Friday Afternoon – Saturday Afternoon

Well, I am still enjoying my vacation.  How are you enjoying your weekend?  After my last post the husband and I headed to a local favorite for some lunch.

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If you ever visit St. Thomas, Shipwreck is actually a bit overpriced, but we had a coupon.  I ordered the Buffalo Chicken Sub, which came with fries.

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Spicy buffalo chicken tenders with pepperjack cheese and blue cheese dressing, count me in!

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I let Adam eat 90% of my fries but I demolished my sandwich.  I have a serious weakness for buffalo chicken sandwiches (good thing I’m moving to Buffalo NY, eh?).  In general I am able to make healthy choices at restaurants, except when I am choosing to indulge, but no matter what my intentions I am powerless when I see this option!  The annoying thing is that it doesn’t even have to be so unhealthy – I would probably like it better with grilled chicken!  My problem in recreating them is that I’ve yet to find a sauce that tastes like “buffalo” to me.  Any suggestions?

After lunch we headed home for some showers.  Adam spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess with my dad but I drove back to school to do some work.  I spent 4 – 5:30 doing chemistry studying.

Next the family headed out for a fun dinner at Enkai, a new sushi spot.  It was right on the water so husband and I posed for some pictures.

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I love my hometown (duh, it’s an island!) but I had to do some Brooklyn representing!

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The restaurant was super cute,

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I love it when tablescapes are mismatched.  But the lighting was really dim so my pictures are all terrible.  I also have zero description because I couldn’t take my usual close-ups of the menu descriptions.  We started with some edame,

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which I pretty much polished off by myself, sorry guys!

My parents don’t really eat real sushi, as raw as they get is smoked salmon (because they are used to lox and bagels) so we stuck to tempora shrimp, lobster, crab sticks, and smoked salmon.  My mom dad and I split 4 rolls,

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here are my pieces –

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Everything was delicious!  When I looked at my camera later I realized I only ate 11pieces (aka 1.5rolls), no wonder I was still a little hungry.

After sushi fun we came home for more games 🙂 We are definitely trying to rope my parents into playing at least one game a day while we are here.  I made my mommy and I frozen coffees (4C cold, strong, coffee; 1tray ice cubes; 1/2C skim milk; 3/4C coffee chip ice-cream) while we played.

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They weren’t all that sweet, but they were super icy – perfection.  I also ate 3 more chocolate chip cookies.

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I’ve decided I’m done with the cookies, I physically cannot stick to just one.

After game time Adam and I headed out to meet up with some high school friends at Mojos, a new bar.  They had some good drink specials so I got a $2 strawberry mojito.

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I was driving so after that I stuck with small sips of the husband’s Cruzan Dark with Cokes.  We stayed out past 2 though so by the end of the night not drinking I had eaten most of this pack of Newman’s Own Organic mints.

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Peppermint tummyache was more than worth the good time we had with our friends though.

Saturday – dining delight

Our late homecoming only slightly effected our wake up this morning, we made it out the door before 8:30.  We had plans to meet some friends for lunch and I wanted to get some studying done so we decided to park ourselves at my favorite spot on earth – Barefoot Buddha Cafe.  We timed it so we could have both breakfast and lunch there, it is that good!

For breakfast I ordered the Bigfoot Bagel.

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Holy frick, I cannot even describe how good this is!  It has turkey bacon, egg whites, tomato coulis, spinach, aioli…..drool

We ate breakfast around 8:45 and then I spent 9 – 12 deep in chemistry.  When it was time to come up for air our lunch date had arrived.

I was in the mood for hot coffee so I ordered a vodoo latte; it has espresso and coconut milk.

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It was gorgeous, look at the heart –

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And for food I got a sweet potato wrap.

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It had sweet potato, chipotle sauce, goat cheese, and was pretty fantastic.  Not as good as my breakfast but pretty damn close!

After lunch we ran some errands with my mommy and at some point it seemed like a good idea to go to Wendy’s for a cookie dough twisted frosty.  {for which I magically seem to have no picture} This put me over the edge fullnesswise.  Looking back on this post there has been a lot of indulging in the last two days (I feel like that’s been the norm these last few months, that is good for fun times but not as a norm!).  I want to assume that it’s time for some leafy greens and light choices but being realistic we are headed to a fancy French spot tonight and I don’t see that happening.  Tomorrow (maybe!).

