Fridaze

The kids were with Aunt Ellen today, so the only pics I took were of food. I think I’ll spice this post up with some oldies but goodies.

Pears.

Ava, age two, with a pair of pretzels boobs.

A bowl of shriveled stuff.

Maxine, shriveled.

A banana spinach smoothie, with a little too much spinach. Even for me.

Ava and too much green finger paint. Even for me.

After my morning meals wore off, I made my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink salad.

Mixed greens, tomatoes, shredded zucchini, carrots and jicama, garden picked cucumber, mushrooms, all tossed in Italian dressing.

No pepper though.

I ate a scary amount of cherries. (OK not ALL those but let’s just say that bowl was full when I rinsed them.)

No Cheerios though.

Who’s watching these kids anyway?

For dinner tonight I made a tomato and white bean soup. I’ll have you know this recipe is a classic. This is meal is one of the first I truly cooked. When we were newly married and I had my first kitchen and was working toward preparing healthier meals.

1 – 2 Tbsp EVOO
1 Large onion, diced
1 – 2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 15 oz cans of Cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
2 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
1 cup of water or veggie broth (if needed, I didn’t use any tonight)
10 – 15 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1/4 c lemon juice
salt to taste

Saute onion and garlic in EVOO until soft. Add tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add beans, broth, basil and salt and simmer 20 – 40 minutes, stirring occassionally. Before serving stir in lemon juice.

I ate so many cherries I was only hungry for a cup of this soup.

I also had a dose of Vitamin G&BDC. (That would be Green and Black Dark Chocolate, of course.) It was about to take a picture when the doorbell rang so instead I just ate it while I answered the door. True story.

After dinner we made a paper chain to keep track of the number of days until we might expect our butterfly to emerge from it’s cocoon.

Zak as a caterpillar.

Maxine in her cocoon.

Ava as a butterfly.

And there you have it.

Pupa Don’t Preach

This morning’s run had a purpose: Go pick up the car.

The car was in the shop yesterday and was ready last night, but we didn’t get a chance to pick it up so I decided I’d just run down and get it this morning since it’s only 2+ miles away.

I disregarded the No iPod Left Behind Act and did a warm up loop though my neighborhood and then ran what I would call my 5K pace to the shop.

With my warm up loop it turned out to be exactly 3 miles and got down there in 22:29, making my average pace 7:47. I was hoping it was going to be faster than that but I think my warm up mile brought my average pace down.

Came home to some watermelon, which was also happened to be my pre-run snack.

I finished up with some pushups (20), jump squats (damn you Jillian!), plank (2:30, my new record!), some roll ups (a la Pilates), butt kicks (Jillian style holding 5 lbs weights) and some downward dog to stretch it all out and call it a work out.

Ho ho ho Merry Chrysalis!!

I put a totally hippie new age branch in there for him to spindle on to but of course he chose the broken piece of plastic from Ava’s scooter that we mindlessly grabbed to cover the bowl to make his transformation on. We saw him getting ready to hang last night, Ava said he must like princesses. I can dig that.

The Chrysalis phase lasts 10 days. Mark your calendars! Can’t wait for the kiddos to wake up and see what Metamorphosis Claus left for them.