Merry Christmas! In pictures...

Amelia and I are ready to go to a Christmas party.




School Christmas party. They had a pajama day, and a day long party. They work so hard all school year, it was nice to see them have a fun day. And I love that I got to be there for the party, yay for being a stay at home mom. I got to spend 6 hours in my kids classroom that day.



Christmas Eve was a big surprise for Amelia and Anthony. We got tickets to see Disney on Ice. (Thank you person at Jeff's work who gave us the company tickets and parking pass. You are awesome.)

It was Toy Story 3 on ice, those are the army guys being dropped down from the ceiling. It was pretty well done. I was pleasantly surprised.


The show finished up way past dinner time, so we decided to find somewhere to eat near the arena. Jeff spotted this nice seafood restaurant and of course I said yes!
This item on the menu grabbed my attention. See those Willapa Bay Oysters? I grew up on Willapa Bay, and in fact my mom worked in an oyster cannery there for years.


I had an amazing meal. Well actually this much foods equals about three meals for me, it was also my Christmas morning breakfast. Jeff had a slight problem with his food, involving a big rock that looked like a clam, but hey, they comped us his dinner for it. lmao.

The Christmas tree, loaded down with presents. We did a pretty low key Christmas this year. The big presents were from Santa, and were little two wheel scooters. The kids got a few toys each, a video game or two and some clothes. And of course a whole bunch of junk in their stockings.


This is me thinking, "Why the hell am I letting you take pictures of me in my pajamas before I've had caffeine or a shower? Cause this picture might actually turn out cute and then I'll have to put it on my blog or facebook." At least the kids are cute... lol



This picture cracks me up. She's wearing a hat she got from Santa, but it's on backwards, with her Christmas dress, and her new boots, that she says are "Cowgirl boots? ya know? like they wear in Old Texas?" I love that kid but she's a goofball sometimes.
My Grandfather happens to live about 30 minutes from our house, so Jeff picked him up for the day too. The kids love seeing him since we don't have much family around.

This kitchen was clean when I started cooking this morning. Then I made a turkey, and homemade Italian sausage stuffing, and mashed potatoes, and candied yams, and a pumpkin pie, with fresh whipped cream, deviled eggs, and some rolls (those did come out of a bag, I can't make everything!) and a green bean casserole thing, and I don't even remember what else, and by the time I was done, my kitchen was a wreck. But the few bites I had of turkey and orange cranberry sauce were awesome.





And this goofy little pig, was the favorite toy of the day. My friend Buffi bought it for Anthony and he got us to all play it with him about 87 times. It was a good day.

What I Ate Wednesday

I found a fun linkup on Jen's blog, that I thought I'd try out this week. A few people have asked me lately what exactly I can eat. Here's a day of food for me, in pictures.


Gotta start the day with a cup of Good Earth Chai tea.



.
Laughing cow light cheese gets spread on the peeled cucumbers. Then the turkey and cheese gets rolled up.



Can you tell how itty bitty my plates are? They're the size of a saucer for a tea cup. This is salsa chicken with black beans and a little reduced fat cheese on top.







Teriyaki chicken with stir-fry veggies.






Snack is three mozzarella balls from Trader Joe's. One of my favorite snacks.

What WIAW isn't about

Comparison - Judgement - Restriction - Guilt

What WIAW is about

Celebrating one of the glorious things we all have in common: We all eat!

WIAW is about food and fun! It's about making new friends, breaking out of a food rut, inspiring yourself & others, embracing fruit & vegetables, finding new ways to eat your favorite foods, and so much more <3

Celebrate blogging. Celebrate Food. Celebrate Individuality.
[Cause over here, we like to party!]

We're off to a rough start...

Three weeks. That's how long Amelia has off of school for Christmas vacation. I had all these plans of activities and little things to go during the day. Then, Monday morning, Anthony came to my room about 2 AM. He climbed in bed, snuggled in, and promptly starting throwing up. All my plans for the day went out the window. Even with the illness we ended up having a pretty good day.





I've picked up some new playdough toys while Christmas shopping and had them put away for a rainy (or sick!) day. A few new shapes and cutters can make them so excited about playing with something simple like playdough. The playdough kept them entertained for an hour or more, while I got all the laundry sorted and going. Sick kiddo means lots of extra washing.



