Father's Day Picnic!

We're so fortunate to live in an area with lots of parks, bike paths and picnic areas .. So we thought, why not have a picnic dinner instead of the same ol' dining room dinner?


It was a beautiful change of pace, and so refreshing. The kids absolutely loved it, too! And we had lots of bug spray (though those darned Mosquitos sure gave it their all!) so we were pretty undisturbed. Nothing is nicer than family time.


I packed a protein-filled dinner for us, since I knew we'd be heading to the park and splash pad after our picnic. Protein keeps us full for longer periods of time so we knew we wouldn't be hungry coming home from running around in the hot weather at the park!


I made Caesar deviled eggs .. They were so yummy! Instead of using the usual mayo to mix in with the yolks, I used 2 tsp of Renee's light Caesar dressing (I was only making two full eggs, four halves in total, so it didn't take much dressing at all to get the creamy filling deviled eggs are known for!), filled each egg, and topped it with a sprinkle of light Parmesan cheese. It was such a nice twist to deviled eggs and they turned out so well! I'm glad I only made two eggs because I'm pretty sure we would have polished all of them off .. Even if I'd made eighteen!

Mmmm with Parmesan cheese ...

The plain yolk in the middle was for my daughter .. she can't have egg whites just yet!

Next I made cucumber / carrot toonies. I got this idea from Chef Michael Smith's show a while back on the food network .. Basically, you core a long piece of cucumber, then shove a peeled carrot through it, slice, and voila! Veggie toonies! (it sounds easier than it actually was .. Coring the cucumber was a total P.I.T.A!) It was a nice change from the normal cucumber slices and carrot sticks one would normally bring for a picnic.

I also cooked off two pieces (one for each of us) of M&M Meats honey mustard chicken breasts and used them to make a chicken spinach salad. I tossed 1/2 tbsp of honey and 3 tsp of mustard into one single-serving container of apple-flavored yogurt to make a simple yet delicious dressing (this recipe yielded WAY more dressing than we needed for our salad, so we have lots left over). The only things our salad needed were walnuts (we ran out!) and apples (I completely forgot to throw them in!) but they were still great without. (ps. we made these incredible chicken-walnut-spinach salads last week, read about it here!)

We had tons of food, stayed within our points, felt satisfied (not full!) and had the best time hanging out with each other. And we all got plenty of exercise once dinner was over!

Daddy running through the sprinklers with his babies!

The water was COLD! She loved it - me, not so much! 

Happy Father's Day to all the amazing daddies out there! Thank you for all your hard work and dedication!