Raw as I wanna be

So I have some friends who have been eating RAW for about a year now. They have both lost a lot of weight. Neither were heavy before but they look and feel great. Lauri decided to do kind of a support group so once a month she invites us to her house to share ideas and recipes. The first night was "Green smoothie night" You got it. We all tried green smoothies.

You start with a couple of large handfulls of spinace, chard, kale, romaine or leaf lettuce. I usually use spinach. Pour about a cup of water in the blender with it and add whatever raw fruits and vegetables you like. Since I have a LOT of frozen peaches from our tree I always use about a cup of frozen peaches and maybe half a frozen banana. The best flavor is to add the juice from one lemon and a little packet of Sun Crystals:

It's down below, it just wont move. Grrr Anyway that's like a spinach lemonade. Hahaha

It has the consistency of SLUDGE! Yum!

Not a bad way to start a day although you need to chew to blend with your saliva. I asked if you could just spit in it. I don't think the ladies liked my idea.

The next month we had a salad night with raw dressings. Y'all get salads. Nothing special but I learned to do a chopped salad with my ingredients chopped small. Its tasty and colorful. In this salad I have romaine, kale, spinach, cauliflower (one of my favorite vegies), tomato, mushrooms and yellow pepper. A colorful pepper makes the salad look festive and adds so much flavor. Then I top it off with, raw dressing? Heck NO! I'm as raw as I wanna be! I have discovered Wish Bone Olive Oil Vinegrette. It has 60 calories per serving which is half or less of a ranch or cream dressing. I'm sure I usually end up with 2 servings but YUM!

Now if you really want to increase your raw food intake try pulse. It's supposed to be in the Bible or something but you go to the health food store and get a plastic screen to go on your wide mouth canning jar. It's worth about 50 cents but costs $5.00. You have to use raw seeds and nuts so they sprout. I use sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, buckwheat choats and a little flax seed. I was told to use almonds too but They swell so big and don't distribute well so I do the sprouts and chop the almonds and add it in at the end. I put this on salad and in yogurt. By the way, these ladies are completely down on dairy but I am as raw as I wanna be!
Ahhh, here is that stubborn picture of Sun Crystals, it's a natural sweetener made from stevia. It's super sweet.
Last week we had a get together for raw desserts. Ya know, there is a limit to how raw I wanna be. The facebook group and e-mail group is called "rawaswewannabe" Thus, my constant reference/tirade. I go to get some healthy food ideas and I have come away with good ideas every time but I'm not going 100% on this. I disagree with a few of the ideas and I have not seen any of the references backed by a doctor so it's just a lot of peoples opinions but there is some good information. I'm eating less fried food and cutting down on sugar. I got a new knife just for cutting my vegetables and I enjoy apples regularly and salads all the time now.
The moral of this blog is try it!
Go chew some sludge today!

Hind family baby shower

So yesterday we had a baby shower for A's side of the family. I spared you pictures of all the guests but the aunt at the far right is the long arm quilter that did a beautiful heirloom quilt. This is the stack of presents:This is the quilt I made. R chose the fabric last year and this year likes pink and green instead but it's a super cute quilt and even hand quilted.
These are the receiving blankets I crocheted. I wish the colors showed up better on the pink one. It's so cute. Both have very nice prints. I've probably done 100 of these over the years.

Oh my Gosh!

For cute!

This is a cupcake of burpcloths with coffee filters as the muffin cup. It was all wrapped in celophane. Most of the cousins were very crafty.

Another crafty cousin did a whole set of burpcloths with cute borders and applique. The flip-flops were a hit.

There were some beautiful basics, receiving blankets and onsies.

This was one of many little outfits. This one was pink and brown, ( how cute will baby look in this with that cute little pink and brown quilt Granma Gigi made?) It has a matching onesie and flare legs. Most of the sleepers and outfits were size 6-9 months.

Now for the heirloom:

Aunt Karen got swatches from R's layette set that she's making and made this beautiful quilt. This is a showcase quality quilt. She could hang it on the wall or a rack for decoration.

There were darling shoes, sewn, bought and crocheted, hairbows and head bands which is a good thing considering that R didn't have much hair till she was three but now has enough for three people. Her mother-in-laws family gave a cash gift to help them buy the stroller/car-seat that they want. Now she needs some basics like crib sheets, matress pad, bottles and books.
We will be doing a family party/shower/barbeque on Memorial day for our family. I'm very excited now for this baby to come. R is getting a little uncomfortable but we are so happy things are still going well.

The food was delicious and the presentation was beautiful.

Blindfolded Easter

Not a glamorous picture but I had all my kids decorating Easter eggs. We had some very creative eggs. a strawberry:

a grenade...

and of course a variety of colors and kits.

L is here to demonstrate our adult Easter egg hunt and the hunt begins!

The things we learned or were reenforced during this activity was that R doesn't like being out of control, B is slow and methodical and it pays off, L is rough and CJ just likes having the older siblings around. A was not quite sure why all the kids would participate so willingly even knowing there was money in the eggs. He thought it would be cents but like the others he came away with $$$!

I have great video but after an hour of it saying it was uploading I figure it pobably never would. Darn!

I have another one when we opened the eggs. The surprise was that there were baby sock and baby washcloths in the socks to R and A got a bunch of that stuff too. Then we had cinnamon rolls and watched conference. It was such a beautiful weekend!

Western Carribean Cruise

That sure is a big boat!

