Catching up

I came down with a stomach bug (norovirus?) on Friday and was 100% out of commission.  I’m not exaggerating when I say it was worse than child birth.  It was the most terrible 24 hours I can recall going through.  Ever.  So glad that Kyle was not traveling and was able to take the day off because I was hardly able to muster the strength to get to the bathroom.  So I am now way behind in blogging (and the rest of life).  Let’s back up to two weeks ago…before I went to Catalina for my sister’s bachelorette.

Kyle is THE BEST husband of all time.  He bought me this nutribullet as a surprise the day before he left town.  Just because!  I had been kinda thinking my magic bullet was pooping out and then I went to my parents’ house and used their new nutribullet and realized I was definitely missing out. So he got me one!  And I’ve used it every single day since.  Sometimes 2-3 times a day.

It’s like a mini vitamix, to be honest.  Very powerful and yet super easy to clean and put away.  It’s way bigger than the magic bullet too.  Now I can make smoothies for us all at once.

And I am alllll about smoothies for breakfast lately.  The kids usually try to steal some of mine too, even though I eat RIGHT AFTER they have finished eating!!!!  Little food thieves.

Frozen banana, frozen berries, collagen peptides, vega protein powder, almond milk, and ice.

Runny nose babe was all about this berry banana combo.

We had dentist appointments that morning and we ran into one of our besties in the waiting room! Perks of being in a small town.

Could he BE any more comfortable??

I finally got more mac nuts!  Phew!

We have squash taking over…maybe I’ll actually grow some zucchini this year!?!?!  I’m trying not to get my hopes up…

The strawberries are also killing it and the carrots are coming along too!  We have some tomatoes and basil popping up that are from last year’s (or the year before’s?) seeds that surprised us. I like those kinds of surprises.

My water babies like helping me water the garden with the pool water once they are done.  It occupies a decent amount of time refilling pails of water and bringing them all over the yard. Win win!

Look at these little snack faces grubbing on grapes and sliced cucumbers.  Can you tell I was trying to make sure they stayed hydrated?  We hit the mid 100s that week.

I made the easiest dinner ever since Kyle was out of town.  These are GF chicken nuggets and tenders (both applegate farms) with a variety of leftover sauces and dips that I seem to have accumulated in the fridge because I am a hoarder and can’t throw anything away.  Food waste is non existent in our house.  I was starving when we sat down so I ate the entire tray of tenders myself and had no room for dessert.  Who’da thunk I could do that!?

I spend the night doing food prep…like wrapping dates in bacon and such.  🙂

Morning muffins with my side kick after dropping P off at school.  She is getting quite good at magna tiles.

She thinks to owns the library.  To be fair, we are there A LOT.

Lunching it up with cherries, black beans, and shredded turkey.

Ever since I bought that pitter my life has been…a bowl of cherries, literally.

I wasn’t in the mood for salad, so I assembled a little plate of goodies for myself, including but not limited to, smoked salmon, carrots, Green Valley organic lactose free cream cheese, and Simple Mills rosemary and sea salt almond flour crackers.

These crackers and cream cheese together!!! OMG.  Mega mouth happy dances all lunch long.

Afternoon fun at the splash park with SO MUCH watermelon.

They had a blast, per usual, and then we did a quick change and hit up the library the library’s evening spanish program.

I have been going to the smaller school branch on Tuesday nights for the spanish program which is great because it’s much smaller.  They do a craft at the end, just like the other one, which is super cute.  This lessen my guilt about missing the Friday one we used to attend but can’t anymore due to OIT.

They both L O V E it.  And really, is there anything cuter than seeing toddlers sing in another language??

Leftover skirt steak for dinner.  They had it with some other leftovers that I can’t recall, I had mine over salad.

Then I dipped into this bad boy.  Because skipping chocolate two nights in a row is not an option.

Baking while the kids zzzz…

Green eggs and ham for breakfast!  They thought this was a brilliant idea and who am I tot turn down the chance to put kale in their eggs?  They loved it at first and then suddenly they were so over it.  It was the most annoying 180 I’ve ever seen a toddler do.

I saved the rest to make into a fried rice dish.

See?  I made this later that night.

If you’re wondering about the excessive prep, it’s because I knew I was going out of town for Thursday through Monday and wanted Kyle to be totally equipped to feed the babes.  I made a nice little check list and planned out all their meals and slowly over the course of the week knocked them out one by one.

Because I want to be Gwyneth, I made a smoothie with goji berries I’d been soaking for a few days. Combined with kite hill almond yogurt, walnuts, chia seeds, and almond milk, it was stellar.

It looks a weird color, but made me fall for goji berries in a smoothie big time. I’ve only ever had them in oats before, so I didn’t really know what else to do with them.  Gwyneth knows!

Lunch.

Are you sensing a trend with my dinners while Kyle is out of town??  Operation: make things easy for yourself by feeding the kids all their dream foods.

Pizza!!!

I brought it to market and they happily munched away while dancing to the music.

I used vicolo crusts and TJs vegan mozzarella cheese.  I made an extra for, you guessed it, the weekend while I was gone.

Dessert platter du jour.

This smoothie had strawberries (from our garden!), frozen bananas, walnuts, chia seeds, almond milk yogurt, and ice.  I nixed the vega one, opting for the yogurt instead.

The combo of strawberries and nuts/seeds is one of the best smoothie combos of all time. I’m really into walnuts at the mo.

Creepy pic on the left, I know.  I put chicken in the crock pot overnight so I could make chicken salad for dinner.  It got way too over cooked, so it basically disintegrated when I mixed in the mayo, pecans, celery, and grapes, but oh well.

I was thinking of doing lettuce cups but then I saw THESE at the co-op and knew I had to try them.

I’ve been seeing Siete products alll over the interwebs and I’ve been super jealous of the people able to get their hands on them.  I thought they were exclusively at WF!  I asked about them at the Fremont WF last month but they didn’t carry them.  So I forgot about it.  Then I saw them in the freezer section of the Co-op and threw a mini party right there in the aisle.  It took me a week before I went back to get them because I needed to plan them into the menu, and now here they are in my life.  🙂

I don’t know how they make pliable, non-cracking tortillas out of so few (real food!) ingredients, but alas, they found a way!!  And there are so many more flavors to try!  These will last a while but I’m eager to get the chia ones next.  And they make chips too!

First things first, we had to finish off the tee ball season.  We came straight from soccer and played at the park until game time, at which point he decided he was too exhausted to play.  Truth be told I didn’t blame him or care if he played, and luckily the league is soooo relaxed it hardly even matters.  One of our friends got her game time wrong and showed up at our field so we just let her join our team for the day!  And V stepped in for P for half the game too.  Whatever.

Kyle arrived straight from the plane/train/uber commute home from Mexico at the game and was able to join us for dinner.  Hooray!  And then as soon as I was done eating I got my things all packed up into the car and hit the road for the bachelorette weekend!  Talk about a hand off!