Amelia put on shows with her Zoobles. Of course, I was the audience. These are her new favorite toys. She got them at a Christmas party over the weekend, and I don't think she's been more than a few feet away from them since. They even went to The Nutcracker with us.



We had lots of snuggle time with the sickie boy and the blankie he likes to steal borrow from the couch. (Since he "lost" his blankie, he just finds other things to snuggle, pretty much anything knitted will work. I keep finding his scarf in his bed.)


And of course, if I have snuggle pictures with one kid, I have to take one with the other kid too. Poor Amelia wanted to go and do and we just couldn't. Anthony stopped getting sick by mid day, but I just didn't want to take him to the park or the dog park in case the pukies weren't really gone.


I love this little cook book. My mom or my sister found it at a yard sale years ago, and somehow it got passed on to me. So Amelia and I made some Strawberry Smashup Muffins. I can't eat them, but the kids loved them.

The kids thought this part of the day was pretty exciting. Anthony has an old TV in his room that sits under his bed. It doesn't have cable and most of the time it doesn't have a DVD player either, so he doesn't get to watch it much. But once in a while they get to take the DVD player in there and watch a show. Usually when I just don't want to see Dora on the 50" screen in the living room.

I made biscuits, with cutters picked by the kids of course, and chicken noodle soup for dinner. While I was finishing up the soup, this is what the kids were doing.

Amelia said she had to stand on the very top of the slide to see the beautiful sunset.

Even days that start off a little rough and involve sickies, a lot of bleach and extra laundry for me, can be good days. I just have to remember that.

What are you all doing for your Christmas vacations? We've got some more fun stuff planned, Disney on ice, a trip to the beach, a visit to Disneyland, I'll post more later on hopefully.

It's that time of year..

I really miss people. My uncle and my grandma both passed away last year right before Christmas. My dads been gone for almost 6 years. Gosh that breaks my heart. My dad was one of 6 kids, and only two are still alive. My mom has lost both of her sisters. And ya know what my mom is doing for Christmas? She's going to the women's prison to visit my sister. Ugh. It's just sad. And depressing. I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately. It happens now and then that I just really miss him. He was a good guy. He never quite mastered staying clean and sober but he was a good person. Okay this is just going to turn into a sad ramble so I better stop writing now.

Three months later...

Time has flown since my surgery. I'm officially three months post op and I can stop going to the doctor's quite so often, I don't have to go back for three months now. I still have a huge list of forbidden foods. Still can't have pasta, rice, bread, pork, beef, sweets, fats, soda, and pretty much anything that tastes yummy. :-) I didn't expect how much my tastes would change. I don't really miss most of the foods. I would kill for a diet coke though. I tried a sip of of diet soda a couple weeks ago, (I know, I know, I should KNOW better) and it wasn't pleasant. It hurt. A lot. Don't think I'll try it any time soon, even if I still crave it. I eat 1/4 cup of food 4-5 times a day. Ninety percent of what I eat is still lean protein with some sauces (keeps food from getting stuck,) and some carbs in the form of cooked veggies and a bit of fruit. Most fruit is too sweet and makes me sick, but I seem to get along with strawberries and pears.

I've had a few instances of what's probably low blood sugar. That's a bit scary. I can't just eat whatever's around or it will make me sick, so I'm having to plan ahead much more, and keep snacks and protein drinks in my car or my purse. On the plus side, I've lost 65 pounds in the last three months. That's pretty exciting.

I have no regrets about the surgery. I'm so glad I did it. However, no matter how prepared I thought I was, there are so many things that pop up that I just didn't realize or think enough about. It's all worth it though.

Not sure who won this battle...

but, I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. Anthony has a love hate relationship with preschool. Every morning he fights me about going. He whines, he cries, he refuses to get dressed or take his backpack to the car. Once we're there he loves it. He warms up quickly, doesn't cry when I leave and doesn't have any major complaints about his day. He'd just rather stay at home with me, in his pajamas, watching cartoons. Ha. So his preschool is set up and paid for through the city we live in. The first few months they let 30 kids in, which was way more than they were set up to handle. After a few months the realized there was a limit of 20 for a reason, and dropped it down to 25. So each month there are 30 kids from the previous months, plus whoever finds out about the classes all trying to register for 25 spots. Kids already in the class don't get priority. You can tell where this is going can't you? I forgot to register Anthony for next month, and the class is full. His teacher apologized repeatedly, she's asked them over and over to stop opening the class up to online registrations but they do it anyway. So I guess he wins and he gets to stay home with me. You can bet I'm going to be one of the first parents registering for January though. It might be time to go back to playgroup for the next month, if we just stay home every day I'll go batty. And so will Anthony I think. He likes constant interaction, and that's hard for me. I've really gotten used to my 2.5 hours a morning of quiet time to clean or whatever.

