Yet Another Reason I Love Fungi

Unlike popular belief that mushrooms are void of nutrition, they are actually very very good for you!

Not only are they high in water and fiber which is great for a healthy digestive tract, they are loaded with Riboflavin! Riboflavin is the name for the B2 Vitamin. B2 helps your body cells use oxygen (which is good for us who are anemic), metabolize amino acids (eliminates free radicals) and fatty acids as well as carbohydrates. It's also the precursor needed to activate the B6 vitamin which assists in adrenal gland function and cell reproduction. Isn't that fantastic?!?

So next time you order a salad or a steak, be sure to load up on fresh mushrooms! YUM!

Check out my collection of Fungi Photographs HERE
***The mushroom pictured above is poisonous and should not be eatten***

Guess What?

It's SNOWING today! It's totally fluffy and huge. I'm extra excited since I get to stay inside and be warm :)

2 Pics

I just wanted to do a quick post of the tree and our little Christmas goose.

After 5 Years...

WE EAT TURKEY!
Now that we are in a place of our own, we finally, after 5 years, had our very own Thanksgiving dinner! Of course the best part was the prospect of cooking the turkey. I was so tired the night before that I didn't get the turkey in the brine bath until the next morning, but at least it got a few hours in before cooking.

We decided to experiment: I stuffed the neck and body with cornbread stuffing, rubbed it with canola oil and then Herb d'Provence and baked it for 3 hours. Then we took it out of the oven, took out the stuffing and stuck it pan and all, on the grill outside and smoked it with mesquite chips for about and hour & a half. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of it (it looked Martha Stewart perfect) but it was seriously some of the best turkey we've ever had. I am so happy it came out good, especially considering it was my very first turkey.

We were going to buy a TV form this guy who posted his on craigslist and when Nick went to his place to check it out they hit it off rather well. We didn't get the TV, but since he was spending the day alone, we invited him for dinner. It was really nice to have company and he is officially our first friend in the area. He turns out to be a Christian and like us, is church shopping. He also used to own a Christian book store and gave us a copy of Lee Stroble's "Case For a Creator" and this really neat magnetic bookmark.

Connor was a very good boy and slept through most of dinner. I forgot to put him in his turkey outfit, so I put him in it today and got a picture. The thing is one of those that will keep him really warm, so I can use it as pj's for at least a few more weeks.

In other news, I finally broke down and got some window coverings for the dining room and kitchen. They are not really what I ultimately wanted, but we are renting and if I got what I really wanted (wood shutters) then I'd be putting an investment in the house that is not ours and not to mention, expensive. So I opted for some cute curtains. I'm still not sure I like floral print, but when we get the dinette set, hopefully it will look better. The point is to have some more privacy and keep out the light for when we DO get that TV.

Today I am working on the yard (taking a break right now.) It rained for about a week so the weeds just sprung up like mad. I've got most of the front yard done. I've got to mow and spray off the driveway and sidewalk. The backyard is another adventure altogether. For some reason the weeds are a lot worse back there. I can't mow back there yet though because we got a frost last night and the lawn is still frozen (it's on the northern side) but I just can't put it off another week. I've got to get it mowed while it's still green. Not to mention, I'd like it to look nice for Christmas decorations. Also, I was spraying the weeds on the south property line and found a jelly fungus! This is the first one I've ever seen, so I was pretty excited to find it. I got my camera right away, especially since I accidentally sprayed part of it with the weed killer, so I don't know if I have doomed it or not.

So Excited, I Nearly Cried...

Well here is another delirious 5am blog but the excitement is still high.

I took a trip to Target yesterday and they got all the Halloween stuff moved over into clearance and they are setting up CHRISTMAS!!!! Now normally I'd be pretty annoyed at how early they have everything out but this year is different and it just goes to show how perspective changes everything.

