The Real New Year's Resolution Post....geez

Sorry about the early post, still not sure how that happened.

So we are about one week into the new year and while pondering what to write about I am reminded of the big topic of New Year's Resolutions, because one of mine was to blog more often. Now notice I didn't say that I would blog EVERYDAY because that is really just setting me up for failure. Now, I think you all know what I am talking about because by this time of the new year most of us have already failed on a lot of our resolutions.

Now I am all for setting goals and improving ourselves. I just think that January 1st shouldn't be the day that we start stressing about all the things we don't like about ourselves, but it should be a gift of mindful thought about how we can make the new year the best year it can be.

So a bit of a back story. I subscribe to the magazine Cooking Light. I love this magazine. It is about cooking good whole food in a healthy way. They had an article by Dr. Susan Albers that caught my attention. She isn't a dietitian but a psychologist, and she really hit the nail on the head about what I want most out of my life. It touches on my relationships, my impending loss of Andrew to college, my fear of getting cancer, my obsession with food (both eating it and not eating it), and my life as a teacher.

It all boils down to being mindful. Being mindful with everything you do. Live in every moment and really do things that make you feel good about yourself. Give yourself JOY.

The book I immediately bought for my kindle was her book regarding food. I have an unhealthy obsession with food. Now you might think this means that I am a over eater, but that isn't the big thing for me. My family has a lot of cancer in it, and I just married the man of my dreams and have SO much life to catch up on with him so I am obsessed with food and making sure that I "eat all the right things" so that I can live a very long life. This attitude causes me to diet and restrict and then binge when the restriction gets too much, which it always does.  I have always been someone who loves to cook healthy and I have studied nutrition and eating habits and have found some books that really have changed my life and my attitude towards eating. I am no longer on a diet. I am no longer obsessing about food. I am so happy that I am not worried so much about food. I am concentrating about eating healthy food and eating food that I like.  Now changing habits aren't always perfect, but that is what I love about her she talks a lot about forgiveness and working towards goals not perfection.

Dr. Susan Albers changed my life in my opinion her way is really the only way to change with regards to food.

Here are my books (I would insert a picture but blogger is not cooperating, I have a couple of New Year's resolutions for them):

Michael Pollan - Food Rules

Dr. Susan Albers - Eating Mindfully and her "But I deserve this chocolate!"

The Michael Pollan book tells us all about food and nutrition from a researchers point of view not a dietitian and Dr. Albers book tells us all about how to go about eating.

Put away the diet pills and stop spending money on "weight loss food, and diets".

But most importantly live mindfully, enjoy the moment, and life.  It goes by too fast.  I hope that by January 1st 2014 I am happy, healthier and not sad that another year of my life flew by.

More Later

- A Ro

A Few More Pictures

As I sit here writing this I am listening to Sarah practice her clarinet scales.  She has been furiously practicing her scales and memorizing them because she wants to audition for the band that is the next one up.  I am a music teacher and I have never seen a person work so hard towards a goal.  As soon as she came to live with us she wanted to re-learn how to play the clarinet.  She wanted to join the band in high school.  That meant she had one year to get it together.  We got her a clarinet and some lessons and away she went.  She joined the band this year AND the marching band and it was the best thing for her. 

I am constantly amazed with how much this girl has blossomed since moving here.  She has only missed two days of school since she has been with us, she has learned the clarinet,participated in marching band, and has a 3.57 grade point average. 

She made it onto the marching band academic honors team.

We are so proud of her!!

So I mentioned that I have some other adorable nephews and a niece and since my sister-in-law Michelle sent some pictures of our adventures in Iowa I have a few more to show you.

This is my beautiful niece Sami.  She is very glamorous and has the best clothes.  She is super sweet and so smart and full of energy.

Here are my nephews JoJo and Tyler.  They are also so smart and darn cute.  JoJo, the younger one, just loves his Tyler and always is right next to him.  It is a very interesting cousin dynamic.  My two are the oldest and kinda do their own thing.  JoJo and Sami are about six months apart in age and they are two peas in a pod.  JoJo adores Tyler and follows him around, and little Abby just loves them all and is the caboose in the cousin train.  They just walk around all following Tyler.  It is so cute.

Here is the dynamic trio with their mom's.  I love this picture.  It was such a happy evening.

And if you ever wondered out of the four siblings which two cause the most trouble just look at the following picture.

Let's just say Kate and I keep things on track.

More Later

- A Ro

Hey! It's Me...Happy New Year

First I have to put a disclaimer out there. I am attempting to blog on my iPad. So we will see.

So to ease me (and potentially you) back into this blogging thing I decided to start with some pictures of the goings on around here.