He's four!

He wanted a Halloween Birthday Party.

He dressed up as a nocturnal firefighter and Grandma Toni came to visit.

Anthony got a ton of presents, a lot of cash, some gift cards and even some clothes.



We had a pinata in the park, crazy halloween cupcakes, and the kids dressed up (for a while, it got too hot for costumes.)


Lots of friends and half the kids in the neighborhood showed up. We do big birthday parties around here. People hang out all day. I think one friend was here for about 8 hours.


It was about 90 degrees that day, but it didn't stop anyone from having fun. The kids just drank extra Capri Suns and Green Slime Punch when they took breaks from the bouncer.

Jeff obviously had too much sugar.

Anthony thought it would be a good idea to show me his toes while I took a picture of him with the cupcakes. I swear there were no toes in the cupcakes!



In all it was a great day! Even though it's a lot of work, and I always spend too much money, I'm glad we do big parties for the kids.

Happy Halloween!

The kids really got into Halloween this year. Anthony requested a Halloween birthday party ( I'll post those pics in a bit). Between parties at school, birthday parties, and the actual holiday it feels like we were celebrating Halloween for weeks. Amelia dressed up as Snow White and Anthony was a nocturnal firefighter, which happens to be what he wants to be when he grows up too. We went trick or treating for about half an hour; the neighbor child went with us. Then we hung out in the driveway and handed out candy. I think the kids had more fun handing out candy than they did trick or treating.

After handing out candy for a while, the neighbor child and Amelia went out trick or treating again with neighbor child's family. I've been working in Amelia's class for a while now, and it was funny to come across kids trick or treating who recognized me from the school. "Hey you're Amelia's mom! Where's Amelia?"

Because the girls were gone for another hour and a half or so, Anthony did the majority of the handing out of candy. I'd guess we probably had 150 kids. Lots of big groups, lots of tiny adorable kids, and a fair amount of high school kids. But the older kids were mostly all in costume and they were all polite, so I didn't have a problem with that. All in all it was a good night and I think we all had a good time. I love our neighborhood.

Another thing

One more thing I didn't realize about this surgery, is how much time I would spend focused on food even though I can't eat. I spend all day thinking about food and eating and drinking. Is it time to eat yet? How many minutes is it until I can drink again? (Food and drinks cannot be taken in at the same time.) Which medicine or vitamin should I be taking at this time of day? Did I measure my "meal" properly (I have 1/4 of a cup of soft foods up to 4 times a day)? How many more ounces of protein shake do I need to choke down? How many weeks is it until I can add in some fruit or veggies? Am I getting enough protein in today? Am I going to vomit? Will this stuffed feeling ever go away? I start out at a meal feeling full and before I eat 1/4 cup of food, I'm starting to feel like I'm going to be sick.

What's for lunch Wednesday

I'm new to posting lunches and doing bento style lunches, so just bear with me as I figure this out.

Here's a quick pic of Amelia's lunch today.

Peanut Butter and Jelly on whole wheat, with moon and stars cut out of cheese. I wasn't trying to make a face, it just turned out that way. In the same section are gold fish and grapes. The bottom right is plain yogurt with frozen* strawberries and strawberry stars on top. She also has a sliced up plum, and out of the picture is a container of baby carrots and milk in her thermos.

What are your kids having for lunch this week?


*She says the frozen strawberries taste better in her yogurt because they're all mushy by lunchtime. :-)

Oh, and check back later this week, I have a scrapbook giveaway to post. Should be up by Friday. I'm really excited to share it with you guys.

It's 1 AM

and I can't sleep. I went out this morning to home depot and sears. I then came home and took a 4 hour nap. Now of course I can't sleep. I'm apologizing now for the odd random blog posts, or absences, that will probably be around for a while.

