Asher's Favorite Thing

A while ago, James downloaded a kids app to his iPhone and it had a few really cute short little cartons that played. One of them Asher feel in love with. He would walk up to me or James and say "Quack, Quack?" which we both understood meant he wanted to watch this one video. I don't know if anyone else has seen it but it's called The Duck Song and here is the link. Well, after watching this video a few hundred times a day I decided to start searching youtube for some other short videos he would like. The big thing for him is that they sing, he LOVES music, so I did a search for Sesame Street, knowing they like to sing on that show. Now I've created a monster! An Elmo-loving-monster. He loves Elmo, as soon as he wakes up in the morning he says "elmo?" The other day I bought him a video from Walmart, The Best of Elmo. It has about 6 or 7 songs on it and he watches it every hour! And its a 30 minute video!!!!! I don't know if this obsession will continue until his second birthday, but if it does everyone can buy him anything Elmo related and he will be thrilled! Its so cute (except around 5pm when I've watched that video about 30 times!!!)

Biggest Loser Recipe update...

I might have to put a hold on our Biggest Loser cooking experiment, at least for 24 days (Feb 3- 27) James and I are doing a month long get fit challenge that our gym is doing. I'll keep you posted, but as a fair warning, you'll probably be reading a lot of posts about how sore I am because I can already tell its going to be some grueling workouts! But we are both excited, we start Tuesday!

Days 4 & 5 Biggest Loser Recipes

Doing two days at once here, I'm falling a little behind because this week is a nightmare at school for me. Thankfully today is Thursday and its almost over.

Here are some recent recipes I have made from the Biggest Loser cookbook. I couple of meals we ate out but that's ok, I'm not trying to do them all in a week, just in the next few months or so.

Breakfasts: 1. Kelly's Cottage Cheese and Fruit Parfait: it was good. James really liked it, I thought it was 'good'. Nothing really special about it, just layered cottage cheese with some green apples and blueberries. James gave it a 10, I gave it an 8. Total calories: 174

2.Warm Pumpkin-Pie Cream of Wheat: I liked the idea of having pumpkin pie in the morning...but it didn't really taste like pumpkin pie so I was disappointed. It was missing the whipped cream! LOL Overall it was, again, good. James gave it a 7.5 I gave it an 8. Total calories: 121

Lunches: Matt's "Slap It Together" Turkey-Gauc Sandwich: I liked it, James loved it. The best part about it was that it called for prepared SPICY guacamole and the kind I bought was spicy so it had a lot of flavor. James gave it a 10+ and I gave it a 9. Total calories: 332

Dinner: Sexy Joes (like sloppy joes). SO GOOD! I'm not a big sloppy joe fan myself but this was yummy! The recipe calls for chili sauce but I had no idea what that was or where to get it so I just substituted more tomato sauce and I loved it. James and I both gave it a 10. Total calories: 331

With our Sexy Joes we had Parmesan-Pepper Sweet Potato Fries, also really good! James gave them a 9 and I gave them a 9.5. Total calories: 249 but I think this was with ketchup and we didn't use ketchup so it might have been a little lower.

Dessert: Lisa's Frozen Gramwiches: Couldn't be simpler, take a graham cracker and some flavored cool whip and make a sandwich out of them. They were tasty and so easy that I have to give them a 10! James really liked them too, also gave them a 10. Total calories for 3 sandwiches was 200.

So I think that puts me up to 25 recipes now, only 100 left :)

Day 3 Biggest Loser Recipes

Wow today I was a superstar in the cooking department. I made 6 recipes today! I have to say that I am really surprised at how good most of these recipes taste. I was expecting them to be flavorless and not so great but most of them are really good! (so far, lets not jinx ourselves!)

Breakfast: Boston-Cream Peanut-Butter Breakfast Banana Split, holy cow say that three times fast! LOVED IT! It was easy to make, really tasty and didn't involve any cooking...great for 7 o'clock in the morning. I give it a 9, James gave it an 8. I left for school before he woke up this morning so I left all the stuff out on the counter for him with the cookbook open to the right page. Well I guess James' dad (who comes over to watch Asher for us) actually feed Asher James' Boston Cream Pie yogurt so James had to use a different flavor. Maybe he would've liked it even better with the right flavored yogurt.

