Rambling Babushka: Family...

Well hello there beautiful people. This Lovely Sunday is nearing its end already and this makes me ever so sad. Today was another busy day in the ALWAYS EXCITING life of yours truly. I woke up and immediately did some laundry and cleaned the house up a bit. It seems like I'm always cleaning. How is this possible? Nick and I are both so clean and neat. Maybe I just like walking through a room hat smells like Windex? You know, that magical mist in the air that has the aroma of squeaky clean goodness! I have issues! HA!

Of course before ANY of this went down, I made myself a large cup of coffee. As you all know, I LOVE MY CAFFEINE!

After all the tidying up I got caught up on some blog reading and even managed to sneak in an episode of So You Think You Can Dance before Nick woke up. I'm SO behind with the show this season! I live with a dance hater!

Oliver kept a close eye on me the whole time. He was being very nosy and sweet this morning. My crazy little critter bear.

When Nick finally decided to join the land of the awake and living, I made us both a fruit protein smoothie for breakfast. Incorporating smoothies is something new I'm trying for a few weeks to see if it impacts my weight loss in a positive way or not. I plan to have smoothies on the weekends for breakfast and probably 3x a week for my pre-workout snack at work. It's good for you, good for muscle growth AND delicious. You can't go wrong! Here's what went into my mix.

1 cup vanilla Almond Breeze
1 scoop chocolate Whey Protein powder
1 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1 cup frozen strawberries

YUMMY! Nicks mix was exactly the same except I made his with regular milk. He doesn't like Almond Breeze. CRAZY RIGHT? This nearly overflowing glass kept me full for hours.

I was due to visit the folks at 1:00 and as usual I was going to take my own lunch. I packed up a quick and delicious salad. Into the mix went sweet butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, green onions, black beans, red pepper flakes, spray butter and a leftover salsa covered chicken breast from the other day. I threw all this together real quick and I was out the door.

When I showed up I was greeted by a OVERLY excited Papa. I guess he has been keeping in touch with certain family members back home (Hungary) with Skype and he was about to chat with our Aunt again. He very excitedly asked Ann and I to go with him. I don't know why but this freaked me out. We said hello to our Aunt, her daughter and her granddaughter. As weird as it was to talk and see them, it also felt nice. I was almost a bit nervous though, I won't even lie. Having to talk Hungarian with anyone other than my parents or Ann tends to make me very uneasy. I was 7 or 8 when we left Hungary and my Hungarian is somewhat broken with English words tossed in all over the place. Of course my family and I understand each other perfectly but actual Hungarians is another story. They could tell me a joke and start laughing and I would have no idea what the heck they were laughing at. HA! Anyways, it went well. We exchanged emails and I gave them this blog address so that we could keep in touch. Szerbus csalad! Remelem hogy mindent amit mondtam meg lehetet erteni! Yo volt latni titeket. (for you non-Hungarians, I just said hi family, I hope you understood everything I said earlier and it was great to see you guys...) :)

After our family chat session it was time to eat. The smoothie was wearing off and I was getting super hungry. I quickly whipped together my pretty little salad. All the flavors worked so beautifully together. I barely took a breath between bites. Yeah, it was THAT good!

After lunch we chatted for a bit, caught up and played some games. The usual fun stuff! Good times! :) Then unfortunately it was time to leave paradise and come home to my very own, personal, leaf mountain covered hell. All the pretty piles were sitting pretty, just waiting for me to tackle them. Nick and I immediately dove in. With the use of the tarp that the neighbor let us borrow, we busted it out in about an hour. Not bad. AND IT'S DONE FOR THE YEAR! THIS MAKES ME SUPER EXCITED! YEAH!

After the leaf tackling I cleaned up with a nice hot bath, lit some candles and made myself some deliciously fluffy pancakes for dinner. My lovely Mama sent some stuffed cabbage and Hungarian sausage home for Nick so I only had to worry about cooking dinner for myself. Pancakes just sounded too good to pass up.

1/2 cup oats
3 egg whites
dash cinnamon
dash nutmeg
dash unsweetened cocoa
1/2 banana, sliced
1 sugar free peach fruit cup
1/4 cup of vanilla Almond Breeze

I blended this till smooth and then stirred in two tablespoons of coconut flakes. This was enough to make 3 generously sized pancakes. I topped them with a bit more coconut and sugar free syrup. SO TASTY!