Joys In My Life

I've been requested by The Queen Mama (what a cool blog name!) to do a List of Sevens. Here are mine: Seven things to do before I die (not in order of importance): 1. Travel the world extensively (US, Italy, Spain, South Africa, India, Vietnam, China, the list is endless) 2. Have more children (either biological or adopted) and see them become happy, healthy adults. 3. Study yoga with Joan White to become a certified Iyengar yoga instructor. 4. Learn more foreign languages and use often (goes with #1). 5. See world peace in my time (it's a long shot, I know). 6. Grow old with my darling husband. 7. Spend lots of time cooking fabulous foods in my new kitchen. Seven things I cannot (or will not) do: 1. Skydive. 2. Hang glide. 3. Scuba dive. 4. Go in a submarine underwater (do you see a claustrophobic and fear of heights theme, nahhhh). 5. Get my nipples pierced. 6. Ride a roller coaster. 7. Do a cartwheel. Seven things that attract me to my spou...

I've been busy getting ready for the holidays, so I know I've been a little sparse in my postings. You'll have to excuse my last post. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about my daughter. To explain, it's a little more of a complaint of my families "Just Relax" when it comes to secondary infertility. You see, in my family, the first child is always the easier child. The one they never have to worry about. The second child is usually always in trouble. My mom is the second child (got pregnant at 16), my brother is the second child (bi-polar), and my mom's sister's second get's into trouble as well I've been told. They always tell me to stick to one. The first is the commercial. The second child is the real thing. I hate that saying as much as we all hate to hear "Just relax." "Go on vacation." "Just adopt." or my favorite hated new one..."New house, new baby." Phoebe's adjus...

My parents have a habit of telling me not to have a second child, as the first one is a commercial and the second one is the real thing. I have to disagree. My daughter is no commercial. I had a discussion with Phoebe's new Pre-K teacher who started three weeks ago. She said Phoebe's been having some horrible temper tantrums at least one a day, maybe two that are really disturbing to the class. Sometimes she has to be sent down the hall to the Director's office because she's just so loud, yelling, kicking, and screaming. I have to say I do believe her teacher. I've seen one or two at home and I send her to her room with her door closed. I will not give in to whatever she's looking for, because that will make it twice as bad next time. On the way home talking to her, I found out what I think happened that I'm hearing this from the new teacher. The new teacher follows the rules, that the Asst Director would break when she was filling in. She'd ...

John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. I even loved him post-Beatles in a completely different way. I was going to write a completely different post tonight, but coming back from dropping Tom off at school, I got to listen to NPR for an hour back to Delaware and of course the topic of the evening was John Lennon and comments from people as to what he meant to them and where were they when they found out he was shot dead? John Lennon meant a lot to me growing up, but I’ll discuss that more in a minute. Where was I when I found out he died? I was at home. I was 9, almost 10, years old. I remember my father telling me and I cried and was terribly upset. John Lennon being shot was my JFK assassination. To me John Lennon was young, exciting, and wanted to make the world a better place. Just his way was through music. Please don’t think that at 9 years old I was too young to understand this. You have to understand I was old way beyond my years at this point. I grew up listening to t...

So in this hectic life I've been faced with lately: way too much work, house on market, new house being built, getting dinner on table, etc., and being very frustrated with the infertility thing, I ran across a quote that made me feel much better. BTW, I'm researching other Traditional Chinese Medicine practictioners in the area. I like the lady I've been seeing, and she's very respected in her field, but I don't think it's working out. I just don't feel like she really knows me, and she always seems very scatterbrained and hurried. It kind of caught my attention when she realized I actually cook real meals at home, not the stereotype of boxed, re-heated meals of the career mother. Anyway, I decided to give myself some me time and I went to the basement to practice yoga. I open up my favorite Iyengar book and here's the quote that really was on the first page I opened to, "Do not stop trying just because perfection eludes you." I'll j...

Here's me looking all happy in my new kitchen last weekend standing next to what will be my stove. Behind me the bottom cabinet is the spice rack drawer. I can't wait to make my first meal here!!!

Here's a view of the sunroom that is off the kitchen. I think we'll have our long kitchen table in here, so it will extend our kitchen/food entertaining area.

Here's the view that I went crazy over last Sunday. There will be an island that can seat three comfortably in the middle of the room. The box straight on is where my Wolf 6-burner 1 1/2-oven stove will be. I am planning lots of good cooking memories here.

Here's the latest front view of the new house. There is scaffolding in front as they've started putting the stones on the front of the house. It's hard to tell from this picture, but the color is fabulous!

I've really been having fun in the kitchen lately. I don't really cook fancy gourmet meals. That's my husbands domain, but I've been having a lot of fun and success with making simple everyday meals taste really good. I've been learning some interesting techniques along the way too that I can use in many different ways. The two recipes that I've been playing with are a lentil soup with rice or pasta (I like it with brown rice best) and pasta with vegetables in a creamy garlic sauce. The lentil soup recipe started from my favorite book " Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone ." I highly recommend this book even for non-vegetarians. It is very thick, easy to read, and is chock full of good information on how to cook different vegetables, whole wheat pizza, muffins, desserts, vegetarian soups, pretty much anything you can think of. This recipe was originally a lentil minestrone, which the second time I made this I substitute the small pasta with brown ri...