I Heart Faces: Red, White & Blue

I love this snapshot taken of R, D, & E while we were waiting for fireworks to begin on Friday night.  (This was my best attempt to get 3 squirmy kiddos centered under "liberty").  Isn't that why being an American is so great?

Liberty:  The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life.

The freedom to complain or commend our president, the freedom to worship or not as I see fit, the freedom to have a gun in my house or not...  LIBERTY.

Thank you to all of those, past, present, and future who make liberty possible for all of us.  Happy 4th!

Test Post

This is a test to see if I can create a new post, this is only a test.

Had this been a real post you would be shocked.

*This was done by my wonderful, tech-savvy husband Jason, who figured out why blogger has not been working for me for quite some time.  Apparently, I need to actually read those Blogger Update thingies (technical term:) to know when settings have been changed!

i heart faces: whimsey

WLW: Along the Journey

Today is the last Wednesday of Lent. I set a goal of exercising every day, for 40 days to give myself a small taste of the sacrifice of Jesus' actions. Here is what I have learned through the journey...

1. Even walking for 40 mins, in 40 degree temperatures, with stinging rain beating down on you, pales in comparison to Good Friday. WOW!

2. The more you exercise in front of your children, the more they want to exercise themselves.

3. Not every friend is going to be happy for you when you tell her you lost weight.

4. My family does not feel neglected, or slighted, or love me any less just because I exercised some evenings instead of sitting down and watching a movie with them.

5. Regular exercise makes a huge difference emotionally and physically. I'm less overwhelmed, happier with my physical appearance, and exerience less chronic pain.

What have you "learned along the journey" (weight loss related or not)?

Sunday, Sunday

I think I know I've shared before that I have an autoimmune disease that limits the foods I can eat without being in agonizing pain. Because we live in a smallish city, I can't always find foods in our stores that I can eat (like breakfast cereal, tortillas, etc). So, every once in a while, we venture to the great north to go to Trader Joe's.

Eli and Ruby LOVE going to Trader Joe's to find the monkey. If you haven't been before, here's the deal... you look through the store for the purple money. When you find him, you tell and employee and he/ she gives you a yummy prize. I get food I can eat, they get a prize, everyone's happy. This particular trip we also arranged it so we could have lunch at Five Guys. Yumm-O! After we got back home, we ventured to a local toy store where the Easter Bunny was visiting. While we were there, the kids got some delicious cupcakes

from my friend Aubrey. After dinner, they went to town on those cupcakes. (Here are Ruby and David; Eli scarfed his down so quickly I didn't even have time to grab the camera!)

All in all, a delicious Sunday:)

Weight Loss Thursday:)

Yesterday was crazy... so please pardon me joining the party on Thursday....

So, last week was definately a rough patch for me. I was procrastinating exercise until 8:00 or 8:30 pm, I was whining that I didn't want to do it... my poor husband.

Anyway, on Saturday night we were going to church. I decided to put on my pair of kacki pants, which I haven't worn since Lent began. I noticed that they fit a little differently, in a good way.

Sunday morning I decided to weigh my self (I have not been weighing myself regularly. I am prone to being a bit obsessive about it if I weigh myself more than one a month, one every couple of months.). So anyway, I was down FIVE pounds since Lent began. FIVE POUNDS! I could not believe it!

THAT has put some serious spring back in my step when it comes to exercising; no whining this week! Of course, I'm not looking to drop a magic number, I just want more than one pair of jeans, one pair of kackis, and one pair of shorts that fit my body. It just helped me see that what I have been doing is working, that my hard work and sacrifice is making a difference. Isn't that what we all long to know?

Now, if I could just keep myself from eating the Trader Joe's Caramel Sauce straight out of the jar during pre-school time...:)

Tasty Tuesday: Vietnamese Roasted Chicken

I found a new recipe on my favorite blog... okay, I'm always saying, "my favorite blog"... so many favorite blogs... How about my favorite cooking blog?! Yea, that will work. Okay, so I found a new recipe on my favorite cooking blog called Vietnamese Roasted Chicken. I didn't know about this one. I was a little afraid we were going to end up tossing it and calling a pizza, but, much to my DELIGHT, this is one of my new fav meals! Seriously, you've got to try this, like tomorrow!

Vietnamese Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:

4-6 chicken thighs (I used boneless & was glad I did when the meat was falling apart)

1 1/2 T soy sauce (I subbed Bragg's Liquid Aminos for IC reasons)

1 1/2 T fish sauce (we had this on hand, if you don't, look in the asian sec of grocery store)

1 1/2 t white sugar

1/2 t black pepper

4 cloves chopped garlic

1 T oil

Preparation:

Put chicken in crock. Mix remaining ingredients and pour on top of chicken. Cook on low about 6 hours or on low 3 to 4 hours. Serve over rice. (For our family of 5, I doubled the recipe, which gave us about 7 servings.)