Tuesday - mars

Wednesday - mercury

Saturday - Saturn

Thursday and Friday don't match up.  I know they have something similar in French.

The other thing I love about having colors associated with days of the week is that it makes getting my kids dressed super easy.  I can just tell Bumbles, "It's orange day" and he knows what he's supposed to wear.  I have very few arguments about clothing this way.  In fact, I fold their clothes and put them in the drawer according to the day of the week.  They just take what's on top!  My older kids have a little more flexibility.  

Since it was orange day we had these.

Tangelos!

So Sweet and Yummy!

This is my sister who is visiting with us. I loved the way she opened her Tangelo.

And her son who we call Shirmp (and no I didn't misspell it)

Bumbles and I decided we should call Tangelo's God popsicles because they were cold and juicy and dripping all over us.

 

Mitsitam

I went to my favorite place to eat today.  It is the Mitsitam Cafe.  It's the cafe in the National Museum of the American Indian.  There food is so very delicious.  We used to eat there every once in awhile when my husband was doing his internship at the Senate.  Here's what we ate.

Grilled Bison, Cedar Planked Salmon with Wild Berry Glaze, Wild Rice and Watercress Salad, Roasted Celery Root Salad, Chili Roasted Carrots

BD is eating Black Bean, Winter Squash & Queso Fresco Burrito with Chimichurri Sauce.  There is also Indian Pudding with Maple Drizzel and Whipped Cream

Sweets is eating Blue Corn Bread and has a Tre Leche dessert in front of her.

We had a good reason for traveling to DC which I will tell you about later.  Since we were going there I decided to take Sweets and BD to the American Indian Museum.  Sweets is studying Native Americans.  I wanted her to try foods from all the different regions.  We started with the 5 region sampler plate and added a few other dishes.  It is amazing how flavorful this food is.  I have decided I'm asking for their cookbook for my birthday.

Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook

Love

This is my Love banner.  Each month we focus on a virtue from the book Standing for Something by Gordon B. Hinckley.  January's virtue was Optimism.  February is Love (duh!)  I left the top of the heart open so people can leave little love notes in it.  Of course this banner says "Shkurt" because that is February in Albanian.  

One of my readers asked me to explain more about the Family Celebrations we have during the year.  We have a large extended family and celebrating everyone's birthday in turn leads to a LOT of cake.  We decided to cut down on the celebrate and combine some things.  Several years ago my mother started having a Fall Festival.  We used to go a cider mill every fall when we lived in Michigan.  We loved watching the cider press and eating the donuts. My mother wanted to recreate this for us and her grandchildren. Originally we were just celebrating the season.  

Last summer more of my siblings moved to Virginia.  Things were getting complicated because three siblings lived in Richmond and three in the Charlottesville area.  People would be stopping by at my mom's house and try to get everyone together.  We hated missing each other and decided we needed to coordinate better. We had a brainstorming session and decided on a few celebrations we would have every year.  Here's how it breaks down.

Winter Celebration in February - we celebrate all the winter birthdays, play in the snow (if we have any), play basketball, celebrate fruits and veggies of the winter season, do handwork and put on plays.  (this is our first attempt, which is happening on Saturday.  I'll let you know how it goes).  I am taking on the hosting of this celebration

Spring Festival close to Easter - again we celebrate all spring birthdays, celebrate the season. Cookies will be the featured dessert. (we haven't had one of these yet, but I'll update it when we do).  We plan to also celebrate Children's Day (this is June 1st in Albania).  My three sisters and their families who live in the Charlottesville area will host this.

Mother's Day - We have a specific menu that the men prepare for this day.  Chinese Chicken Salad being my favorite part.  We also plan to have cheesecake, berries and whipped cream for dessert.    

Father's Day - We will celebrate with pies and cobblers because our fathers seem to really love those things.

Summer Celebration - to be celebrated before my brother's kids go back to Arizona for the school year.  We go to my sister's house that lives near the beach.  We hang out at the beach then return to her house.  We celebrate all the summer birthday's and my brother's kids birthdays.  Ice cream is the featured dessert.

Fall Festival - celebrated when the leaves begin to turn.  The featured dessert is donuts.  We also have apple and pumpkin desserts.  We had something like a carnival last year.  It was very geared towards children.  We also had a bonfire with delicious food.

We also celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas together.  We are adjusting this as we go. I hope that was enough detail.

Since we are focusing on love this month.  Here's something I LOVE!

One Stick and Two Apples

Today was weigh in day!  I only lost .4 lbs.  It's so frustrating.  However, I also lost another inch from my waist! (I got it right that time, Ben)  I am still happy because .4 lbs is around 1 1/2 sticks of butter.  Since I've started this blog I have lost 5 1/2 boxes of butter!  Also, I have lost 30 lbs exactly, since I started with Weight Watchers.  I still have 16.4 lbs to lose before May.

It has become clear to me (again) that how much I eat has a much greater effect on my weight loss than how much I exercise.  I have also had a little complication with my Activelink.  Apparently, Activelink doesn't record elliptical exercise very accurately.  After reading this I did a little test.  I've been working out pretty intensely on the elliptical, but I still have to run in place for 30 mins every evening to earn 5 points.  Then on Saturday I didn't exercise, but I did walk around Costco and the grocery store.  By the evening, I was at the same point as if I had worked out on the elliptical.  This morning I just walked for 30 minutes on the treadmill and my Activelink gave me much more credit than it does on the elliptical.

I've decided that I'm still going to work out every day that I can.  I am going to lower my goal points to 3 per day.  I think when my Activelink says I've only earned 3 it is really more like 5.  I am going to put more of my energy into TRACKING my food.  I am tired of tracking, but I did it today.  I am showing BD how to track.  He is going to be my tracking assistant because he loves any excuse to use my phone.

Today for fun we had an apple taste test. The apples in the test were Honeycrisp and Pink Lady.

The children chose the Honeycrisp every time.  I picked Pink Lady.  I thought it was MUCH sweeter and taster.  The Honeycrisp tasted watery.  I still love Honeycrisp, but the Pink Ladies were amazing.

BD took this photo of his own beautiful eye.  Those lashes are so unfair.  I love it when I upload my photos and I get surprises like this.