Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 205, Down ~70lbs

The last real day of work for the week.  I love holiday weeks.  Things were pretty slow all day today as everyone begins slowing down for the long, extended weekend.  There were some amount of deployments that needed to be done tonight just because a lot of people were treating this as a Friday even though it is Wednesday but not very many.  I was actually able to get all of the deployments done very quickly after four o’clock and by a quarter to five I was able to get out of the office and escape!

We have Francesca watching the girls tonight so Dominica and I are escaping to get some quiet alone time.  It is very, very rare for us to be able to get away from the kids, even just for a few hours.

From work I ran over to the Comfort Suites where we have a jacuzzi room for the evening.  I got us checked in and checked out the room.  Then from there I ran up to Addison to pick up dinner at Norma’s for the family.  They had called in the order before I went up there so I just needed to stop in and pick it up.  Very fast.  Although after getting dinner at the club last night it is really noticeable that it is cheaper for us to eat at Brookhaven than it is for us to eat at the diner by several dollars.  That is pretty crazy.

I got home and dropped off dinner.  Then we spent some time with the kids although Liesl and Luciana are perfectly happy hanging out with their cousins and Aunt Francesca.  They won’t care if we are home or not.

We left around a quarter to eight, once the evening with the kids was mostly over, to go get away for the evening.

Medifast Status: Day 204, Down ~70lbs

I did make it in to the office today although it was on the last side.  Busyness spilling over from yesterday.

This evening I got home and we packed up the Grice and Miller families and we went to Brookhaven for kids night.  On kids night for each adult that eats one kid eats free from the kids buffet which is pretty nice with chicken fingers (no good for us but good for the Grice kids), cheese pizza, french fries, fruit, vegetables, cookies, cupcakes, etc.  It is very nice and there is a low table so that the kids can easily reach the food.

What is really amazing is that with nine adults and six kids and Dominica ordering a really expensive dinner that the total for our dinner, including tax and gratuity, came to only fifty dollars and change!  That is insanely cheap for all of us to eat anywhere let alone at the country club.  It is so cheap to eat at Brookhaven that we really cannot justify going anywhere else.  Had Dominica ordered the same level of food as Francesca and I it would have been likely more like forty three dollars.  We can’t feed all of these people anywhere for that kind of price.

Medifast Status: Day 203, Down ~70lbs

This morning was completely crazy at work and it ended up being so busy that I never made it in to the office.  It was exhausting.  I did not even manage to lunch today.  I worked right through everything.  I was pretty worn out by the end of the day.

This evening we got Panda Express again.  Everyone loves it.  It is a very popular choice around here and one of the few quick and easy options for Dominica and I on our diets.

Medifast Status: Day 202, Down ~70lbs

I slept in some this morning but once I was up it was time to get in the car and drive back up to our house.  Francesca, last night, decided that she did not want to get left behind to drive up after us so she had packed late at night and was up and ready to leave at the same time as us.  We was mid-morning when we all got on to the road.

Gas is so cheap this weekend.  Prices have been falling all week and today I saw gas as low as $2.89 per gallon.  We heard that New Mexico was at $2.85 a few days ago but we cannot be too far behind.  So many people kept saying that we would see four or five dollars this summer.  Instead gas is decently affordable again.  We are way down from where it was just a few months ago.

For dinner this evening I ran out and picked up Panda Express for everyone.  We have been getting everyone turned on to Panda Express ever since Souder and I discovered it earlier in the year.  We love having three of them so close to us.  We can always easily get to one and the prices are not too bad.  The honey walnut shrimp and the golden treasure shrimp are both really awesome and we can get healthy steamed vegetables as our main side which works out perfectly.

Medifast Status: Day 201, Down ~70lbs

After getting in quite late last night and Luciana having a really rough time getting to sleep I had to get up at six thirty this morning with only two or three hours of sleep so that I could take Madeline to work at the food bank for some community service for national honor society.  Boy was that an early morning.

The community service wasn’t bad.  We just helped bag and hand out food at a United Way food pantry type thing.  People lined up and for three hours we handed out produce for Thanksgiving dinners.  The weather was nice and we were back to the house by ten in the morning so very little of the day was actually spent doing that since we were up so early for it.

Once back to the house I worked on doing some baking.  I had to make one apple pie and the crusts for two more pies for which Francesca was making the filling.  This time we have the pastry cloth and rolling pin cover that we were missing last week and that made a huge difference.  The crusts came out just beautiful!  I also made the filling myself this time and put in the butter that we figured out that Dominica had forgotten on the pie that we made together last week.  I’m sure that the pie will taste a whole lot better with the butter in the filling.  Although it tasted good and was way healthier the way that we did it last week.

The final pies turned out beautifully.  I’m very proud of having been able to make a real pie again after all of these years.

We didn’t have much time with the community service this morning and the pies and other baking and cooking to do this afternoon before it was time to head over to the Toccos’ where we are having the family Thanksgiving dinner.  All of the food was really good.  I’m really not much of a fan of Tofurkey.  I need to ask Dominica if we can just forgo that next year and do something else instead.  I don’t like real turkey so having fake turkey doesn’t improve it any.  I’d prefer just about any protein source to fake turkey.  And they don’t fake the good, dark, juicy turkey meat but the hard, dry tasteless bits.  Why, I have no idea.

Overall we were not that faithful to our diets for Thanksgiving but we did better than we might have and are pretty proud of ourselves.  There was just way too much awesome food to eat and Thanksgiving, of all holidays, is all about the starches and carbs.  The apple pie really did turn out well.  It got good reviews.