November was busy too

In November, I won tickets for Kent and me to attend a gala for the Veterans Community Project. We bid on tickets for the Hip Hop Nutcracker and kept bidding long enough to get the tickets. We also bought a slew of raffle tickets for a quilt—there were several quilts, but I was only interested in the one you see here. Yes, we won the quilt too.

And we made our last trip to Yuma for Thanksgiving. We knew we were going to go for a hike so I (finally) replaced my hiking boots. Dad had bought me an amazing pair years ago, but they were destroyed when we flooded in Boston. These are the same brand, although not quite as nice.

Alison has taught herself acrobatics and flexibility moves. She is truly a pretzel (and didn’t get that from me, that’s for sure).

Kent, Ben and Jordan finally finished out their customized game of Risk Legacy. Jordan got that a couple of years ago and as you play, you settle the rules, and there are only so many games you can play until the board is full. This was the final year. Kent says it was a really great gift and I know he’s enjoyed playing it with Jordan and Ben.

We had our usual amazing food for Thanksgiving, made even more amazing by the fact that Ben and Jen and the family were moving to California the very next week. So we enjoyed the food, the fire pit, seeing all my family together again, and especially enjoying having Amanda as our daughter-in-law now. It was a great trip.

We got back late the Saturday after Thanksgiving, just in time for the blizzard the very next day. Yes, a real blizzard. But things cleared up enough for us to go to that Hip Hop Nutcracker I mentioned earlier—and it was amazing!

Thanksgiving 2017

November has been a packed month for me, professionally and personally. After my trip to Corpus Christi for work, I headed to Orlando (also for work). Alas, the view from my hotel room looked onto a boring roof, and we were nowhere near the ocean. It was so humid and foggy that I couldn’t see through my running glasses and every attempt to wipe off the lenses when I ran only resulted in more blurry smears.

I got back from Orlando on Thursday, and Kent and I headed to Nashville the next day. My older son is engaged to a wonderful woman, and her folks threw an engagement party that Saturday. If we’re friends on Facebook, then you’ve seen this photo already—I love it. I also realized that compared to everyone else, I’m kind of short!

This past Saturday, we flew to San Diego, picked up Jordan and Amanda and drove to Yuma to be with Ben, Jen and the kids for Thanksgiving. It’s definitely different running in the desert. I run before the dawn breaks, so I’ve enjoyed seeing the stars here in the desert and then watching the sun come up as I finish my runs.

Now I’m sitting here on Thanksgiving Day, so grateful to be with my husband, sons, daughter-in-law, future daughter-in-law and grandkids. It doesn’t get much better than this.

A new fitness device

About four years ago, I got a Jawbone Up (wrote about it here). Pretty quickly I realized that I didn’t like the interface or the looks so I returned it and got the Fitbit Flex I’d originally planned to buy. I wore my Fitbit faithfully, and manually entered my runs and workouts online. Last summer, it quit holding a charge so I got a new one. I (briefly) considered getting one with more bells and whistles but went with what I knew and was already comfortable using.

But over the last year or so, I’ve gotten frustrated with the Flex. It’s not designed to provide anything more than a relative scale of activity—you get your steps, you get some sense of whether the steps were light, moderate, or intense, and you get a very rough guide on the amount of time you spent doing your steps at that level of effort.

When I say rough guide, I do mean rough. For example, in Yuma I ran the same route twice; the first time Fitbit thought I ran 3 miles, and the second time, Fitbit thought I ran 2.65 miles. That’s a pretty big difference. It's the same with the amount of time; the Flex tracks in 15 second slices (I think?), so if you stop a run at the beginning of a slice, you'll look like you took more time. And you have to do the math to get your average pace per mile (assuming your mileage is tracked halfway accurately), and you still have to enter the info yourself.

