Thursday, August 30, 2012

Chocolate Challenges & Family vaca

Chocolate is everywhere. And it is SOOOOOO good.  This is going to be harder than we thought.  On the first nights after we undertook the chocolate challenge (my new name for it, it feels more motivating when it is a challenge! I love a challenge!) we were laying in bed and all of the sudden Colin says, "Does this mean no more Dairy Queen Blizzards?!"  I honestly hadn't even thought through the fact that chocolate is in almost everything good.  From Blizzards, to cookies, to granola bars, it's everywhere. (And it's delicious I might add!) Anyway, not my smartest moment and I'm usually more thorough than this but when we originally made the commitment, I was mainly thinking of the chocolate I use to bake with, actual chocolate bars and chips but had forgotten about all the little chunks of chocolate that are hidden in most of my favorite treats.  So what are we going to do? Well, we are going to stay the course.  Without getting too crazy legalistic about it.  Our goal will still be that when we purchase chocolate or something that has chocolate in it, we will try to buy only fair trade chocolate and organic whenever possible.  HOWEVER, if there is an occasional slip up, for example, if it is really hot and you have been camping for days and you see a carton of Coffee Chocolate Chip Gelato and you buy it and start eating without even thinking about where the chocolate came from.  In situations like these, we won't beat ourselves up, at least not yet.  Old habits die hard and lasting change takes a while to build.  So we will take it one step at a time.  Our main goal is going to be that if we buy it or make it it needs to be fair trade...if we happen to go to someone's house and they are serving french silk pie blizzards or our neighbors make us fresh chocolate chip cookies we won't turn them down (hint, hint, just kidding!)

On another note we had a wonderful, great, relaxing, hummmm, not sure if I can come up with the right adjective to sum up our camping trip to the Jackson Hole area.  It was wonderful to be together as a family enjoying the beautiful countryside.  It was really hard to have a sick little two year old and be living out of a camper.  It was a big reality check for us on the fact that we do have a kid with his own preferences, wants, needs and abilities and that they don't necessarily correlate with ours.  It was a lot of work.  But somehow it was still nice.  I am sure it will be one of those trips that as time goes by we forget about all the hard stuff and just remember all the good stuff.  Here are a few pics of the good stuff.

 Day one waking up sick.
 Fishing Pacific Creek.
Notice the sweet Mullet? Don't worry I gave him a hair cut yesterday...although the jury is still out on whether it looks any better. 
 Get me home to bed.
  Breakfast in the scamp, feeling a little better.
 Good thing Colin is confident in his manhood, otherwise the size of our camper might have made him feel a little insecure next to all these giants.
 There's a smile.
 Greys River Valley
 Man on a mission.  Which was actually to get back to the car and then home. It was sort of heart breaking if we weren't in the car all H would say was car, car, car, as soon as we got in the car he would say, hooooooome, hoooooome, hooooooome. But he has always been a homebody.




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