Competition

This is what happens when the first sprinklings of snow hit the ground here.

It starts the male competitive juices flowing. 

Sled races down the icy driveway.

Arizona Here I Come

Sometimes a picture tells a thousand words....

Food, Glorious Food

I love food....especially if someone else is cooking it.


I admit I am a lazy cook...(that's right I said lazy not lousy...although that also could be true). Mostly I don't have the interest to crack open the cook books and find something new to cook. So I tend to cook the same things over and over. If it weren't for my 3 constantly ravenous children I may not cook at all. Cereal would become my best friend.


Well that is all changing....well....not the love to cook part...but I am trying to overhaul my diet. There are lots of exciting things coming up in the next 12 months for me and changing my diet is going to be an important step. I'm trying to eat less processed food, more fresh fruit and vegetables.


But nothing TOO radical...my food triangle will still include alcohol and chocolate....just less of it.


So with that in mind we signed up for the local food co-op, Bountiful Baskets.
This is an absolutely awesome idea - a volunteer run organization based on delivering fresh, quality produce to people at a reasonable price. You can get more details on how it all works from their website but basically you register and pay for either a standard basket of food ($15)...or an organic basket ($25). It is a mixture of fruit and vegetables but you don't know what you are getting until you pickup the basket. You can also add on selected artisan breads and other weekly specials.


Here is what we got in the standard basket for $15 that Matt and I picked up today.



Yum!


After our co-op pickup we headed out to the new Trader Joe's store,and here are some of the goodies we came home with.



We may have gotten a little carried away.


But we had the sweet potato gnocchi ( along with some of the sauteed vegetables we got in our co-op basket) for dinner along with the Teryaki chicken and we all agreed ( even the kids) that it was delish.

Blessed

I'm someone who keeps a small circle.

A VERY small circle.

The people in my circle are people that I trust completely.

Lifelong friends and family only.

Some people see that as kind of limiting. Don't get me wrong I have plenty of acquaintances but only a few of them make it into the circle.  I'm not really sure why that is.  I don't really see the need to analyze it. I like it.  It works for me.  Period.

Now you have the backstory I can tell you about this week.

It has been a tough week. For a lot of reasons.  I'm not going to bore you with the details. 

And then tonight a knock at the door...out of the blue.

And there is my friend Michelle and her daughter Natalie. They were just on their way home from the gym and dropped in to give us this.....



For no particular reason...( she wasn't aware I was having a tough week).  Just because.



All I can say is that my heart is full and I feel blessed.

I think random acts of kindness are her specialty. I'm so lucky she is in my little circle. Oh, and the banana bread is wickedly delish!

A Week in Our Life.

Have you ever felt that your life goes by in a blur sometimes.  That one week somehow blends into the next. I always tend to feel this way as we head into November. All of a sudden it is nearly the end of the year. How did that happen?

Now I am not a person that sees the point of being busy just for the sake of it but sometimes when you have kids it seems like busy is unavoidable. So in an effort to reduce the "blur" I thought I'd take my camera with me for a week and record our life. Kind of like a snapshot of our year as we come to a close of 2011. One picture of something that is going on in our household each day for a week....here goes!

Monday:

School dominates most of our time during the week.  The boys generally get started at homeschool as Ciara heads off to high school.  By 7:30am heads are in books and pencils are out. We have really missed Ciara this year but she is having a blast at CV.

But high school means lots of homework. Ciara's school bag seems so unbelievably heavy with all the text books jammed in it .I'm sure she is headed for some permanent back injury. We weighed her bag the other day. It weighs 30 pounds.

Tuesday:

The boys hit the pool for their weekly swim team at the YMCA. This week they got to ride the water slides at the end of practice

Wednesday:

Now its my turn to get wet.  In the evening I head out to the gym to swim with my tri team. As my coach says..."Misery loves company"...so, so true!

Thursday:

We are lovers of science. I think it is the boys favorite subject. This week they were studying protozoa  so we got some live samples and looked at them under the microscope. Kept them busy for hours.  Way better then TV!

Friday:

Mercifully there was no school today.  Veterans Day. 

So we decided it was the perfect time to deliver some blankets we had made over the summer for a couple of local charities.

Weekend

And of course in the mix is a myriad of scout meetings, religious education classes, music and art lessons and a whole lot of other things that fill our time.  Sometimes I need to just step back and find the quiet.

And then it is time to chillax....and enjoy our first hint that winter is on the way.