Sparked, Lost, Klompen

SPARKED through sparkpeople.com, which is a diet/healthy living website wherein I track my exercise, calories and water intake. I decided I needed to get to the bottom of my lack of weight loss even though I exercise 6 days a week, so I joined...for free. I found the problem...I eat too much. I guess that's not really all that surprising. What was surprising is just how much I eat.

LOST the Hoard's dairyman cow judging contest for the third year in a row, although this time I came in not only behind the dairyman himself, but behind the kids as well. This is all the more humiliating as my son chose the same line-up for every single class--dcba. Still higher than me. My daughter played it a little more random, but come on, she's not even two. She didn't know what she was doing. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that next year I'm not even going to look at the cows--except for the Brown Swiss because I got a 100% on those the last 2 years--next year. I just going to choose some random letter configuration and see if I can do better. Anyway, now I have to make pizza twice a week this week and for two more weeks as that was Ryan's wager. Not as bad as the last couple years of three pies, as I don't like to make pie. I think it is a mental thing because it's not like it's hard to make a pie, especially the kind Ryan likes--peach, made with a large can of peaches in heavy syrup and then you dissolve yet another cup of sugar into that. Still I just think they are too much work.

KLOMPEN. The kick-off for Tulip Time is tomorrow night with the Klompen Classic. I will be running it--well jogging really--with Kaleb. It is 3.1 miles, so we'll see if he can go for that long. I have a feeling he'll do just fine as he is really excited and he loves to run. Today he ran probably 1/2 mile to and from the library. No problem. He wasn't even breathing hard. He just may beat me. His dad and his sister are going to position themselves about half way through though just in case he can't make it any more. I'll post pictures when I get them.

Changes

Well, that is what has been happening here lately. Monday Ryan met the Smit grandparents and got the rest of the parts for the futon couch that is a hand-me-down from my sister. So, Tuesday I put that together and we hauled the dilapidated, possibly previous mouse-infested couch out. As part of our parting with the old one, Ryan tore the bottom fabric cover off to see if we lost anything in it that we couldn't live without. Guess what he found. My dad's wallet! I think it had been in there a while as the driver's license expired in 2004. Got that sent back to him yesterday. Anyway, now we have a new couch; one which Ryan thinks is great because he can stretch out almost fully to take his morning naps instead of being in the fetal position.

Yesterday we picked up a new bed for Laina. She is getting so big that her toddler bed seemed small in comparison, so we got her a twin captain's bed (one with the drawers underneath) since her room is fairly small and already is as full as I like them. She says she likes it. Currently she is taking her nap on it, so it must be bearably comfortable at least.

The final change lately is that all of a sudden last week Laina went from being understandable 5% of the time to being understandable 80% of the time seemingly in a day. Something must have clicked. It sure is fun when you can get some idea about what is going on in their head.

Trips

Ryan and I got to go to Kansas City in the middle of March for the DFA annual meeting. What a fun, and tiring, experience. Very long days. It is great to get to meet such nice people, not only in the YC program but in the coop as a whole. We are greatly looking forward to National Milk in October in Nashville.

I was home from the annual meeting for one day then the kids and I headed to Wyoming, the equality state, for one of our twice yearly long visits with family. We dyed Easter eggs, which was a first for the kids. They seemed to enjoy it. I thought it would be interesting to see how the kids have changed from one year to the next, so the 2007 Easter picture is on the left and 2008 is on the right. The picture of egg-dying with cousins, minus 3, is below. I don't know where two of them were and the other is only a couple months old.

During our visit Kaleb finally decided to be potty trained, after 6 long months. I have tried to think back on what we changed in our handling of the situation that could have made him finally get it, but I don't think there was anything. Something finally just clicked for him. We are VERY thankful for that to be over. I think it was a little like being a teenager. He wanted to be a big boy, but then again he didn't.

Funny story, we are getting my sister's old futon for a couch because our current couch has had mice in it, love living in the country, and I just can't stand that to be in the house. Anyway, my parents brought the frame to my grandparents' house in December with the intention that I would go up there to pick it up. It never worked out for me to do so, and because we weren't going home from Wyoming through there (we took a southern route) we picked up what we could fit on our way back to Wyoming. The poor thing made a useless trip, which my Grandpa and Dad were quick to point out. :)