This is the first year since we have been married (5 years) that we have a home and will actually be able to decorate and have a tree and cook a real Christmas dinner. It may seem like some small thing but not to me. Christmas was always so much fun growing up and when my parents divorced that began to change. We still had Christmas but it was split up between houses and it always involved some fight over who got the kids and for how long. Then I moved out and got my own Christmas tree in a box but still went to the family gatherings. Eventually I moved away to TX and the first Christmas there I spent with my extended family with whom I was living and Nick. He and I had been dating since October. So we had a "real" Christmas then and it was nice but not our own yet.

So anyways, at Target they actually have an entire aisle dedicated to stocking stuffers! (one of my favorite things!) They didn't have the trees set up yet which makes it feel ultimately "Christmassy" but they had the candy, ornaments, lights, cards, paper and bows out. I couldn't resist buying a frosted glass Yoda ornament as Connor's 1st (Nick calls him Yoda). I am just so tickled pink that even though it will be just the 3 of us (unless we get some surprise visitors) it WILL be Christmas this year!

Oh yeah, and the decorating! I can't wait to hang lights on the outside of the house!!! I think I want to go with the large multi-colored ones, kinda old-fashioned since our house is made to kinda look like a 1930's bungalow mixed with your modern "garage out front" track home. I also have 8 little cyprus trees and 2 young maples to wrap in lights. I might even get one of those lighted deer for the lawn. Call me silly but I want to do it, at least once in my life. I want a wreath on the door and a tree in the window and my baby crawling around in piles of crinkly, shiny paper and Bing Crosby playing on the radio. I don't care how many presents are around the tree, I just want to experience it and share it with my husband and son. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

P.S. Connor finally just fell back to sleep, so it's back to be for an hour or two. HOORAY!

3rd Post of the year..Let's CELEBRATE by looking at tons of pictures!

Talk about getting behind. I actually meant to do this last year but TOO LATE NOW! I'm just going to focus on 2007...

Picking up where I left off with our baby-making trip to Niagara Falls on Christmas, you should all have figured out by now that I s'ploded a baby boy named 'Connor' about 8 weeks ago. The time has just flown by since then. I can't believe we have already celebrated the first of many fun holidays to come. For the last 5 years or so, we haven't really celebrated much of anything, and if we have, it's been late and jut doesn't feel the same. Speaking of which...

I'll start here with January 1, 2007. We got to Boston on Christmas day...How depressing. Yet again no tree, no gifts, no family, no friends, new town and yucky weather. And unbeknownst to me, I was really cranky because I had just popped an egg. Oh yeah, fast forward to the 1st... I got all dressed up in a new dress and Nick got dressed up in his celebration Tommy Bahama silk pants and shirt and turned on the telly to watch the ball drop while we drank a bunch of the most expensive champagne I've ever had. We actually celebrated something! AMAZING!

Doodleeydoot...fast forward to the 4th. My friend Shanny just had her son and I found out that the night of crankiness in Niagara Falls on Christmas eve turned out to be the last night Nick and I would ever be "2" again. I got my first + pregnancy test!

Doodleeydoot... fast forward to...well...later. By this point I had pregnancy brain and I started to lose track of time. ( I now have "mommy brain" and still have no concept of time.) Anyhow, I got to go to NM the first of 2 times. Mom and I gathered together with some girls for a real "High Tea" which was super-yummy and fun! We all wore hats and took lots of pictures and gorged ourselves on finger-food and clotted cream. I also got to visit with my friend Shanny, her son, her hubby (who were visiting from Germany) and the rest of the gang although I wish I could have visited longer. My Mom and I also took a trip up to Taos (my first!) and bought fun toys for the baby. THAT was a relaxing trip!

So by May Nick and I were gearing up to leave Boston to head back to our "home" in Dallas...Just in time for the hellish weather and killer mosquitoes. But before then, we got a short project in New Jersey so I got to spend a little time in NY. Unfortunately I was pregnant-tired and alone so I didn't get to do much but at least I can say I went and I have pictures to prove it! I even went up to the top of the Empire state building.

We got back to Dallas and started apartment shopping and I also went back to NM for a second trip to help my Mom after a surgery. This ended up being a miserable trip... Well, it was good, but the weather was miserable, worse than Dallas for sure. DRY, HOT, HIGH ELEVATION, BABY IN MY LUNGS & NO AIR CONDITIONING DO NOT MIX!!!

