Hanging with the Niece

I don't even know where to start so I am jumping in basically chronologically.  Our niece spent the night Friday night.  Our weekend started with watching her softball game.  We took Millie...she was mostly good. She just gets so excited when people come over to talk to her. 

When we got home we grilled a few hotdogs and veggies. My in-laws came over.  We had a nice visit hanging out on the deck eating our dinner. I had an idea that I think I need to do more - especially for potluck type get-togethers.  If you don't record your food immediately it is easy to forget some of the little things you had. I was hungry and didn't want to record my food before I ate so I took a picture.  Made it very convenient to record later.  I do like my hotdogs hotdogs in something, but 2 buns at 90 calories each is significant. I found I can have them in a yummy corn tortilla for about half the calories. 

Dinner was good - sometimes a grilled hotdog just really hits the spot. My mother-in-law brought brownies and I couldn't resist having one. She also brought me a very small piece of the blueberry-apricot pie she had made..and I ate that too. So for the first time, according to MyFitnessPal, I went over my daily calories. 83 calories over - oops!

It wouldn't have been a big deal if I had not skipped my morning walk too. I stayed home and cleaned house like a madwoman because we were having company. So that didn't work out for me so well dietwise, but at least the house wasn't a pit :) There is quite a bit of give and take in this process. 

Saturday morning we all got up early and headed out to the levee.  My husband ran his usual 5 miles while my niece and I rode our bikes. We ended up going a little more than 6 miles - by no means a blistering pace but we had tons of fun while getting decent exercise. 

We park by the base of the bridge. I am not sure what is going on with the steep hill sign. Maybe it is to warn people to slow down because the path crosses a road at this point.

As always I love the scenery along the river. This barge is moving over to head into the lock. The last time I saw one going through the lock it was being pushed through this time the barge was going the opposite direction and was being tugged.  

We saw 6 or 7 herons along the river today, including a couple Great Blue Herons. I love watching them.  The one on the right below was fishing - darting his head in and out of the water. 

The river is quite a bit higher than normal right now. Below you can see where it has come over the bike path - thankfully it had receded before our ride. 

However, it has not completely receded yet. Not sure what a water main is doing out here in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly isn't useful at the moment. 

We made it to the turn around spot and headed back to the start. 

My 12 year old niece would like to point out that her shoes are bigger than mine.  She is on the verge of being taller than me too. I am destined to be the family shorty!

After our workout we went to breakfast. That was our planned splurge for the weekend. We planned for it to be within our calories. The calories were higher than we expected - at least as we guesstimated since you can't know for sure at local eateries. I think it might have gotten us off on the wrong foot for eating today. We have been struggling ever since. 

After breakfast my niece and I did a little exploring we found this cool grill.  Yes it is a bull made of metal with a grill in it's back. How cool is that?

The smoke comes out his nose.  The fact we already have a grill kept me from buying it. Well mostly it was the $650 price tag that kept me from buying it. 

When we got back home this happened.

My poor pizza loving husband has been seriously craving pizza, so since we had someone to help us eat it we got one. It probably wasn't the best day to do it after eating out for breakfast. It has been a tough weekend in the food department. I am still in my calorie range...if I have water for dinner. Just kidding. I am actually not very hungry so I think I am going to have a little banana/blueberry smoothie and call it for the day. I can do that and still be in calories. 

So far the weekend has had some ups and downs. Tomorrow is a new day and I know we will be fine. I will be burning up the pavement in the morning and making healthy home cooked yumminess :