Playing at Our Future Park

We took advantage of a sunny weekend day and headed down the road to play in a new park.  It’s a few blocks from our hopefully soon-to-be home.  It always surprises me to step back and watch Desmond play.  He can climb up little rock walls and go down the slides all by himself.  He didn’t want to try the spinning chair, but once we were on we giggled the whole way.  I hope to spend many summer days here.

     

House Update: We heard back from the bank and they wanted $25,000 more than the advertised price.  Hello!  We countered with $5,000 more than our first offer and the bank countered with another $5,000 more.  We tried to hold, but they basically sent a rude email saying we must not want the house if we can’t give them what they’re asking.  We do really like the house and it’s still a good deal at $10,000 more so we conceded.  God has provided the funds to allow us to pay more, so we’re hoping to hear back any day that we can move on to the next step toward closing.  We’ll see!

Snow Day

   

Last weekend we took advantage of a schedule-free day and went up to Mt. Hood to do some sledding and playing in the snow.  It was beautifully sunny, but very windy!  Desmond didn’t know what to make of it all and felt nervous in the new environment.  To make matters worse he couldn’t walk in the stuff so we had a tearful experience.  We picked a little hill and Davin and I went down a combined total of five times while Des sat at the top throwing snow.  Desmond loves slides so I think he would have liked sledding if we had been faster getting situated for our ride.  I took too long and he just fell apart crying “No! Done, done!”  We left soon after and enjoyed hot chocolate in the car.  It was a fun day even though the snow play only lasted about thirty minutes.  Maybe next year we can make it an hour.

Butterfly Army Birthday Cake

I was asked to bake the cake for Jeremy and Aunt Marcia’s combined birthday parties.  How do you combine a fun theme for both?  I decided to have a butterfly vs. Lego army men battle.  Bonus: the birthday kids got to keep the cake decorations afterwards.

Making the Cut with Jillian Michaels

I am determined.  Determined to loose this last twenty pounds and reach my goal.  Enough messing around with the same five pounds.  I want to try something different to shake things up a bit and give myself the extra push I need.  I recently purchased Jillian Michaels’ book Making the Cut.  It’s not just about counting calories, it’s about eating the right kind of calories.  For thirty days I want to stick to her diet and exercise plan to see what happens. 

Yesterday was day one.  I bought tons of fresh produce including some new things I’ve never touched before: fennel and eggplant. Who eats that stuff?  I didn’t actually get in her first workout though because I spent all day making food!  Okay, not really, but dinner alone took me three hours.  Thankfully it made enough for two more dinners.  I had the Artichoke, Fennel, and Tomato Salad with chicken for lunch.  Dinner was Lamb Dijon and Baked Eggplant with Roasted Tomato Sauce.  The smells and flavors are strong and so good!  So much better than prepackaged, processed food.  Twenty cloves of garlic take forever to peel though, and the house still smells strongly of garlic. No vampires here!  I think I need to hire a cook to do all the prep work for me. 

I just finished doing her first workout.  Oh my.  It’s intense if you do it right and don’t rest in between exercises.  Usually I look forward to the strength training part of my workout so I can rest from the cardio.  I find with Jillian’s workout it’s the opposite.  I look forward to the cardio so I can “rest.”  I also got her 30 Day Shred DVD and I’ve done the level one workout twice.  Desmond freaks out when I turn it on though (huge tears and sobbing), so it’s one more thing I’ll have to do when he’s napping.

This is pretty labor intensive – both the food and the exercise, so we’ll see how it goes.  It helps to know “it’s only thirty days.”