We will probably meet up with friends again after our French dinner but I’m not sure what the plan for tomorrow is.  Just in case anyone is wondering about the lack of beach time I wanted to address that: even though I grew up on an island I do love the beach, it is gorgeous even if you’ve seen it a billion times.  However, I am very careful with my skin – growing up on an island means even without tanning I’ve already had way too much sun exposure – so I don’t tend to calmor for the beach.  And right before this trip my husband had an abnormal mole removed from his back so for now I’d mostly rather keep him out of the sun.  How do you take care of your skin?

I was born and raised in St. Thomas, here are some fun facts about my island childhood

  1. Down here we drive typical American cars (steering wheel on the left side) but we drive on the left side of the road.  The first time I had to drive on the right in the states it was pretty scary for me!
  2. I graduated from a private prep school in a class of 40.  I was very fortunate to be at private school (my mom is a teacher so we had tuition credits) because the year I graduated all of the local public schools were deemed non-accredited.
  3. I am a US citizen, but I can never run for president.  People born in commonwealths or US military bases outside of the US can, but people born in territories can not.
  4. Similarly, I could not vote in a presidential election until I established residency in the continental US.
  5. (Partly due to the lack of voting rights and partly because of the lack of highways) Even though we are a part of the US the drinking age here is 18 years old!!!

What are some fun facts about your hometown?

Wednesday Morning – Friday Morning

Hello, vacation-style!  I hope everyone is having a good week, the vacay has been nice and relaxing so far.  I’m in a bit of a time crunch today so I’ll try to keep this recap pretty brief.  Just fyi – I only have internet when I go to work with my mommy so I’ll be doing a recap every few days until I get back home.

Wednesday – travel day

Our flight was at 8:15am so we had to get up nice and early.  We had to leave our car in long-term parking so we actually drove to the airport.  Thankfully, Mapquestgot us there in time to get breakfast, of sorts.  There were not many restaurants and those that were there didn’t have full menus.  I ended up with a Wendy’s Maple Baked Frescuit with egg and cheese.

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It actually tasted pretty good; I love the sweet-savory combo so cheese with maple syrup was nice.  And when I looked up the nutritional information online this morning I learned that it only had 390calories.

Being at airports always makes me think about having kids (not that it isn’t on my mind anyways!).  Adam and I have always discussed how important it is to make exercise fun for kids – the more you make movement into a game the better.  Even now, when we come to a moving walkway one of us will ride and the other will walk alongside and we will race!

We had a straight flight, which meant we were at my house before 2pm!  My mom always has a gift waiting for me on the bed.

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I wanted to get right into reading but Adam needed to go to his old doctor to do some forms for medical school so off we went.  I ate a baggie of baby carrots during the ride.

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The husband took forever so my father and I ended up taking a long walk on the boat docks.  I drank a Ting.

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My parents cooked us a great dinner.

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WW pasta with parmesan cheese,

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spinach and tomatoes cooked in toasted sesame oil,

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and broiled salmon.

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I also ate a slice of dry sourdough toast.

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They did a great job, everything was delicious.  Also good was my snack.

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Huge cup of coffee with skim milk,

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and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

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We played Pictionary and cards and by the time we were done I had actually eaten 4 cookies!  My cookie control was down a bit because of booze 🙂

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My favorite drink on earth is oj with cinnamon Stoli.  They actually stopped making this Stoli, my mom and I have 2 of the last bottles available, but it is equally good with Goldschlager. We each had one, yum.

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Thursday – “it’s so hot!”

In spite of not staying up all that late playing games (my dad is pretty intense about bedtime, he is my sleep role model) we could not get going Thursday morning.  I was supposed to get up and work out but that did not happen.  I woke up 3hours later than planned, ate breakfast, and went back to sleep for the rest of the day.  The husband and I think it’s because it was so hot.  At least I did have a great breakfast.

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A small chopped nectarine, half a banana, and ground flax seed.

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Plus a Low Fat Pineapple Chiobani.