Lunch: Champ's Chicken Quesadilla. Very simple ingredients, but kind of a pain to prepare for a quick lunch. First you have to marinate the chicken for 15 minutes, then grill the chicken, then cut it up and then grill the quesadillas. But in the end it was worth it because they were very tasty, and with only tortilla, chicken and cheese I bet it was pretty cheap to make as well. We both gave it a 10!

Snacks: Today I made some snacks. These low calories are kicking James' butt so I had to give him something to snack on in-between meals, plus its better if you eat smaller meals more often then 3 large meals. First snack was Spinach Skinny-Dip, which you serve with cut up veggies. The first thing James said when he took a bite was "its missing cheese", I had to laugh, of course its missing the cheese, that's where all the fat is! Needless to say it wasn't nearly as good as Parmesan Spinach dip that you get at Applebees but it was ok. James gave it a 6, I give it a 6 also. But I probably won't make it again.

Second snack was Lemon-Poppy Seed Mini Muffins. These were really yummy. A little chewy compared to other muffins but the flavor is wonderful. James gives them a 10 and I give them a 9. At only 34 calories and just a trace of fat per muffin its hard to give them anything lower than a 9!

Dinner: Thai Ground-Chicken Salad. Ok first off, mine didn't have ground chicken in it because I already had chicken breasts here so I just cut it up into tiny little pieces...worked perfectly. Also the recipe calls for cashews and I thought I had some at home but turned out someone ate them all so I used almonds instead. I think the cashews would've been better but the salad was good as I made it. James liked it a lot. He gave it a 9. I'm already sick of salads so I was fighting to get the last few bites down. But don't get me wrong, it was really tasty, I just get to a point where I can't eat another salad and I'm at that point already. The dressing was a little spicy but full of flavor. I give it an 8, the dressing was burning my lips from the lime juice, I had to mark it down for that reason LOL!

Dessert: Iced Buffed Mocha...what a disappointment this was. It had very little flavor and since I was having issues with my Bullet Blender I was annoyed by the time it came to drink it and didn't enjoy it at all! I have to say though that I didn't follow the recipe very well so it could've been my own fault it didn't taste well. First it wanted instant coffee but instead I used coffee from a pot, also it wanted chocolate soy milk but I had accidentally bought vanilla so I added a little fat-free chocolate syrup instead. Anyway, James gave it a 5, and the 5 is because it had whipped cream on it, without the whipped cream it would've scored lower LOL!!!!! But I'm with him, I think a 5 is being generous, I'd say a 4. But out of fairness I'll have to try it again with the proper ingredients to see if its better.

Calorie count:

Breakfast: 294

Lunch: 242 plus we had a little side salad with fat-free poppy seed dressing

Snacks: Dip 21 per 2-Tablespoons (w/o veggies)

Mini-Muffins 34 each

Dinner: 333

Dessert: 127

For me, since I had maybe one serving of the dip and 3 muffins, my total for the day was about 1200. I'm not sure how many muffins or how much dip James had so I don't know his total but I'm sure it wasn't much more than mine. And I'm full, I didn't feel hungry at all today except right after my workout, which is not a surprise since it had been 4.5 hours since I had eaten breakfast.

Running total: 15 recipes made so far, out of 125!

New Year's Goals

Well I think its finally time to post those New Years Goals I've been putting off, after all I'm almost down to only 11 months until the next new year. Time flies doesn't it?

Here they are:

1. Save $50-75 each month for Christmas presents. I was going to attempt to buy one or two Christmas presents each month but I figured if I did that by Christmas time everyone would have what I already bought them so this works out much better.

2. Back in 2006/2007 James and I and some friends (Brian and Jessie) went on a cruise to Hawaii. I started a paper scrapbook (not digital) and haven't finished it yet...this year I will finish it, if I don't I'll soon forget everything we did and not remember what pictures go where.

3. I also started a scrapbook (paper) of Asher's first year (from pregnancy to first birthday). I've made it to the day he was born, time to get that one finished also.

