And Summer Begins...

June already, Wow! It's been a busy few weeks, with end of school activities, laptops getting viruses then breaking down, then getting ready for and spending a long weekend at the lake. Whew. Life is good, but crazy and busy. The summer has barely begun and my nerves are already quite frazzled. So, blogging has not been at the top of my list, even though I have lots of recipes & sewing projects to talk about.  So for now, I'm just going to mention a couple of my goals for the summer. 

The first is to get SERIOUS about helping my family eat healthy and stay physically active this summer. This is such a challenge since summers for us are just packed full of 'special occasions' that call for special (fattening) meals, special desserts and special grandparents who like to spoil my children with treats. Treats and special occasion meals are great, but they add up and I'm going to do my best to make the special meals healthy ones. And then there are just the days spent at home with the kids. It's hot, no one feels like going anywhere and these kids are ALWAYS hungry. So, I have to be prepared with healthy snacks & lunches that are not frown-inducing. And I have to be prepared with activities that don't involve sitting on our butts and staring at a TV or computer screen. It's hard! Especially with two kids who have different interests and who LOVE to argue, pester & annoy each other. How many days till school starts again?

This past weekend at the lake was packed full of ridiculous amounts of junk food :( So, since we've returned I've decided we are in 'detox' mode. We went to the store yesterday and bought all kinds of fresh fruits & vegetables. I let the kids pick out a few things each that looked good to them, and now the fridge is nicely stocked. And this next weekend, my goal is to GET RID of any candy or junky junk food that is lurking in the cabinets & drawers. The kids can seriously sniff these things out, even if they are hidden. It'll be good for the grown-ups too, to have the temptation gone. I'm actually looking forward to it!

So, yesterday for our first dinner back home I found a nice light dinner recipe that was different & delicious! It's from Our Best Bites. I didn't even plan on making it before we went to the store, but I ended up having all the ingredients on hand. The recipe is for Pasta with Cilantro Peanut Pesto. Almost a tongue twister there. It was a wonderful blend of flavors, such a fun new recipe. We had ours with chicken so the meat eaters wouldn't grumble too much. The only real change I made in the recipe was in place of some of the cilantro (since I didn't have enough) I used fresh spinach. I thought that was a genius substitute, if I do say so myself.

Here is my bowl of yumminess:

I'm going to scour their blog for more delicious summer recipes, I know there are many more and I need all the help I can get!