In serious need of a detox!

I love the Christ­mas hol­i­day sea­son. The older Squidge gets the more I love it.  I remem­ber sit­ting on my BFF floor one Christ­mas watch­ing her won­der­ful fam­ily inter­act and enjoy­ing the time being together.  At the same time I was feel­ing lost and like I didn’t have a har­bor to tie up to and set­tle in.  When I became preg­nant with Squidge I made a con­scious deci­sion to spend Christ­mas in our home.  No trav­el­ing to visit fam­ily– I’d been doing that for 10 years, it was time to set­tle. It is not that I don’t love my fam­ily, I do more than they know, it’s that I wanted to start my own tra­di­tions, find my own har­bor.  This past year we moved into our own home.  Oh yes, I know we had a home before but it wasn’t OUR home.  It was Wal’s home that we shoe­horned into, no mat­ter how hard I tried it was just a bad fit.  Now that we have a fam­ily home and Squidge is at the golden age of believ­ing this past Christ­mas was mag­i­cal.  There was a moment when Squidge and I were in the bath­room brush­ing our teeth.  We had sprin­kled rein­deer dust out­side and left a snack for Santa & Co and were get­ting ready for bed.  Squidge looked up at me and I swear to you she was so excited she shiv­ered and I think she was float­ing off the floor.  MAGIC!

We have so much more space here and I have been embrac­ing liv­ing in this house.  Our last house had an eat in kitchen but was a bit short of counter space so we rarely ate as a fam­ily– together.  It was Squidge alone at the table then Wal and I in front of the TV when he got home.  After mov­ing a BMF friend of mine was look­ing to get rid of a fab­u­lous old oak table, they’d recently remod­eled the kitchen and pur­chased a new one and we were lucky enough to get it– for FREE! You know how much of a geek I am about free things!  That has meant Sun­day (and mon­day, tues­day, wednes­day…) din­ners w/ roast pota­toes, York­shire pud­ding and some sort of roast– chicken, beef, pork… you name it I’ve made it and we’ve eaten it on our large oak table. Such a new a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence for us me.  On Christ­mas day we had a free range turkey. It was only about 8 1/2 lbs but for a fam­ily of three it was HUGE.  It lasted almost a week!  Christ­mas din­ner, box­ing day lunch and din­ner, and three pies on con­sec­u­tive days.  On the last day I had to choke down the pie.  I was sick to death of turkey, I couldn’t look at another roast potato and the thought of York­shire pud­ding had me run­ning to the loo!  After what felt like a month of eat­ing rich, heavy foods I hit a wall.  I still had New Years day to deal with… ugh!  We roasted some beef and had all the fix­ing.  On the 2nd I told Wal he had eaten his last* roast potato this month– cue sad face from Wal.

I’ve been try­ing to eat lighter meals to make up for all the large din­ners I’ve been mak­ing.  I’m not going to make any New Years res­o­lu­tions as I don’t think they work.  I’m just going to stick to what I have been doing.  Lighter healthy options, eat­ing a few small meals, noth­ing after 9pm (sounds really late but some­times Wal doesn’t come home until 8pm so we have late din­ners a lot), early to bed ( I used to reg­u­larly go to bed at 2am), and some sort of phys­i­cal activ­ity 3/4 times a week.  I stopped going to BMF in late Octo­ber because of knee and ham­string prob­lems.  I’m tak­ing up swim­ming this year– LOL isn’t that what old peo­ple do when their joints start giv­ing them grief??  I also want to grow my hair out this year.  Does this list sound like a bunch of res­o­lu­tions??  They’re not, not really.  They’re just things I want to do or con­tinue to do.

So I guess what I’m try­ing to say is I’m in seri­ous need of a detox!!

*If you’re a FB friend you’ll know I fell off the light meal menu train by cook­ing a pork belly last night– old habits and all that.