4. Before Christmas Kimmie and I started a family calendar, I think I'd like to get that one all done for 2011 since it won't be done for 2010.

5. Make Asher a blanket. I've been wanting to do this for about 6 months now, I just need to do it!

6. Run a 5K in under 30 minutes. This is going to take some time, today I got on the treadmill and ran 2 miles in 30 minutes...yikes I have to run an extra mile in there somewhere!

7. Cook/prepare all the recipes in the Biggest Loser cookbook. There are 125 recipes in all and I'm going to try all of them, even the ones that don't sound good at all!

8. Pass all my classes with Bs or better! This could be difficult if my classes get any harder! But I passed Discrete Math with a B- so if I can get a B in that class I can in any class!

9. Keep up with this blog. I'm going to make sure I do a post at least once a week, even if its just to say we are all still here just extremely busy!

10. Be grateful for everyday I am here on this earth happy, healthy and with a roof over my head!

Please note that there is no weight loss goal. Some of my goals will help me with this but its not a goal, I just want to be healthy and happy and right now I am, even if my jeans are a little tight or if I don't look terrific in a bathing suit!

So here's to a great 2010!!!! I can finally start my year now that I have my goals out there in blogland! :)

Thanksgiving...

Yes you read that right...Thanksgiving...its time to catch up on some of the events I've missed. Thanksgiving 2009 was a blast for me! I had everyone I love here, well everyone but Bailey, who was missed A LOT!!!! From the beginning my mom and stepdad Rocky were always planning on coming up, they usually do for Thanksgiving. Then when we found out my dad was going to be starting radiation treatments him and my stepmom Kimmie decided to make the trip up too, bringing with them my stepbrother Jon and his wonderful girlfriend Carolyn. Then my sister and brother-in-law Tate decided to come too, bringing of course, my beautiful niece Cailin. We had a house full but it was so awesome. Then the Friday after Thanksgiving we had all those plus all of James' kids (except Sabelle, who we also missed a ton!) and our good friends Tami and Andy and Mark and Patti over and we played bunco. It was a loud, rowdy good time. Here are some fun pictures from Thanksgiving day and Bunco night. I hope everyone plans on doing it again next year because that was just too much fun not to do again.

Day 2 of Biggest Loser Recipes

Alrighty....4 more recipes tried today, here is the low-down on them.

For breakfast we had Better Blueberry Pancakes. I liked them, didn't love them but they were good. I put sugar-free syrup on them and I'm thinking I would've enjoyed them more without the syrup. I would give them a 6, James gives them a 10 which really surprises me, I didn't think he really cared for them.

For lunch we were out of the house down in St George so we had Subway...yummy but not in the Biggest Loser cookbook :) hehe.

For dinner we had Sweet-and-Spicy Pork Tenderloin and Parmesan-Roasted Cauliflower...YUMMY!!!! Both of them were really good. I was surprised at how good the cauliflower was, because I am not a big fan of cauliflower at all. The tenderloin was spicy but so good, it had a glaze on it that was kinda sweet so it was a great contrast to the spiciness. I give both of them a 10! James gives them "a 9 or 10, they were big hits with me"

For dessert we had Marty's Creamy Pineapple Sorbet and it too was YUMMMMMY!!!! It was very easy to make and the basic concept is easy enough to switch the flavors around a little and make something completely different. All I did was throw some frozen fruit (for this one it was pineapples) into the blender with some fat-free flavored yogurt and little lemon juice and blended! You serve it right away, it doesn't have to sit in the freezer or anything. My only complaint was that because there is hardly any liquid in it I had a difficult time getting it to blend but other than that it was easy as pie! I give it a 9 and James gives it a 9.

Calorie count for these dishes:

Breakfast: 140

Dinner: Pork 221 Cauliflower 32.5 (I didn't realize the recipe was one serving and only made one of it so James, Josten and I split the one serving in 3rds which made it only 32.5 calories each!!!) Dinner total 253.5

Dessert: 78

Total Biggest Loser recipe calories: 471.5

For dinner we also had a big portion of salad with very low-fat dressing on it so I'm guessing that's another 50-60 calories and then we had lunch at subway. James had a few other snacks throughout the day but not me!!!! I'm way proud of myself (and James too).

