Star Wars Cookies

I bought this set of cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Really, how could I NOT buy these cookie cutters? I just knew they would come in handy for some special occasion. And tonight was the night--the scout Blue/Gold/Red/Green dinner. The boys were each supposed to bring a decorated cake, but I thought, "Who likes cake in the first place?" And my second thought was "that's a lot of cake"... And so we decided to decorate cookies instead. One thing is for sure--everyone likes cookies. Especially sugar cookies. Especially Star Wars sugar cookies.

I used my trusty old recipe.

Four boys in scouts means our family would have taken four cakes to the dinner, and likely returned with 4 cakes, and as nobody in our family really likes to eat cake in the first place, we would have then thrown away four cakes. Any guesses on how many leftover cookies they brought home?

We also love the Williams-Sonoma kids cookie and cake decorator set. I gave it to Savanna for Christmas last year, and I admit I use it more than she does. It makes it easy for kids to decorate cookies. Really, who can manage one of those tricky icing bags without the icing coming out the back end and all over your hands? Not me. These little squeezy bottles are fantastic.

See how cute they turned out?

Snow Day!

Today was the day I have been waiting for for many years. We have lived in our city for 12 years, and we have rarely had snow like we had today. It wasn't a great quantity, but it was real snow. We have had many snowstorms, but generally they come with high winds, which dries out the snow and blows it into drifts--never big, beautiful flakes that cover the trees and grass. I knew the air would warm up and melt away by mid-morning, so we went out at 6:30AM to enjoy the snow while it lasted. All the schools cancelled everything for a measly 3" of snow, which entirely melted away by 10AM, but boy, did we have fun!

I love snow. I love driving in the snow. I love watching it fall. I love playing in the snow. It was a happy day.

The best present ever

Last year for Christmas my parents gave Zachary the smartest gift. They got a very cheap mp3 player and recorded themselves telling him bedtime stories. These stories are loaded on the mp3 player, and Zachary can listen to them whenever he wants. That way he can have Grandma and Grandpa tell him a story every day. He loves his" little pod."

If you don't already know, I grew up listening to the best bedtime stories ever. When we visit my parents, it is no problem to get the kids in bed, because they know if they are fast, grandpa will tell them a bedtime story.

Sometimes Zachary can't find his little pod, and it is because another kid has taken it. I often find it stashed underneath another kid's pillow.

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The Grapes of Wrath

Otherwise known as Nerdlings, part II.

The Academic Decathlon is coming up. Abram is not on the team this year because of his newfound talent at debate and interpretive reading. He's actually heading for Berkeley tonight for a tournament this weekend...

But I love the Academic Decathlon, and I love the nerdlings. And I really, really love teaching. Especially when it involves an excellent classic piece of literature. Like The Grapes of Wrath.

The Academic Decathlon this year is themed from the Great Depression. All the history, art, music, essay and literature sections follow this theme. Of course, the literature is mostly Steinbeck-based, and the kids are supposed to know The Grapes of Wrath inside and out, including being prepared to write an essay on a Grapes prompt.

I am helping the team get ready to take the lit section of the exam and to write their essays. So I have been reading the book again, and this time digging deep into the symbols, allusions and themes of it. Although the ending of the book disturbs me visually, it is a very lovely symbolism of selflessness, community and the over-soul. Still, it makes me gag. Yuck. Yet unforgettable.

I sort of prefer the movie to the book, because it entirely leaves off the disturbing ending. Plus, I'm a sucker for anything with Henry Fonda in it.

Get ready for Sunday School, kids. It's going to be fun. Not as fun as Dickens was last year, but I am very excited for the new batch of Nerdlings.

A body in motion

I know you are all dying to know how my running is going..... or not. That's just it. It's NOT going. I haven't been running in 2 months. You can stop reading here if you want to, or you can read the nitty gritty.

I have always had a lingering IT band monster on my right knee, and every time I have run a 1/2 marathon, at about mile 10, the monster would appear, and I would end up walking/limping/running the last few miles. In Hartford, the monster appeared at mile 6, and it was a miserable end to what started out as a good race. That IT band problem never went away, and 2 months after the race, I could barely run 4 miles without the IT band flaring up.

I found an excellent doctor who is also a marathoner. He told me that he had previously had the exact issue I was facing. He examined me, and determined that my left hip was rotated forward, and that basically my right side had taken over all power, using my left side for only balance. He hooked me up with a trainer that had completely re-vamped his body and running form. He said he wasn't exactly sure what her qualifications were, but that he totally believed in her methods. Plus, he is a really fast runner who had battled through my same issues. He told me to completely stop running until I got things worked out and strengthened. So I stopped running. It actually wasn't too hard to stop running, because it was FREEZING COLD and very windy. I started swimming or water jogging each morning instead of hitting the streets.

I think it comes down to 7 pregnancies with severe sciatica throughout had forced my body to adapt a "neutral" position that was anything but neutral. Also, carrying 7 babies around on my right hip had definitely played a role in messing me up.

I had my first meeting with the trainer the week after Christmas. She looked me over, took some photos, and gave me a basic routine to get my right hip to start to take it easy, and for my left hip to start engaging. She came back a week later and showed me in photos with lines drawn through my body how I am twisting to the right even when standing. I became aware that indeed I was always putting all of my weight on my right leg and none on my left. She also showed my how my shoulders were pulled up, and that we also needed to working on stretching out the muscles on my chest and teaching my shoulder blades to stay pulled down rather than up. She gave me a new workout to start to strengthen some of my muscles that my body had forgotten existed. Over the next 2 weeks, I became distinctly aware of how I was standing, sitting, moving, and how my brain really was not calling my left side into action to help with anything. My brain is starting to understand what normal should feel like and that my left leg is not there just for a decoration.