So I’d been thinking about other fitness device options. While we were in Yuma, Jen showed me her Garmin Vivosmart HR+ device, and I was intrigued. Turns out Ben had done a lot of research to find a device that would do what Jen wanted it to do, and it turns out that what Jen wanted was pretty much what I was looking for. AND it turns out that I was able to buy a refurbished one for about $80 less than new. Although honestly, this device sure seems new to me—I’m pretty sure whoever bought it didn’t use it more than once and then returned it.

The verdict? I love it. I love that the device is fully synced to my phone, that my runs get uploaded automatically, and that I can enter something manually if I need to. I love that I know what kind of elevation gains I had on my runs in Provo (49 feet if you’re curious, there was an overpass I ran up and over every day), and what the starting elevation was too (4498 ft). I love that I can see my total average pace per mile, where I was slower and where I was faster. I love knowing my heart rate, resting and while working out, and I love that I can set the device to alert me if I'm not in my target heart rate zone, or I can set it up for running sprints.

All in all, I’m very happy I made the switch. Now I need to figure out what to do with my Flex.

A couple of completed projects

Lest I leave you with the impression that all my projects end up as wadders, here are two I've completed recently.

The sweater fabric is from Mood, and I got it last July on our trip to NYC. The pattern is McCalls 6408, which I've made before and blogged about here.

Don't mind my weird expression;
my allergies are kicking my butt and I feel
pretty miserable at the moment.

This lunch bag is my own creation. Inspired by my granddaughter and daughter-in-law, I took apart a paper bag from Bath & Body Works to use as the rough pattern pieces. It's made from the scraps left over from a bag I'd made for Jen, and the lining is from one of Kent's shirting materials. The front flap has Velcro to hold it down. I'm pretty pleased with this. I'd wanted a smaller lunch bag than the one I'd bought a couple of years ago, but it's hard to find a small one plus they're expensive for no good reason. So now I have this one.

I can see clearly now

This is not a 9-11 post, although it is a post about living and dying.

My daughter-in-law ran a half marathon a couple of weeks ago, a really tough one in the heat at Virginia Beach. Partway into the race, she and her running partner turned the corner and saw an apparently fit man who’d collapsed. He was being given CPR, EMTs were on their way as was an ambulance, but it was not enough. He died.

My DIL wrote a very moving post about that event, the thoughts that went through her head when she saw him, and her struggle both that day and the next week to make sense of something so random and arbitrary.

Years ago I either read or heard in a sermon (don’t recall now which it was) something that made sense to me. Basically, the author or speaker said, until we come to terms with the facts of our deaths, we’ll have a hard time making sense of our lives. I took that to mean that if I want to live a purposeful life, and feel as though at the end of it all I spent my life doing things that matter to me, then I need to be deliberate in what I do and how I live.

As another friend of mine posted today (and I’m paraphrasing), you just don’t know if today’s the day you’re on the wrong plane or in the wrong building. I think J would agree – she’s comforted by her faith, and she’s aware now in a different way that yes, life is fragile and arbitrary. We don’t know when the end comes. Better to live deliberately and to enjoy the moments we do have.

I have a tattoo of a sun face. I got it in 1999 as I came out of a particularly dark time in my life. That tattoo was a permanent, visible commitment to myself that I didn't have to live in a mud puddle or stick around with negative, emotional vampires. About five or six years ago, I got it recolored; I want it to stay vivid. I always want to remember that commitment and even more I want to live it.

We are family

We had such a great time in Virginia—so glad we went, so very glad Jordan and Sophie could be there also and very grateful that Ben and Jen are willing to host all of us.


We met Colin. Just look at those eyes! They aren't exactly brown (sigh) but they are also very different from Alison's eyes and Eliot's too. Both of those kids have crystal blue eyes. Colin's eyes sometimes look gray or navy blue.

Alison has changed so much. She's looking very grown up, not like she's in kindergarten. Some of that is her height (she's nearly four feet tall at age five), but a lot has to do with her new sense of confidence. This visit, she got to make cake pops with Sophie; watching her break the eggs and use the mixer was a lot of fun.

