A tale of a frozen family

Wow… we’ve been busy.   So incredibly busy, that I’ve not found any time to come here in FOREVER.

Tis the season though.   Hubby started on the Christmas light rampage November 1st.   It takes a heck of a lot of time to get 85 thousand lights strung up.  

We’ve got lots of changes from last years display.   We’ve got a new tree design, we have a singing Christmas tree and a myriad of other new goodies.  

This years fund raiser will be the Alaska Wounded Veterans.  We are having an opening ceremony the day after Thanksgiving for our subdivision and family & friends.   We are hoping to have a bus full of veterans brought out to enjoy the festivities with us and to give us an opportunity to express our gratitude for everything they have done for our country.

You’ll have to stay tuned for up coming progress pictures!

For the suckiest blogger on the face of the earth!   It’s been almost TWO MONTHS since I posted anything.  

I REALLY must get my butt in gear.

So… the offspring was officially accepted into the private Tang Soo do academy.   She’s pretty dang excited about it.   One lesson and she’s already prepared to show me all of the moves.  

 I am vastly aware that I will likely misspell every single one of my attempts at the “correct name” for some of these moves.  But what can I say… I’m a brand new “little dragon” mom!   So… here we go!

 JUNEBEE!

Fighting Stance!

FRONT KICK!

PUNCH!

and I have no idea what this move is… but she ended it with a very authoritative sounding shreek.

And blocking the master…. she is grasshopper!

So there you have it.   The birth of a little dragon.      She is so over the moon in love with Tang Soo Do!

I have been MIA nursing a kidney infection.   In case you’ve never had a kidney infection.  THEY FREAKING HURT!!!!!

I have much to update about and will get those up tomorrow.

Okay… so I said I wouldn’t say anything… but isn’t there something so amazing about a child’s smile when they don’t know you are looking????  (insert heart exploding feeling here).

Every Thursday, I devote my blog to being thankful. I think in this life where everyone is under pressure to get everything done as fast as possible, where we are overbooked and under rested, we need to take a moment to stop and smell the roses. I got the idea from here

I am thankful, that in a declining economy, our business is growing by leaps and bounds.

I am thankful, that the offspring officially became a “little dragon” yesterday… when she was accepted into the private martial arts academy.

I am thankful that my health is coming around. WOO HOO!!!!!

I am thankful to have such an amazing and supportive family, even if we are spread all over the place.

What are YOU thankful for?

So hubby and I got on the weight loss wagon again.   He’s doing Atkins… I’m doing sensible eating.   I can’t do Atkins.  My blood sugar plummets through the floor and I just don’t think it’s healthy!  But it works for him (quite well and quite rapidly I might add!).   You know those commercials about the woman’s weight loss supplement, where she talks about she gave up everything and he gave up soda??  She lost her boobs and he lost 50 pounds??  THAT’S ME!    He can drop weight like that… and I struggle for each and every ounce.   Welcome to the doom of hypothyroid!   But I digress!

A dear friend of mine ordered me a subscription to this magazine.  I can’t recommend it enough!  It’s filled with tons of really great recipes.   Lots of articles on organic eating, gardening, etc.   If you get a chance I highly recommend it!

And for you low carbers… here is a favorite in this house.   I’m actually going to make it for our neighbors on friday night, since hubby bragged it up so much.   Two thumbs up!  We originally saw it on Rachel Ray, but I’ve done some modifying since then.

• 3/4  pounds ground turkey breast, 3/4 pounds lean ground beef 
• Salt and pepper
• 6 crimini mushrooms (baby portobellos), stems removed and finely chopped
• 1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed away from skin and finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Romano cheese (a couple of handfuls)
• A handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
• Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), for drizzling
  
• 4 large portobello mushroom caps, stems removed
• Coarse salt and black pepper
• 2 cups arugula leaves, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 pound fresh mozzarella or fresh smoked mozzarella, thinly sliced
• Sliced red onion and sliced yellow and plum tomatoes, for garnish

Preparation

Pre-heat oven to 450°F. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.Combine meat with salt and pepper, chopped crimini mushrooms, chopped bell pepper, chopped onion, garlic, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, crushed red pepper flakes, cheese and parsley. Score and form meat into four large 1-inch thick patties.Wash your hands after handling the raw poultry.Drizzle EVOO on top of the patties, then fry 5-6 minutes on each side in the hot skillet.Place portobello caps on a small baking sheet gill side up and drizzle EVOO over them. Roast the caps 12 minutes. Remove them from the oven and season them with salt and pepper.

Turn the oven off. Top each cap with about 1/2 cup arugula and a burger. Cap burger with mozzarella and place back in the still-warm oven. Melt the cheese for one minute.

Transfer burgers on “bun” bottoms to plates. Top with onions and tomatoes and serve.

ENJOY!

I know I’ve posted before about how irritated I was, with her being super mom and all.   Hiding a pregnancy on a teensy tiny frame until the 7th month,  flying home from Texas AFTER her water broke, to ensure she didn’t have her baby anywhere other than Alaska (baby #5) and still running the state.   I really loathed her! LOL

Well, it appears she’s got herself in a bit of a pickle.    A few weeks ago, she fired our states “top cop”, the head over the entire Alaska State Troopers.   She appointed a no name police chief from a very small town in Alaska.   Everyone was in shock.

Well…. it turns out, that her ex BIL is a State Trooper.   It also turns out that her ex BIL and his wife (her sister) had a VERY nasty divorce.   It appears that our governor and her family filed dozens of reports against this officer, to the extent that the judge warned them to knock it off.    It also turns out that the governors husband approached our “top cop” to ask that his ex BIL be fired.    He refused to do such a thing.    So the rumor that is out right now is that he was fired because he refused to fire her ex BIL.     Our senate today voted 12 to zero to spend up to 100k on an internal investigation to see if our governor abused her power in office.    Between this and half of our political representatives going to prison in the last year or so…… AND our longest standing senator, Ted Stevens… was just indicted today on 7 charges!  Politics in Alaska are getting INTERESTING!

