Sunshine in January

I woke up to cuddles from my little guy this morning and after we wiped the sleep from our eyes I was ready for a morning smoothie but not just any smoothie, no I wanted a super healthy, yummy green smoothie. What makes it yummy you ask? Well I just threw a handful of spinach, one banana, 1/2 cup of orange juice, and one frozen peach into the blender and YUM instant energy. Now that I was awake J man was hankering for a game of trouble. Alli joined in and I promptly kicked their little butts, I am the TROUBLEMAKER:) Then we realized hey it's sunny outside so we stepped out and hey it wasn't cold so we decided to take a walk down to the lake. Let's get some exercise and burn some calories!


Once we got to the lake the kids threw rocks onto the ice, climbed trees and just enjoyed being outside in the sun.


When we got home Jack played with his new Yoda in the house that we built for him on Saturday. We actually had a whole birthday party for Yoda on Saturday complete with presents for the little guy.
Then we watched a video of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech and talked about why today was Martin Luther King Jr. day. I was surprised by how much Jackson had remembered by the time daddy got home. The only thing he had forgotten from our talk was the man's name:)

Last week when we started the raw foods diet experience I made cauliflower couscous and it was so tasty that I made it again tonight. I meant to take a picture of it and was so hungry that I totally forgot. However I will share the recipe so you can enjoy the deliciousness for yourself.
Cauliflower Couscous
1 head of cauliflower
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
parsley
scallions
garlic
cherry tomatoes
red pepper
olives (we used black once and kalamata once both were good)
salt and pepper to taste

Throw the cauliflower into the food processor using the 's' blade and chop it up to resemble couscous. Then move it to a big bowl.
Next squeeze the lemons until you have 1/3 cup and mix it with the olive oil. I also added dried basil and oregano to the mix but you can add whatever herbs you like or you could use fresh.
Next I put three cloves of garlic (we really like garlic) and some scallions in the food processor and chopped them up and added them to the cauliflower. Chop up your red pepper and add it to the cauliflower. Now pour the lemon, oil mixture in and stir. We add our own tomatoes and olives once it has been served because some of us like them and some of us don't. Side note: I wanted to make extra of this for leftovers but I didn't want to use that much oil so I only used the 1/3 cup of oil but used two heads of cauliflower and doubled the lemon and everything else. Now we have lunch for tomorrow too.
If you make your own version of Cauliflower couscous please share.

Since I started trying to lose weight back in August I've lost 20 lbs. I was really happy that I hadn't gained any weight over the holidays and I figure I lost about an average of 1 lb. a week. I was strictly following weight watchers in the beginning and then I slacked off and was just being really careful about how much I was eating. Then I became vegan and that helped to keep the weight down. So far since only eating raw foods I have lost another 5-7 lbs. I officially weigh in on Wednesday so I'll let you know then how my week went. Aside from losing weight I have to tell you that I feel AMAZING. Truly I have more energy than I remember ever having EVER!

Catching up from 2009

Well it seems I wasn't as good at blogging in 2009 as I had intended to be. Oh well let's try it again for 2010. First though I wanted to throw some pictures up to remind myself of all the fun we had last year. It was definitely a GOOD year.

Jessica and I went to the midnight party for the Twilight dvd release at Hot Topic and had a blast being silly and meeting other Twilight fans.

The kids LOVE watching the blend tech guy on youtube and one day while shopping at Costco we saw one and all three kids wanted their picture taken with it. I swear we can have fun ANYWHERE!!



We visited a nearby Children's Museum.


We went to the Chili Cook Off and saw Framing Hanley, Trapt, Hollywood Undead, Pop Evil, Amberlin, and Searching for Timothy. J-man stayed back to play with his cousin so everyone was happy.

Unfortunetly my Grandma got sick this past year and had to stay at a Rehabilitation Center luckily the courtyard was pretty and had some neat art that kept J-man occupied for a little bit while we visited her.

We got a huge tin of Tinker Toys from our local Freecycle and J-man and Alliroo had a great time building all kinds of cool stuff with them. Hurray for Freecycle.
We went to a local botanical gardens and had so much fun playing in the trees, making art in the kids learning center and J-man loved playing with the worms from compost bin!

well blogger doesn't seem to want to let me load anymore pictures tonight so I'll continue the look at 2009 tomorrow. Until then Happy Sun Shiny days to ya:)