Salads Please

Adam and I have a new goal, to try as many different yummy, healthy, salads as possible.

I am still on a "diet," although really it's more of a lifestyle change. One of those changes is making sure I'm eating plenty of fruits and veggies every day. Both Adam and I feel a whole lot better and have more energy when we do this. My problem is that I don't have enough good recipes. I can always look them up in a cook book, but half the time the recipes I find in cook books are gross or have wierd ingredients that I can't find in a grocery store or don't know what they are.

I'm asking everyone out there in blogger world to please give me their recipes for tasty, healthy salads, that you've actually tried. Here's one we had today that was soooo good (I sort of made it up):

Sweet Spinach Surprise

• Baby spinach
• Diced celery
• Diced gala apple
• Sliced strawberries
• fresh raspberries (don't cut these, just put them in whole)
• chopped pecans
• Poppy Seed Dressing (The best brand is Briannas Home Style. Its has all natural ingredients and the lowest sugar content of the regular ones on the shelf)

We put the dressing on our self, once its on our plate, not when the salad is in the bowl. I find we use a lot less dressing that way, which just lowers the calorie and sugar content. The fruit in the salad adds a lot of flavor, so it really doesn't take much dressing. Plus, too much dressing takes away from the natural flavor of the salad.

Try this salad and let me know what you think. And more importantly, give me a recipe for a good salad that you make!

Another Rolo Detour

When Adam got home tonight I actually had dinner ready (this is fairly rare in our home lately). So Adam goes to get a bowl out of the dishwasher & Rolo is at his side (where you can pretty much always find her when Adam's home. Rolo is totally Adam's dog/shadow and Shady is my dog/shadow). Rolo was still wiggly & excited from Adam just getting home & still trying to shower him with her love (aka dog kisses). When Adam pulls his nice clean bowl out of the dishwasher to be able to eat my lovely prepared dinner, Rolo can no longer reach his hand to lick him. So what does she do you ask when she can't lick him, she licks his nice clean bowl instead.

Don't worry, Adam threw the “Rolo's Love” bowl in the sink and grabbed a new one. This one safely out of reach from Rolo's tounge.

The Rolo Detour

Since we haven't been able to have kids yet, most of our cute and funny stories in our home end up involving our dogs, especially Rolo. This is one of my favorites of those stories.

A couple weeks ago Adam had already gone to work when I went out to leave and found that one of my tires had a screw in it & was completely flat. Since I depend on Adam to fix all things car related and he wasn't home, I was at a total loss of what to do with the car, so I called my wonderful and brilliant sister-in-law Julie. Shortly thereafter, Julie came over with her tire fixing stuff and was ready to fix my tire (it's wonderful having a sister-in-law that's a mechanic & way smarter than me!).

Julie has a three year old boy and a 5 month old girl, so I took the kids in the house while Julie worked her tire magic (I would be no help to her outside, that was for sure). Of course the first thing Rolo did when we came in the house was bring the 3 yr old a toy to play fetch. So Rolo & 3yr old nephew are happily playing fetch when baby niece starts to cry. Now this is Rolo's first experience being around a baby so I really wasn't sure what she would do. The first thing Rolo did was bring the baby one of her toys. Makes sense. Toys make Rolo happy, so her toy would surly make baby niece happy.

Well that didn't work, so then Rolo comes back and licks baby niece's leg, Voila! Baby niece stops crying. Then anytime baby niece would start to fuss Rolo would come over, put her head on baby niece's lap (while baby niece poked Rolo in the eye & examined her) & if baby niece didn't stop fussing, Rolo would lick her and all would be better.

The best part was towards the end when Julie was finishing up her tire magic. Nephew sat down with a sigh and said, “Whew. I'm tired. I'm done now.” That's great, my dog can tire out a three year old. I'll definitely have to keep her around for when I have kids!

The Problems of Eating Healthy & Exercising

For those of you who know me and Adam very well, you know we can be pretty cheap, or what's the politically correct term, frugal. Especially when it comes to clothes. In 2008, between both of us, we spent a grand total of $250 on shoes and clothes. Not per person, total. And it's only that high because I had to buy a new business suit, and those things aren't cheap!