The last week of February was cold and gloomy but we had an alternate plan, we went on a cruise. This was to celebrate D's 50th birthday. We saw blue blue water and white sandy beaches.

We dressed up for dinner and walked on deck in the cool sea breezes.
We ate warm chocolate melting cake and went to comedy shows and musical entertainment.

We saw beautiful sunrises and sunsets!

We climbed the ruins at Kohunlich and learned about them from an experienced archeologist. It was so fascinating but we just didn't have long enough to see it all.

This is the temple of the masks. These masks are carved on tombs and then covered by another structure to protect them. In some cases the outer structure crumbles leaving the original building exposed and we were lucky enough to see it.

We got out picture taken dressed up. D thought this was frivalous but I reminded him that our kids spent more money than we were on pictures with people they will never go out with again and we have been married for 28 years and rarely get our picture taken together and we looked good!

There were two elegant nights so we got our picture taken both times.
We were so cute.

We had a great time and had some warm days. We had cool days at sea and some days that were a little warmer and a couple of really warm days. I think February is a great time to go on a cruise.

This is only part of the trip. If I get to it I'll show you more.

tidbits

Ok, that was weird, I kind of expected my family to respond but nooooo. My good friends and customers. That is really funny. Ok Linda, these books were suggested by my sister and I think I told you about them.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
This book takes place in Afghanistan in the 80's I believe. It's a great history and culture lesson but sad. It makes one think about the purpose of your own life. I would give it a 3 1/2 of 5 because I like happy. Very well written and I learned a lot. Be grateful for our lives!
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
A book my sister learned of by association with the author on a writers blog. Well written, a book of unmet possibilities. 4
Then I still had the ride home and nothing to read so I picked up Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger in the airport. Easy read, thought provoking. I remembered to be grateful for every minute I have with those I love and my associations with people who inspire me and make me happy. also a 4 maybe even a plus.
I am a people person and love to be with people. I am motivated by people. My house doesn't get clean unless someone is coming over. I love to meet new people which is why I love my job. Anyway, more tidbits later!

So much to blog about, so little time. Should I blog about the great time we had on the cruise and tell you all the things we did? But I did that on facebook. Should I tell you the books I read last month?, two just while vacationing and enjoying the peace and cool sea breeze.

I could also blog about how I'm so lucky to have spent nearly 29 years with such a wonderful husband and how I'm learning to enjoy every good moment because there is enough sadness and difficult times to deal with.

Or, I could blog about D and his 50th birthday and the great cake R made for him or give you his list of things he accomplished in his 50th year like buying his motorcycle and riding it home from Vegas or rafting cataract canyon with L and the cruise that we took together
and zip-lining in the everglades and doing a perfect 360 degree flip off of a rope swing in a river in Belize.

I could also blog about the things we have done with K to try to teach her to take care of herself and her things and the next step in her life.

There is so much and I have so little time and when I get home in the evenings I have no energy and don't want to blog at all.

I'm also expecting a grandchild around my birthday and still run a salon which is a happy place right now. So many things and I still have nothing really to say. If there is anyone that reads this or anyone that has an opinion about what I should write about, leave a comment. If not, I'll blog in April. hahahahaha

Room of Disaster

This is what a tantrum looks like at our house: That is black sharpie on the bed. The bed is on the floor, not a frame because we learned years ago that any empty space is where all the nice and useful things go, all gobbed up and covered with any liquid close at hand, such as: lotion, glue, nail polish, blood, the list goes on. There was a washable marker in her room that she pulled apart, drained onto her hands and wiped on the walls, carpet and clothes. Thank goodness, this washed off pretty well.

Now, notice the purple marker on the box spring and on the carpet and then notice the spot just to the right of it that is NOT washable but black sharpie.

The interesting thing here is what set K off. D told her to eat her dinner. We had chili, which she usually likes and didn't say she didn't want. In discussing this with the therapist we think she can feel us withdrawing from her and acted out. D has been done for about a year and can't wait for this phase (foster parenting) of our lives to be over but I'm so concerned with the regression she will make. We haven't had a big tantrum in so many months but we can't have her constantly destroying our house. This is probably a good thing because as much as I've been hanging on, I think I'm on the same page as D now and CJ has been ready to be done for a long time. I think L thinks we are just giving up but as much as she wants to save the world she hasn't volunteered any time to help out. About a year ago R told me that she told her husband A that she wishes he had known us before K because we used to be fun. I thought about that and I'm not sure we would have been fun anyway. We used to have kids that got good grades and enjoyed school and friends and activities and were very involved in band and plays. Now we have K and CJ who just wont do school work even if he does understand it. It's not the best time of our lives but we are happy we are not in the position of some of our friends whose son is stealing and doing drugs and they are afraid to be home with him.
OK, back to the story. So we've discussed this with the therapist and case worker and it was decided that K needs to go to another home with higher level of structure and supervision. The interesting thing is that K asked if I would talk to the case worker and ask if she could go to another family for a while. Now we will do as she requests and she feels like she has control of her life. Maybe it all will work out just fine. The case worker wants her to stay in the area so she can go to the same school so I could still take her and do things with her without her taking over our lives. After being her mom for 4 years I can't just stop.

The consequence to the tantrum was to have the door removed and I took her "extra" clothes
so she wears her school uniform all day. She also lost TV, computer and phone privileges all week. D can't wait to get into that room and fix it up so it will stay nice.