Cakes ...

I have found my problem. Cake 1, flopped into a brownie (recipe called for 2 large eggs and I used 2 small eggs). Cake 2, over flowed like lava (recipe called 2 large eggs and I egg yolk and I used 3 small eggs and one yolk). Cake 3, separated into liquid fudge and cake (recipe called for 2 Xxl eggs and I used 4 small ones). Tonight - cake 4 was made. It called for 2 large eggs. I used 2 large eggs and the cakes came out perfect.

How frustrating!! The eggs from our chickens are small :(

Watch Wednesday

Stick figures are just the best!  They tell a story like no other .... Well I guess if your actor is crap a stick figure might just be a lot better!

Unconcious Mutterings

Why don't you try this too.  Once a week - random words and what is the first thing your mind thinks of?

Week 526
1. Align ::Straight
2. Collar ::  POP
3. Orphan ::Alone
 4. Program ::C++
5. Waves ::Ocean
6. Accident ::  Car
7. Offices ::Email
 8. Corrupt ::Congress
9. Tears ::  Kisses
10. Family ::Snuggles

Weekend Baking

Zooey is turning one this coming Friday. We did sugar cookies for her to take to daycare and then I did a tester cake. I want to do a chocolate cake with strawberry icing. The icing came out amazing and the cake sucks. I'll try some more recipes this week.

Spring??

It rained a lot yesterday. The winds are picking up too. Spring is just around the corner!

Watch Wednesday - Well Thursday

Because this is the kind of week I'm having!

Weekend Exploring

We spent the weekend in Utah and Colorado exploring biking and hiking trails. We got to see dinosaur bones, meet great people and thrift store shopping. It was a great trip!

Watch Wednesday

I LOVE NASA!

Photo Bombed

Dinner!

My new favorite sour dough bread recipe. From King Arthur baking of course. The soup is a vegetarian green chile. Care for the recipes?

Hawaii Vacation ... Bust!

This here is a sick girl. We are suppose to be in Hawaii today. Zooey has an ear infection and RSV. We decided to cancel yesterday.

Watch Wednesday

Who you calling a nerd?

Zooey.

She sometimes just had too much spirit!

Happy Valentines Day

As many of you know I love Frank Deford's sports articles.  Yesterday he had this one:
Gentlemen of a certain age might make a nostalgic note that today, Valentine's eve, is the 80th birthday of Kim Novak.
One of Miss Novak's most famous movie roles was in Picnic, where she played the gorgeous ingenue who could've married the son of the richest man in town but instead fell for a hunk of a bum who was an old football star.
Picnic is being revived on Broadway, as is Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, where — guess what? — Maggie, played by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson, is married to a hunk of a bum who is a former football star.
I bring this up especially because last month, Brent Musburger, doing play-by-play for ESPN, was pilloried for allegedly being sexist because he gushed about how Miss Alabama was going out with the Alabama quarterback.
Of course she is.
If Mr. Musburger was guilty of anything it was failing to note what a cliche he was dealing in. As Tennessee Williams and William Inge and scores of lesser writers have written, it is all so true: Beautiful women fall for football stars — especially quarterbacks.
If football had been around in Shakespeare's time, the Bard would've had Juliet ditch Romeo for Flacco. "Flacco, Flacco, wherefore art thou Flacco?"
Where have you been, critics of Brent Musburger? Going back before Jane Russell fell for Bob Waterfield, through Joe Namath and on past Tom Brady, pretty ladies have thrown themselves at field generals.
But, we seem to have a new trend this Valentine's. More and more, athletes are falling in love with athletes.
Why, Danica Patrick is actually going out with a competitor race driver, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.; the No. 1 golfer in the world, Rory McIlroy, is canoodling with Caroline Wozniacki, who used to be the No. 1 tennis player.
Love seems to have worked better for the golfer. He went to the top of the rankings after the romance started, while Ms. Wozniacki nosedived.
Give her a ring, Rory. After all, another top tennis player, Maria Kirilenko, recently became engaged to Alex Ovechkin, one of the best hockey players in the world, and Maria's been on a tear ever since Alex proposed.
And now comes the news that Tiger Woods, who rather famously — or infamously — prefers blondes, is at least "good friends" with Lindsey Vonn, the great skier.
When Vonn had a terrible accident on the Austrian slopes last week, the gallant Mr. Woods sent his private plane to fetch her — sort of the modern equivalent of Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cape in the puddle for her majesty.
There've been a few all-athletic romances in the past — Ralph Kiner and Nancy Chaffee, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Florence Griffin and Al Joyner, Nomar Garciaparra and Mia Hamm — but perhaps especially now that there are so many more female athletes, sports stars are connecting in the workplace just like everybody else.
However, even at Valentine's, quarterbacks still seem to prefer beauty queens, and vice versa.



