it's time to go offal

Top Chef is most certainly my favorite reality show.  Hand's down.  I've seen all 9 seasons of the original, 2 seasons of Desserts & 3 seasons of Masters.  The new season of Masters started this week and ohmygod Chris Costentino is a cheftestant!!!!!! 

He's mah faaayvorite.  He co-owns Incanto is San Francisco.  They have a Leg of Beast feast that I've been dying for.  I need to find 5 other people who are willing to shell out $55 bucks each for dinner tho. Chris is one of the biggest fans of Offal & has a site about it called Offal Good.  I reallllly want to go to Incanto.

The thing about Top Chef is that it's a real cooking contest.  It's not super drama filled (tho there's always a bit of that), but it really is all about the cooking and there are some dang talented chefs competing.  Top Chef Masters is harder because I always know at least 50% of the chefs competing.  Not personally of course, I'm just not that cool (shocking, right?).

If Chris doesn't win I'll be devastated.  Kind of like when he lost The Next Iron Chef.  He should've had that win!

Anyhoo...I have nothing else to say on the matter at this time.

'twas a gooood weekend

It was a busy weekend, but a good one for sure!

We started off the weekend with a bit of bouncing in the bouncy house.  Ray was getting it ready for our niece's birthday party so he decided to set it up and Emma could invite her friends that live on our street over to bounce for awhile.  And bounce they did!

Then we got ready and headed out to our fellow Daisy Scout's house for hot cocoa and cookies before we went downtown to take part in the Holiday Tree Lighting Parade.

When it was time we made our way downtown and got lined up to join in the parade.  It was going to go down the main drag in Morgan Hill and end with the tree lighting.  We marched along with other Girl Scout troops and the girls were so excited to see all the floats the other groups put so much work into!

We didn't see them but Ray was able to take a picture of the Marines who lead the parade.  They were so impressive!

There was this old firetruck and an old police car.

Lana's Dance Group

And here's our girls!  Their first time in the Holiday parade and in their Daisy uniforms!  They looked so cute!  It was so cool to see how many people came out to watch the parade.  They lined up along the street and cheered everyone on.  My parents, Auntie Marilyn, mother-in-law Frances & sister-in-law Theresa came all the way out just to watch the girls.  My mom had to leave right afterwards to go to work too!  It really solidified my belief that Morgan Hill is the best town EVER.  There's just such a feeling of community and pride.  And it was so much fun getting to spend more time with our Girl Scout parents.  We really lucked out in that department.  Each and every one of them is awesome and so gung-ho about giving our girls the best Girl Scout experience they can have.

After the parade we introduced the Kaisers and my in-laws to the Crying Tiger at Siam Thai Restaurant.  It's only the best steak EVER!

We had a great day and the weekend was only halfway over!

On Sunday we had the Minnie Mouse Chloe Day of Festivities!

 

My mom made Minnie cupcakes

Another picture of my sister not smiling - on purpose.

My friend Kim made the delicious cake pops!

I swear she's having a good time!

Chloe liked her dress up gloves.

Ray's downfall.  He spent time in the bouncy house.

six and counting

Today is our 6th wedding anniversary!

Doesn't seem like six years ago!

But boy has it been a great 6 years.  I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world.  Tonight we drop the kiddos off at my parents' house and gorge ourselves at La Fondue. (*psssst* don't tell Emma - she'll be so jealous!)  It'll be the first time we leave Olivia!  Though it's only for a few hours.  And it is for cheese and chocolate so think we can safely say it's worth it, right??

Happy Anniversary to the one perfect for me man in this world.  I love you more than I could ever tell you, more than I could ever show you.  You make me happy every single day of my life and I can't believe that I get to spend those days with you.

things that made me happy this week

This week has been a pretty good week.  I've felt relatively good all week (thanks to the bijillions of medications I'm taking).  And I finally feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that the end of the tunnel isn't as far away as it felt last week!

These are some of the things that contributed to my yay week:

Ok so this wasn't necessarily a yay thing.  All of a sudden a nice little crack showed up on the screen of my iPhone.  When I say 'showed up' I mean to say mysteriously.  I didn't drop the phone or anything and the strangest part was that the crack was on the inside!  You couldn't feel the crack on the outside glass of the screen.  And where it was situated was directly over the phone icon in that corner making it very difficult to make calls (or choose the letter 'v' when playing Hanging with Friends with my sister).

So Ray called Apple and they said that any crack in the screen voided the warranty and it would cost somewhere around $250 to get a replacement phone.  BOOOOO.

