Larson food/weight issues

Most of you know that I try to feed my family fairly healthy. I just whipped up a batch of my rice krispie treats with green pumpkin seeds and cranberries, I've been known to sneak seaweed into goulash, and yes, I have even sprinkled flax seed meal into brownies!! So some of you may be surprised to find out that a member of my family is not only obese, but I think she may fall into the category of "morbidly obese". I have finally put my foot down regarding our dog. For years I have tried to tell John that she was overweight, that it wasn't good for her, that he shouldn't feed her table scraps, that she doesn't need the saucy "topping" that he adds to her dry food and on and on and on. I was a nag, nothing more. I think John thought she was kind of cute heavy? Well, something came over me and I just could not stand it anymore... (I think it actually started with the boys - he "sneaks" them candy and stuff because HE enjoys giving goodies and he can get carried away). I came to my trusty computer and started Googling "healthy weight for Samoyed husky"... Would anyone like to take a guess? For a female Samoyed, normal weight range is 39-51 pounds. I went to 4 different websites, took their range and then averaged them all. Would anyone like to guess how much our dear Windy weighs?? Go on, take a guess... She weighs in at..... 111 POUNDS!!!! 20% over normal weight is considered overweight. Windy is 120% over normal weight... When I gave John these numbers he was astonished. His guess for what her average weight should be was around 75 pounds. I think John also is starting to see that Windy's weight issue is really HIS issue because he has always been the one in control of her food. John is able to laugh about it now and has put Windy (or himself) on a strict diet. And as with any dieter, Johnny is going to need support and encouragement on this one...I'm asking for your support everyone. :-) Happy HEALTHY weekend all.

Germs

Mom, you'll appreciate this...

Last night I told Cooper we needed to go upstairs and brush his teeth, and as we were climbing the stairs I said "Coop, do you know why it's important to brush your teeth?", he said "because you have to get the germs out or they will have a party in my mouth."

Dinosaur's toes

This past Sunday I was cleaning strawberries and they were drying on the counter when Cooper came into the kitchen and said "mom, those strawberries look like dinosaur's toes"!

He never ceases to amaze me...

Vitamin D?

Did you know that sunshine can actually make you feel... ??? It's true. And not just because it's warm and a nice relief from all the rain and snow and cold that we have had, but because it gives us vitamin D. I don't know about all of you, but I just seem to have a spring in my step when the sun is out. Don't get me wrong, I love a nice rainy day, but vitamin D actually raises the chemical serotonin in our brains, much the same way some anti-depressants do! (Found this info on WebMD.) Now I'm no doctor, far from it, but I was researching vitamin D in relation to osteoporosis (not for me! keep in mind what I do for a living) and it seemed every site I was on, and every article I read, reinforced the idea that vitamin D really can help make us HAPPY. And, many articles actually said that vitamin D directly from the sun (vs a supplement) is actually better for you. Food for thought everyone. But please please please don't forget the sunscreen :-)

Admit it

New pajamas are so cool!

New BASEBALL pajamas are even better.

New baseball pajamas after a warm bubble tubby and kicking back to watch the Phillies vs. the Astros is the best.

Goodnight all...sweet baseball dreams.

Abundance

Yesterday's forecast was "abundant sunshine", so the word abundant was on my mind all day. I found myself really liking the word, it's like being "really filled up with a lot of good". I really feel like that IS my life. First things first, yesterday was my favorite brother's birthday - he turned 33! We had an abundant 76 minute conversation :-) Happy Birthday Butchie, I want to hear about a blog from you soon. Right now I have an abundance of work. The past three weeks have been unbelievably busy at Comfort Keepers. We have nearly doubled our business in three weeks. I won't go into the logistics of how difficult this is, but may I just send out a huge thank you to my dear friend Bryn and my amazing scheduler Annie - you guys are the best!

With the help of Uncle Richard, I took the boys shopping for new clothes yesterday. The end result was an abundance of new (baseball) clothes! Thank you Richard for your help - I hope you got all the "sticky" washed off you.

Can you tell I have boys? Not a stitch of pink/purple in the stack.

Ah, then there was the abundance of Spring food we had for dinner! Cheeseburgers and asparagus on the grill, fresh strawberries, and tomato/cucumber salad.

An abundance of new growth that Duncan is just as excited about as I am.

And last but not least, an abundance of baseball. And for those of you that don't know, baseball is all about the "smoke" - the puff of dirt that appears when you slide into base or smack your foot on a base.

Dunc working on his swing.

Yesterday was also Ma Jane and Pop's 50th wedding anniversary! Talk about ABUNDANCE! Congratulations you guys. We are having a celebration dinner next weekend at the Lodge when Aunt Lynnie comes to town - I promise pictures next week.