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This was the first time I ever saw this flavor and it was awesome, I hope this comes to NY!

After my intense napping session I managed to drag myself to the shower and get gussied.  We ended up eating at the restaurant right near where we got married so Adam and I had to take some pictures!  This spot is exactly where we said our wedding vows –

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We had a fun time, it is hard to believe it’s been so long since December 28th, 2007.  1.5years, we are not even newlyweds anymore!

After some rememberings we headed to dinner, I slept through lunch so I was pretty starving.  I started with a beyond fabulous passionfruit colada,

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and my dad and I split a sandwich and salad for dinner.

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Fire roasted chicken paninni sliced chicken breast, roasted red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and a garlic and basil ailoi.

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Key Lime Caesar Salad.

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I ate half of everything.  The sandwich was good but a little greasy and I loved the salad, the lime cut through the usual creaminess wonderfully.

After dinner we went home for more board games and cards – Monopoly and Gin Rummy – we are serious nerds about game night!  I drank an iced coffee with skim milk, along with some desserts.

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First, two homemade chocolate chip cookies,

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and even better – Greek Gods Honey Greek Yogurt,

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frozen,

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oh yeah, this was so good!  Freezing Greek Yogurt (I’ve only tried it with flavored but I imagine that plain would be a lot like Pinkberry) turns it into slushy, granita-like goodness, I highly recommend it.

Friday– wake up!

Today, I managed to get my butt out of bed!  I went with my mom to an 8am spin class so we had to get up by 7.  We left extra early because we dropped Adam off at the beach, with a bucket of beer!  I ate this Luna Bar in the car for breakfast.

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The class was 60minutes of spin and floor work.  I don’t know if it was the sugary breakfast, that I was feeling sick yesterday, or that I’m out of shape, but my butt was kicked!  I felt so sick I actually had to sick down and skip the lunges.  I chugged some water and I’ve been sitting so I’m feeling a little better but it sucked at the time.

Now I’m hanging out at my mom’s library, hopefully headed towards some studying.  The husband and I are getting lunch soon so we’ll see what happens.  I will most likely be doing another post on Sunday, hope everyone has a great weekend!

For now, I will leave you with a list of the songs I played while I typed, found on my mom’s i-pod!!!

  • Viva la Vida – Coldplay
  • Single Ladies – Beyonce
  • Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
  • Low – Flo Rida
  • Blame It – Jamie Foxx
  • That’s Not My Name – The Ting Tings

Early Vacation

FYI (because I know everyone totally cares!) I will not be posting today because I’m going on early vacation – once we are done packing and running a few errands I am spending the day chillaxing, alone with my husband.  We’ve had lots of downtime, but not much togethertime and that situation needs to be fixed.

I am heading home to St. Thomas early tomorrow morning and I plan on doing regular posts throughout my vacation.  However, my parents don’t have internt (it is an island!) so I will be posting sporadically when I can go to work with my mommy. 

Have a great Tuesday!

What is annoying about visiting your parents’ house(s)?  I (and my husband) get along superwell with my parents so we pretty much have a great time, my only complaint is the lack of internet and cable tv, which really, aren’t that big of a deal 🙂

Back to the City

After a final car trip this morning, we are home again!  I’m excited to be back (I was actually a little bit homesick this weekend), but that doesn’t mean I’m not super excited to head to St. Thomas on Weds 🙂

This morning we headed out the door bright and early (8am) and made our way back to NYC.  I brought a 0% Oikos Vanilla to eat in the car,

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and supplemented it with oj and an Amazing Grass packet.

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I liked this berry flavor a lot more than I did the plain one.  I found it a little too sweet, but apparently not too sweet to keep me from eating one of the hubby’s maple candies during the ride.

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Once we made it home sweet home we got right down to business – we had to sign/mail our lease for the Buffalo apartment (yippee!), pick up some 2day essentials at the store, and get an insurance check for our car.  FYI – Adam’s parents are amazing and bought us a car our senior year in college (no car was not an option because I had to drive to my internship so they totally saved my butt).  They have driven it for the past two years while we lived in the city but now we have a car again, which is pretty exciting.

