Hey All –

I hope everyone had a nice Monday. Personally, I was happy to see the sun – I had enough rain on Saturday to last me a few days! 😉

This morning I actually got out of bed at 6:30 AM. I realize that for a lot of people this would hardly be called an accomplishment and for some of my friends and family, this would actually be considered sleeping in.  But for me – this was the first step in my effort to turn over a new leaf in life.

I have never in my entire life been a morning person. Mornings are a struggle for me in many aspects.  But this week I am going to work hard at getting up at a good time and enjoying a bit of my day before rushing off for work.

This morning I woke up and made coffee (tonight I prepared the coffee and pre-set the coffee maker!) took a shower, got dressed and made stove top oats for breakfast!  For those of you that follow the blog, you might realize that I never make stove top oats during the week. It is not that I prefer instant oats or the “microwave technique”.  It is that I simply never have the time. By getting up early today, I made the time for breakfast at home.

Today’s mix included:

• 1/2 cup of dry rolled oats
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon ground flax
• a palm of raisins (about 12)

These were all mixed in while the oats were cooking. The toppings were:

• a dash of cinnamon
• a pinch of pumpkin spice
• 1 teaspoon of peanut butter

Breakfast was 230 calories. I also had a lovely cup of coffee.

Because I ate breakfast about an hour and a half earlier than normal, I had a mid morning snack or two! I had four small pretzels at 10:45 and then at 11:45 I had half of a blueberry Cilf Zbar.  At 12 o’clock I went for a walk… it was soo windy on the water I only lasted twenty minutes. But I figured it was better to walk and be in the sunshine for twenty minutes than not at all.

For lunch I used one of our Easter hard boiled eggs to make a mini-egg salad. I have never actually made egg salad before – but it was great. I cut up one egg, added a pinch of onion powder, cyan pepper, black ground pepper, a tiny smidge of salt and a teaspoon of light mayonnaise.  This was so easy, and really quite good (especially due to the extra spices!)

At 12:40 I had the egg salad on two pieces of the light oatmeal bread (200 calories total). It would have been even better with lettuce and mustard, but I didn’t have any this morning when I was getting things together. Oh well, I did buy some great Dijon tonight at Trader Joe’s.

Twenty minutes after lunch I enjoyed a 90 calorie Reeses Peanut Butter egg. Yum.

My afternoon snack was a vanilla Chobani and 1/4 cup of honey nut Cheerios.  I had this at 3:45 and it kept me going until 7:30pm tonight. (After the camera store, gym, and grocery store – impressive!) The yogurt and cereal was a total of 160 calories.

After work I took another ten minute walk while I waited for Ben to get out of work. I figured walking was a more productive way to wait for Ben 🙂  After I picked him up, we went by our local camera shop – where the oh so helpful person there said the camera repair would only be about 15 dollars cheaper than getting a new camera.  Since my camera is about three years old, the upgrade is much needed but I just was not exactly mentally prepared to buy a new camera today. Thus the blog entry without photos. How boring.

We left the camera store without a new camera… and headed to the gym. We did about 40 minutes of weights and a few minutes of cardio after as a cool down. After the gym, we hit TJs and then we made dinner.

For dinner I made a sort of fajita… I cut and roasted one red pepper and cooked up some turkey.  On a whole wheat wrap, I put light Mexican cheese and heated this in the microwave, added the peppers, turkey, salsa, 1 teaspoon of light sour cream and lettuce for a really good dinner!

Well, sorry for the super boring post. I hope to have a camera soon.  I also hope to get up early to enjoy another morning before heading to work tomorrow! I’ll let you know how I make out.

Good night everyone!