In addition to THAT drama, the new top cop evidently lied about a little “sexual harassment” complaint that was filed against him.  Well, lie isn’t a fair term.   Exclusion of the truth is a better term.   I mean seriously…. when my DH was hired as law enforcement, his background check was so extensive that they knew if he failed a test in the 5th grade.  HOW ON EARTH does one get appointed for the highest position in law enforcement in this state and have THAT hidden in his file????     When the media hounded him and our governor repeatedly about this finding, he resigned from his position after two weeks.    So now we have no one leading our law enforcement and lord knows what will happen with that poor department now!   Did I mention I’m so glad my hubby doesn’t work for them anymore?

So anyway…. there is a quick little politically drama and gossip for anyone who cares

I’ve always wondered why no one really tells you what to expect when you enter motherhood.  All you ever hear is those usual things “life will never be the same”  “you’ll never sleep again”  “you’ll spend the rest of your life worrying”, etc.   But they never really cover the in depth range of emotion you experience as a mother.

I never thought I would find a day that I would worry about the most innocuous of things.   I never thought it was possible to love my child more than the day before.  There are times I look at her and I swear my heart feels like it’s going to explode.  Those times are usually when she doesn’t even realize I’m looking at her.    There are times that she just blows me away.   Of course, I say these things like I’m the only mother in the world that has had these feelings towards their children!

I love that she still lets me hug and kiss on her and she’s not embarrassed yet.   She was playing independently earlier and I asked her to please come here.   She walks up and I give her a huge hug and tell her that my love meter was low and I needed a recharge.  I was charging charging charging my love meter!  She laughed so hard and then says “But wait mommy!!!  You can’t charge too much… because if you do, I won’t have any love left for Daddy!”  Isn’t that the sweetest???  So we agreed to make sure and save enough love for Daddy to recharge his love meter too.   (insert that heart feeling like it’s going to explode sensation again).

I will openly admit though, that yesterday she really BLEW ME AWAY.    We’ve known for a while now that she pretty much falls into the “freaky smart” category.   Maybe we should have noticed when she started her fascination with books as soon as she could sit up.  (yeah! I have an excuse to put one of my favorite pictures here as a reference!)

But I still have moments when I guess I live in denial and she brings that reality rushing right back to me.   Last night,  I’m cozied up on the couch watching her play “Big Brain Academy” on the Wii.   She can’t be happy with an easy level, which we repeatedly *tried* to get her to do.   She has this really bad habit of wanting to push herself beyond her ability, but then getting frustrated when she can’t figure it out…. so we try to cut it off at the pass.   I learned an amazing lesson last night while trying to cut her off at the pass.   I really don’t give her enough credit    Okay… so where was I???  Oh yeah, so she’s playing big brain academy and insists on playing the hard level.   I sit on the couch, preparing for the onslaught of outrage when her frustration kicks in, from not knowing the answers.   I sat and watched.  I watched her whiz through these games, one after the other.  My jaw started to hang lower and lower.    I watched her identify a screen full of balloons in which she had to select the lowest to the highest number and pop them in that order.  I looked at that screen and saw numbers like -97, -44, 62, 4, 59, 23, 25, -17, etc.  *I* was having a hard time visually identifying them with the time ticker counting down as added pressure.   She FLEW through them, not missing a single one.   She moved onto the memory games where she nailed every single one of them.   She moved onto the math games, which.. understandably, she missed several, but she GOT some of them!  I’m not talking easy addition, I’m talking about adding double digit numbers, multiples of times, in a 10 second span.   I was shocked.

I learned last night, that I need to stop thinking of her in terms of what is “normal” for her age, and start giving her the credit that she deserves.  I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for a child, for them to KNOW they can do something, but repeatedly be told by adults that “they can’t do that, they aren’t old enough”.     Like her various science experiments LOL!  

 She’s going in…..

I hope this doesn’t cause any permanent brain damage….

You see, that is the other thing no one ever told me about being a mother…. that my little girl would teach me so much every day.   I’m in awe of how much I learn from her every day.   What I would give to look at the world through her eyes.  

Not to sound like a ridiculous sap….. but I am so blessed to have been chosen in this world as her mother.  My only hope in this world is that I’m capable of teaching her as much as she’s already taught me in her 4 years on this earth. 

For all that know the offspring… bless her heart… sports is not her thing.   She loves them, but she really lacks the concentration to truly *play* the game.   She DOES have a blast, and that is all that matters!   They just finished their season this last week and she won the “friendship” award.   She consistently was the player that spoke to everyone on the other team (and our team) and the sidelines and the coaches and the butterflies and the clouds!    All during the game of course!

Here are some highlights from her last game.

“okay kiddo… see this big white ball… keep your eye on it… umkay???”

Remember?????   Watch the ball…. ummkay????

Ohhhhh… you mean THAT ball?????? OKAY!

HOLY SMOKES!!!!   SHE KICKED IT!!!!

And they’re off!  Notice the facial expression… LOL

And they SCORE!!!!  The cheerleader emerges.

She fights for the ball…

but decides that she’d rather be an airplane….

Still wants to be an airplane… afterall, soccer is over rated.

and still……. an airplane.   “What was it that I was suppose to watch again??”

Of course, you can’t have a soccer game, without sharing the love with your team mates!

And of course, you must do the “good job”

So… that ends our soccer season.   I have to say… there is nothing cuter than 4 year old soccer.   Well… I shouldn’t say that, because we are on to karate and hockey next