Travel day

Yesterday was a super busy travel day!  I didn’t sleep much Tuesday night because I was getting anxious about the snow that I kept seeing falling!  Thank goodness my car started and while the trip was a little treacherous, I made it to the airport in a good amount of time. 

 

Instead of parking in the lot, I am getting my car worked on at DIA Auto, they dropped me off at the airport and will pick us back up when we return.  They also are waiving their $8/day parking fee because we’re getting work done. Win!  I’ll report back on the service when we come back, but so far I’d have to recommend Denverites to look into this option.

 

I didn’t take pictures of breakfast, I grabbed a bagel and an eggnog latte at the airport.  I didn’t want to unpack my camera from my carryon and I forgot about my Droid’s camera.  Oops.  I remembered it in time to take a not so in focus shot of the runway.  It was still a steady snow and please note that it is completely white.  The white is all snow.  For some reason Denver doesn’t find it necessary to actually clean the runways.  I have no idea why.

Despite the lack of plowing, I made it to Baltimore without any trouble.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen D.C. with this much snow!  It’s pretty incredible.  Dan hit some major traffic on his way to pick me up and was just dying of hunger by the time he got me.  I do NOT miss driving on I-95 North during the holidays.  We made a stop by the Panera where we had our second date.

 

I had my usual, Broccoli cheddar soup with whole wheat bread.

We also split this gingerbread man.  I have to admit that I think the gingerbread Tom gave me on Tuesday spoiled me.  I thought this gingerbread cookie was weak.

We made it back safely to Dan’s parents house and slowly but surely all of his brothers made it back home.  Dan has three younger brothers and so now there are seven of us.  It kind of reminded my of when my sisters and step-sisters all would get together for Thanksgiving.  Except of course, all boys, which I have to admit is a big difference.

 

All seven of us went to a sushi restaurant in downtown Rockville for dinner.  We all shared edamame beans for appetizers.  I can’t believe that Dan had never had them before.  I used to eat them all the time, but I guess I never gave him any?

I also snacked on Dan’s salad.  It was pretty tasty, I couldn’t figure out what the salad dressing was.

For dinner I got the tempura sushi roll.  They gave me a ton of wasabi and I was so busy getting the soy sauce made that I forgot to take a picture.  It was delicious, but unfortunately the roll fell apart. But that just gave me pieces to eat instead of stuffing a huge roll into my mouth I dissected it.

 

For dessert we split some stuff at the restaurant and came home and had some cookie’s that Dan’s little brothers girlfriend sent over.No pictures of those either…Sorry about the bad pictures, I have a feeling that the droid camera would be better if I tried. 

 

Merry Christmas eve!

A view from the top

Now for a recap from Saturday!  Jody and I had a great time being tourists around Denver.  We started the day with a drive up Lookout Mountain.  Dan and his teammates ride up this mountain for practice.  Yikes! I was nervous driving up in my car! 

It was fun to see how excited she was to be up close and personal to mountains!  Look at how smoggy it is over Denver!  Do I breathe that in all day?

Jody always makes friends wherever she goes, and this trip was no different.

It was a perfect day to be out, beautiful snow on the ground and it felt like it was 60 degrees!

We headed straight to the Coors factory when we got back down the mountain.

The Coors Brewery has free tours daily (only one per day though!)  The tour includes a view inside the actual brewery.

A free taste of Coors (did you actually know it is called Coors Banquet) or Coors Light.

At the end of the tour, everyone over 21 gets three free beers.  We only had two since we had to get Jody to the airport :(

They tried to sell us this picture for $20.  Ouch!  Too rich for my blood!  It was a nice pic. so we took pictures of it. 

 

It’s so fun to be a tourist in my own town.  Now Jody is gone. Boo.  Hope you come back soon Jody!

snowed in

I wish!  We woke up to over 14 inches of snow and we still had to go to work on time!  I showed up to work first only to find out that most of my coworkers called out claiming they were snowed in.  Boo on them!  I got to watch the icicles grow on the window outside my office.

The heat still isn’t on at work so I spent the entire day drinking hot tea.  I have no idea how much I drank and so I have no idea how I did on my water.  Is anyone else obsessed with counting their water? 

