More snippets from our weekend.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yummy Chicken Salad

A new to me recipe Hot Cross Cookies.....so yummy...will post recipe to my Cooking Blog soon :-)

Our "raid the freezer" stirfry meal when we didn't have kids on Sunday night

My Easter treat to myself bought at a book sale we attended on the weekend

My blog is having an attack of "I don't want to cooperate with you itis" lol.  I don't know what it is doing but I will just carry on as though nothing happened lol.

I have found that since starting our diet our world seems to be revolving around food and shopping.  Its starting to drive me a little insane.  I think I have lost my planning mojo and it is starting to show with us just making the same meals over and over again, both for us and the kids.

I have been browsing through Michelle Bridges book "Crunch Time Cookbook" and I think we will start incorporating a few of her meals into our diet regime.  I feel like we have slacked off to a degree this past week with Easter and Mr10's birthday really playing havoc with our weight loss.  This week we have Mr11 with Autism here so that makes life really difficult too.  I can't leave the house with him on my own because he will just throw himself to the ground and he is getting too big for me to lift now, so we are housebound while hubby is at work and can't get to the shops.  I planned for Easter food really well but not so much for the rest of this week lol.  The best thing about our little diet break was the fact that after having junk food, we really didn't feel that great.  It showed us that our bodies are adjusting to not having crappy food (not that we over indulged in it before but it was little bits pretty regularly lol).  We both really felt it on Saturday after having had junky meals the last two days.  It is great because it is inspiring us to keep going on the diet and even though I hadn't really felt any different or healthier, last week made me realise that my system has in fact changed for the better and it doesn't really want to go back to nibbling on crappy food.

Exercise this week has been a little tricky too.  We were supposed to be doing one of the Wii games but having had between 6-8 kids in the house all the time and will have for the rest of the school holidays for the most part, it has been a little  hard to find time to use the Wii uninterrupted.  Therefore, we made the decision that for this week at least we will do either the treadmill or the bowflex instead.  Next week I will be back to having just my boys and probably a few extras at various points in the week.  I hope (fingers crossed the weather will help me out here!) to be able to get out and about a few times next week even if it is just going for some walks or bike rides!!  Money is tight right now so free activities are a must lol.  As I keep telling the kids, we can leave the house and not spend money and enjoy ourselves,,,,,my boys get it but Miss13 just doesn't, not at all, which makes me feel sad.  It is hard being a step parent and only having minimal influence on a child, especially when the other parent has totally different values than you do....can make life rather difficult at times.

I better go and check on my Anzac cake I have in the oven.  It smells delicious!!  (No I won't be eating it lol, I promise!!)

Easter,,,,,,and not a photo of an egg in sight...how bad am I lol

It occurred to me this morning that I didn't take a photo of our Easter morning celebrations.  Not one photo of the Egg Hunt, not a photo of the Easter morning Easter Egg gifts from the Big Bunny, how slack am I!!!!!  Now I could go and take a photo of the eggs, the kids haven't eaten much chocolate yet so there are plenty of eggs to photograph, but I won't.  That to me would always annoy me as being "fake" lol.

Our diet has been a struggle this last week.  Weight loss has been pretty much non  existent, partly because we have been doing weight training this week and also partly because we celebrated Mr9's 10th birthday with our traditional party night, which of course then turns in to a "lets eat the left overs for lunch the next day" lol.  Both hubby and I gained weight after having pizza, party pies and the obligatory birthday cake. 

Mr now 10 had his best friend over for a sleep over,,,,sadly his friend got sick in the middle of the night and ended up leaving at 8.30am.  I think it may have been over tiredness that did it to the poor little munchkin as he went home had a sleep and then woke up good as gold.  My kids are fine with late nights and it doesn't cause them any ill effects, others aren't so lucky I guess.  Lesson learnt when it comes to this particular friend lol, next time there will be a time limit of midnight!!  Mr10 had a great birthday though I think and was very excited at having his first friend for a sleepover.  I remember my older two had had many a sleepover by this age but with the younger two they have been a bit slow to get interested in having friends over to sleep.  It still amazes me how different the 4 boys are in that respect.  The younger two hate birthday parties and the like, whereas the older two loved them.  I always feel guilty that this was the first birthday "party" with friends (albeit only one friend) that Mr10 has had and Mr11 also has only ever had one party with friends and that was for his 5th birthday.  But I can't push them into these things I guess, if they don't want to have parties it just isn't worth forcing the issue.

I felt a little sad to see my youngest "baby" hit the age of 10.  It feels like you are kissing childhood goodbye for the last time.  But they are all wonderful and they make me so proud every day.  I know that we have many more years of fun and challenges (both good and bad) ahead of us to look forward to and I do look forward to watching them all become young men and make their own life decisions in the future.

So I will post a summary of our diet results tomorrow.  For today I will just share some piccies of our Easter weekend.....

Mr10's cake - complete with TimTams, Skittles and M&Ms

Mr10 and his friend who celebrates his birthday today (Big bro in the background)

My little cutie Mr10

Down at Semaphore Beach, Mr11, Mr15, Mr10 and our newest family member, Shadow

Miss13's sand art (can you tell she loves Justin Bieber just a tad??)

Our beautiful Shadow (we have to get her green collar clearance so she can go without the muzzle)

Miss13's icecream pic (don't ask lol)

Shadow was such a good girl

 

We adopted Shadow last weekend.  I have wanted a greyhound for years and we had planned a while back to become greyhound foster carers to help ex-racing greyhounds have a second chance at life.  When our beloved Billy passed away a few weeks ago, our younger dog, along with all of us, missed him terribly and still do.  I felt terrible though for our little Mojo who was really lost when he was outside by himself.  He always had Billy to follow around and "play" with and now he had just taken to moping around all day, waiting for us to come and play with him.  Last weekend while we were at Mr15's soccer game, I was browsing through the paper and saw a greyhound free to good home advertisement.  Hubby called the guy and found that he had adopted Shadow a year ago from NSW and she hadn't been green collar tested but she was great around cats and other dogs and was very placid.  We went to meet her and fell in love with her instantly.  She doesn't take any notice of our cats and our little Mojo thinks she is pretty cool.  She has adapted to our family so well and so fast it is hard to believe she hasn't always been here.  I would have still liked to foster greyhounds but seeing the kid's go through losing Billy, we thought that it would be too hard on them at this stage to have to bring a dog into our home, have it with us for a month or two and then have to say goodbye to it.  We will still look at fostering in a few years time when the kids are that little bit older, but for now we are more than happy with our latest family member.