So things didn't work out in Dallas to our extreme dismay and we headed up to Minneapolis. By this time I am 7 months preggo and getting pretty miserable. Driving long distances + pregnant woman = misery. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure that the only reason we ended up in MN is so I could give birth to the baby there. I think if I had in Boston or Dallas, I would have had a MUCH worse experience and I wouldn't have met Jeannette who helped me through labor. At least my mom got to come visit and on HER birthday too!

Fast forward 2 weeks after Connor is born and we rush rush rush to pack and move out. This was truly the most miserable experience of my life, bar none. I have this brand new baby that I want nothing more than to just hold all day and night, I'm barely able to get up and down the stairs still and here we go...off to Oregon.

On our way we at least got to stop and see Nick's family and share the baby but it turned into a lot longer stay than we had anticipated. Really, the DRIVE turned out to be a lot longer due to the trailer being loaded with the weight ill-distributed. We had to drive 45 mph or less through South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, adding to the misery but thankfully we made it safely. Days later we ended up in Oregon, where I've always wanted to land but never thought I'd get here. We got a cute little house with a real yard, front and back and we even have a giant volcano close by! One of the best things about it so far is the great mild weather and Nick finally got a BBQ grill!

Oh yeah, we did manage to make a couple of cool stops on the way which in a way, made the trip better (but longer.) Mt. Rushmore and the Berkeley Pit mine in Montana.The woods outside our window in Billerica, MA

Nick & Connor at Mt. Rushmore on an absolutely gorgeous day

"THE VOLCANO"

Nick and I drove up to Cape Ann before we left Boston

A puffer fish bath toy I got in Taos

A Spring Peeper Nick found for me when we were in Boston

Me on the top of NY

Nick and Connor at the Berkeley Pit Mine

The Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in Connecticut

Nick the "Grill Master"

Baby Is Here!

Connor William Arrived at 2:15 am on September 10th, 2007 (Both my Mom's Birthday and my midwife Edi's!) at St. Josephs in St. Paul Minnesota... 7lbs 10 oz, 20 in, 13.25 head circumference. 9 hours of labor, 4 of which were pushing (yikes!) thanks to a short umbilical cord not allowing him to turn face down. Finally assisted with the ventouse for the last 4 contractions to get him out into the open air, otherwise, pretty uncomplicated but amazingly painful! Anyhow, check out his pictures here.
Connor's Blog Is Also Here.

IT'S BABY TIME!

OK, so now that the word is out to all of our friends and family and we are past some imperative milestones, I can now post something NEW here (finally) and that is: We are expecting our first child!

It has be hard to post anything about what's been going on in life without mentioning it, SO I just didn't post anything for a while. In fact, I haven't posted anything since 3 days before I passed the test back in January. It's high-time, don't you think? Anyhow, to keep my head from exploding I started a baby blog separate from this one and now I can take a big deep breath and link to it from here. I will post all of the cool stuff and big happenings there for the most part. Check it out by clicking HERE or just check out some of my PHOTOS HERE.

P.S. It's a BOY!

Blog Therapy

HOLEY RUSTED METAL BATMAN! It's been SO long since I've last blogged! I keep wanting to put it off too for some unknown reason, but I am forcing myself to do it today considering I'm sitting here in my bath-robe, it's cold outside, and no car today. Might as well.

So, we finally left San Fran./Oakland. YAY! I always kinda miss wherever we leave because I establish a little bit of a routine and some favorite places to go (like the grocery store) but I really am quite happy to get out of there. Maybe it would be better in the summer and if we stayed in another hotel? The sound of the traffic and the train yard was so bad just all the time, I think I was literally going crazy from sleep deprivation. Everything else was kinda nice (minus bad drivers! A HUGE pet-peeve of mine) but nothing like SoCal where I can head down to the beach and the air is warm. Anyhow, I DID get to see my baby brother that I hadn't seen in a least a couple of years (that makes me sad) and we went and ate some really good PHO and had tea at the Japanese Gardens and strolled around Berkeley (which by the way is thee most liberal-minded place I've ever seen!) It was nice to be with him though. He's in Brazil again now, so who knows when I will get to see him again.

