Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Season's Over

Tabitha and I finished our basketball season tonight!  This may be the only year we ever play on the same team, and let me just say, I don't look forward to playing against her!  She's never really played other than at summer camp, so she doesn't have a lot of shooting skills.  What she does have is speed, jumping ability, reckless abandon, a good eye, and natural athletic ability.  Of course she got all of that from me!  Okay, maybe some from her dad as well.              
                  
Nice Squat form!

I had to make her play this year.  She really doesn't like it, she's more of a volleyball girl.  She complained most nights about having to go, but she always gave it her all once she was out there.  She says she doesn't like it because she doesn't know what's going on.  I told her not to worry, neither do any of the rest of us!

This is one of her rare shots.


She steadily improved each game.  She doesn't shoot often and when she does they're usually pretty ugly.  What she does do is steal and rebound!  Tonight I think she took more shots than ever, and she hit two of them.

                                          

Girls guard way to closely!  In case you are confused.  This is me and not Tab, I'm the bigger one.


Not that I like to admit that, but a bigger butt does help push some of those smaller waifs out of the way.  Now I try to play nice, but I did grow up playing against big ol' farm girls in Oklahoma!  I also grew up playing 6-on-6 basketball.  If you aren't 30+ years-old or from Oklahoma you probably don't have a clues as to what that is.  Here's a brief explanation.  On each end of the court you have 6 girls.  The half court line is now a boundary that you cannot cross.  Three of the girls on each end are forwards, they shoot, and three are guards, they play defense.  They guards are also supposed to get the ball to their forwards on the other end.  Best part about it is half the running and much less congestion at the goal.

                                     
  See here you can count 8 of the 10 players on the court, plus the ref.            

Anyway, I was always a guard.  I never once shot the ball in my entire "career" of  high school ball.  Now I occasionally do and I even make a few from time to time.

Probably didn't make that one.  I was wide open.


So here are a few more gratuitous pics of my daughter and me.  You may take your nap when you are finished!

Drive or pass?  She is just a freshman.


Save it!



Pretty girl!


A bit jumpy!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

NOOOOO!!!

Two little things this week have given me fits.  A pocket and a driver's license.  Each one, not so kindly, reminded me that I have a ways to go in reaching my goal weight.  It's not so much a weight, as it is a size.  Anywho, my absolutely favorite pair of jeans ripped out this week.  Not in the seam but one of the back pockets!  Now, I wore these jeans a lot and they were starting to show that wear, so I'm not surprised that they ripped, but that still does little for the ego!  I also had to renew my driver's license this week, another ego buster.  As I was looking at it I saw how much I weighed 15 years ago when I got it.  About 20 pounds less than I do now.  Now I have no illusions that I will get back to that, but it still...

...now I have to go buy a new pair a faovorite jeans.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

When You Can't


My "little" girl just found out that she won't be doing something that she had really wanted to do.  Through some not-so-smart decisions that she made, nothing too dramatic or serious, she's been told that she won't be doing what she had wanted to.  What I can't do at this point is comfort her.  She's mad at herself, mad at others, and just really disappointed.  What she thought was an innocent little joke, someone else didn't see it that way.  I'm hoping she will learn to think things through a little better now.  Always an issue with her.  I can't say that I don't know where that tendency in her came from.  It is rather blatant in both of her parents.  Children really do learn what the live.  Both of mine are jokesters, they both tend to act and then think, they like to have fun and make people laugh.  Not necessarily bad things, but they can be if you're not careful.  I guess we all have something to work on.

On a happier note, I think I'll take her out today for some fun.  Maybe a movie or shopping or both!  Maybejust some coffee and talk.  I'm not sure yet, but we'll have fun.  Even if I have to make her!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Eating Well

As I am trying to eat "better", I have been looking for a few new recipes and at some different websites and blogs.  I am looking a bit into the Paleo diets.  They can be pretty hard to follow if you are not serious about them.  No dairy, legumes, grains, sugars, added salt. 

Wait, why am I doing this? 

Well, like I said I'm just looking right now.  You test drive a car before you buy it, why not test eat a diet?  So this week I am weaning myself from dairy and grains.  The grains won't be so hard, but the milk may be a whole other story.  I am not a Packer's Fan, but I am a cheesehead!    I also have some coffee with my milk. 

One thing I have done to help transition to dairy free was to make some almond milk.  No soy milk, it would  be a legume.  It was easy to make.  Now I wouldn't drink it plain, just not my thing.  I tried it in my coffee.  It might suffice, the jury's still out on that one.  I am having a smoothie that I made with it at this moment and it is pretty good. 

There are a couple of good sites that I have bookmarked that have given me some good ideas.  Here they are:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
http://www.everydaypaleo.com/
http://www.zonediet.com/

Here is how to make almond milk:
Almond Milk
1 cup raw almonds
4 cups water
vanilla bean or vanilla extract

If you do not have a powerful blender, soak the almonds overnight. Discard the soaking water.

Place almonds and water in blender. Blend until white and frothy and almonds are very fine. Scrape the vanilla bean and add to milk, or use vanilla extract to taste. You can also sweeten if you like.

Pour through a fine mesh strainer. Refrigerate just as you would dairy milk and us the same way. Keeps about the same length of time as well.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Broccoli

I have a rule at the house for my kids.  If it's a raw vegetable, they can eat as much of it as they want, anytime they want.  Elijah has taken that to heart.  He loves carrot sticks, celery, and bell peppers of all colors.  Now, I'm not saying he will take them over chocolate chip cookies or any other confection we may have around, but he knows he'll have to ask for that and that the answer is usually, "No" or "Later".  He has found that I don't even bat an eye when he is rummaging for veggies.

