mandalei

This last year was a good one, but if I look back on it, I remember it more as being tough.

Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. I am going to make this, the Big Double Three, a superluckyyear!!ZOMG!!! Let’s see how I do.

Strawberry Jam!

I can’t remember if I have posted this recipe here before and am too lazy to check, but this is an adaptation from the Sharon United Methodist Church’s Cookbook (submitted by Ben’s grandmother, Lucille Uphaus). This is my version:
1 small loaf of crusty rosemary bread, cut into cubes
1 lb sausage, cooked/drained/cooled
2 c milk + 6 eggs + 1 tsp salt + 1 tsp mustard, whisked
1 cup shredded grueyere

Directions:
Day 1 (the night before): put cubed bread on bottom of 9×11 baking dish (or whatever dish you need to have the bread cubes come up the side over halfway). Spread cooled sausage over, then sprinkle gruyere. Take eggy mix and pour over top, making all is covered and soaked. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and put in fridge overnight.
Day 2: preheat oven to 350. If your oven has a delayed start feature, this is an excellent time to use it. Take off plastic (hey, it’s early in the morning! you may need that step spelled out for you) and pop in oven for 40-45 minutes. Feeds at least 6 people with big appetite.

Making a Pink Lady Cake

I have lost 10 lbs as of today.

This is just to say

That Jack has peed

in his

potty.  At his

request.

It must be time to post again, ha.  And what a month it’s been!  starting on New Year’s Day, Jack threw up in his crib and that about sums up what we’ve been doing lately.

Seriously, though, it’s been a rough couple of months for us, with the illnesses a-coming like, well, like the plagues of Egypt.  We have a play group we go to on Tuesdays, and since Thanksgiving, we’ve been been able to go *twice* because every other time we’ve had a cold or something.  This last week, Jack and I both got slammed with some stomach bug, which had us throwing up and otherwise in the bathroom for 24 hours, and then since Friday we’ve both been incapacitated… intestinally, shall we say.  it suuuuuuucks!

In Honesty news, before the stomach bug hit, I had lost 7.5 lbs in 4 weeks.  not bad!  Then I stalled out and hadn’t lost anything in 2 weeks (although when I had the stomach flu, I lost 3.5 lbs between Wednesday and Thursday morning).  I have been eating about 300 calories fewer than my daily allotment of calories and exercising every day which is supposed to bring it down even further, so it’s very discouraging.  Oh well, I guess maybe i’m building muscle or something.

I got a faboo camera for Christmas, which I love with a deep and passionate feeling.  And I need to upload some pics of the things I have been working on and actually post them, sheesh.  I always feel like I am not getting anything accomplished, but then I look back and see just how much I have finished up in little projects and it’s not as bad as all that. Things I’m currently working on:

• a knitted scarf
• Jack’s geometric quilt
• Mike and Melissa’s wedding quilt
• Libuse’s quilt (planning stages only–the first one I had worked on was when I was pregnant and I think the painting-while-pregnant rule applies here as well: never choose color schemes for painting your house while pregnant!  I hated the color combos in that quilt once Jack was delivered.)
• learning how to knit socks (to be started once the scarf above is finished)

Also, I think if Jack could, he’d have a poster of Rachel Coleman from “Signing Times” hanging on the wall above his bed.  Since we’ve been sick, we’ve been watching hella lots of “Signing Times” and the kid can’t get enough.  I don’t blame him, really, she seems like the kind of person I’d like to hang out with. Sometimes I think I want to go back to school to become proficient in ASL.  It’s a fascinating language, and hey, something to add to the Latin, Greek, and French.

Ben found out something kind of cool the other night.  As he was reading a book of ABCs to Jack for the 5th time in a row, he got bored and started asking Jack what the things were in the pictures.  The thing is, almost every thing in the book is something Jack can either say, or of which he knows the sign.  He has something like 100 words he can use now, spoken or signed, at 19 months.  Of course, some of them are more clear than others… and our interpretation.  I *heart* Signing Time, and no, I am not affiliated in any way.  One of the best things Jack has done recently is sign “penguin”, which is putting your hands down at your side, and doing a little side to side stepping motion.  I’ll see if I can swing some video of it.

So I started eating properly and exercising last Tuesday.  The results of last week’s efforts: down 2.5 lbs. I plan on keeping a weekly update on this.

I will say that I love the Apple app LoseIt!  If you have an Ipod touch or an Iphone, it’s free and AWESOME.  It gets your details at the begninng, and then calculates your calories based on the average amount of weight you wish to lose per week.  In my case, I said 1.5 lbs.  It told me how many calories I could have, and then I can enter my food and exercise into it (I am sure there is some fudge room in this, but whatever), and then it tells me how many calories I have left during the day.  If I exercise, it gives me more calories to eat, if I want.  I can choose to see how I have come in each day over the course of a week in a handy bar graph, even.  But today I found out the best part of the whole app:  as it tracks my weight, it readjusts how many calories I can have each day and how much I actually burn hen I exercise.  Fascinating, and oh so helpful!  (Chels, maybe something to keep in mind for patients?  Seems like something up your alley; in any case, have Chris load it, and check it out!)

I’m having a hard time parting with it.  I am dragging my feet, “just one more day,” i think, “it’s still got alot of life in it.”

I don’t want to, but I think it’s time: the Christmas tree has to go.  There are only so many days out of the year that the garbage company takes them for compost.

In other news, we have had a great New Year so far!  Ben and I got to participate in some Austrian traditions (my favorite involved melting lead trinkets over a butane torch and then dumping it into cold water to interpret the fortune for the next year), and then Jack got some stomach bug the following night around midnight (and I am just getting over it myself, although, fortunately, I didn’t soil my sheets x 2, sleeper x2 and sleepsack combo, and teddy bear x 3… I just felt stomach pain).

Pictures to follow.