We went over to the Apple store to get someone to take a look at it.  The guy looked at it and said it was a single line crack and was probably a manufacturer's defect (though he'd never seen anything like it) and replaced my phone for free!  Whew!

So here's my yay phone picture!

Notice....no crack!

After the discovery of the sugar free awesome Oreos I didn't really think anything would be as wonderful.  I was wrong.  I've been splurging on Skinny Cow products (which are delicious), but they still contain about 10-12 grams of sugar per serving.  We found these at the grocery store and they only have 3 grams.  I tried one out suspiciously, sure they would taste like iced milk or something horrid like that.  I was wrong.  They're rich and creamy and completely wonderful.  Yay chocolate fudge bars that won't spike my sugar!!

For some reason this week I've been especially infatuated with my Hermione book mark.  I love it.

I realllllly good after dinner glucose level!  Yay!

My friend recently joined up with Wildtree food products so being the awesome friend I am I went to the party, tasted some food and purchased said food.  Apparently, grapeseed oil is fabulous for you.  Even better than olive oil.  So I got some to try and used it for the first time the other night.  I used it on my steaks and to saute the spinach, mushrooms & green beans.  It was so good!  If you can find a Wildtree rep in your area you should tackle them and get some of this stuff.  They have a bunch of different infused oils too (like bacon!), but I really liked this Roasted Garlic one and felt like it would be the most versatile.

And last but not least, my favorite yay thing of the week.  Crystal Light's little drink packet thingys.  I started with Iced Tea with Lemon and enjoyed it.  I also got some Green Tea with Lemon and Honey and I liked it (though not as much as the Ice Tea with Lemon).  Then I tried the Orange one and really liked it so I thought I'd try some other fruit ones.  Today I got Strawberry, Fruit Punch, Pomegranate Lemonade & Pomegranate Cherry.  So far I've tried the Fruit Punch and LOVE IT.  I'm not a big drinker of the plain water.  I will drink it and do, but sometimes I just want something with flavor and since I really shouldn't be drinking soda or fruit juice these are the perfect subs for me.

So there you have it!  Stuff that's made this week a little more sunshiney for me!  Is there anything that's brightened your week??

labor day busy-ness

We had quite a busy weekend this first weekend in September!  We started with Emma getting to get a hot lunch at school on Friday.  She was so excited and wanted to me to take a picture of her with her envelope of money.

Look at how tan she is!

Of course, she forgot to take her money to the cafeteria with her.

Then Ray and I went on a search for a new bike.  First he was going to refurbish his dad's old bike, but after talking to one of the guys at Sunshine Bike's here in Morgan Hill he realized it would cost as much to fix this bike up as it would to buy a new one.  So we went to just about every bike place we could get to before Emma got out of school.

We didn't find anything.  So we picked up Emma and headed out to Los Gatos and decided to take Emma to La Fondue in Saratoga.  This is probably my favorite restaurant ever.  Emma was excited to try the cheese fondue and steak off the grill, but mostly it was just a stop gap to the chocolate.

She was so excited!  She barely got any cheese on the bread, but she said it was so delicious.  I was too busy eating chocolate to take pictures of her during the dessert course!

Afterwards we headed over to Sports Chalet and Ray found the style of bike he wanted on sale.  The only problem was the color.  It was blood orange with black accents and it mostly just looked red, but in certain light it did look orange.  He bought it, but I could tell he wasn't really super happy about it.

Saturday we headed out to DeAnza College where on the first Saturday of every month they hold a huge flea market in the parking lots.  Lots of fun stuff to look at, though we didn't buy too much.

As with all the school around the Bay Area DeAnza's adding the solar parking lot panels which will be awesome next year in adding some shade on the hot days!

I love these china plate wind chimes so much I took two pictures of them.

This would make the cutest cake topper!

After the flea market we headed out to look for some accessories for Ray's bike and then headed out to my parents' house to celebrate my Auntie Marilyn & Auntie Terrie's birthdays.

You can't see it so well but my mom made the candles from a 'M' and a 'T'.

Course all the kids had to run over to help blow out the candles.

My cousin Austin got some new glasses and I wish I had his dad's senior picture so I could show you how identical their glasses are.  I took a picture of him and he said I had to take one of him not smiling because he's pretty sure his dad didn't smile in his picture.

My Mom & Dad went to the Longworth family reunion down in Southern California a couple of weekends ago and our cousin Wally gave me his old Canon Rebel 2000 film SLR.  I took a few pictures and I can't wait to finish the roll so I can see how I did!

Wally had a 28-300mm lens and a standard lens.  When I was looking at lenses online I discovered that the 50mm lens I've been coveting is much cheaper for this one...*hint, hint* :)

On Sunday we headed over to Sunshine Bikes in Gilroy to see what kind of accessories they had.  While there Ray found a bike closer to the one he really wanted.  