I have decided that I love making cookies and if I ever won the lottery I would open a cookie shop. I know more than likely if I ever won the lottery I'd be on a beach somewhere with an umbrella drink thinking about anything else but opening a cookie shop, but one could hope.

Here are some that I did for the holidays, by the way these cookies also won me an award at the cookie exchange again this year, that makes 4 in a row...

...but who's counting.




I gave these away with some snowmen cake pops as teacher and friend gifts. I also did some peppermint candy cookies.



Sarah went back to Iowa to visit her mom on Christmas Eve so we had a "Sar-e Christmas" on Sunday the 23rd. We went to her favorite sushi restaurant and went home to open gifts.






Bella's gift from Sarah...a penguin she made in ceramics class.


This is her opening her new Kindle.

The rest of the family opened gifts on Christmas morning before we left for Iowa.


Our tree.


Maggie and her stocking.

We left for Iowa and got this welcome.


Part of my mom's yard.


The cows outside our back door.


A little Abby peeking out.

Speaking of Abby she made it into a few of my picture...now mind you I have two other cute nephews and another cutie pie niece and I promise I'll post some pictures of them soon.


She loved sitting on Andrew's lap she would come up to me and ask me if she could go find Andrew and sit on his lap...most of the time she was shy around him.


She also liked to cuddle with Bella she was sad in this picture and just needed Bella.


She kinda liked me a little too...





Vegas loved her too...sometimes.


Bella took her outside in the snow...so cute!!


Justin came to hang out with us too.


And Christmas wouldn't be the same without me and my siblings and our "wallpaper" picture...geez how come I missed the tall gene.

We went to a place called Incredible Pizza and played mini golf.


One post I will have to tell you all about my crazy phobia regarding life size statues. Let's just say this was a tough picture for me to take.


Kate and Andrew tore up guitar hero.

Well that's a start. More to come I promise. No really I promise.

More Later

A-Ro

Weekend Wrap Up Complete with No Pictures

That's right no pictures not a one, and I call myself a blogger.

Well I don't REALLY call my self a BLOGGER per say, just some gal who has a blog and blogs sometimes.

Mostly without pictures.

Whatever.

This weekend was so nice, and kinda busy, but really nice.

Friday evening Rich, Bella and I went to see our school's production of "Our Town".  Sarah went to the movies with friends and Andrew was at the play too, just not with us...of course.  It was SO good.  I looked at all the students on that stage who are in my chorus and was suddenly blessed and humbled that they (those awesomely talented students) give me part of their lives and share that talent with me.  So humbling.

Saturday morning I got up to run and got dressed stepped outside to find it had just started to rain.  Being the animal that I am I got out my rain resistant wind breaker and set out.  Well this windbreaker was not the the rain resistant item I had hoped and it only seemed to keep in my body heat so that by the time I was done I was about ready to pass out from heat stroke, and was still wet underneath.

I had no choice but to step into some very large puddles towards the end of my run so my feet were soaked, and of course as I stopped running and warmed down it stopped raining.  Yep.

But I did it and I was so proud of myself!!!

And that takes us up to around 8:00 am on Saturday.  Rich and I wanted to go to the Farmer's Market badly so we decided that surely it would stop raining.  We went to our usual breakfast place and decided that since it hadn't really quit raining completely YET that we would forgo our usually walk from our breakie place to the market and try to park a little closer, but surly by the time we got there it would stop because it doesn't really rain in so cal. 

What that translated too was Rich pulling up and since he was driving I would jump out and grab our favorites and jump back in the car and since it was not raining that much pouring I did not get wet at all get completely drenched.

It was worth it we now have amazing hummus, oh so good stuffed grape leaves, organic strawberries and apples, and our eggs from grass fed chickens.  It was worth a little rain.

Since it was supposed to keep raining...much to my obvious surprise...Rich decided to go to Sarah's marching band competition alone.  So me and my kidlets went to see Wreck it Ralph. 

Yes you heard correctly me and my kidlets (plural) went to see it.  Andrew graced us with his presence.  Surely it was because he will miss us terribly next year and wants to get as much time with his family.

Yeah denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Sunday was full of laundry and Andrew's orchestra concert.  I love watching him play.  I may or may not get teary eyed every time I see him play.

So there you have it.  A rainy So Cal weekend. 

Have no fear it is supposed to be in the 70's by Thanksgiving.

I knew you were concerned.

More Later

-  A Ro

Dear King Phillip Came Over For Grape Soda

OK who remembers that one??  Up until last night I only remembered the King Phillip part, and I don't recall the Dear part back then.

For those of you lucky enough not to have a 7th grader studying biological classifications you have no idea what I am talking about.

I am talking about Domain, Kingdon, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

Oh yeah...that.

