Nursing is Great!

I don't think that I have fully appreciated nursing before.  But I am much more knowledgeable about calories and weight gain and loss now after my weight loss journey a year ago that got interrupted with becoming pregnant.  But I have gained that appreciation now.

I did not gain any weight over that holidays and I ate A LOT.  I didn't really loose any either, but I didn't gain and I think I should have gained at least 10 pounds.  I am thinking of this because Travis and I are tracking our food now.  We started on January 2nd.

With my other kids, when I was nursing, I was a bottomless pit.  But this time I don't feel so hungry.  I think it is a blessing from God.  I don't have a scale, but I do know that I have lost 3/4 of an inch off my waist and 1" off my hips in the first week.  And I am enjoying my food.  I am limiting what I eat, but I don't feel deprived.  Some days I just want to eat all day, but other days (most days) I can just eat my food and be completely content.

But I have a day about once a week that I disregard my calorie limit.  Today is one of those days.  I am typing this as I eat some of a Marie Callender's Chocolate Satin pie, that I unfortunately looked at the ingredients of it, but I have dismissed that bad news from my head to enjoy the chocolately deliciousness of it.  As I do, I am thinking of all the calories that my cute little baby sucks from me and not feeling guilty at all.  Tomorrow I will be back to a strict calorie intake, but tonight I will enjoy.

**Morning note.  Eating junk does not actually make you feel good.  Especially when you are used to eating healthy.  I feel full of junk!

Not a New Year's Resolution.

I have been pregnant or nursing almost constantly for the past 14 years and I am done.  I think our family is complete, so I am not planning on getting pregnant again (I am alway open if the Lord has other plans).  

Also, I weaned Zelda a few weeks ago.  She was biting me and then I needed to take some medicine that I couldn't take while nursing, so we unexpectedly went cold turkey.  She hasn't even missed it.  

Now, I am in the process of retraining my body how much food and exercise it needs.  When I was pregnant or nursing, I would get so ravenously hungry and I felt like there was a bottomless pit in my stomach.  I could eat and eat and eat.  It is amazing that I am not heavier than I am.  Also, I felt a responsibility to protect my body that was sustaining another life, I didn't want to do any exercises that I could get hurt.  Bike riding was out (I am not a good bike rider and so the possibility of me crashing is great), and I had also developed Plater Fasciitis, but I have been wearing Orthotics for 2 years now and my feet don't keep my from doing anything anymore.  

I am ready to reclaim my body.

One of the Christmas presents we got was a family membership to the YMCA.  I can exercise without the kids interrupting me or climbing on me.  Wow!  It takes longer since I have to drive there, find parking, get everyone out of the car and checked into the child care, etc.  But I am not nursing Zelda anymore, so I have some extra time.  (She regularly nursed for an hour at a time a few times a day.)  I also get to take any of the exercise classes they offer.  I have been going to a yoga class twice a week and love it.  

Along with all of this exercise, I have been tracking and limiting my calories with www.sparkpeople.com.  

I watched two of my sisters do it and their results were amazing.  I am not planning on doing it forever, or for even very long.  It takes a lot of time!  But it is a great tool for retraining my body how much food it needs,  learning portion sizes and being aware of the food choices I make.  I don't know that I have lost any weight yet, it has only been 1 1/2 weeks, but I have so much energy and some of the extra fluff around my middle is not so fluffy.  My face doesn't look puffy in the mornings like it was starting too.

The last part I should mention is that when I was starting all this, we had a lesson in Relief Society at church about repentance.  It was taken from Elder Christofferson's talk The Divine Gift Of Repentance, from the last General Conference.  One of the things he says in it is, 

"Without repentance, there is no real progress or improvement in life." 

I thought to myself, I want to make real progress, so I am going to repent.  I took my desires to make changes to my eating and exercising habits to the Lord and asked for help to take care of the body that he gave me. 

I have been so blessed.  I have not felt very hungry (certainly never ravenous) and I haven't felt deprived even though I am eating considerably less than I used to.  I often end the day a few hundred  calories short of my minimum.  It has been really fun to look a the numbers and see what I didn't get enough of that day, fat, protein or carbs and then find additional things to eat to balance it all out.  Some nights I have to eat a serving of ice cream because my fats are too low that day, and I really could use the extra calcium.  Another unexpected delight is that food tastes so good!

This happening right around new year is all coincidental because I don't really make new years resolutions, but here is to a new me!

Gingerbread (Not Really)

We made gingerbread houses (only we used graham crackers) at my sister's today.

We all had a lot of fun, and not only because we got to eat candy.

We tried putting the royal frosting in decorating bags, but it was too stiff to squeeze out well.

My sister and her oldest son working hard.

Julius and his cousin tested out the candy for us.

We moved to just using knives and our fingers to put the icing on.

 Daphne finished her house.

That is a lot of icing Mo.

Trip helping Julius.

My cute nephew.