So, as far as these recipes go I would cook them all again except maybe not the pancakes. They weren't all that great, but I might try them one more time without the syrup to see if they are any better. I'm willing to share these recipes with anyone who wants them, so if you do just email (rhonda1118@gmail.com) me which ones you want and I'll get them over to you.

Well that's 9 out of 125 recipes so far! Woohoo I'm flying through!

A new experiment

A while ago James and I bought a cookbook from the Biggest Loser (you know, the reality show). I had made a few things from it but the other night I pulled it out to make one of the recipes I had already made and was flipping through the book. I said to James, I'm going to cook all these recipes and try them out. And I thought he'd say 'UGH, really?" but he said "go for it!" So I'll post a little something about the recipes I cook so that if someone wants to buy the cookbook they'll know if the recipes are any good. I'll even rank each recipe for everyone, on a scale from 1-10, 10 being the best.

Today I cooked the following:

For breakfast we had the Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich. James gave it a 4.5, he said it was a bit dry for him, probably because there wasn't any butter on the english muffins. I really liked it, I'd give it a 7.

For lunch we had the Almost Fast Food Burger. Both of us really liked it! We both gave it a 9. Personally I don't know what was any different between this hamburger and the hamburgers we normally BBQ, except the whole-wheat buns. It was really yummy!

For dinner we had New Orleans Rubbed Chicken with Apricot-Mustard Sauce and Lizzeth's Cucumber Salad. For me the chicken was really spicy, well for me, Josten and Dakota it was really spicy. But it was still good, I'll just use less cayenne pepper next time. James loved it! He said the first bite was spicy but after that it was great. He gave the chicken a 9, I would give it a 7.5. The cucumber salad, for me, was ok, but I've never really liked cucumber salads. James said it was yummy, he gave it an 8, I give it a 5.

For dessert (yes even desserts are included!!) we had One-Serving Chocolate Cheesecakes. James gives it a 7, he says it was different but it wasn't wonderful. He really liked the crust of it, which was made from Grape-Nuts cereal. I didn't really like the chocolate flavoring of it, but I'm not a huge chocolate fan. I might make it next time without the chocolate. I gave it a 7 also.

Here is a calorie count, which really surprised James because he couldn't believe how little we ate and full he has felt.

Breakfast: 278

Lunch: 281

Dinner: 197 + 40= 237

Dessert: 107

Total for the day: 903

Of course we went to see a movie today, Avatar, and ate popcorn and a soda so we ate a lot more than 903 calories, but still, 903 calories would normally be one meal for us so that was pretty amazing!!!

By the way, Avatar was a pretty amazing movie. The visual effects alone are worth the price to go see the movie. But the story line was amazing too. I asked James after we got home if he thought the human race would really do something like that to another species if they had something we wanted. He said he figured there are some people out there that would and that broke my heart. Anyway, I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it yet so I won't go into anymore detail. But the movie is wonderful...everyone should go see it! Another great movie that we saw a while back was The Blind Side. Go see both of them, they are both wonderful!

Well I'm exhausted...I'm off to bed. I'll be back tomorrow with a review of our menu.

Random Thoughts, who knows what topics will be covered!

I'm in the writing mood so here goes...

At the end of the Fall semester, when I was desperately trying to decide if I should continue with my Secondary Education license or switch to Elementary Education, James made a suggestion to me. You see, the issue with the Secondary was the prereqs for my math classes. I have to take certain classes before I take other classes, its a nightmare. I was going to have one semester where I could only take Calculus II and that would be it because I need Cal II for all my other classes....so James' suggestion...add a minor to fill in those semesters when you have no other classes to take! BRILLIANT!!! So that's what I'm doing now. I am a Secondary Math Education Major with an English Education Minor...holy cow world watch out, not only will I be able to do all kinds of crazy math problems but I'll be correcting everyone's grammar as well! (HA! as a funny side note I totally misspelled grammar and the computer had to correct it for me!!!!)