I have a bunch of blog post ideas in my head, school lunch ideas, how to deal with an 80lb dog when you can't lift more than 10lbs, how to get the house nice and clean for company a week after major surgery etc etc. I'm also on pain meds right now, which should make my blog posts either crazy or more interesting. We'll see. lol.

One thing I didn't realize

One thing I didn't realize about this surgery was how tired I would be. Not from the surgery itself really, but from the small amounts of food I'm taking in. I think I told you all that one of the things being done was removing my gallbladder. The other involved operating on my stomach. So, I have an incision in my stomach. I can't have solid food yet, and there are quite a few things that I can't have because they'd irritate. For now I can have sips of water and protein shakes. Yesteday I got about 400 calories total for the day. That's normal. I'm under a surgeons supervision have had numerous tests and will have frequents tests of vitamin levels and other things to make sure I'm ok. (in other words, please don't try to live on 400 calories a day cause it sounds fun ok?)

So the point of this post is to say I'm tired. So very tired.

For later...

Saving these links for later, blogs I want to check out...

How to be a stylish mom. *Snort* I know I know. If you know me, this is kind of funny. I'm the mom in yoga pants and a tshirt, or flipflops jeans and a hoodie. But since I started losing weight (almost 40 lbs gone yay me.) I'm going to have to do more shopping. And there will be no more babies, and there better be no more weight gain, and there's no more nursing, no more infants spitting up, no more, well you get the idea, so I thought I'd try and step outside my usual momwear and get some cute clothes. And honestly, I need all the help I can get. lmao.

Bibliomomia. Haven't read it yet, but it looks cute.

A mom style blog. I'm enjoying her entertaining posts about covering the afterbaby pooch and finding clothes that are cute and suitable for chasing toddlers in.

One week to go

I'm having surgery in one week. It's amazing to me how quickly time is going all of the sudden. At first it seemed like the longest process ever. I got the referral from my doctor back in November of 2010. And here it is, more than nine months later. But time is going quickly now. I'm on a mostly liquid diet. It sucks. I don't like it. But, I'll be on a liquid diet and then a pureed diet for a month after surgery so I guess it's time to suck it up and get used to it huh?

Besides trying to get everything in the house ready, (dinner plans for Jeff and easy stuff in the freezer, daycare arranged for the day of surgery so Jeff can go with me, day care for Amelia after school, ) and on top of it we'll have family staying with us a week after my surgery. I'm just nervous about all of it, and I'd like to just curl up in a ball somewhere with a book or something and forget about all of this. But, I can't. So I'll just vent here, and carry on. My goal for today is to get the dining room floor scrubbed. Because of course, I can't have dirty grout when I go to the hospital right? lmao. Okay, back to my neurotic cleaning now. :-D

Random Ramblings.. (ie brain dump w/random pictures)

School has begun. And if I thought our summer was busy, wow. Amelia started school last week. So every morning we all get up, get dressed, make lunches and drop Mia off at school. The other local school district is still on summer vacation, so Anthony and I still go to the park every day for lunch. (Gotta love free lunch in the park. Not because it's free, but because I don't have to make the boy lunch! lol) So we play for an hour or so, then come back home. We usually have an hour and a half till it's time to pick Amelia up. Being in first grade means she gets picked up with the rest of the school, not at noon with just the kindergarten. This means, we have to get there 20 minutes early if I want to park closer to the school than just being at our house would be. If there weren't so many free roaming dogs in that neighborhood I'd just walk to the school every day. Id rather avoid the packs of wild chihuahuas though so we drive the mile and a half most of the time. So after we pick Amelia up we come home, and she whines and cries the whole way that she's hungry and she's tired. Then somewhere between school and our garage, it's revealed that lunch was just too short and all she ate was a carrot, or some cherries, or one day she managed to eat her Trader joe's gogurt. So we get in the house, and she eats her whole lunch. At 3:30.



