Oh Chick-fil-a...

Chick-fil-a has always been my favorite restaurant- tied with Chili's of course- and I have always wanted to take part in the First 100 event.

So when my sister-in-law Lauren asked if I wanted to I couldn't turn down the opportunity! She was planning on showing up at noon since this particular event was unadvertised but we decided not to take any chances and go at 6am! It was an hour drive for Joey & me so instead of going to sleep after his 5am feeding we headed to Lake Jackson.

Lauren was #38
I was #39

At noon there were still only 42 people.

We wished we had stuck to the original plan but at the same time it was fun to hang out together and I got to see my sweet nephew Peyton and sweet niece Annabelle!

At 3:30pm they were only in the 50’s and Jacob was seriously considering coming down. Our awesome friends Blake and David not only lent us their tent and blow up mattress but their car! Jacob got there in the nick of time right around 5pm and was #92!

In case you’re wondering what our 24 hours were like here’s the (caloric) breakdown:

6am: register and set up camp. We had to get everything from our car and park in the Wal-Mart parking lot before we could register…this was more challenging than I had imagined…

9am: role call and breakfast! The Chick-fil-a chicken biscuit with honey (440 calories, 20g fat)

12pm: role call and lunch! Chick-fil-a chicken strips (405 calories, 17g fat)

1pm: brownies or cheesecake! I went with the brownie (370 calories, 19g fat)

6pm: role call and dinner! Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich (430 calories, 17g fat)

7pm: IceDream bar—our group had to pass as we were too full to eat anything else

Games and music started after dinner. We were so pooped we went to bed after Mark came to visit around 9pm. I think I heard a “late night munchies” announcement around 11pm for fruit cups and side salads…why didn’t they offer that in the afternoon instead of giving me a meal’s worth of calories disguised in a delicious chocolate brownie?

5:30am was the next check-in. Theoretically, I could have gotten 7 hours of good sleep. Joey got at least that much. I don’t know how he fell asleep with the bright lights and noise but he slept perfectly! The process of getting our reward of 52 free combos (#1 or #5 only) was quick. We were out the door at 5:58am. Since we had already packed up our tent I just had to go get the car and we put everything in!
I really had a lot of fun and with the weather being so nice I can’t complain. Joey took naps—falling asleep in the stroller as I paced up and down the Chick-fil-a parking lot. It was just like the old times when we went on 3 or 4 walks a day. My grand total of caloric intake was 1,825. I had to add the sprite I drank but decided that the couple French fries I ate would make up for the fried part of each meal that I tried to peel off.

Here’s the kicker.
Grand total of grams of fat: 73 grams of fat.
Yes, I wrote grams of fat twice.
Oh.my.gosh. No wonder I felt so disgusting!

My one little Clementine orange that I ate was the only source of fruit I ate and forget about veggies. If I did it again I would definitely have to bring some good fruits and veggies. I didn’t expect them to give us choices but yeesh. I might have inherited $306.78 in coupons (and about $24 in free food) but if I can’t substitute for grilled chicken and a fruit cup I will be doing a lot of bartering with my coupons.

If you take gas into account and the drive time I made about $11 an hour.

So if you’re thinking of taking off work…it’s probably not worth it. There is no way I would have been able to go to work this morning. Now, we had a particularly loud group. One particular boy—he had to be at least 7 cried like a baby ALL NIGHT LONG. We noticed in the morning that he was sleeping on concrete in their tent. The parents didn’t even go in their tent. They talked all night. Hence, my trouble with falling asleep. If you’re a deep sleeper…you would probably be fine to go to work. I just can’t run off of a few hours of sleep.

All in all, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I wouldn't mind doing again sometime.