Whole30 Challenge

A few weeks back, I found out about the Whole30 challenge and decided I wanted to give it a try. I got Eric on board and we decided to start at the end of May after Memorial Day. Tonight starts the first of our Whole30 challenge. Basically, you are very restricted on the food you can eat. It's a month-long detox for your system - it's like hitting a reset button. No sugar, no grain, no dairy, no legumes, and no crazy chemicals or preservatives. Mostly, you can eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts (no peanuts), and fruit.

On Friday, we made a trip to Whole Foods to prepare for the month. There's lots of things I had never heard of - I didn't know there was almond flour and I had never heard of ghee or clarified butter.  We walked out of Whole Foods and spent about $120. I'm pretty sure we didn't have enough ingredients from that trip to make one meal! Granted, we were picking up pretty obscure items that will hopefully last a few weeks. The next day, I went to Kroger and left with my cart filled with fruits, veggies, meats, and a few things for Alec (he's not taking part in Whole30). It was strange not having to grab a bunch of packaged food (chips!) and Diet Dr. Pepper. The whole trip to Kroger was $208.

This sounds like a lot of money for a week, but when you consider this is all our meals for the next 7 days it doesn't sound too bad for us - we spend A LOT of money on dining out.

Here's the meals and snacks I'm planning to make this week:

Easy Chicken Marinade with Tomato and Avocado Salad
Pulled Pork as lettuce wraps with this BBQ sauce
Banana Muffins
Sweet Potato Casserole
Tex Mex Muffins
Fruit Smoothie
Banana Ice Cream

Thank goodness for the web - there are a ton of recipes out there to keep you on track and to keep the food interesting. Variety is important for me, I can't eat the same thing everyday. It was a little daunting to put away the groceries and realize that everything I bought for food this week needed some form of preparation.

My hope for the next 30 days is to change the way I fuel my body and how I feel (I'm not trying to lose any weight).  I'm a sugar junkie! I eat pretty good most days of the week but sugar is my weakness. I eat 1-2 sugary foods (desserts, ice creams, candy) a day on top of the sugar that's just in everything. I have bad sugar crashes in the afternoon and my blood sugar fluctuates and leaves me starving, shaky and weak. It's also going to be difficult to give up cheese and yogurt for the next 30 days. I also hope this gets us out of our eating out all weekend and gets us into the routine of eating at home.

For now, I'm just going to take this one day at a time/one meal at time. Here's to a healthier me in 30 days! :)

May Fun 2012

May is always a busy month for us - it's busy at work, Mother's Day, my birthday, and our anniversary. Plus, the weather is usually consistently nice so we start packing in the activities. Here's a recap in pictures of a few of things we've done so far this month.

Alec's first trip to the dentist

We've had some more Mommy and Alec lunches.

We've spent some time downtown - we <3 Little Rock!

Went to Disney on Ice

Alec is finally big/old enough to push the little carts at Kroger

We've been running down at the Big Dam Bridge on Wednesdays

We created some art for Grandma and Mammie

We had a donut for breakfast at Krispy Kreme

We went to Russellville to see my cousins graduate - I was 13 when they were born!

We made our first family trip to the library - Alec wanted books about airplanes and dinosaurs

We ran the Dino Dash - I pushed Alec in the stroller

Alec ran/walked the 1K at Dino Dash - he wouldn't wear his number!

I'm pretty sure we finished last! It was so cute!

Post race powerade

Post race Popsicle

After the race we played at the Museum of Discovery...

...And went to the Farmer's Market

We got our Riverfest tickets - yay for Boyz to Men and Third Eye Blind!

We had gyros at the Greek Food Festival - yum!

This post is all over the place! It really shows the wide variety of things you can do in Little Rock, we really love living here and can't picture ourselves anywhere else. It's close to our families but still big enough for diversity and a wide variety of fun things to do!

A few things I want to write down about the pictures above:

Alec's first trip to the dentist - he did really well. This was just a check-up and for Alec to get used to going to the dentist. The place was really fun. They had a cute waiting room with lots of games, books, and it all looked like a tree! There were tvs above the dentist chairs that were playing Toy Story. The dentist told us to start using fluoride toothpaste on Alec - he's such a big boy!

We went to Disney on Ice at Verizon - Alec's favorite part was the Lion King. At school, they read about Timone and Pumba and Hakuna Matata. Alec loves to sing Hakuna Matata - I think we play it about 5 times on the way to school in the morning. It's so cute to hear him sing the song.

Dino Dash was our first family 5K - I pushed Alec in the stroller 5K, Eric ran the 5K, and we all took place in the 1K fun run. Alec was super shy and didn't want to participate at all in the 1K. We got a really slow start and he wouldn't move. Finally about half-way into the race and he started running but only on the sidewalk. We were all chasing each other! He finished last but I think he had a lot of fun. He got a little dinosaur for running the race. Here's a picture from the race - we are in the background, I'm wearing green. 

Dallas Trip 2012

This post is way behind! Back in April, we took a mini vacation to see my sister in Dallas. She moved there about 6 months ago and while she's been here a few times this was our first time to visit her. Eric stayed home but other than that it was me, Alec, my Mom, my Dad, and my Dad's girlfriend who took the trip. We had a good time and it was way too short. We shopped till we dropped, ate at some great restaurants, and kept Alec entertained. We packed a lot into the weekend, I think I had the whole group completely exhausted by the end of the trip.! Here's a few pictures from our trip.

We didn't plan this, but the weekend we were in Dallas, Thomas was in town!

They had lots of activities for kids to participate in - train displays, storytimes, and special guests.

But the best part of the day was seeing Thomas...

...and riding on the Train!

Alec even got a Thomas tattoo.

Another highlight of the trip was the hotel's swimming pool.

He loved jumping in the water!

Shopping at the Galleria and IKEA was a highlight of my trip! :)

IKEA was Fun but I barely made it home with what I bought!

 It barely fit!

We had a great trip and it was good to see my sister. She lives in a great place and it'll be fun to visit her again, hopefully later this year.