At my last meeting with the trainer, she gave me a workout I absolutely hate...and love....all at the same time. She told me that my body would begin to look forward to my running days, considering them "easy" compared to the 2x a week workout she had just given me, and which I am supposed to continue doing on my off-running days. It is really hard, and I have to do really funny-looking things, like stork-walks backward and forward, bear crawls, duck walk, a crazy roller-coaster thing, inch-worms, some killer lunges, and the always fun Downward Dog. But I can feel it working, and I'm getting stronger.

Next week I get to start up running again--slowly, but it will be nice to be outside again. I ran 1 mile on the treadmill last week to test out Mark's heart rate monitor for him (a whole other post--hopefully it's his monitor with issues and not his heart), and Mark said he couldn't believe how different my form was while running that it had been previously. I used to dip one of my hips, and I always felt like I was "twisted" when running. Also, I often thought I sounded like a horse when I ran. Now I know why--because my right leg would power me, and then my left leg would just take a quick step to keep my from falling over while the right leg got back into position.

I love the trainer. I asked her how she got into what she does. She said she got her degree in exercise physiology, and worked as a trainer on her university's football team. She was planning to go to physical therapy school, but while doing her hours in PT offices to be able to apply to school, she decided she just wasn't cut out for it. The PT philosophy at the time was about addressing the site of the injury or pain, and not about looking at the overall mechanics of the body to see how they were affecting motion which was then putting strain on a certain area. Anyway, she has changed my life, and I think she is a genius. I now stand on BOTH of my legs, sit un-twisted in the car, and my left hip is rotating back to where it belongs.

I have had 3 different physical therapists in the last 2 years tell me, "Weird. It's like your hip joints are on 2 different bodies. Huh." And leave it at that. Nobody every tried to figure out why. They just told me that I "was probably just one of those people who don't have the right body for running." Yeah. Thanks.

In another week, I will see if my "gait deformity" has corrected itself by growing muscles that I should have had a long time ago.

In the meantime, I sure have seen a lot of interesting things at the pool....but I'll save that for another day.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

This is what we are having for dinner tonight. It is the best broccoli cheese soup I have ever had. All of my kids love it--they even eat the broccoli! This recipe is also fantastic because it comes together fast. 30 minutes and it looks like you actually cared enough to plan ahead.

If I'm in a crazy mood, I sometimes make bread bowls to go with it. But not tonight. I just made some whole wheat bread instead. Because I'm lazy like that.

Broccoli Cheese Soup
Combine and cook for 15 minutes:
4 chicken bouillon cubes in 1 qt water
1 c celery, chopped
1 c grated carrots
1 c chopped onion
1 1/2 c potatoes, diced

Add:
16 oz package broccoli

Cook for 15 minutes and then add:
2 cans of cream of chicken soup
1 lb. velveeta cheese


Crusty Soup Bread Bowls
Ingredients:
2 Tb. yeast
2 c. warm water
1 Tb. sugar
2 tsp. salt
5 c. flour
Cornmeal

Dissolve yeast in water. Add sugar, salt and 3 c. of flour. Beat 3 minutes. Gradually add remaining flour to make a stiff dough. Knead on lightly floured surface until dough is smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl, cover and let rise until double. Punch down and divide into 8 pieces. Form each piece into a ball and place on baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 25 minutes. Cool. Cut off tops, scoop out bread to make a bowl. Eat interior bread with soup. Makes 8 large bowls, or 10 small bowls.

Walking the trails (photos by Joel)

I found these pictures on Joel's camera. He took Savanna and Zack on a walk through the backyard a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't realize he had taken so many cute pictures of them.If you come to our house, we would love to take you out to walk the trails. No trip outside is complete without taking a walk over the bridge. Zachary always checks for trolls underneath it before he will cross it.

Here are some picture of Zachary at the archery range. Yes, that is a deer target he is shooting.

And boy, was he happy when he got his arrow in the deer. Never mind he was only 4 feet way. It was a great accomplishment.

Rebecca

Doesn't this look like a trashy cover for a book? It's a great book with a bad cover. You know the old saying.

I recently read Rebecca. It has long been one of my favorite movies, and especially a favorite Hitchcock movie. I bought the book about 4 years ago, always intending to read it, but things are a little busy around here, and for some reason I just never cracked the book open.

And then about a month ago, I decided it was time to read it. And read it I did. I couldn't put it down. Even though I knew the ending from watching the movie at least 5 times, I still could not stop reading. I read the whole thing within 2 days. And Zachary watched a lot of movies for those 2 days. Great suspense, excellent story-telling. A real work of art. I was completely surprised at how much I loved this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a well-written suspenseful, spooky love story. And WOW! What a climax. The falling action continues the utter suspense. And the denouement? Fantastic. The book was so great at showing the inner struggle of the main character, and although the movie tried to convey that same thing, showing her staring off into space just wasn't the same as knowing the thoughts that were going on in her head.

Of course, having seen the movie, I totally pictured Lawrence Olivier as Maxim in my head the whole time I was reading. He was so perfect for that role.

Now my big problem is that I cannot find my DVD. I must have loaned it to someone years ago and have forgotten to whom. Anyone? Anyone? I really want to watch the movie again.