This picture shows perfectly how Colin is--a little love bug who grabs on tight and likes to cuddle. He's really fond of clutching hair in his little fists and can get a death grip you wouldn't believe. I'm not sure how Jen still has any hair left on her head.

Isn't this a great picture of Jen, Alison, Eliot and Colin? I swear Jen stays calm through anything.

Sophie posted this story yesterday about Jen:
The best mommy quote this holiday was definitely when 2 1/2 yr old Eliot asked his mom to get him out of the highchair. Jen, who had a baby in her arms, said "I can't get you right now Eliot, how about you sing a song to yourself."

Jordan and Sophie are just the coolest, always upbeat and looking to make sure everyone else is having a great time too. Kent took some great pictures of them "dancing" with Alison and Eliot and you should see the grins on the kids' faces.

OK, bear with me. Yes,it's another picture of Colin but this one is pretty cute even if he is crying.

Kent and I had gotten Eliot probably three different sets of train tracks from Ikea last spring before we left Boston.

I'd protested that three were too many plus the package said they were for children ages three and up and that Eliot would only be two at Thanksgiving, all to no avail.

I'm here to say that Kent was right.

Eliot loved his train tracks and splitters and whatever else was in there and so did everyone else.

Finally, here's our annual family picture. We clean up OK, don't we?

Some of what I've made

In this picture, you can see the large bag I made for Jen--it's the same pattern I used for my pink bag only here I've used heavier material which will make for a sturdier bag. You can't see the lining, but it's a laminated version of the monkey material you see on the rest of the projects.

I didn't want to use a print for kids on the outside of the bag because after all, Jen is an adult. But she's also expecting her third child, so I tried to make this bag useful for carrying around things for her children. I put pleats on the bottom of the large interior pocket and elastic on the top so she can put sippy cups in there. I made it big enough for two cups, I think. The laminated material can be wiped off if/when things get messy in the bag,

I also made a baby blanket, three bibs, three spit cloths and a hooter hider for nursing.

And here's a picture of the two throw pillows I made for us. As you can see, Eddie approves. 

Dear Alison,

The jacket for your doll is all done. See?

It's got a hood and is lined so your doll stays warm.

Tomorrow I will cut out the top for your mom, but I probably won't finish sewing it until Friday. Then I will send everything to you in Virginia.

Love,

Nana

A nifty trick

I use broth a lot in the recipes I cook, because it adds good flavor without a lot of calories or fat. But I refuse to buy broth any more. Store-bought broth is expensive and can be high in sodium. Plus I don't know how it's made. With my broth, there's no added salt or any sort of preservative. But making broth takes time and I don't care for the texture of the meat when it's been basically boiled all day long.

Last week, I learned a new way to cook the bird. My daughter-in-law, Jen, puts a whole chicken in her slow cooker and roasts it all day (or all night) long. She doesn't add any water, which surprised me at first. But really, it's just like roasting a bird in the oven, only at a lower temperature. Once the bird is cooked, she picks the meat off and makes stock with the carcass. What I really like is that this method means I can put the bird in the slow cooker and go do other things. Plus using a whole bird is a lot cheaper than using chicken pieces.

Here's my first slow-cooker chicken:

As soon as the chicken cools, I'll be taking the meat off the bone for other meals and then making broth of my own. This chicken probably had a lot of water injected into it, because there's a lot of water/juicy stuff in the slow cooker. So this may turn out more like a boiled chicken after all, but I hope not. And if it does, well I'll try again with better chicken.

Catching up

Heading to the birthday dinner

Here’s a picture from my birthday—we’re dressed to go to dinner and I’m wearing one of the dresses I made.

My cake

And here’s a picture of my birthday cake. Kent told them the name to put on the cake and he said there was a pause and they asked if I used the whole name. I think maybe the decorator started to spell my name incorrectly because you can see a bit of a bobble in the script. I’m sure it was very hard to get all nine letters on that cake!






