Detox Day Four

I'm weakening. Help!!

68 ounces of water---check

TurboKick Class (Body Sculpt--turbo kicked up a notch)---check

Weight Lifting (too weak to lift my legs let alone any weights after Body Sculpt)----nope

Menu:

• Breakfast: oatmeal and hot tea
• Lunch: turkey sandwich and Ritz baked chips
• Supper: Eggplant Parmesan and side salad
• Evening snack: Cappuccino

My husband loves to try new recipes so he has been dying to try Eggplant Parmesan. While I was gone to the chiropractor and TurboKick class (Dr. C doesn't really know about my workouts...shhhhhh!) he put on his TIVO'd "Throwdown with Bobby Flay".

Bobby challenged the champion of Eggplant Parmesan makers and lost....but in the meantime inspired my husband to try the dish himself. So Brian had our 8 year old stand in the living room and watch the program while yelling the instructions into the kitchen.

This may sound like a total disaster but it was absolutely delicious...very unhealthy (11 WW points, yikes!) but really delicious. I also got the added bonus of my kids telling me all kinds of tips from Bobby Flay (like how to slice an eggplant, etc.) while we ate the masterpiece.

So not the best detox day...but definitely not the worst. Four days down...3 to go.

Easy Frugal Dessert

For my first ever Frugal Friday entry I’m going to share with you one of my favorite recipes, Bread Pudding. It is the epitome of frugality. My Grandma taught me how to make this as a little girl and she told me that it originated during the depression and was called “poor man’s dessert” because it was a dessert you could make even if you didn’t have flour or other fancy ingredients. All you need is stale bread, eggs, milk and sugar and you’ve got one of the most moist and delicious desserts (more like a cake, don't let the name fool you) you’ll ever taste. Add the butter sauce and it is really decadent.

This is a great way to use up stale bread, hot dog or hamburger buns. I personally save the heels from all of my loaves of bread (my kids won’t eat them) and freeze them until have I an entire loaf of bread made from heels. When the bread sack is full I make Bread Pudding.

Grandma’s Bread Pudding with Butter Sauce

2/3 cup sugar

2 cups milk
2 t. vanilla

3 eggs, beaten

Fill a 9 X 9 square pan to heaping with stale bread torn into bite sized pieces. Mix all ingredients and dump over bread. Mix well. (It works best to use your hands to really squish the liquid into all of the bread.) Bake at 325 for one hour.

Butter Sauce

¼ cup butter

2 T. sugar
2 T. flour

½ t. vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Melt butter in a small saucepan. Mix in flour and sugar. Add liquids, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil over low heat and stir until thickened. Let cool and refrigerate.

The Bread Pudding and the Sauce are delicious warm, but even two days later the Bread Pudding will be soft and moist. The sauce will congeal in the refrigerator so you will need to heat it each time you use it.

For more great Frugal Friday tips click on the graphic above.

Book Discussion

I have joined a book discussion blog. We are discussing the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. It is a really great book and the discussion is interesting. We are only on Chapter Two so feel free to join us. You're not too late.

If you aren't up for this one I'll let you know when we start the next book.

Shameless Plug

We've found a product that we really like that I thought I'd share with you all.

Sam's Choice Southwest Black Bean and White Corn Salsa

We used to buy the Black Bean and Corn Salsa from Tastefully Simple. It is really delicious but just too expensive to keep on hand. This stuff from Wal-Mart is just as good.

And it's good for you!

A 2 tablespoon serving only has 20 calories, 1 gram of fiber and 0 fat. That is ZERO points for a serving. Can't get better than that.

Detox Day Three

68 ounces of water---check, plus a little extra

TurboKick class---check

Weight Lifting----nope (too exhausted)

Menu:

• Breakfast: hot tea
• Lunch: turkey sandwich and free sample of the new Cheerios snack mix (very good actually)
• Supper: bowl of Turkey, Corn and Lima Bean stew
• Evening Snack: handful of peanuts and more hot tea

I've never looked forward to TurboKick so much in my life. Running two miles is for the birds.

Three days down...4 to go.

Make Playing Easier

This is my first ever WFMW post. It is supposed to be a "best of" theme but since this is my first one I guess this is my best. This idea did not originate with me. It came straight from the Family Fun Magazine. Here is it.

It is a chip clip being used as a card holder for little hands. It worked perfectly for my 4 year old. He always has trouble holding on to his cards and usually ends up laying them all out and making us promise over and over and over and over not to look at them. We played a rousing game of Sesame Street Uno and never even saw a peep of his cards, however, it is harder to lose on purpose that way so use this tip at your own discretion.

For more great tips click on the graphic above and read them all.

Detox Day Two

68 ounces of water---check

2 miles on treadmill---check

Weight Lifting---check

Menu

• Breakfast: hot tea and chocolate bread pudding (I know, I know but I can't stand to see it go to waste.)
• Lunch: turkey sandwich, corn chips and carrot sticks
• Afternoon Snack: chai tea
• Supper: 1/2 of a Turkey Quesadilla

Bonus Points: I should get bonus points for sitting between my sons and reading them stories while they passed the Trefoil (Girl Scout Cookies) back and forth across my lap. I only ate one!

