The Birds

My mom told me that today there were a ton of pigeons in front of her house and they all flew away together. I imagine that was quiet the sight to behold.

For some reason it reminds me of the summer we had ducks. They were not our ducks but every day they would come and hang out on our suburban street for the day and fly off toward the lake at sunset. They were mallards, two males and a female.

The first day it was amazing to see ducks in the front yard. We didn't leave near the water by any stretch, and never before have we had ducks in the area. Pigeons yes, but never ducks.

What was even more amazing was that these three ducks returned every day for weeks that summer. They came to our house so often that we started to feed them bits of bread. We even bought a kiddie pool and feeder fish for them.

It is an amazing memory from my childhood.

Family Portrait: Check

This weekend I was able to check another item off of my life list...get a family portrait taken. It would be awesome if we could make this a yearly event. I won't hold me breath because it took 15 months to get a professional portrait of my son, which we also did this weekend. I just take so many pictures at home that I don't worry about this sort of thing. The pictures came out really good though.

Veggie Challenge Update

I am into week two of my veg out challenge and I have to say that I am not doing as well as I had hoped.  For the most part I am eating vegetarian but I am not eating as many vegetables and I was hoping to add to my diet.  I don't feel like a complete failure because I am adding more vegetables and fruit to my daily diet and that isn't bad at all.

Typical breakfast:
Cheerieos or Chex cereal and a banana

Typical lunch:
Flat bread with peanut butter rolled around a banana
veggies and dressing to dip them in

I guess that is better than a big cheese burger.

Ornamental Memories

We put up our Christmas tree today. Or holiday tree for those of you readers that might not celebrate Christmas.

Decorating the Christmas tree is one of my most favorite holiday traditions. We don't have one of those uber coordinated, color matching trees. Nope. We have a memory tree. Every ornament has been collected by us through the years, and some have rather fond memories tied to them.

Here is our tree after it was completed tonight.
One of our new additions this year is a train that circles the middle of the tree. We picked it up on a trip to Home Depot, and it was very much an impulse purchase, but we knew it would be so much fun. Chris loves trains, and grew up with train sets. We thought Ian would love watching the train chug around the tree.
So far all Ian cares about are the ornaments within reach, particularly this red mirror ball ornament. He picked up one of my mirror ball ornaments and gave it a kiss. For his trouble the mirror ball left him a scratch on his nose. The mirror balls were some of my first ornaments when I moved out on my own. I got the first of them the Christmas I was in my very own one bedroom apartment.
I love this shot of Ian admiring the tree. I fear he will knock the tree over and hurt himself but also that he will break some of my memories, I mean ornaments.
Last week we went to Frankenmuth, MI and visited Bronner's. It is a huge Christmas store. My goal was to find some ornaments that will mean something to my new family. So I picked out some that represent our respective nationalities. For my husband we picked the Polish ornament below and a German ornament. Both have text on the back listing various traditions unique to the nationality.
For my side of the family I picked an Italian ornament with the traditions on the back. I am more than Italian but you know there are only so much dollars in the bank account.
My husband is a HUGE hockey fan and we have many hockey themed ornaments. Most are for the Red Wings...including a Santa in a Red Wings jersey. However, this new Smore hockey player is by far my favorite. While Chris does not play hockey himself hockey is a huge part of our lives most of the year, so it is only fitting it be a huge part of our tree.
My all time favorite ornament is this Lenox china snowflake. It was something I purchased for our first tree after we were married. The coloring exactly matches the Lenox cake topper we used on our wedding day. While it isn't the typical "First Christmas Married" ornament, to me it is the one that symbolizes us. We have at least two other standard First Christmas type ornaments but this is the one that really means something to me.

This ornament was made for Chris and I by a very good friend of mine, who I have known pretty much my whole life.  She is a great artist and love that she took the time to turn Chris and I into cartoon characters and painted them on an ornament for a gift.  I love this ornament and I remember my friend every time I see it.

Coming soon some pictures of the rest of our decorations along with some more stories and memories.

Shopping Fail

Did you know that as of today there are only 34 days until Christmas? How did this happen? It was just the beginning of November the other day, and now it is the 20th already. Yikes!

I had big plans for this year. I was going to get all of my Christmas gift shopping done early to avoid the crazy holiday shopping that will begin next week. As I have only acquired two gifts to give so far I have to categorize this as a very big fail. That leaves most of my family to still buy for, plus my ten students at work, and the kids at day care. Oy! At least I have ideas for most of them.

Let the crazy, madhouse shopping begin!

Challenge

Day two and I have already failed at my challenge. We got free lunch at work today and I ate a piece of pizza with ham. I know I am ashamed of myself, but I just love ham and pineapple pizza. I just couldn't pass it up, especially when it is free! I will have salad for dinner to make up for it and I will stay on course.

The Stones

Dear Kidneys,

I just wanted to let you know that you are going to be in for a real work out in the coming weeks. It looks like I have grown some kidney stones inside of you thanks to that habit of mine to drink lots of milk and eating lots of yogurt. Who knew excessive calcium would have a side effect like this?

So I am going to be giving you a big work out on doctor's orders. I must drink about a gallon and a half a day to flush out those nasty stones. So you better get ready for some overtime work.

Please ask the stones to go easy on me, as I already pushed out a baby and I don't really want to enjoy that pain again without the joy of a kid involved. As a thank you I will cut down the milk in the future so we hopefully won't have to enjoy this fun again.

Sincerely,

Your host body

Veg Wrap Lunch

I decided to start my veg-out a little early with lunches this week. For the past two days I have had the following roll up from stuff I already had around the house.

Kid size Flat Out Healthy Harvest flat bread
One square of cheese, melted in the microwave on the flat bread
Covered in chopped broccoli and cauliflower
Light Honey Dijon dressing

On the side I ate some baby carrots with more Honey Dijon, and a cup of yogurt one day, and other other day some applesauce.

I am happy to report that my afternoon snacking has gone down tremendously already! Since I am fueled with a better lunch I am not getting that hungry sitting at my desk at work and eating out of boredom. I can't wait to add better breakfasts into the mix and maybe loose a little weight.