Snowy Sunday!

Hi All -

Happy Sunday! I was expecting some snow when I woke up this morning, but there was only a dusting on the ground. However, it did continue to flurry most of the morning and afternoon - but we did not get any accumulation.

I woke up around 9 o'clock this morning. The first thing I did was warm up the small amount of oats left over from yesterday's breakfast. I added raisins, a couple of slivered almonds, semi-sweet chocolate chips and a small bit of Teddy. Yum. I knew that Ben was making a brunch later today, so I did not want a huge breakfast - but I also did not want to be starving by the time brunch came around! The bowl has about a half cup of oats, which I warmed in the microwave with a couple of tablespoons of milk to re-hydrate them.

Ben later made us homemade whole wheat waffles! I had two and they were amazing. The recipe Ben used was from his childhood in Iowa. I love the recipe because it does not call for sugar! Ben also bought fresh fruit from the grocery store - I had a helping of cantaloupe which was really great. The other thing on my plate is a Morningstar Farms veggie sausage patty - great protein!

We enjoyed brunch around noon time today. It was so great!
Today we discovered that Daisy is as big a fan of Barack Obama as Ben and I are! She enjoyed listening and watching him today on Meet The Press... seriously - isn't this a little strange? She looked at him on the television for a few minutes. I am glad I had my camera to capture the moment!

Around 4pm I had a snack - the last clementine in the house! I will have to get some more this week. They have been my go to snack this week.

What is not pictured are a couple of other snacks I have had today as well. Five Kashi whole wheat crackers and a Holiday sugar cookie left over from the party last night!

I am beginning to think of the Turkey chili that I am going to make for dinner tonight. I will post the recipe if it turns out well!

While I did not get to the gym today, I did spend most of the day cleaning and organizing, so I feel like I have got a bit of exercise! I definitely should have gone for a run this afternoon, but I will definitely get back to the gym tomorrow.

Hope you are all having a great Sunday! I will post more tonight.
So long!

Food update for a few days...

Ok, so like I said, I'm behind. I can tell you what I've been eating (and I will!) but I'm seriously behind in the photos, as well.

On Sunday morning I had a really, super traditional breakfast! I had a combination of Kellog's Smart Start and Kashi Heart 2 Heart with skim milk and a little juice glass of orange juice. I was at my mom's house, and all Sunday morning I was sneezing... I was scared that I was getting a cold. So far I'm ok... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I stay healthy! Here is a boring photo of my breakfast on Sunday...

I watched the morning shows with my mom on Sunday... who knew that Meet the Press was on at 9am this Sunday instead of the usual 10AM time slot it has in Providence?? Glad I got up an hour earlier than normal!

After a while, I decided to head back to Newton. I stopped by Petco to get Daisy more cat food, more jingle balls (her favorite toys) and a new mouse with cat nip in it. She loves this new mouse, more than the others because there is a rattle inside the mouse! We now feed Daisy Science Diet kitten dry food, and we give her a little bit of wet food once or twice a day. I think the wet food is definitely keeping her coat nice and soft. Her favorite wet food right now is the Minced Savory Salmon by Science Diet... she loves it.

Once we got back to Newton I dropped Daisy off at the house, and went to the grocery store. I loaded up on a lot of fruits and veggies, along with milk, orange juice, ground turkey and more. Unfortunately, Stop and Shop was out of the chobani blueberry and strawberry yoghurts. So, After checking out of the first market, I headed over to Whole Foods to get a few more things, and five yoghurts for the week!

At around 2pm I had to have a snack - and I was surprised that the cereal and orange juice tied me over for 5 hours! Instead of having a big lunch, since I was running around doing my Sunday errands, I had a Blueberry Zbar by Cliff Bar. I can't say enough about these little bars. I love that they are low calorie and are pretty healthy for a fast on the go snack.

For dinner on Sunday night I cooked slices of green and red peppers, ground turkey and chopped onion all together. Once the turkey was cooked I added a can of verde enchillada sauce to the mixture. I also cooked up a bit of black beans and rice. I wrapped up all of this with some non-fat sour cream and salsa and enjoyed some sort of Mexican food... I'm not sure if you'd call it a burrito or taco, but it was something like that - and very filling! I like making Mexican food at home because you can decide how healthy the food will be. By making the ground turkey instead of ground beef, using cooking spray instead of a high fat oil, and not adding regular sour cream, or high fat cheeses, Mexican food can still be rather healthy!

OK, I'm signing off for now - but I promise to catch up soon and get the photos back up again on a regular basis!

Our Newest Family Member

On July 10, 2008 Ben and I brought home our newest family member, a tiger calico kitten named Daisy. Ben had cats growing up, but I was a new cat owner so I wanted to do my research before we brought Daisy home. We had been discussing getting a kitten for two months, and during this time I read two books about having cats and kittens as pets. I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared (or prepared as I could be) to share my home with a new animal companion! The two books that I read were wonderfully informative, and had a lot of duplicate information, but I am glad that I read both of them since they had two different perspectives. The book titles were, The Everything Cat Book
and Cats for Dumbies which were both great reads! The books really helped me get prepared for bringing Daisy home.

The night before we brought her home, Ben and I went to the pet store to get a few of the essentials (litter box, litter, Iams kitten dry food and a couple of cans of Iams wet kitten food and a few toys that we thought she might like).

Another important thing we did for the kitten was set up a safe room. We decided that our bathroom would be her safe room, because it was easy to take everything out of the room that she could hurt herself on. We're lucky because our bathroom is very spacious, and we have a large window that she likes to look out onto the world by - it's also a good thing because it provides a nice breeze and can keep the room cool.

Daisy adjusted quickly to our home. There are always a few difficult obstacles when you bring a new kitten home.


Now we are in the process of letting her explore more rooms in the house. At first (the first couple of days that she was new in our home) we limited her to the living room and bathroom while we were all getting used to each other. After a couple of days (and some cat proofing between the refrigerator, oven, and washer and dryer - these were places that she would get stuck and not know what to do and places that she could get hurt!) we opened up the kitchen to her exploring. She has done very well in not challenging the areas she is not supposed to go to (i.e. behind the washer!)

After a couple of weeks we have opened up the loft area to Daisy. Ben worked hard in cleaning up the space so there weren't areas that she could get trapped in or any glass objects that she could break. That is one thing about having a new kitten - once they can, they love climbing and exploring. If you have a vase or anything breakable on a shelf, be sure that the kitten will not be able to reach it, or move it to a room that he or she will not be in unless she is very well looked after!

So far it's been wonderful having our kitten. I'll use this blog as a bit of a story board to report any little mishaps along the way - but so far we've been doing well.