So there you have it, a little snap shot of the abundance of in my life right now.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Pour yourself a cup of coffee, then pull up a chair...this is worth reading and comtemplating.

Pearls Before Breakfast

*I promise to post more tomorrow and this weekend, it's been a long hard week.

This day

After working until 6:30 this evening, I was off to yet another meeting. I raced out of my office to pick up my niece to go to a Youth Relay for Life meeting. The meeting was silly and probably a waste of time. The Youth have a goal of $15,000. Youth Relay is in one month and they have probably raised $1000. I finally made it home by 8:15, tired and hungry. There was one small piece of cold pizza left. I turn on the news and sat down at my computer only to have yet another school shooting flashed in front of me...horrified and drained I walk upstairs to give my boys a tubby... I can certainly see how sometimes we forget the importance of the little things. And I can certainly see why sometimes we forget just how very important THIS day really is.

All right, who did it?

Who pissed off Mother Nature? This is getting ridiculous!

I can't remember, did Punxsutawney see his shadow in February?

How about those woolly caterpillars? Something has to give. The strawberries are on sale, asparagus is in season and I'm getting thirsty for lemonade. These are all clear signs that Spring SHOULD be here. Can someone please tell Mother Nature? PLEASE?

Sleep tight

I don't know when it started, but for as long as I can remember my bed has been my sanctuary. My parents used to say sleep was my drug of choice. When I was a teenager and my friends were all staying up to watch Saturday Night Live, I had probably hit the sack sometime around 8:30. My first big purchase was a water bed - don't laugh, it was the 80's! And for my birthdays, I used to ask for new sheets & comforters. So it's not surprising that not much has changed in my adult life. I still love to sleep and my bed must be made EVERY night before I get into it. Some nights I make it just before I crawl into it, but all the same, it must be made. (Probably also why I am pining for a new bed and mattress.) I have an evening routine. After dinner, I take the boys upstairs and plop them in the tubby and while they soak I make the beds.... first mine (ours), next is Dunc's... and I finish with Coop's.

Go ahead, call me a Virgo, call me compulsive, but there is just something so crisp, neat and comforting about a made bed.

Goodnight all.

Kids say the darnedest things

Last night when I was putting Cooper to bed he told me that his pants stayed dry all day and that he peed on the potty at Ma Jane's. I said "oh Cooper, that is SO great, I'm so proud of you". Cooper waved his hand and said "it was nothing". Aunt Carla clued us in to a new little phrase of Duncan's... Picture this; Duncan gets up to bat, he taps home plate, raises his bat and says "come on baby, you can do it". Man they are cute!

Easter recap

So what does an organic, whole grain, sprouted bread, veggie lovin' mamma get for her boys on Easter? Please, give me credit, I'm not THAT bad. I get them CANDY, and lots of it. And we made cupcakes with grass and eggs to boot! Check 'em out...are they not the cutest? Cooper did all the grass himself, then Duncan helped with the eggs. Then Easter morning, when Cooper found the peeps in his basket, he insisted that he take them and put them on the eggs to "stay warm" so they could "hatch". (Some of you may remember this drill from last year, but I swear he did this again with no prompting or reminder from us.) By the way; "a watched peep never hatches".

Then there was just the fun of the baskets. Opening all the plastic baseball "eggs" to see what each one had inside. Comparing, marveling, eating, trading...

Then we were off to Ma Jane and Pop's for dinner. I ate SO much, I never ate another bite the rest of the day. The coconut cream pie from Tony's was to die for!

After dinner I pulled up my blog and showed it to Nana (Jane's 99 year old mother), and Connie (Barb's slightly Alzheimer's impaired mother), and tried to explain to them what a Blog was...wow, try THAT some time.

We headed home for nappy's, I watched the movie Hitch (hysterical by the way), finished up laundry and then started printing some of these great photos for scrapbooking later. I'm feeling my creative juices flowing and think I may need a "mental health scrapbooking day" soon.

Hope all of you had an equally lovely day. And oh, happy COLD Monday.

Happy Easter

I have pictures, pictures and more pictures.

But somehow, this one just said it all.

Memory lane

2004

2005

2006

Chicken sitting on her eggs (in case you were wondering)

Happy Easter everyone.

Stay tuned for 2007.

Holiday laughs

I have tomorrow off, we signed on 3 new clients today, and I'm not on call this weekend. Three things to be very happy about. So in honor of good things, here is some Easter/Passover humor for you all.