I’m doubly obsessed this week after eating out as much has I have been.  (p.s. last night’s dinner was AWESOME, I’ll post a review later!) I know I’m retaining water like crazy.  The scale was not kind to me this morning!  In addition to drinking water I have just hopped onto the elliptical for an hour.  Better work off all the heavy food we’ve been eating. 

 

I ate my usual breakfast.  The Mix 1s are a great breakfast food.  I never worry about being hungry soon after eating them.  You know how important that is to me!

The all bran buds give me a chance to have a crunch with my breakfast (and a whole lotta extra fiber, nothing wrong there!)

I usually drink my coffee after the all bran and need something sweet so I dig into my fruit which today, like every other day this week, was a pear.

 

We didn’t have any leftovers for lunch so I still ate my Chinese food from Tuesday night.

Have any of you tried dark chocolate with sea salt?  It’s amazing.

Dinner is all home made and veggie heavy.  Yay!  I have a deep love for artichokes and haven’t had them in ages.  They were incredibly delicious!

To accompany, Dan made some mashed potatoes and made a tweak suggested by Chai—garlic mashed potatoes!  Thanks Chai!

To round this out, I had a teeny tiny piece of a chicken thigh.  Mmmmm.  I’ll have to post this recipe for Chicken Pieces with Lime.  Totally hit the spot!

So, remember that giveaway I did on friday?  Well Mary hasn’t emailed me to collect her prize.  If I don’t hear from her by tomorrow night.  I’ll pick another winner, so stay tuned!

Another non-dinner post!

It’s snowing a lot here in Denver, even so Dan and I are going out to dinner tonight! Yum!  We really need to stop eating out.  I don’t remember the last home cooked meal I had, Monday lunch?

 

Breakfast was the same Mix 1 and all bran bran buds

Lunch was soup again. Mmmmm

For dessert I had a pear and a piece of sea salt dark chocolate

 

The snow is piling up

I’m totally not sick of it, I love all this wintery weather! I was definitely not made to live in the south!  Off to Potager!  Check out the link, it’s a great concept for a restaurant!

Let it snow!

 

Our dinner out didn’t work last night.  Instead we decided to come home and make dinner, so our date is postponed to today!  Instead we took a nice walk and got to watch some MLB playoffs.

 

While waiting for Dan to come home I broke out my Yoplait yoga mat and did some strength training.  Go me!  The arm exercise I did was so hard my arms felt weak.  That’s a good sign!

 

Dinner started with some roasted butternut squash.  All this is is a light dusting of olive oil and some spices.  Recipe to come.  This was such a flavorful appetizer/side dish.

And I usually don’t like squash, but the way it was cooked last night was exceptional.  I ate two.

For dinner Dan made tilapia with peppers and olives. 

The olives were a little salty so I only had two.  But the whole dish worked very well and was really tasty.

This morning we woke up to snow!  I am like a little kid for the first snows of the year.

I’m looking out our balcony now and just loving watching the snow fall.

Dan is making us some French toast and I am planning on cracking open a Bean & Body coffee, just can’t wait!

What a perfect Saturday.

 

What is your favorite weekend breakfast?

Snow Way!

It’s snowing today.  I love the first snow of the year, it always makes me feel like a kid.  Growing up, the earliest snow I can remember happened on Halloween.

I guess I need to get used to Colorado weather, it’s weird!  Yesterday it was 70 degrees! 

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it would be this cold and so I just wore a jean jacket today.  That won’t help my recovery from the darn swine flu! 

Thankfully, Dan had a delicious Tuscan style potato soup waiting for me at home.

This was so warm and cozy with a hint of spice from the turkey sausage.  And yes, below the soup is a Real Simple.  This one is huge!  I can’t wait to break into it.

The rest of my food was pretty boring.  Thankfully I was able breathe all day.  This is a huge improvement.  Lunch was another PB&J.  I can’t believe I still like these.

Breakfast was a Mix 1 

all bran buds with Just Pineapple

And finally, an apple.

So, that’s my day backwards!  Tomorrow is another furlough day, so I have a 4 day weekend ahead of me.  I just hope this darn sickness is fully gone so we can actually go out!

 

Finally, I stepped on the scale this morning to see that I have now officially lost 26 pounds!  Sweet!  I’m off to watch Jim & Pam’s Wedding on The Office!