A Day of Accomplishments

1. We got a lot of gardening done in between rain showers. I got all the weeds pulled up in the garden and elsewhere in the yard, I picked up all the sticks that fell and will be in the way of mowing the lawn, Josh started digging out the squash bed, and I thinned our lettuce, spinach, and peas which came up thicker than intended. The strawberries look fairly thin, but I'm not surprised since they are transplants from last year, I think we will buy some starts to thicken the patch up since these probably wont fruit this year anyways.
The original plan was to do our summer planting (squash, tomato, beans, and peppers) over the next two weekends but its been so cold I am chickening out. So wait they do. I might have to get a bigger container for my starts if it takes much longer though.

2. Mal is standing if you give him a hand for balance. He will also sit on his own if he feels in the mood for it.

And he will make this creepy face if you pretend to be eating his stomach.
For some reason it reminded me of this face that Zeke used to make...
But then I realized this one was WAY more creepy.

3. I made some really funny looking bread.
Where I went wrong was in trying to get creative and make a tic-tac-to pattern with my slashes on the top instead of the normal parallel ones. That little center piece was a good 2 inches high, lol.
But the real accomplishment was that I succeeded in week 1 of making all our own breads. I made the loaf featured above for dinner one above, 4 biscuits for dinner another night, muffins for breakfast and snacking, and 2 loafs of sandwich bread. I'm using the book artisan breads in 5 minutes a day and it is wonderful. You mix up your dough in 5 minutes and then just pull it out and use it when you need it. So this week was more hard as I had to mix the two doughs for peasant loafs and sandwhich loafs but now this week I just have to pull a chunk out when I need it, let it rise a half hour, and bake it.

3. Zeke learned to recongize the letters E and Z, which both stand for "Geekey!" as he sadly pronounces his name.

4. I got up the bravery to join a biggest loser competition with my friends. My goal is to not be last place. Josh says since there are like 15 of us and it's 6 weeks long there will probably be at least one person that gives up and either loses no weight or gains weight. I would like to not be that person.
In reality, though, I have 15 pounds left to lose after Malachi's birth. I would like to lose those 15 pounds but at the same time they dont seem to bother me enough to get me to actually work to lose them. So maybe the competition will give me the reason I need to work at it. I know that part of the problem is exersizing is nearly impossible in the rainy season with two children under 2. I cant go outside and I cant go to a gym (remember Zekey the stranger-danger freak?). Also since I'm breastfeeding it's not really advisable to do any calorie reduction diets. I can eat HEALTHIER but not LESS. And seeing as I already dont drink soda and dont eat many processed foods I have a hard time seeing what habits I have left to change.
Im going to try some green smoothies once I get to the store to buy ingridients. I have heard horrible things about them. Like they are disgusting. And they make you throw up. So I'm not really looking forward to it.

5. Also....sleeping baby.

6. Oh and soon to be accomplished. A night out!! The 5th night out since Zeke was born, in fact, which is pretty sad if you come to think about it. But we are finaly ready to make this a normal thing. Zeke will accept anything if you let him watch TV the whole time (and we totally totally will if it means we can leave the house without him) and Malachi took to his first bottle like a champion.
So now we just need to find a babysitter. Kim, you have sisters right?