Driving from West Virginia back to Maryland today, it's always so sad to leave. We have such a special time. My Grandmother isn't doing as well and just due to both their ages it's always so hard to leave. 💔 My kids always change so much being here and it's so special to watch.
Some of my favorite pictures from yesterday.
#1 4 generations 🩷🩷
#2 My Grandpa and I sat down to record some stories of his life and he shares some of the ways he has maintained his health into his 90s and the changes he has seen in food production throughout his lifetime. It is for a YouTube video but it won't come out until later in Sept. His roosters kept crashing our conversation. 🐓😂
#3 My Aunt's kitchen for @kayficken and @BeckyLynn 😂
#4 We spent some time going through an old tin of letters and journals from my Great Grandfather...so many love letters he and his wife wrote to each other over their lives and lots of farm journal's and family mementos. Things that went all the way back to the 1850s. It was really cool to go through it all with my Grandpa, Mom, and Uncle.
#5 My kids running around my Aunt and Uncles farm with their cousins. They had the best time this week.
Once we over the mountains and get signal back, while Chris is driving, I plan to go through Locals and catch up on everything.
Its been so nice to only be using my phone as a camera this week but I look forward to catching up with you all.
Yesterday we surprised the kids and brought home a puppy!! They have been begging for one for years and we felt like the time was right to bring one home.
Meet Angus 🐕 He's a Golden Retriever/King Charles Cavalier Spaniel mix. He's 11 weeks old and currently weighs about 8 pounds, he should be around 35 pounds fully grown. I know it will be an adjustment for a while as he gets potty trained etc but we are so excited. 😂 Wish us luck! 🤪
Cheese is good! I ate a block of chipotle oven baked cheese with lunch yesterday and it was divine. I love it, but know that it halts any progress I'm making, and will even trigger eating in excess to where I'll gain weight. It's sad but I have accepted it. If I eat it in small quantities with a meal, it's ok, but I really have to work to keep it in check.
What's your favorite cheese? How do you incorporate it? Do you see negative results when eating it?
Happy Sunday! Sharing a video today from our week, one of the highlights. This was Wednesday evening church, normally they have a more casual prayer meeting where someone plays the guitar, but they were doing some construction in the fellowship hall so they had their prayer meeting in the sanctuary. No one was there to play the piano so my my Grandma did it, she's been playing the piano in church for probably 80 years.
For context, she's 88, she had a really bad fall 5 years ago now and hit her head and ended up with a lot setbacks, similar to having a stroke. She has a lot of dementia like symptoms also (I am sure related to her Type 2 diabetes), she really can't read music anymore, and she has trouble seeing well, and she needs to wear hearing aids to hear but hates wearing them, so on this night she didn't want to wear them. My 93 (almost 94) year old grandpa takes care of both of them on their farm. Anyway, on this night she sat down on the piano and led worship as people called ...
Happy Tuesday! Thanks to those that hung out on the Livestream last night. One of the topics we talked about is breaking a stall. And unfortunately the best advice I have for breaking a stall is "keep it boring" and just stay consistent. Honestly that's been my motto this year. I love variety of course, but the more simple/boring I keep things with my food the better results I get. Usually when we add "variety" we add a lot of diary, or carbs, or those replacement recipes that increase cravings or contain hidden dairy/carbs/calories.
It might be hard to get into a routine at first but I do find that just eating the same things most days is actually a lot easier. And if you really enjoy that food (and know how to cook it), you'll still look forward to it each day.
If you're feeling stuck, just focus on consistency and keeping that food simple, and I PROMISE it will work...you just have to be patient.
Boring =Results! Have you found this to be true for you?
Happy Tuesday evening!
We spent the day at the farm show w/out 5 yo who didn't feel well. Which was probably good as it was windy, cold, rainy. We figured we walked 3+ miles. So lots of fresh air and exercise.
We ate breakfast on the way (location is an hour away from our house.) They had a Chicken Club Protein Bowl, so I had that. The "cheese" was plastic american cheese and it had tomatoes on it; but otherwise it was just eggs, bacon and chicken breast. I also had about 1/2 of my normal protein coffee on the drive.
We skipped lunch.
After some farm errands in that city, we came home to chore and go through all the swag we got. Caps, tee-shirts, flashlights, rain gauges, fly swatters, chip clips, pens and I seriously will never have to buy another note pad or sticky notepad, ever! And of course the nice grocery bags and 5 gallon buckets.
Then we took the grandkids swag in to them. Stickers, caps, corn hats, coloring pages, rubber bracelets, pencils.
Then we went to our Mexican ...