Of course - I'd like to point out that if you have ever watched Flash Gordon you know that the QB always gets the girl!

Watch Wednesday

  NASA is so cool.  I wish we spent more money on learning about the world we live in.

Weekend ... OH MY!

Well this past weekend went by too too fast.  It was only a two day weekend (I get every other Friday off, so some weekends are 3 days).  And let me go through the list of craziness in a list of 10!
1. Mike got Zooey use to falling asleep against him (BAD BAD BAD).
2. Drove Mike to ABQ and then back through a blizard.
3. Zooey had her first non-family non-daycare sitter (she did okay).
4. I took photos of a girlfriend knitting in a photo shoot to end all photo shoots (because we all froze our butts off).
5. Mike is gone until we leave for Hawaii
6. Zooey is coming down with a cold (at least her nose is running like crazy)
7. The dishwasher broke
8. I've gotten very little crafting done this weekend
9. I cleaned out my cookbooks (how did I end up with 5 cocktail books?)

10. Zooey woke up every hour last night because she couldn't breath - I'm freaking tired!

Happy Valentines Week!

Watch Wednesday

Another oldie - but goodie.

Sleeping Hard!

Watching the Superbowl and I have to share this funny photo of Zooey. She woke up after having her hand under her face.

A few firsts this weekend. Zooey's first Super Bowl, she found she can open cupboards and she learned to climb up and over the one stair in our house!

That Time of Year

Winter carrots. They have been growing since fall. The ground is soft today - so I pulled some. Delicious!!

2012 Working Out.

I use Dailymile.com to track my miles during the year.  What I find interesting is March (had a baby and was on bed-rest before she came).  August (what got into me??)

Do you track your miles?

Another Great Error Message

You know I love error messages.  Here is another one.

Watch Wednesday

One of my all time favorites!

Watch Wednesday

Sometimes I dance by myself in the store. But nothing like this!

Sleeping Baby.

 There is an old saying, "let a sleeping dog lie".  In our world it is let a sleeping baby lie.  Where ever she might fall asleep.  During the weekends and when we are at home with her, the only time to get dishes or laundry done is when she is asleep.  Of course, she is pretty darn cute when she is asleep!

2013 ...

As you can tell I've been slacking on posting.  I guess that is what 2013 has in store for me.  In news we had a wonderful new years, invented a new green chili recipe (which rocks), and Zooey is trying to walk.  Let's see if I can get my act together and actually post more often.

Watch Wednesday

Because a smile is in order!

Watch Wednesday

Because this is my first full week back at work and I sure do need a pick me up!

2012 Year In Review.

As always, with the end of a year I like to reflect back on what has happened.  Mostly to remind my self of all the great things that have occurred, but also to pay attention to anything negative and to learn from it.