So we took the long drive from SF all the way to Spokane, Washington to FINALLY meet Nick's family! Driving along the Columbia River was just as beautiful as I imagined it would be with huge rock cliffs, evergreens, and this time of year; frozen waterfalls. It really was gorgeous. We got to spend 2 weeks there, visiting everyone, although I think we could have spent another week. I am hoping though that we can make it back there when the weather is warmer and we can get outside more. Anyhow, we got to go through a bunch of boxes of Nick's stuff from years ago and we found some pretty neat stuff like model cars and trains and even a rocket. Maybe some day we will have a little boy who can utilize all that stuff! So anyhow, we rode a ferry out on Lake Coure d’Alene and saw Santa and Mrs. Clause, and saw the tallest decorated Christmas tree in the North America. It was really nice getting to see everyone and spend time, alas I wish we could have had just a FEW more days at least. We still missed Nick's other Brother and his family by about a week. They live in CO. so maybe, just maybe, we will get to go see them before the kidd-O's get too big. I love CO. by the way.

So after Spokane, we headed to Minneapolis, MN for a meeting Nick had there. I was already getting sick by the time we left WA and by the time we rolled in to MN, Nick was feeling just awful. He made his meeting, but we were stuck there for a week while we both got better. Let me tell you, it's even less fun being sick at the same time as your spouse than it is going it alone. I did however, begin to feel a bit better before he did and it just so happened that I got to ride the shuttle across the street to the Mall of America and do some shopping! Nick was feeling better by the end of the week, so he went with me one day to see the underground aquarium that is at the mall. It was really neat. I wish I would have remembered my good camera, but all I had was my cell phone. Oh, we got to pet a stingray and a shark and a horseshoe crab! I have ALWAYS wanted to do that! The rays actually LOVE to be pet! It was amazing.

After we left MN we headed towards Massachusetts, but ended up staying Christmas Eve in Niagara Falls! We got a gorgeous room overlooking both falls that were lit up at night. There was this little slot you could open up in the wall and listen to the sound of the rushing water. It was gorgeous. We didn't have time to go walk around that next morning, so we'd like to go back through and spend a little more time, whenever it is that we head back that direction.

So we made it to Boston on Christmas night. I really hated traveling on Christmas, in fact, I'm still kinda depressed over it, but what's done is done and there is next Christmas on the way.
Anyhow, we are in a very quiet and pretty spot outside the city and just yesterday it finally decided to get cold. There is a TON of photography ops. to do here, so I am really looking forward to seeing what develops. Not a whole lot to say about the place yet. We're settling in and we may be here for quite a while. We'll just have to wait and see, as usual.

Well there, I blogged and got it out of my system. Hopefully I won't take so long to post the next one! In the meantime, there are more photos to be seen here.

New Politics

Well...

Australia lifted it's ban on cloning human embryo's. I think it's a travesty, but I also say "Good, let them screw up and figure out it's a worthless chase so we don't have to." At the same time, let's not be whiny Americans that act like 2 year-olds and whine: "Waaaaaaa! The Australians are doing it, why can't weeeeeeeee?" Oh wait, the Missourians just voted up "protecting" embryonic stem cell research. DOH!

Arizona proclaimed English as their official state language. Good for you Arizona, now if the rest of the USA would just catch on...

It seems Colorado, Nevada & South Dakota voted down making marijuana legal. No worries pot-heads, this doesn't mean that the plants growing in your closet or back up on the hill behind your house are going to shrivel up and die. It just means that your local Starbucks won't be converting into a Hashbar any time soon.

Overwhelmingly, I've seen so far the vote to keep the definition of marriage between one man and one woman as it is. Good, we are one step above keeping the definitions of things like "elephant" to mean "either of two large, five-toed pachyderms of the family Elephantidae, characterized by a long, prehensile trunk formed of the nose and upper lip..." rather than "a horse of any small type or breed" or any other definition we might find amusing to please and entertain ourselves and call "the pursuit of happiness."