In order to keep up with his demand for these snacks (Tabitha is not quite as demanding, but she does like to take them for lunch) I wash and cut them up as soon as I buy them.  I always have baggies full of them in the fridge.  This week I bought some fresh broccoli and cauliflower as well.  I usually get frozen since It is usually cooked around here.  They just aren't as big on those as they are on the others.  Anywho, I did my diligent work of washing and cutting.  Then we went snowboarding.  When I got home last night I walked in the house and OOOHH the smell!!  I could not figure out where it was coming from.  There wasn't anything in the trash, nothing in the sink, the sewer had not backed up.  Where was this coming from!?  About that time I opened the fridge to get something out, or put something in, I don't remember.  All I remember is that the smell liked to have knocked my over!  Had the fridge died while we were gone?  Had something died in it?  No, it was my lovely broccoli and cauliflower!  Was it ruined? No.  I had released chemical compounds (ethyl mercaptan) in my endeavor to be more prepared for eating well.  I don't know exactly how it manages to smell through a Ziploc baggie and a refrigerator, but it does.  No wonder George Bush (H.W.) doesn't like it.  I'm cooking it for lunch now.

So, a word to the wise.  Keep you broccoli uncut until you are ready to use it, and don't try it with onions either!

Great Date!!

We had a great time on our snowboarding date!  Saturday evening there was the great excitement of driving through freezing fog between Amarillo and Santa Rosa, NM.  Fortunately, I slept through most of that.  We got to Las Vegas at about midnight and stayed there (Las Vegas, NM).  Next morning we were up early and had a great breakfast.  It turns out that the manager of the hotel had grown up in Edmond and one of the guests we spoke to has a son who lives here now.  Small world. 


Leaving Las Vegas!

We got in a full day of snowboarding.  It always takes a few runs to get your snowboard legs back, but I was pleasantly surprised that after those first few runs that my legs were not ready to give out.  They were tired, but not dead.  I love my new snowboard!  It's pretty.  I sound like such a girl.


See, it is pretty.  Yes, I went down that way.  No, I didn't hit a tree.

That evening we watched the Superbowl up at the lodge.  I didn't really care who won, but was pulling a little more for the Saints.  I always root for the underdog.  It was pretty cool that they won, especially since no one thought they could.

One thing that happened while we were there, that was completely unexpected, was a surprise from Jeff.  He bought me a beautiful ring.  Now, it's not that he doesn't like to buy me nice things for special occasions, but they are generally practical things, which really is okay with me.  To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement.  He's so sweet and cute, and well, I'll stop there.


Told you he's cute!

Monday we were treated to about 7 inches of snow.  Nice new powder!  Last time we went we got about 12 inches of snow.  That was much more difficult to navigate.  Especially since I snowboard pretty much heel side and move more snow than the snowcats.  7 was just about perfect.  We had a blast!  That night at dinner we met a couple from Mustang, small world again.  They had brought their two little boys to learn to ski.  They were very cute and very ready to go to the top the next day.  Hope they got to.


On the Lift

We got home yesterday in time to pick Elijah up from school, then my basketball coach called, "Can you play tonight?"  So I did.  That's when my legs finally felt ready to die!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Snowboarding Date!!

There are never any pictures of me when we go somewhere!?
Guess I'll have to make him take some this time!


Our date is almost here!  We will leave Saturday evening for a couple of days of couple's snowboarding.  The grandparents are staying with the kids, the house is almost clean, school uniforms are ironed for next week, and we are almost packed!  Just need to get a few tunes put on the iPod for Jeff and we should be good to go!!

Monday, February 1, 2010

A GREAT Weekend!

Thursday  brought us another 4 inches of snow!  I don't really mind the snow too much, the ice underneath  can be a little troublesome however.  This is why I stayed home Friday.  That, and we were expecting dinner guests.  Yes, in this mess of winter weather, we had invited people to come to our house, through snow and ice and in the dark.  We had actually invited them earlier in the week while the weathermen were still back and forth on how bad it might get.  Fortunately, they were wrong and it didn't get nearly as bad as they thought it would, at least for our area.

It can be very pretty, when it's not breaking the trees!


They made it for dinner, with not a lot of trouble, just a little stuck.  (Although they may tell you different.  I would if I were the one stuck!)  We had a great evening.  The conversation was fun and lively, dinner was excellent (if I do say so myself, once again, they may disagree).  I tried some new recipes and I think they turned out well enough to keep them in the recipe folder.  We had gingerbread for dessert, a nice winter dessert, I think.  We visited until around 11 p.m. and they headed back to their warm house.They made it home safely.

Maybe they just needed some snow tires!

Saturday was church as usual.  More great lessons there.  We talked afterwards as we normally do, then headed out for dinner before coming home.  We spent the rest of the evening just relaxing.

Sunday was just a great day to do what we had planned for the past few weeks.  I think it turned out really well.  We also did some things not so planned.  We got Elijah's snowboard out and let him play on it for a little while.  Now here in Oklahoma, you need a little help with gravity in order to get going, but he had a great time.  later we played Farkle and Yahtzee.  We even got Tabitha to play a few games with us.  It's not always easy to get your 18 year-old sister to play games with you when you're only 7.  We had a lot of fun though.  The evening ended with a light meal and then bed, AAAHHH!  All-in-all it was a great time!

With a little push from Dad, he's off!