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I ate 1.5slices of cheese before we took the car,

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and taking the car took us to 15th street so we took the opportunity to go to our favorite Thai place, Watana.  I got the lunch special, which was pretty exciting.

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My meal was Pad See Eiw chicken.

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It came with a side salad,

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soup,

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and a veggie spring roll.

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Everything was delicious, this lunch totally rocked my socks.  I loved all of the different veggies and the smaller portion of noodles was great because I have zero self-control when it comes to broad rice noodles.  I actually did take about 1/4 of the meal to go, but I attacked it within the next two hours.

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Before we drove home we did dessert Expansion style, by hitting up Union Market for cake samples.

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I had a killer headache all afternoon so I lazed around the house room and enjoyed the comfort of my own couch.  Reruns of Bones kept me pretty happy, as did my yummy snacks.

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3 strawberry chocolates,

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and a marzipan pig.  I also ate about 10, unphotographed, pieces of saltwater taffy.

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After that I made a strange sounding but great tasting bowl – 0% Plain Fage, tons of blueberries, a few pine nuts, and a smidge of maple syrup.

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The mix of flavors and textures in this was perfect.

Plus some protein plus pretzels from Newman’s Own Organics.

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These were hands down the best pretzels I’ve ever had, they had a great salty almost sour flavor.  I ate about 2x what was pictured.

Later in the evening I ate a small bowl of granola for “dinner.”

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Then I was (finally) productive again by writing my thank yous.  We made the mail drop off trip a stroll, ending at Starbucks for a nonfat iced half pump white chocolate mocha.

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P.S. I was making serious eyes at the husband’s dinner during this post and while I was blogging he darted out of the house and brought me back this –

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yums.  I almost never drink sugar soda but I adore dipping my pizza crusts and coke coke (rather than diet) is just a little more special for that classy activity.

Vacation Reflections

  • especially for the lack of good choices available, I did a pretty good job of getting in fruits and greens
  • packing a few of my own snacks helped me a lot (hello Amazing Grass packets)
  • when I get frustrated my food choices go downhill – I did pretty well at breakfast and lunches but after a day of dodging unhealthy choices I get frustrated and end up eating a bunch of crap.  I’d be better off having a few smaller indulgences throughout the day than, for example, eating chicken fingers with fries and mac and cheese for dinner
  • the above point is especially important when I am feeling bored in the evening
  • even when I can’t fit in a full workout (like my Saturday run, with hills, go me!) I would be better off squeezing in 2 or 3 minutes here and there

I have another trip coming up, right before my 24th birthday, so I will have to keep these reflections in mind; it’s a learning curve here!

Fun Hap’s in Bloggerland

  1. Mr. and Mrs. Hangry are giving away some MojoMix.
  2. Eat Live Run is helping us uncultured drinkers to figure out wine.
  3. An Apple a Day has 2 fun giveaways, Sahale/Ooba and Crofter’s spread.

Long Weekend in 500 Words or Less

Looong car ride Friday night, chips and grilled stuffed chicken burrito at Taco Bell,

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to-go applesauce, yum

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toffee coffee twisted frosty, ugh, should have stopped eating.

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Saturday morning in VA35minute run (with hills) with the husband, then 25 minute walk with sister-in-law, hills make me feel powerful.  Sun-protection is gangsta,

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Beer for breakfast,

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turkey sandwich, fruit, broccoli salad,

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dinner at a steak house – frustrated with lack of choices, went all out unhealthy, felt sick.

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Early birthday celebration, cake and ice-cream with caramel, in-laws are so sweet.

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Saturday late night, ate way way too much chex mix, without photographs.

 Sunday morning, 1% chocolate milk, fruit, ww bagel with lowfat strawberry cream cheese, jelly, fancy pb.

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Turkey sandwich (with squeeze cheese) in the car,

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cookies x4,

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snacks,

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dinners seem to go downhill, ie: black and white milkshake, mini chimi appetizer, french fries, sandwich so gross I took only 1 bite.

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P.S. Word count = 152; reflection to come.

What did you do this weekend?