So, to my point, over the last three months I've managed to lose a grand total of 39 pounds. That's great right, well yes and no. Great because I really needed to lose weight and be healthier, not so great because that means that none of my pants fit me anymore. This brings me to the Problems with eating healthy and exercising:

1. I can now put my pants on and take them off without undoing them at all, and if I don't wear a belt, they fall down completely. Now I need to go buy new clothes. I'm still hoping to lose more weight in the next few months, so I especially don't want to buy more clothes just to have them no longer fit in three months and have to do it all over again.
2. I've started walking, running, exercising more, which means my workout shoes are now worn out and I need new ones. Good quality running shoes cost like $70! Yeah right!
3. Healthy food is expensive, thus our grocery budget has gone up! Bad news for cheap people.
4. Since I've been eating lower calorie foods, so has Adam, meaning HE'S losing weight without meaning to. Adam really does not need to lose any weight. So quit it, would you Adam! :)
5. Once you start losing weight, everyone wants to know how much you've lost and how much more you have to go. Well, I'm sorry people, but it's embarassing to think how much weight I really needed to lose in the first place. So after 40 pounds, I'm not telling!
6. All this exercise has helped me realize something, I LOVE EXERCISE! I know, crazy, but I absolutely love to work out, and even though I work at a gym, I'm so dang busy I don't get to work out nearly enough. So now it's like I have this massive craving and I can't fulfill it, which is making me a little nutty.
   

So what's the moral of the story you ask? Well, if you're thinking about eating healthier and exercising, be prepared to spend a lot of money and be prepared to be frustrated with sometimes embarassing questions and answers, and with not being able to fulfill your cravings (whether those be food or otherwise). One last thing, dang you men who lose weight without even trying! :)

My First Detour

I've finally decided to join the blogging fun. For quite some time I refused to have a blog of my own due to lack of free time, but yesterday I had a good conversation with my friend Hilary that finally made up my mind that blogging was a worthy detour. Hil had a great point. She said that some people commented on how in the world someone could find the time to update a blog on a regular basis. Hil's answer was simple, but totally logical. Taking five minutes of her day to write a blog actually saves her time. She used to spend hours each month writing emails to friends and family updating them on what was new with her and her family. Add that to the multiple phone calls to repeat the same story, and you get a lot of time. Exchange all of this for a blog, and now she only takes a few minutes each day and she has a lot more time on her hands as well as memories preserved that would likely have been forgotten by the time she got around to emailing or calling friends and family.

Hilary has two adorable little girls, one of which is a toddler that does and says the most hilarious things, so she has plenty of funny and memorable stories to write. Even though I don't have children yet, I still have interesting things happen that if nothing else, I'd like to remember. I used to be a regular journal keeper, but that simply doesn't happen anymore, so this blog will hopefully serve two purposes. Keeping my friends and family up-to-date on the happenings in the Dalton family life, and keeping my memories preserved. So, thank you Hilary for showing me the light!

Now, you may wonder why I chose “Dalton Detour” as the title of my blog. Hopefully my little thought at the top helps clear that up some, but I thought I'd expound a bit on that. Most kids have ideas for what their life will be “when they grow up.” That idea changes as we get older, but we all have some kind of plan for the way we want our life to go. When I think back to where I thought I would be by this time in my life, I realize I've definitely had a lot of detours, which have ultimately put me on a different road, but a good one. Even if you asked me 18 months ago where I'd be today, I definitely would not have said on this road, and I can guarantee you, Adam didn't think he'd be here either.

When we got married a little over three years ago we lived in a condo in Bluffdale. About two weeks after we got married I asked Adam if we could get a dog; he said no. Three weeks later was Adam's birthday, and guess what he got for his birthday, our dog Shady! (Can you tell I don't listen to “no” very well). Then seven months later I suggested to Adam that we should look at selling our condo and buying a house. He said no, and a month later we were house hunting, and two months later we moved into our house in West Jordan. What can I say, I'm a very persuasive person. :) Sure there were plenty of times since then that Adam's persuaded me away from my original thoughts, but thankfully he's a really laid back person so we get along great.

The end of 2007 we decided that we should get a friend for Shady to play with, so we got her our playful puppy Rolo (thank you Jarod & Debbie). We figured that if we could raise a puppy and keep her alive as well as Shady, then maybe we might be able to handle a child. All I can say is, wow, who knew a puppy was so much work! There were definitely tears of frustration (at least on my part) and tears of laughter. Rolo is one of the best things that ever happened to us. She is probably the funniest dog I've ever met, and even though she's kind of a brat to Shady sometimes (who is probably one of the sweetest dogs in the world), Rolo and Shady are great friends and they are one of the great joys in our lives.

In 2008, Adam and I started working together for Family Total Health Club. In the beginning of our marriage, I never would have saw myself working with Adam. But now, I can't imagine not working with him. Adam may have a different opinion, but I absolutely love working with my husband. Sure there are challenges, but what job doesn't have challenges? I'm a work-a-holic by nature anyway (get that from my dad), so at least now when I work 90 hours a week, I still get to see my husband. Now if only I could figure out a way to get Shady and Rolo to be able to work with us. Hmmm, I'll have to think about that one.