Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Medifast Status: Day 200, Down ~70lbs

Day two hundred on Medifast!  That is crazy.

It was a nice day today, cool but warm enough to be able to sit outside.  Jen and I were able to go to the cafe today and have our coffee outside.  She didn’t even wear a jacket although I thought that it was cool enough that I was glad to be in a fleece.

Work went a little bit late today and it was nearly eight in the evening when I was able to get home and get the family loaded up and get on the road so that we could drive down to Houston for the weekend.  We are doing the Tocco Sibling Thanksgiving tomorrow evening so we are going down there tonight.  Then Francesca and the kids are coming back up to Dallas with us on Sunday to spend the week in Dallas.

I’ve had too much food recently so I am attempting to cut back a little.  I skipped dinner tonight and Dominica was just going to get food while on the drive.  We swung into Panda Express but they were completely out of shrimp!  So much for that.  Now Dominica has to figure out where to get food.

We ended up finding a Subway on the drive and Min got a salad there with tunafish salad which was pretty tasty and decently “on plan.”  So that was not all that bad.  In reality the salad was probably a better option than eating the fried shrimp at Panda Express.

The drive was not bad but it was pretty late when we arrived at the Grices’.  Liesl slept well in the car and had way too much energy once we got there.