Lots of Fruits

This will be another quickie post but I have a very important PSA – Do NOT go see Bruno!  That was the worst movie I’ve seen this year.  (In my opinion) it wasn’t funny and it didn’t end up having any sort of message.  My movie snack was a winner though,

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Cookie Dough Balance Bars are always good.  I have really been making an effort to eat healthy on this trip, in spite of any negative influences – like husband and his sister splitting a large popcorn with butter – that are around me.  It’s been tricky because there isn’t much food (healthy or not) in the house but I think I’m doing ok.  I was hungry after the movie so I asked my sil to stop at a convenience store so I could get this:

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The Amazing Grass packet was from my packed snack bag but the juice and medium banana were from the store.  I would say it was a pretty solid convenience store snack – a little veggie and lots of fruits.

We are hitting the road soon, I’m not sure what the internet situation will be at the parents’ house so I might be doing a recap post when we get back here on Sunday.  Either way, I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Have you seen Bruno or Borat?  What did you think?

Quick Quick

I don’t have much to post, but it is so exciting being in a house with internet that actually works that I wanted to do a quickie.  We’ve had a relaxed morning – I slept in past 10:30! – and we are headed to a movie this afternoon.  After that my sister/brother-in-law, the husband, and I are making the 6hour drive to their parents’ house in Virginia.

Last night I ate a sliver of rocky road fudge after my dinner post –

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And this morning I had a 0% Strawberry Oikos (fruit on the bottom) –

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My sister-in-law is so sweet that she bought Greek yogurt for me to have while I am here.  The husband’s family has very different eating habits from me (not super healthy, a lot of meat) but they’ve really made an effort to make me feel welcome.  Also, this yogurt was fantastic.  Oikos offers the only organic Greek yogurt on the market and I enjoyed stirring the fruit (more like a jam) up from the bottom.

Stir ya later!

How does your eating style differ from your family/your in-laws?  What do you do to make things work?

Bus or Car? NY or PA?

Hello, vacation-style!  We are in PA and we are having family fun time so it will be a quick post.

The husband (due to extreme anecdotal evidence) joked last night that I would wake up at 1 (we had to leave at 1:30) and rush around like a chicken with my head cut off.  However I calmly got in a workout and a study session before we left, go me!  We did the same 2.7mile run that kicked my butt the other day and I got through it a little better.  When we got home I did 2 sets of 10 push-ups on the stairs and some stretching.

After a quick shower I hurried to Starbucks and studied from 10:30 – 1:00.  I got another yummy lowfat egg white feta wrap, with some ice water for re-hydration.

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These wraps are just too tasty.

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Adam picked me up and we made our way to the train, to the bus station, for an hour wait before the three hour bus ride.  We had a ‘picnic’ lunch on the floor of the terminal.

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Iced tea and a sliced Jazz apple Adam packed for me.  I also broke into the snack bag for a Peanut Toffee Buzz Clif Bar.

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I was glad I ate before the trip as seating was pretty cramped.  Husband and I had some interesting conversations to kill the time, we spent more than an hour on coke vs. sprite, blue cheese v. goat cheese, Mexican v. Thai, etc.  I’ve been with my husband for 6.5years so we pretty much know everything about each other but we still love games like that; it’s clear I’m a foodie, all but a 5minute tv show section (which character would you marry? etc) were based around food choices!

My sister-in-law picked us up the bus stop and even had gifts for us when we got home.

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She knows we are stressed about the move situation so she gave me some relaxation tools, thank you!

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Our only choices for dinner were take out so I tried to go as healthy as possible with Zoup.  I did a side soup side salad that came with a side of bread.

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I choose chicken fajita soup and cibatta bread but the highlight was my build-your-own salad,

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romaine and spring mix base, cucumber, black olives, pepperochinis, roasted red peppers, dill and balsamic vinegar on the side.

We are hanging at home tonight and then being low-key until it is time to drive to VA tomorrow, check ya later!

Tell me your favorites –

  1. soda?  cherry coke zero
  2. cheese? brie or blue cheese
  3. cupcake place? sugar sweet sunshine, in SoHo
  4. milkshake flavor? black and white
  5. thing to eat of all time? I can’t narrow it down beyond four: roasted Brussels sprouts, oven baked yam fries, baby carrots, and Pad See Eiw