(just click on the passover joke to make it bigger)

Book club confessions

Yes, I've been remiss in my blogging. I just hate it when earning a living and volunteering for good causes gets in the way of blogging! So, you may have noticed I changed my blog name. When I set up my blog, I didn't know what to call it, so I just went with "A". I've been called "Big A", A2, AJ, Double A...you name it. Growing up with A A as initials, I acquired quite a few A nicknames. And as many of you know, I really should have been a meteorologist with my love of the weather. I watch the Weather Channel like most of you watch American Idol or Grey's Anatomy. And then there is the many other uses of the word "degree". It seems to be a unit of measurement. There are Bachelor degrees, second degree murder, third degree burns, degrees of accuracy and the list goes on and on. Now there is unofficially an A degrees, and it is here at andria-andria.blogspot.com, and it is my method of measuring not just the weather and seasons, but my thoughts, ideas and love. Okay, on to my next thought. Remember my book of the month? It's All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren. I was all excited to read the book, the reviews were great, there is currently a movie of it, the author was a Poet Laureate and on and on. Well, let me tell you, I'm on page 66. Out of 661. I think I'm starting to understand WHY the guy was a Poet Laureate. Let me share with you just two sentences in this book; "Close to the road a cow would stand knee-deep in the midst, with horns damp enough to have a pearly shine in the starlight, and would look at the black blur we were as we went whirling into the blazing corridor of light which we could never quite get into for it would be always splitting the dark just in front of us. The cow would stand there knee-deep in the midst and look at the black blur and the blaze and then, not turning it's head, at the place where the black blur and blaze had been, with the remote, massive, unvindictive indifference of God-Almighty or Fate or me, if I were standing there knee-deep in the midst, and the blur and blaze whizzed past and withered on off between the fields and the patches of woods." I mean COME ON, you have GOT to be kidding me? To the best of my knowledge, they are driving along a dark road and pass some cows...lets not make it anything more than it is! Oh, I know, it's beautiful writing, but I read and read and read and read, and look back, and it's been like three pages. So I have a dilemma. I really want to finish the book, but by April 17th, I just don't see it happening. I looked into the audio book, but it was $40.00 and 21 hours long (do we wonder why?). When would I listen to 21 hours of book on tape?? It takes me 4.5 minutes to get to work...round trip, I'm not even clocking in at 10 minutes. Do the math, it's just not happening. Sigh. I know what your thinking. RENT THE MOVIE, right? Well, you see, that's like breaking the cardinal book club rule. It's like cliff notes were to high school English class. It's the cop out, the "I can't hang, so I had to rent the movie". It will put a black mark on my book club record. Not reading the book is better than watching the movie. I could just plow on through, but at approx 3 pages a night, with 600 to go, I'm looking close to Halloween for a finish date... I gotta sign me up for a speed reading class. Sigh. Okay, enough lamenting...I promise tomorrow I'll be back with those Easter pictures I promised.

Getting closer

This picture was taken Sunday afternoon. And with today in the high 60's and tomorrow near 70, I might just have real honest to goodness daffodils on my table by Wednesday. However, I won't EVEN tell you about the snow forecasted for this weekend...it is still 5 days away and with any luck the forecast will change. By the way, my mother asked me today "so did you ever actually give the cookies away, or did you just chuck them"? Good question. The answer is, we gave them away. Truth is, I found Bryn eating one before I had a chance to tell her that I was donating them to the area high school for hockey practice. She said they really were not THAT bad. Then my sister stopped over for a couple and she said "not bad for sporting equipment", so what the heck, we filled our boxes and off we went. However, should you actually be the recipient of one of our boxes of cookies and you just can't bring yourself to finish them , John said they would probably also be a great substitute for furniture slides...just a thought. Now, be sure and check back this week because I came across some adorable Easter pictures from years past and I have a great Easter joke on the way too...

Red socks

Ahh, March is over, hallaylooya! Happy April Fools Day everyone.

In honor of a new month, I have a new picture and a new quote. And in keeping with the theme, I have posted a picture of Cooper from earlier today. This is Cooper's new uniform. He wants to wear red socks EVERYDAY. And not just "wear" the red socks, but WEAR the red socks...take a look. Doesn't he look like a cross between a young fan and a small Garrison Keillor?

Baseball season has started everyone - watch out for the Larson boys...spring training in the driveway is now underway.

And for anyone who read yesterday's post - Ali Edwards came in first place! She raised almost $50,000 for Autism Speaks. Just incredible.

Boys are down for a nap, but when they wake up...we are dying eggs! FIRST TIME! I promise pictures. I bought all the Easter "stuff" today (candy, eggs, toys). I can't tell you how nice it is to have children so small that you can shop right in front of them and they don't even know it.

And all things equal, I also bought my Matzo and kosher egg noodles for my kugel for Passover dinner Friday night :)