Smithfield got a dusting of snow late Saturday afternoon and this is a picture of Alison getting ready to run, run, run in it. The next picture is Eliot at the door watching her. Pretty cute, huh.

Alison has gotten old enough that she understands when someone is leaving. Yesterday after lunch, she walked toward me and I could see she was tearing up and wanted me to hold her. I picked her up and she told me in a tiny sad voice that she didn’t want me to leave. Awww that broke my heart.


All in all, I had a really fantastic visit. I love seeing Ben and Jen and the kids and even more, I love it that they invited Kent and me to see the ultrasound. I feel very fortunate to have family like this.

It's a . . .

Boy!

I’m in Virginia this week. Ben and Jen invited us to come for her ultrasound yesterday and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s amazing how much detail you can see in those scans today. Ben and Jen said the images were even clearer than they were two years ago with Eliot.

Ben apparently has natural skills at reading the images; he’s known the gender of each of the three babies just by looking at the image—before the tech says anything. That’s how it was yesterday. I looked over at him and he was grinning. The tech saw it too, and asked him if he knew. He said yes, you couldn’t miss it. She laughed and agreed. So grandson number two it is!

Alison wasn’t really interested in having another brother and had told Ben that if it’s a boy, “you just keep it to yourself, Daddy.” He’d already told her he would get her an American Girl doll if she wasn’t getting the sister she wanted. So on the way home, we stopped at Target to pick up a doll. Kent had to head to the airport after that so he didn’t get to see the kids open their presents.

Eliot was far more interested in the cookies and rolling around on the tissue paper with the cat than he was in the toys.

C is for cookie!

And cat!

My children made me cry

And in this post, I am counting all four of them as my kids (no disrespect intended to the mothers of Jen and Sophie).

We exchanged gifts with Ben, Jen and the kids and Jordan and Sophie on Saturday. The puppets were a huge hit with both children, which really made me happy. I have some great memories of playing puppets first with my little sisters and then later with Jordan and Ben. Seeing Alison and Eliot love the puppets like that brought all those good feelings back.

But I have to say I think that I got the most amazing gift of all. My kids completely surprised me and more than that, they got me something that just overwhelmed my heart. To understand why, I need to give you some back story.

I’ve written here before that as divorces go, mine was pretty civilized. Yes, a marriage ended and yes, dreams we’d both held of beating the odds and living happily ever after also ended, but for the most part, neither of us got nasty or vindictive. One of the few sticking points for me—and let me hasten to say that this wasn’t Rick being nasty or vindictive, I think he was just sort of oblivious—was that I got pretty much no photographs of our 16 years together. That also meant I had almost no pictures of my children as they grew up.

I’ve always felt this loss keenly. The boys loved it when I’d sit down with them and go through all the photo albums and tell them stories about what they were doing in each picture. Our albums weren’t scrapbooks, just the old-fashioned, probably ruin your pictures kind of albums but they held the pictures and we looked through them frequently.

Even this summer, when Rick was in Boston and took us both out to dinner, I mentioned that I had no pictures. He was shocked and promised to get me digital copies. I didn’t hold my breath.

Maybe you can see where this is going. Last year or the year before, Ben and Jen put together a picture book, bound and everything, that contained pictures of us with them and their children. That was a fantastic gift, so Saturday when I felt the texture of the book, I knew what it was.

But I was wrong. They’d gotten their childhood pictures, scanned them all, and had them printed into a book for me. They also burned the pictures onto a disk. It was a complete group effort by all four of them—I cracked up at the account of how Sophie just walked in to Rick’s house and took the pictures (yeah!).

I’m getting teary again just thinking about how much this book means to me. I haven’t looked at the disk yet. I am saving those pictures when maybe I’m having a sad or lonely day, or feel not so great about myself. I know for a fact those pictures will give me a wonderful boost.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have something in my eye.

Ben is on the left, Jordan is on the right. Cute lil stinkers, huh.