Today is Jo’s birthday party! We invited her entire class, so…yep. As long as she feels loved and special, it’ll be a success (<– reminding myself of that here so I manage my current overwhelm and so I don’t ruin the fun (and my sanity) with trying to get everything set up just right, instead I’d rather just let it be). We’ve decided after Jo’s birthday is when we are going to put up our Christmas tree/decorate for Christmas and I can’t wait! Apparently, so much so that I woke up wide awake at 3am, so I’ll either start getting stuff ready here in a minute, or (hopefully) I’ll fall back asleep. But, for now, here’s what I ate this week!

Leah has reached the stage of wanting to feed me everything, which is a stage I find really cute!

This week we ended up doing a lot of pasta.

Back for seconds…I ate these like the girls eat these (olive oil + parmesan)…yum.

Sun-dried tomato pesto pasta!

Mostly I’ve been feeding the big girls there own separate meal lately and me either eating in peace before/after them, or waiting for Andrew to get home and eating with him. I’ve been making the girls tea lattes, so a bag of tea brewed and then pouring in frothed milk + creamer…they love it.

I did a meal support session with a client. We had avocado toast together for a snack…yum. This seedy bread from Whole Foods was amazing. I think it was called Harvest Bread. The smell alone made me weak at the knees! It was so dreamy! So good.

Other snacks I remembered to take pictures of:

Starbucks sells their Cranberry Bliss Bars in a pack now, so I picked up some for cookie boxes I made earlier in the week and enjoyed the leftovers at snack time…

And paired with breakfast…

Easy peasy lunch = apple + english muffin with nut butters (almond butter and nutella).

After church I made Andrew and me breakfast sandwiches, salad, and latte number two of the day. This salad is great: blue cheese, butter praline pecans, grapes…yum. Dressing is olive oil, lemon juice, dijon, avocado toast seasoning.

Same salad + this pot roast and mashed potatoes. This meal felt like a Christmas dinner. It was so good!

Went back for salad seconds.

For Jo’s actual birthday we got donuts for breakfast. I asked Jo if she wanted to get up early before school and go to the donut shop with me, to which she said, “no, I want to wake up and there to be donuts here already.” Ask and you shall receive!

I don’t think I shared this, but one of Andrew’s hobbies is the Toyota Landcruiser. He found Jo a mini Cruiser on Facebook Marketplace for $60…she loves it. And Leah loves getting in it, and out of it, in it and out of it, in it and again and again and again. AND no one has been run over yet, so that is good.

One lunch I had sweet potatoes + an omelet.

Another lunch was Chick-fil-A. Some flavor of the Chick-fil-A grilled chicken sandwich tastes like dish soap to me. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I rarely get this sandwich because of that.

*insert relaxed sigh* when just looking at the below picture. It makes my shoulders drop and me breathe easier. I love starting any morning at the coffee shop and it being at least a once a week routine has been so nice and something to look forward to.

And lastly…cereal! I’ve been mixing these 3 and it may just be the perfect cereal combination. Plus, the best nut, walnuts.

We have also reached the phase of family life where we need to buy 3 milks!

I hope you have a good one. Are you decorating for Christmas or holding off for now?! I usually wait until the week of Thanksgiving, but not this year!