Two days down....5 to go.

We Sold Our House!!

I can't believe it either. I never thought we would do it, but we couldn't pass up the offer. $500,000 is a lot of money, after all. Plenty for a new house.

APRIL FOOL'S DAY!!!!

That is my best attempt at an April Fool's joke. Wasn't it great? I thought about having the title be "I'm Pregnant!" but that is just too scary to be funny.

This is one of Ryker's favorite days of the year. Personally, I totally forgot about it until I was scrolling through on AMC today and noticed that "fool" was in the title of every movie. (BTW, that is a great way to find out when an old celebrity dies. If they are showing all Sean Connery movies you can be pretty sure he just kicked off, either that or it's his birthday. Either way a quick check on Yahoo will confirm your suspicions.)

I digress. Anyway, Ryker loves to fool as many people as he can, but he isn't necessarily that good at it. As soon as he got home from school he had to report to me about his 3 tricks of the day.

#1 He wrote "2007" instead of "2008" on one of the papers he turned in to his teacher today.

#2 He told his music teacher it was his birthday today. (He said "April Fool's!" before she could say "Happy Birthday".)

#3 He hid inside a locker and jumped out and scared one of his friends as he came down the hall.

At least he got better at it as he went along.

He gets the foolin' bug from his father. Brian loves to fool me, and not just on April 1st either. One of his favorite gags is to take his life-sized cardboard cut-out of Han Solo in storm trooper armor and stand it in the bathroom. He then patiently waits for me to open the door and scream. But on April Fool's Day he always pulls the same trick...lucky for him I never realize it is April Fool's Day. He puts a rubber band around the handle of the sprayer on the sink so that when I turn the water on I get sprayed. LOL, yeah right!

Today about 12:30 pm when AMC kindly reminded me that it was indeed April 1, I was surprised that I was still dry. Apparently someone else forgot the date also. Well, not for long. As soon as Brian got home he rigged the sprayer. Here is what happened.

I hope you can see the big wet spot on his shirt. That's right, he got himself. He was eating turkey, had some greasy fingers and went to wash them off when....BOOM he gets sprayed. Serves him right!

Of course I'm sure that later tonight I'll get sprayed because he'll just put the rubber band back on and I won't look for it, as usual. Some April Fool's Day's I get it two or three times. Sad, I know. But at least I'll always have April 1, 2007 (April Fool's!!) to look back on and smile.

Miss Grinch

Kinley is rapidly becoming queen of the brats. She is basically just one big meltdown after another. Her favorite words are "NO" and "MINE" and she never does anything the easy way. She takes her shoes and socks off everytime she it strapped into her carseat (which is actually somewhat OK with me because she then forgets to tear the bows out of her hair...always a silver lining, right?), she won't sit in the shopping cart (without a fight) because she prefers to stand, she screams if the dog eats the food she throws on the floor, and tries to hit me when I wipe her nose.

This weekend in Cracker Barrell she wouldn't eat her pancake if she had to sit in a high chair, but she would gladly eat it if she got to sit in a big chair and use a big fork. Oh, and just one more thing. No bibs either. Brian had to take her out to the bathroom and spank her twice in the course of an hour long brunch.

Last night she threw a screaming fit and had to be removed from the table because we wouldn't give her.........more lima beans. Yeah, lima beans!! Of course, Ryker and Cainan gladly offered theirs, but we declined on her behalf. She wouldn't touch the baked turkey or the potato because she had already made up her stubborn little mind to eat 3 cups of lima beans in one sitting.

She spends 85% of her day shrieking at Cainan, slamming doors, and sitting in her bed (the punishment for these behaviors). The other 15% of the time she is rocking her baby dolls and giving them their bottles or driving her shopping cart around while she sings a happy tune. But let her spy Cainan looking in the general direction of the stuffed bunny she discarded half an hour ago and she becomes a shrieking shrew.

Brian tries to remind me that the boys were horrible at this stage (20 months) too, but I really don't remember. Maybe I've blocked it from my memory to protect my fragile psyche? He also frequently reminds me that I was the one that wanted to have a girl in the first place. Yeah, he's a lot of help as you can see.

We are just waiting for this stage to pass and another to take it's place. Hopefully one that involves immediate obedience and lots brotherly love. Sometimes we just have to laugh at her terribleness because there is nothing else we can do in the meantime.

This weekend we were driving home late at night and all 3 kids were asleep in the back of the car. Brian and I were having a nice conversation when suddenly we heard Kinley's little voice saying, "No, no, no, no." She hadn't been asleep at all. She wasn't screaming "no", like usual, she was just saying it, with various voice inflections and tones. "No, no, no, no, no." Now in a sing-song manner, "No, no, no, no, no, no." Now in a whiny voice, "No, no, no, no, no."

Brian just looked at me and said, "She must be practicing for tomorrow."

Detox Day One

68 ounces of water---check

2 miles on treadmill---check

Weight lifting---check

Menu:

• Breakfast: banana and hot tea sweetened with Splenda
• Lunch: salad and corn chips
• Afternoon Snack: 1/2 apple with peanut butter
• Supper: Baked turkey breast, baked potato, lima beans

One day down....6 to go.