February Recap {+ How I’m Making THM Work for Me}

My dad is still in the hospital ICU. This difficult trial seems like it will never end. Of course we’re all praying that it will end soon (in a happy way). But in the meantime, I still have a husband and five children at home, even though my heart is often at the hospital with my parents.

I’ve been trying to make sure we plan some fun and special things here and there, just to make life pleasant for my family. One evening we all went to a roller skating party and had the best time together!

We also had fun planning our annual family Valentine’s celebration. I had everything all planned, but then my sweet husband surprised me by making some of the food!

I found the dessert plates, napkins, and straws at Target.

We had the Perfect Pizza (from the THM cookbook), accompanied by a salad for lunch. I LOVE this pizza recipe! A few of my family members weren’t as impressed, but I think it’s absolutely delicious!

Then we had the Chocolate Berry Wedding Cheesecake (also in the book) for dessert. Everyone thought this was yummy.

And some heart-shaped Skinny Chocolate:

Planning ahead has been a huge key for me in being able to stay on the Trim Healthy Mama plan during this time of stress with my dad in the hospital. I’ve been using the crock-pot and cooking ahead when I can.

A couple weeks ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon making breakfasts, snacks, and staples for the coming week. Here’s what I made:

1 batch of Chocolate Banana Muffins and 1 batch of Just Peachy Muffins. My husband and I used some of these for breakfast and I froze the rest for future breakfasts and snacks, which has been so helpful.

I also made up a batch of Lemon Pucker Gummies. It turns out that my kids really love these, too, so next time I need to make more. 🙂

On days where I’m at the hospital all day, I just make the best choices I can. I’ll often have a salad with grilled chicken with Caesar dressing (which has no sugar) for lunch, and then for dinner I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger (without the bun) and vegetables. I’ve also been taking these muffins and the gummies for snacks. It works!

I also made a batch of Jigglegurt, which is a great way to stretch your Greek yogurt. We were almost out, so this seemed like a great time to try it. I like it better than plain Greek yogurt! I plan to keep this on hand as much as possible.

This past week was my birthday, and I didn’t want to sabotage my progress with my 100 Days of Trim Healthy Mama Challenge (3 lbs lost so far!) just for the occasion. So, I made the Lazy Lasagna, and now it’s a family favorite! My whole family loved it. They said it didn’t even taste “healthy” to them. Accompanied by green beans, this was a very satisfying meal.

For dessert we had the Cry No More Brownies. My whole family was worried about this recipe, because they happened to see me making it, and it has okra in it! They were sure it would be disgusting. But they were pleasantly surprised by how delicious these were also! We each had a small serving of strawberries and stevia-sweetened whipped cream with the brownies.

February seemed to be a month for everything to break. Our central heating broke twice, during some very cold weather. We had this kerosene heater in our garage that we keep for emergencies, and it really did a good job of heating the main rooms. Everyone would end up congregating here, where it was warm.

In addition to the heater breaking, my computer broke and then our cell phone broke. My husband found this one at the dollar store and we put TracPhone minutes on it. I love having it at the hospital with me so I can communicate with friends and family. And the hospital has free Wi-Fi, so that makes it less expensive for us to use.