Newlywed, Newly Veg!

Hey y’all! Well, as many of you predicted (and as I worried about all yesterday and last night), my flight to DC this morning was cancelled—big surprise, right? Luckily, Ryan worked all morning on the phone with the airline, and finally got me rebooked through Philadelphia tomorrow. What a great husband—anytime we have to call any sort of customer service (for flights, computers, i-pods…whatever), he always makes the call…and waits, on hold FOREVER…and never loses his temper (well, almost never).  I’m lucky to have him! 

Hopefully everything goes okay with my flight tomorrow…I don’t teach until Tuesday, so as long as I can get home by then, I’ll be fine!

The good news is that it is a beautiful day here in Shreveport!  I’m so happy that we’re finally getting some sun! This morning, I woke up feeling (unsurprisingly) not so hot, so I was happy to get a healthy start to the day with this breakfast:

Ezekial toast with almond butter (1 tsp.) and Earth Balance (1 tsp.), plus fresh fruit and a dollop of Green yogurt.  Yum!

After breakfast, my mom and I headed out for a 3 mile walk.  After the three miles, she went back home but I continued for another 4, running.  It felt so great to run outside in the sun! I hate how much of a slave I become to the treadmill in the winter…running outside is just so much more fun!

After my run, I dealt with some more flight hassles (arghghghgh!!!), showered, and dressed, and then my mom and I sat down for some lunch.   Just like breakfast, we kept it simple and healthy:

La Tortilla Factory Wrap with Sabra red pepper hummus (I hadn’t tried this flavor before, but I liked it! It tasted kind of like pimento cheese!), spinach, and grape tomatoes, along with fresh fruit.  I also finished off the rest of my Fage from this morning.  YUM!  This is the first Greek yogurt I’ve had since the Vegan challenge ended, and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

This afternoon, we’re going to another parade…a PET parade!!! I’m so excited! It’s the crewe of “Barkus and Meoux”—isn’t that cute? My parents always take our dogs, but I’ve never gotten to go because I live so far away! I’m super excited to see all of the dogs in their costumes—it’s a patriotic petriotic theme, but our dogs are only wearing Mardi Gras beads…kind of lame, but it’s better than nothing, right?

I’m not sure what I’m doing tonight for the game.  My mom is going over to another couple’s house to watch with some of her friends, but I’m not sure what my sister and her husband are doing.  A lot of my family is also watching over at my aunt and uncle’s house, so I might go over there.  I didn’t think I was going to get to watch it at all, so this at least is a nice surprise!

See you tonight!

Here are a few more pictures from the parade last night:

Hey guys! Long time no see!

How is it that the blog world travels at the speed of light so that when I don’t post or read blogs for 12 hours, it feels like I’ve been away for days or even MONTHS?!?  It makes me feel like Rip Van Winkle.

Today was a really busy day, and lots of fun, so I’ll just get right to it!  I actually didn’t take pictures of much of my eats today (sorry…BAD blogger!!!), but I have a lot of fun pictures of the festivities, so I’m going to post those.  Because it’s my blog and I can post non-food pics if I want to. 

This morning, my sister had a big baby shower thrown for her by a group of her high school friends.  It was so fun! They had a great spread of food, but I was so busy chatting and then playing secretary during the gift-opening that I didn’t even eat until the shower was almost over.  Even then, I grazed on a cake ball, a few chips with guac, a few crackers and some cheese, and a slice of king cake (my fave!).  There is a bakery here in Shreveport that sells the BEST king cakes during Mardi Gras.  My mom always sends me one via UPS, but they are HUGE, and so I told her not to worry about it this year—with just me and Ryan in the house, that is way more king cake than either of us needs. Do you know the tradition of the Mardi Gras king cake?  I’ll do a post on it soon!

Here are some highlights from the shower:

My two grandmothers checking out Sophie’s new swimwear:

Not sure what we were talking about here (me, my sister, and my mom), but it was obviously very funny:

My mom got to practice her grandma skills with Katherine’s friend’s new baby girl, Eloise:

Around 1:15, the shower wrapped up and my mom and I headed home.  I snacked on a HUGE orange to tide me over for…the Mardi Gras parade!!!

Shreveport does two big Mardi Gras parades each year: the Crewe of Centaur and the Crewe of Gemini.  This weekend was the centaur parade.  I’m so glad I was in town for it—I haven’t been to a Shreveport Mardi Gras parade since high school!  I went down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in college, and for the past few years we’ve been going to visit Katherine and Kevin in Baton Rouge for their Spanish Town Parade (they moved to Shreveport just this past summer), so I was excited to have a little hometown fun!

Around 3, we headed out to the parkway where the parade route would start.  The mother of my cousin’s wife, Tena, has a big Winnebago motor home, and she had parked it right along the parade route, so my mom, my aunt Lisa, and I met up with a bunch of our family for the parade.  Having the motor home was great because we had access to warmth and a bathroom!  We had fun drinking beer, munching on snacks as we waited for the parade to begin.  It actually didn’t get going until six o’clock! 

It was worth the wait! Mardi Gras parades are such a fun, unique tradition!  Love ‘em!  Here are some shots of the various floats:

Parade strategy: position yourself by a little kid so that lots of beads get thrown your way! 

The Centaur King:

These two girls are my cousins’ kids, Charlotte and Hagen.  Aren’t they cute?  They were really racking up on the beads!

My cousin Anderson caught a football:

And my mom caught a rose (she also wasn’t wearing her wedding ring…coincidence?  I think not…)

Of course, there were lots of Saints references: 

Things like this always make me so happy that I get to call Louisiana home…however far away I may be living at the moment!

I realized that I didn’t get any pictures of me in my beads, so here are a few from last year’s Spanish Town parade (which is fun because it’s in the daytime…and who doesn’t like debauchery and drunken shenanigans at 11 a.m.?):

Whew!!! Mardi Gras madness!

After the parade, my mom and I headed to a Mexican restaurant for MORE “bad” food…eek! Friends, my eating has not been up to par this weekend, so I apologize.  What can I say? I’m human! I’ll get back to my normal eating tomorrow!

But for tonight…

Cheese enchilada, guacamole tostada, rice, and beans:

Oh, and forget about the sugar challenge too.

Say hello to my bff, TCBY:

Actually, I feel kind of nauseous right now.  My body just isn’t used to this kind of eating anymore.  It will be nice to get a clean start tomorrow.

So, tomorrow, I’m supposed to fly from Dallas to DC to State College.  Yeahhhhhhh, the whole DC thing is going to be a madhouse…IF I can even get there!  Ugh.  I have a feeling it might be a lonnnnnnng day.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  I’ll try to post as soon as I can, but again…there’s no telling when or where that might be!

See you tomorrow, Saints fans!