Independience Day

Today I was up early with Evelyn to get ready for the Brighton Commerce 5K. I managed to get to mom and dads just in time to leave for the race. Sarah was already there so after a quick check in and trying to prepare mentally for the race (and eating a quick breakfast bar)we lined up for the race. Sarah wanted to start near Angela and David until she asked how fast they wanted to run (I was glad to start in the back) and as we discussed our aversion to running the race and trying to banish the negative thinking I kept an eye out for my co-worker who didn't show :(

Despite the negativity in the beginning we did pretty well, Sarah is good at keeping a pace rather than running as fast as you can and hope that it is over quicker therefore running out of energy at the end. Though I did loose her in the end (I saw my baby then the finish line and just wanted it over) Sarah got a little nauseous so she fell back a little, I should have stuck it out with her.

After the race the crew went to The Bagel Bin and I went home to feed Evelyn (I forgot that I didn't get to go inside to drop the food off and therefore had it with me). This ended up being a good thing as Grandpa got some great bonding time and Evelyn went down for her nap well before the rest of the crew got home. She was one tired baby!


Getting a family picture is rather difficult these days and I will try to post it soon. Even more fun than getting a family picture is trying to get a picture of two babies... Though it is well worth the effort.

Stony Brook

Stony brook is a special park for our family. We went there on our first camping trip with Grandma and Grandpa Grotenhuis and have been going there ever sense. So today despite the 50% chance of rain we decided to take the hour drive and hope for the best. I took the time during the drive to work on Evelyn's cross stitch (I still haven't finished though I am a lot closer...) at one point a car on the highway pulling a trailer lost the wheel of the trailer (it poped and shreaded) and Jason decided to point this out to me as I was peacefully oblivious working on my cross stitch. My first reaction was oh shit however I quickly decided it wasn't worth worrying about as the car pulled over with out incident. Jason apparently didn't like my responce of "oh well" and decided that he needed to tell me that a popped tire can cause rolling or other sorts of car accidents (non of which are good at 65mph), thanks dear I needed the extra anxiety!

We managed to get there with out incident and beat the whole family despite stopping for gass (I need to check my spedometer because Jason is not a speeder). We started out on the playground and although Evelyn was a bit young for most of it we had alot of fun. thankfully we didn't play long before we ate (I was hungry!). The pick nick lunch was great I spent it watching Evelyn sit peacefully on the blanket and everyone else trying to corall Zack. This is Zack and Evelyn going down the slide with a little help from Angela and me...



My anxiety of course kicked in full force during the hike. I realized (about 60 min too late) that I did not bring the baby bajorn as I intended so had to just hang on to Evelyn during the hike. I discussed waiting with Evelyn at the pick nick site while everyone else hiked and he didn't like that idea. So I walked with her in my arms on the muddy and wet trail. It wasn't to bad untill I feed her and she fell asleep as we were waiting for the others to finish up at the third waterfall and stairs respectivly. Somehow cradeling her is a harder position to cary her in and see where I was going.



It all worked out in the end though I don't think I would do that again. We had a great trip!

4 years and counting...

Today Jason and I celebrate our 4 year anniversary! It was a great day we had our annual lunch date at Dinosaur BBQ (we were going to go to Tapas 77 but apparently they do not serve lunch). The food was good as always and I enjoyed spending some time with just Jason as we do not get a lot of time for just us anymore. It was nice to sit down and relax though I really need to teach Jason not to ogle the waitresses... It's just impolite!

In mid sentence Jason goes from looking at me to turning halfway around in his seat and says "oh wow" He then turns back to look at me with drool dripping down his chin and tells me how great the BBQ looks. ;) After lunch we run back to work and I have a super productive day! I love those days when I have all the information I need to actually complete my job!

