Challenge #6, here I come!

Well folks, I have finished my May challenge. You may ask, "What was your challenge? I can't remember because you haven't posted anything on your blog in like, well, forever!" And my response to that would be, "I'm just so busy being a nurse, world traveler and monumental time-waster that I haven't gotten around to writing anything lately. And the challenge was to eat the recommended daily servings of fruit and veggies." Now that we have that out of the way, I'm sure you'd like to know how I did. The answer is: not too bad.
I'm not certain I can say that I got the daily recommended servings, but I certainly made a conscious effort to eat more fruits and veggies. Even while I was on vacation I made sure to order veggies when I normally wouldn't. And I carried a big bunch of bananas in my car with me on vacation, so I made sure to eat one every day. I would find it considerably easier if every fruit and veggie came pre-packaged in its own wrapper like bananas do, so I could more reliably track my consumption. I know that you can measure out a "fistful" of something as a serving, but frankly, my food isn't on my plate long enough for me to try to measure out how much I'm eating. I will say my chocolate consumption has returned to normal. At the beginning of May I was still gorging on chocolate, since I had given it up for Lent. Now I can go an entire day without chocolate (though I don't know why I'd want to) and only eat a small amount the next day and feel satisfied and not like I have to make up for lost time. I will admit I didn't dedicate as much time and effort to this challenge as I did to past challenges, but I still think it was a worthy challenge and I really hope to keep the consumption of the healthy stuff going and keep my chocolate and ice cream consumption down where it should be. Please observe my current food pyramid in the picture above and congratulate me as you see fit :)

Now for my June goal: I am going to attempt to find a geocache in every county in the state of Wisconsin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with geocaching, it's basically the best hobby ever. You use a hand-held GPS to find items that are hidden by other fellow geocachers. The thing they hide is called the geocache, or cache for short. I've always loved scavenger hunts, so this is awesome for me because it's like a scavenger hunt that is available 24/7. Once you find the cache you sign your name on the log to prove you've been there. Some caches are large enough to contain trinkets that you can swap. After you get home, you log on to geocaching.com and log your find. My neighbor Amber and I have 5 geocaches that we hid last fall and we really enjoy reading the feedback from all the people that have found our caches. So I'm going to be spending a fair amount of time on the road this month, trying to knock off as many counties as possible. I can't wait! I (unfortunately) anticipate many mosquito bites and lots of ticks, if this past weekend at the cottage is any indicator. Stay tuned to read about my geocaching adventures! Also, I always have more fun caching with someone than when I go alone so if anyone wants to go with me, let me know!