Ocean and Lily working on their houses.

My sister decorating the house Rez abandoned.  

Here are all the houses.

Daphne's house.

Julius's house (he had help from Dad).

Lily's house.

And the other side.

Ocean's house.

This was Harvey's house.  He slipped on his chair, and fell on it, smashing it flat.

 

So, we rebuilt it in to this.

On the way home, he dropped it and it broke to pieces again.

Here is Mo's house.  He was so proud of it.  He was holding on his lap on the ride home and Trip went over a bumpy stretch of road.  The first bump lifted the house off the plate, the second bump smashed it flat.  He was not happy.

Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

For our Thanksgiving this year we decided to really make it a feast and eat in courses.

Also, my brother in law's family has an annual tradition of an Italian feast on New Years day.  We had talked about joining them this year, but they are going to be gone, so we incorporated some of the Italian feast into Thanksgiving.

Around 10:30 am we started off with appetizers: deviled eggs, crackers and cheese, veggie platter, apples and marshmallow/yogurt dipping sauce and spanakopita.

Later we officially started the feast with a cranberry juice toast and 

Cappiletti soup with rolls.  

The Cappiletti is homemade stuffed pasta, shaped like a little cap, hence the name.

A couple of hours later, we had the Lasagna course.  

Also, homemade by my brother in law.  

We next came the pumpkin pie palette cleanser.

After our tummies had settled a bit, we moved on to the veggie course with baked sweet potatoes.  It turns out if you wrap them in foil then bake them, they are delicious!  We also had succotash and green bean almondine.   

It was all delicious.  

Next came the main course of turkey, 

stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry jelly.

Last of all was the Pie course.  We had 14 1/2 pies. 2 lemon meringue, 1 pumpkin chiffon, 1 cherry, 1 large apple, 2 chocolate chess, 2 pumpkin spice, 1 large pumpkin, 1 chocolate cream, 1 vanilla pudding, 1 old fashioned cream, 1 strawberry, and 1/2 a pecan pie.  

It was great having the courses.  None of the food got lost in the crowd, you could really savor all of it.  We did end up eating all day long, but we took breaks and played games,

 and there were enough adults that we took turns in the kitchen.  

It was a wonderful day of food, family and fun.

And a good time to reflect on all that we are blessed with.  

Happy Giving Thanks, we are.

Chili, Chili, Chili...

I had to make a poster advertising a chili cook off we are having at church.  I like to make things like that on the computer.  Especially now with my Mac and Pages.  I did run into a snag though,  I wanted a  picture of a bowl of chili to put on the poster.  I looked on line for some clip art, but I couldn't find any that looked like what I wanted, for free.  Trip asked if I was going to take my own picture of some chili to use and after fruitlessly looking, I did.  

I opened a can of chili, put it in a bowl,  and set up a little photo shoot on my dining room table.  I used Daphne's red skirt for back drop and had to replace the burned out light bulbs in the dining room fixture and bring in another lamp for extra light.  But now, I have several shots of chili to choose from.  (And so do you.  If you need a picture of chili, and like one of mine, feel free to use it.)

This is the picture I ended up using. 

 I really like how this shot turned out, but it didn't work for what I needed.

Here I threw in a few chip, and ended up eating it for lunch.

We added a couple of dollops of Daisy sour cream and Daphne took this picture.

Then I used my new skill of cutting out the image, that I acquired by following the directions given on this blog.  And I had a perfect bowl of chili.  

I put it into my poster and voila.  It worked perfectly.

Edible Fruit Arrangement

I was co-hosting a baby shower recently and thought it would be fun to make an edible fruit arrangement.  I did look online at Edible Arrangements for inspiration.

I started with some green florist foam.

And trimmed it to fit in a wide mouth mason jar.

Then I wrapped the jar in brown paper (a cut up grocery sack)

like this.

We were celebrating a boy baby, so I blue ribbon it was.

I used pineapple, strawberries and red grapes.

I cut the outside off the pineapple and sliced it into 1/2 in thick slices, then cut them with a cookie cutter into star shapes.  Then put them carefully onto a bamboo skewer.  

You have to be careful that you don't poke your finger, because the skewers are very pointy and sharp.

 Next, I washed the grapes

and poked them onto the skewers in groups of 3-5.

I did the same for the strawberries, but they were just one to a skewer.  I left the stems on.  Also, be careful not to poke in too far.

I cut the skewers to the desired length with my garden pruning shears and them placed them in the foam prepared jar.

I think it turned out well.

And it was delicious!

Peaches

Today we preserved peaches.  We had 4 - 24 lb boxes of Red Globe peaches.  

Daphne's friend and her sister came to help.  Thanks girls! (one of them had to go before the picture was taken).

We ended up with,

28 quarts canned

22+ quarts frozen

9 1/2 pints of jam (I am waiting for the jam in the canner)

plus the ones we have eaten over the last week.

Over all a successful endeavor.