Evelyn was happy as can be when I picked her up at daycare today and we had a great evening complete with a new food - Avacado. She was not as excited as I thought she would be but she ate some of it, next time I will not keep it in the fridge to see if it was just to cold. She would take a spoon full then kind of start when she tried to swallow. We will try again another time to see what happenes. When I put her in her crib she moved around so that her legs were stuck out of the slats again, so I ended up putting on the new bumper despite the fact that only one piece fits the crib. still she seemed excited when I put it on and I will have to contact the company to see if I can get two of the pieces that i have instead of the set which will not work with the crib. She went to bed happy and I know she is looking forward to seeing the new family (especially) Zack in the morning!

Sold - I think

I'm going to do a little exploring on this site but may do as my sister did and switch out. As much as I have liked LiveJournal I don't or want another site to long in to daily. I am hoping that if I switch over that I will have more motivation to keep up my blog (I do check my e-mail daily). So I will try this for a few days to see if I really like it.

Brew Day!

It’s about time to have the neighbors over for another round or five to get room in the keg fridge for more batches. I can’t wait to have BBQ’s this summer you bring some food to share, we supply beer! A little backwards but hey I like doing things differently!

Brew days are always great days J can tell not only from the smell of the wort but also from my jumping all over the place. Now I’ve been doing this for years so I really should not get this hyped but there is something about the smell of cooking grains and hops that turns me into an energy ball. Today’s brew is a summer wheat brew, I’d like to run some experiments with this one but as I have never made it before I thought I would be better off just letting this one run it’s course then playing with the next one (hopefully soon) it’s a wheat as I have said and it includes orange blossom honey and Whitbread yeast. The yeast should be fruity and bring out the orange flower in the honey. Now I read somewhere that you can’t taste such flavors in honey but the meads that I tried to make (aside from needing more experimenting and serious help) taught that there were distinct floral small and slight taste to the wild flower wild flower honey and well the buckwheat honey (J’s idea) well definitely tasted like buckwheat, not a great flavor for mead. So is this going to taste like orange or flower? Sigh four weeks until I find out. The next one I’m adding orange or lemon zest to the fermented wort and maybe even juice (not allot) to see how that will turn out 5 gallons I should be able to do all with a control. This weekend Irish Chocolate Stout! I wonder what J will do for a glass…

Hell has frozen over...

Dinner tonight was to be chicken and veggies with rice. Since I forgot to thaw out the chicken the night before (opps) J decided that he would have leftovers well I still wanted my veggies and rice. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the morning farms chicken strips to get more protein in my diet. I decided to add that to my meal, they are great. As I’m stirring the rice and dishing out my own platter J comes up behind me and steals my tofu chicken so it’s on the way to his mouth and I freeze. I’m in shock my husband is eating tofu. “you know that’s my chicken right?” (Like he could possibly be mistaken in the matter). “it’s not bad” my jaw hit the floor, I literally didn’t know what to do. So after a few minutes I get over my shock and dish out my dinner and let him do the same. I go sit with my food and J comes and he’s got MORE tofu on his plate... He at the tofu I was going to have for lunch as leftovers.

For those who don’t know my pork, I mean meat, loving husband. He teases me relentlessly about my vegetarian ways. I used to cook him nice dinners for editing my school papers (I know I should have him edit these as well). The first nice dinner I made was a great meal completely vegetarian of course. The salad comes out and he says “looks nice where’s the bacon?” as he examines every inch of the bowl for signs of his beloved bacon. He loved every dish of the meal and asked for bacon with every one (yes that includes desert). At the next meal I served and abundance of bacon - we all had a great time making fun of J.

TV Night

I haven’t blogged in a while my life has just been too boring. Although I had a job interview with key bank Thursday and I think it went well (wish me luck).

Today has been great slept in until 8:30! Ran errands all morning looking for a bathroom rug since the last one got shredded in the washing machine (oops!). The rest of the day was spent cleaning (fun).

Tonight it’s Absolutely Fabulous, I love this show. This great show is about the fashion world specializing in Champagne, sex and dysfunctional families. Tonight’s episodes feature gigolos, orgies, bulimia, drugs, and books called “Sex with myself - sticky fingers” I’m thinking I should really write a book with this title it could be fun! I really think every one should see this show, make sure to have lots of cheep Champagne on hand.