Well all that I remember is that we have Kingdoms that are divided into plants and animals and maybe something about molds and fungus.  However in the 90's some guy decided that we needed to add a some domains to make things clearer further confuse us moms trying desparately to remember anything from middle school.  But if you thought that the classification system was confusing with all the King Phillip stuff just imagine adding Domains which now include stuff about prokryotes and eukaroyta and cell nucleuses or nucleui or whatever.  Let me just say that I would like the 45 minutes of my life back that I spent on this last night with Bella.  Because this science fest was just after I spent a King Phillip hour with my ATT bill trying to figure out what the heck I was charged for and only just after I about set my kitchen on fire.

Before you either laugh hysterically or gasp in horror thankfully our friend Eric was there to pick up his daughter, Bella's best friend, Hannah (who probably will never be allowed to come over to our house again) and put out the small pan fire flaming inferno.

The really scary thing is that after I put the wine in the (obviously too hot pan) and ignited the small pan fire flaming inferno.  I paniced.  It took what seemed like an eternity after I yelled "What do I do????"  to realize that I needed to turn the flame off and allowed Eric to throw the lid on the pan.  I'll have you know that I have made this recipe a thousand times with no small pan fire flaming inferno. 

After Eric left and my humiliation kicked in I decided to text him.

Me: Just want to make sure you aren't burnt

Eric: I am not burnt

Me: Do you guys want to come back for dinner :) ha ha

Eric: I think we will have something more room temperature

yeah...funny guy.

I am sorry Bella, Hannah was such a good friend.

Don't worry this gives us more time with King Phillip.

Phew.

More Later

- A Ro

A lot of Pictures to Catch Up on Things 'Round These Parts

Wow, after my concert week, tech week for Cinderella, and the performances of Cinderella this gal needed this three day weekend, courtesy of our hard working veterans.  On Friday I asked my Sixth Graders if they had a veteran in their family, it was surprising to me that many of them did.  Now it seems in my generation we had a lot of veterans as fathers and grandfathers.  All of my Grandfathers were veterans, my Dad was, and my husband is.  It seems that there are fewer in this generation and especially at a private school, but we had quite a few and we had a nice discussion.

But I was so thankful for a three day weekend.  We seemed to fill it up but there was a lot of down time.  My kids were with their dad so that freed up quite a bit of running around.  It was also nice because Rich and I had some much needed us time.  We went to dinner Friday night and then went home and watched To Kill a Mockingbird with Sarah.  They both read the book because Sarah had to read it for English.  It had been quite awhile since I had read it.  It was a good movie, I just love Scout.  Saturday was a trip to breakfast and the Farmer's Market with Rich.  Then off to Andrew's baseball game and then Sarah had a marching band competition.  Man was it cold and windy.  I felt like an Iowa girl in my hat, mittens, and three layers of sweatshirts.  Sunday was cleaning and errands and today Bella and I made cake pops for her homeroom advisory class.

Phew.

OK as the title suggests I have quite a few pictures to show you.  These date back to mid October...yikes.

I have been baking cookies quite a bit...here are a few of the ones I have been doing.

Halloween Frankensteins and Spider Webs

Dia de los muertos cookies for Bella's party

My friend and colleague had a baby shower and I made these.

I am getting hooked on decorating cookies.  So much fun.

I had my concert

Here is a video Rich shot with his phone (so the audio isn't all that great),  it is our second selection from the concert and a lot of me talking.  I realize that my mom might just be the only one who watches it all the way through...that's OK. If it even works.

We had Homecoming.

My seniors sing the National Anthem every year.  Here they are and I can tell you that I have watched all of them grow and change (two of them since 3rd grade and one since 4th)  I love them all dearly.  Especially the one to my right...sigh

Here are a few from Halloween:

My cute piggie and band nerd.  We went over to my friend Vicki's house (her daughter Hannah and Bella have been best friends since Kindergarten).  They live real close and have a fun potluck dinner with friends and family.  It was fun to trick or treat with a big bunch.

Then there was our big Cinderella production.

Steps to making an Ugly Stepsister

1.  Sponge roll the hair and sleep on it (it makes a grouchy step sister too)

 2.  Unroll and have many many curls.

 3.  Have Miss Humbert tease and tease and spray and spray (also makes a grouchy step sister)

 4.  This is what you get.  Bella turns into Portia.

5.  Take a picture with your mama.

 Well that pretty much catches you all up on the goings on around here. 

The next few weeks will just fly by.  I really hope I catch a few more weekends like this one.

More Later

- A Ro

Bella the "Ugly" Stepsister

Just a quick post to post some pictures of Bella as Portia the Ugly Stepsister in Cinderella.

I have some others to post but a parent sent these to her dad and he sent them to me and I just love them.

What a total diva.  I wonder where she gets it from??


More Later

- A Ro