Anthony is usually wound up by now too. So two days a week we get everyone changed and head out to drop Amelia off at one of her after school activities. It's an hour long. Of course they changed her other class time and day so it now follows the first class. If it's not a karate/cheerleading night then we come and do homework. Then it's dinner time, clean up from dinner, walk the dog, take care of the yard, bathe the kids, get them in bed, fold a load of laundry and I fall into bed somewhere in there too. I thought when Amelia started school, things would be less hectic with her at school 6.5 hours a day. I think I was wrong! lol. And it will only get more hectic when Anthony starts preschool in September. I'll drop one kid off, run across town to drop the other off, have two hours of free time to frantically clean my house, then go pick one kid up, have a few more hours, and pick up the other one. I'm thinking things will calm down in a few years when Anthony is in first grade. lol. Have you all noticed that I keep saying things will calm down when... I don't think we're ever going to get there. Of course J can't wait for me to go back to work, or at least that's how it seems. So the plan is once Anthony is in school I'll go back to school. Then things will be really hectic! lol. I think I'm going to have to get the kids and hubby trained to do chores before I do school for me though. I can't see them all coming home each night making a healthy dinner, doing homework, cleaning up and doing the night time routine, while I'm at class. I can't even get any of them to put their dishes in the dishwasher or their laundry in the hamper. lol.





So my surgery date got pushed back. It's now the week before Jeff's family comes for a visit. Eep. I'm nervous about how that's going to go over. I don't necessarily recover well, and I generally don't want people in my space when I'm sick. Hopefully it will all go well and J and the kids can keep them all entertained and I can hide in my room and be in pain alone. lol This surgery involved a lot of messing with digestion and stuff, so it's pretty common for a lot of vomiting. I'll also basically be on a baby food diet for a month or so after surgery. I'm not looking forward to trying out new foods and my bodies reaction to them all with company. Oh well, it will be nice to see everyone even if I can't participate in the trips to the beach and such.



We got Anthony a new bed. Not sure if I posted about that or not. It's a big tall loft bed and so far he's doing great with it. It gives him a ton more room in his bedroom so that's cool. And he's more cautious than Amelia, so i think I trust him more with a tall bed, even if he is way younger. I'm afraid I'd find Amelia jumping off the top if it was in her room.





Hmm what else has been going on. OH! Amelia and I visited my friend's church. It was lovely. It's this huge old church right in the middle of LA. Loved it. Totally random to look up in the middle of church and see someone that you've watched on TV the week before, but that's LA I guess. I really enjoyed the service. It's been a long time since I went to church and felt comfortable. I've never not believed in God, but I've had bad experiences with people being judgmental and hateful and using God as an excuse to be that way. I won't teach my kids that it's okay to hate. So anyway Amelia has been asking about God a lot, so I thought this would be good for her. She had fun and I did too. I think we'll definitely be back. I think it's a little far to go to have this church become our home church but it's nice to visit. And of course it was fun to hang out with my friend too.



So as part of my presurgery diet, I have had to cut most starch out of my diet. Um, it's not fun. Goodbye bread, chips, tortillas, pasta and rice. Its actually not as bad as I thought it would be, the hardest part is making stuff for the kids and smelling it and not being able to eat it. I made Anthony some whole wheat toast the other day and after I cooked it and buttered it, it smelled so yummy! Funny how that works. Other than that day though it's been okay. And my energy levels are much better too, less up and down.



Speaking of energy, I decided to paint our dining room table this weekend. So far it's going ok. Chairs are done minus the seat covers, and they look good. The table top not so much. It was not in good shape when I started and I just didn't sand it enough. I really need to buy a belt sander I think. But we always have a table cloth on the table anyway, so it will just get covered back up anyway. I'll post a picture when it's all done. After surgery, when I have more time, I'll get a belt sander, sand the heck out of it, then reprime and paint and just redo the table top.

Okay, I think I'm done rambling now. Brain dump over. :-) Happy Saturday everyone.

Where did the summer go?

I found this poem online somewhere this morning and it totally sums up how I feel about the end of summer. My babies aren't really babies any more. With both kids home all summer, my house feels like it's in a constant state of messiness. I could have spent more time mopping and less time taking them to story times at the library. I could have spent more time knocking down cobwebs and less time taking them to the beach. I could have spent more time doing laundry and less time at the park. But, I didn't. And as summer vacation draws to a close, I'm okay with that.

Song For a Fith Child, by Ruth Hamilton. 1958

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
and out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
but I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Wordless Wednesday {At The Beach}

The kids dug up this sign while building sandcastles. Hopefully it's old, and Huntington Harbor isn't totally dangerous...