Ran: 584 miles
Books Read (2011 it was 19):

Haunting Jordan (4 stars)

Good Ghouls Do (5 stars)

Demons are a Ghouls Best Friend (4 stars)

White Tiger (5 stars)

River Marked (3 stars)

The Good Ghouls’ Guide to Getting Even (4 stars)

Under a Vampire Moon (5 stars)

Sacre Bleu (2 stars)

Night Circus (5 stars)

Original Cyn (3 stars)

Final Notice (4 stars)

 We lost Moab.  Methow's best friend and an amazing kitty.

Our big change would be having Zooey.  Though the last part of the pregnancy was hard and having her 6 weeks early was hard, nothing was harder than walking away from the hospital while she was still in there.  I hope to never have that feeling again.  Of course as most of you have seen she has grown into an amazing little kid.  She is now 9.5 months old and look at how she has changed!

Overall 2012 was an amazing year with its ups and downs.  I'm sure 2013 will hold challenges, fun and wonder.  Can't wait to meet it all.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Holidays!

The holidays have been good around these parts. Zooey likes to open up packages. Santa was good to us all. And we have had a great time with friends and family. Here are a collection of photos!

Waste.

We do grocery shopping once a week. Normally on Sunday mornings. We plan our weeks meals and then buy what we need. We rotate in refrigerated review meals and plan stuff that we already have some of the fixings for - but especially over the holidays I'm bothered by how much we waste!

We have chickens and they eat mist of the fruit and vegetables that are bad. I try to catch most of them before they get bad and juice or use them. But still there is a crazy amount of waste.

Leftovers that never get eaten. Milk products that pass their prime. Condiments that get used a few times and then never see the light of day. As I clean out the fridge one more time I've decided that my New Years resolution is to be less wasteful. You might ask how I plan to do this (especially in a house where we try new dishes a few times a week)? My answer is simple.

Plan better!

While I was cleaning out the pantry I found 4 bags of sunflower seeds that had all gone bad. Multiple boxes of crackers that were months old and yucky. Way too many boxes of popcorn. Bags of chips that are 1/4 full.

From now on here is the plan.
1. Everything will have a date on it.
2. At least two meals a week will be leftover meals or freezer meals.
3. Once a month I will clean out the deep recesses of the pantry and freezer.
4. Most important is I will make a plan to finish up stuff before it goes bad.

What do you do about food waste?

Partied Out!

Zooey went to her first kid party and just pooped herself out!

Watch Wednesdays

Can't stop laughing!

Watch Wednesday's

I know you have been missing them. Happy holidays!

Old Things!

While at my dad's house for Thanksgiving he gave us a couple old things. First was a stack of Little Big Adventure Books. They range in age from the 40's to the 70's. I can't wait to read the adventure books to Zooey! Next was a set of silver dessert forks that were my grandmothers.

Old things have such a history to them!

Grandparent Time.

Zooey has gotten a lot of quality time with both sets of grandparents. Thanksgiving has been crazy so far - but fun!

Big Girl

Zooey is learning to sit up like a big girl!

Fall!

I love fall. It is my favorite season. This little lizard seems to like it too! Which month do you like best and why?

Oil!?!

Last weekend we went to the race track. Mike was changing the oil on the RV before we left. Something happened and all the oil dumped on him. A human oil slick was left!

Watch Wednesday

Baby Food.

Zooey has started eating solid food.  Which is interesting and challenging (in that each time we try something it is hit or miss if she likes it).  She has to taste something more than once to get a taste for it (if you understand what I mean).  I've been making all of her own food - which has also been fun.  Carrots from the garden, pears and apples from the trees.  I've found that making baby food is really easy and she loves it.  I wonder if she will ever eat store bought food?

Hand Update.

In case you didn't know I had thumb surgery a few weeks back.  Here is the pre/after/finished hand.  I had a trigger thumb which needed to be fixed.  I'm pretty happy with how it feels right now.  I hope it never comes back!

Baby Update

We are working on solid foods with Zooey. Here she is eating squash (one of her current favorites)!

Watch Wednesdays

Just funny.  Can't stop laughing.