Anyway, that explains why I am in the writing mood. I have an English class, Methods of Teaching English, where I have been given these random writing assignments and I'm really enjoying them. So far I've had to write on why I think I (or anyone) watches movies over and over again, or why someone would read a book more than once. I've had to write a paper where I've sketched in words someone who didn't know I was watching them. That one was fun, I did it on my little boy playing with his toys, maybe I'll post it here one of these days. Tonight I had to make an observation on a movie, song or book. Any observation...that one was a little harder but I find that once I start the writing process the words just flow out of me. I have a total of 14 different writing assignments to write on, some that I'm looking forward to are: capture an incident of fear so the reader actually is fearful, explain an important lesson you learned as a child, describe you idea of heaven or hell, write a nasty letter about a product that didn't work, and then the next assignment is to write a letter in response as if I was the customer relations manager in charge of that product...lots of things that really make you think. If I feel I really like my papers I'll post them on the blog.

I also have this Introduction to Poetry class that I am completely NOT enjoying. I know nothing about poetry and I have no desire to get into the heads of these poets to figure out what they were really trying to write about when they wrote these poems some 100 odd years ago!!! My math classes this semester are Calculus I and Linear Algebra, both are going well so far, of course I'm only starting the 3rd week so I'm sure they are going to get worse very soon.

My Education in Society class is very informative. For example I learned that every state in the US gets money from the government, depending on how many students are in class during the school year, (I knew this part already) and Utah gets the least amount of money. The amount received is based on a formula that has to do with the number of kids in school the year prior and the amount of taxable land in the state. Utah has a ton of government owned land, with all the National Parks in the state that's not hard to believe. But because of that Utah has hardly any taxable land, which means they receive a lot less than a majority of the other states. I learned that Connecticut gets about 4 times more per student than Utah does (roughly $10,000 to Utah's $2,400) so I might move there and teach because their teachers make about $80,000 a year :) hehe (just kidding mom!!!!)

I have yet to come up with my goals for the year. I know a few that I want to add to my list but my list isn't officially put together yet, so until then I'm going to keep my mouth shut and post the list when it is completed. Once its out there in there in the world of blog its there to stay so I better make it a good one!!!

Update on my dad: I spoke with him Saturday morning. He is doing good. Only two more week of radiation left thank goodness! He is still gaining weight (which he is completely unhappy about and is threatening to sue his doctor over! HA!). They have moved the point of radiation down more from his face to his throat but his throat isn't hurting yet which is a good thing. He did lose the facial hair he had in that area but once the radiation is completed he should get it back. His face is really red and his skin below his chin is beginning to blister but other than that he is doing great. I am so relived about that, I had this awful image in my head when the doctors warned us that he would be losing tons of weight and not want to eat. I'm thankful that he might be lucky enough to not get the "worse-case scenario"

Ok, well its 10:30pm and about 30 minutes passed my bedtime so I'm off to get some sleep. Secretly I'm praying this HUGE STORM they keep warning us about will shut my power off briefly in the middle of the night making my alarm clock reset itself and then my alarm won't go off in the morning and I'll "accidentally" miss my Calculus class :) If I could only get so lucky! But the power can only go off long enough to reset my clock because the heat runs off of electricity and I can't have my little man getting too cold!!!!

Good Night Blog Land!!!!

Made it through

As exhausted as I am right now its hard to believe I've made it through this past crazy holiday season. I'm so far behind on my blogging and I think to the near future and wonder when I will have time to sit down and really catch up. For now I'm going to make a list of the topics I have yet to blog about so that I can come back and catch up, even if it is little by little.

1. Thanksgiving

2. Fall Finals

3. Spending time in CA before Christmas

4. Christmas caroling

5. Visit to Mission Inn

6. Christmas at home in Enoch

7. Christmas in Riverside

8. Bailey's visit

9. My dad's birthday/clam chowder get-to-gether

10. New Year's Eve

11. New Year's Day - Disneyland

12. Spring semester

13. New Year's Goal

14. Transformation.com

15. Family updates (what are the kids up to?)

16. ...I'm sure there is tons more and will be more by the time I get to this number!

Stay tuned for my updates, I'll try to do one or two each day this week.