It's the same bike I have except it's the men's version and matte black.  We like Electra bikes.

They're so preeeety.

So now he's a little happier about his bike and we can go on family rides now!

Today we headed over to Valley Fair to use up gift cards that we've had forever.  I got these fancy little beauties!

Sally

Jack

And now they're ready for my Jack & Sally shelf!  So cute!  I love them so!

It was quite the busy weekend, but we survived!  This upcoming week is a whole bunch of doctor appointments and all kids of fun stuff.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!!

i just made a kick ass dinner

I did.  But I didn’t take pictures because I just threw shit together and thought ‘let’s try this’.  I didn’t think it would be so great, but it was.

It’s been kind of nerve wracking trying to think of things to eat that are not going to boost my sugar so much.  I’ve never really had to think about this, but now I do.  Though my levels have all been really good and I hadn’t changed much I still don’t want to push my limits.

So tonight I took the last of the salmon fillets I had frozen.  Then I filled a measuring cup with 1/4 cup of olive oil, sliced up a few garlic pretty thick and added that and squeezed a whole lemon into it.  Then I sliced up little cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes, white onion and a few spears of asparagus.  I spread all the veggies on the bottom of a glass casserole dish, salt & peppered them.  Then I laid the salmon down on top of the veggies and poured the olive oil/garlic/lemon mixture over it.  Covered it with foil and baked it in the oven at 350 for about 28 minutes.

It was awesome!  I highly recommend it & I wish I took pictures of it because it looked so pretty with all the colors too!

I’ll try to replicate it next week and make sure I take pictures then.  Let me know if you try it and how you like it!

fun & sugar free?

This pregnancy has been quite different than my last.  Last time I gained 60 pounds.  At about this time in my pregnancy I was probably up by at least 40 pounds.  This time, going into my last 10 weeks I’ve gained 17 pounds.

Woohoo me!

This time the ‘morning sickness’ lasted much longer.  I’ve been more tired, sleep is harder to come by and the back aches and just all around body aches are killing me.  Then to top it all off I came in a few points (2, actually) high on my glucose test which grants me with the awesomeness that is gestational diabetes.

Woohoo me.

The glucose test is by far one of the most unfun things about pregnancy.  If you’ve never had it, let me tell you about it.  You go in sometime during the day, preferably before you’ve eaten anything.  You get to drink this sugary sweet drink either in orange flavor or lemon lime flavor.  Then you sit and wait around for an hour and then they draw blood to see what your glucose levels are.  If you’re lucky enough to pass that yipee!  If not, you have to go back for the dreaded three hour test.

This time you have to eat half a sandwich and a glass of milk around 10 p.m. the night before your test.  Then you have to make sure that you eat nothing for at least eight hours, but no more than 10.  You hightail it over to the lab and they draw blood to show your levels after fasting.  Then they give you the lovely drink (which really isn’t that bad.  Think flat orange soda) and you sit around for an hour and they draw your blood.  Then you sit around for another hour and draw your blood and then the whole thing repeats itself one more time.

I got to do both of these.  Then six months after the baby’s born I go back in to do a two hour test to see if the diabetes has stuck around.  See, with your body producing so many hormones while your pregnant sometimes your pancreas just can’t keep up and there goes your glucose levels.  Most often it lasts only the duration of the pregnancy, but for some it can become a permanent condition.

So I got this little gadget.

It’s my glucose meter.  It’s not really as fun of a gadget as say my camera or iPad, but it’s got parts and pieces and stabs me every few hours.  What could be more fun than that?

Today I had my appointment with a diabetes nurse and a dietician to go over how to use my meter and what kinds of meals I should be eating.  Not so fun, but not so bad either.  Today was my first day checking my blood.  I have to check in the morning before breakfast and then an hour after each meal.  All of my checks were well below the max levels so I’m a happy camper.  I didn’t do too much to change my diet today except for staying away from soda.  Go figure.  Biggest Loser was right!

Ray also sent me an app that lets me track my counts and the times I test so I don’t have to make sure I always have this booklet that they gave me.  Every Monday at a certain time a nurse will call me to get all my readings for the week, answer any questions and check on my kick counts for the baby.

So yeah, way different pregnancy this time.  But eh, what are you going to do?  This will force me not to become a giant blimp by the end of the pregnancy and eat better.  Maybe I’ll become one of those heath nut weirdos.  Well, I did discover sugar free Oreos today (they are AMAZING!) so that probably won’t really happen, but who know, right?