Happy Birthday Isabella!

Isabella turned 11 on the 4th. So this is a bit late but she just had her party a week ago. It was the first big slumber party here. Luckily, everyone was asleep by 12:30 so I'm not totally scared off of having another someday. I love Isabella, my firstborn. My best little buddy and companion when she was little. The sweet little girl who defied all odds with her long blond hair (the long part, not the blond part, of course). Now, she's such a smart, responsible, thoughtful, funny girl. A beautiful girl on her way to becoming a beautiful young woman. Growing up too fast! Isabella loves art, fashion design, reading, music, knitting scarves, her friends and often even her brother and sister. One big wish is to have her own bedroom, but Mom's not sold on that idea yet (it's yet to be established if Mom will ever be, but you never know). She's a blessing in our family, she's a good kid (knocking, knocking, knocking on wood!) and believe me, that's something I do not take for granted!

Reflections-District

Thursday we went to the District Reflections Award Night. She took 2nd in her school in the Visual Arts Category. Finally, I'm able to post a picture! We're so proud of you Isabella!!

President Barack Obama!

This conservative liberal girl is indeed happy and proud today!

I Palindrome I

I've decided I don't have enough stupid pointless stuff on my blog. Yeah, I have some. But is it really enough? And can you have enough? So I don't know why I was thinking about this. Probably because I'm bored (I swear I'm going to go fold the laundry after this). I should be doing a birthday post for Isabella and Noah's birthdays which recently occurred. I'll get to them, there's still more birthday hoopla coming so I'm procrastinating. I don't recommend anyone out there have two kids born withing three weeks of Christmas. So when I was pregnant with Isabella we toyed with naming our kids palindromes (you know words, or names in this case, spelled the same way frontwards or backwards). I've always been a fan of the palindrome, at least as long as I have known what a palindrome is, and of course "I Palindrome I" was a favorite "They Might Be Giants" song back in the early '90s. So it almost worked out for Isabella because Anna was our #2 choice but we ultimately decided Isabella was the name for us and it suits her well so good decision there. Luckily she wasn't a boy because I wanted Bailey, after a character on the '90s drama "Party of Five". Brent would have no part of that, he kept saying the kids would call him Beettle Bailey. As if any child knows who that old newspaper comics character is. But it was a good dodge since there are so many girls named Bailey now. Brent wanted Gabriel, not after the angel or anything close to being sensible. After Gabe Kaplan who played Mr Kotter in the '70s sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter". Not because he loved that show as a kid, just for comedic value. He pictured us dressing our baby up as the guy on Halloween in a little corduroy blazer with a black curly wig and mustache. Apparently we found out Isabella was a girl before we were able to take the boy name thing seriously. So anyway, here is my list of Top 10 Palindrome Names I could have named my kids:

Anna~almost happened
Ava
Ada
Anana~because it means pineapple in French
Elle
Emme~pronounced Emmy
Hannah
Kerek
Level~because it'd be just plain weird
Otto~because J. Otto Seibold is the cool author of the "Mr. Lunch" books and "Olive The Other Reindeer"

Okay, I'm going to do the laundry now.
Seriously.

We're Going Veg!

So I've mentioned to some of you out there that Brent and I are doing this DVD exercise program called Power 90. It's 90 days and we're on day 46. Halfway through, woo hoo! So we did the 1-2 workouts for the first half and now we're moving on to the 3-4 for the second half. They are slightly harder and longer. The first half was during the holidays, of course. We didn't want to worry about the diet during the holidays so now that we're a little in shape and have no excuse to eat chocolate anymore, we're working on the diet. We decided to try out being vegetarians for the last 45 days. Sometimes I think I need to make a major change like that to make it more interesting and easy. Gets the focus off the ice cream (no ice cream is allowed) and onto the veggie diet. I've always wanted to try it out anyway. No, we're not going vegan. We'll still be eating eggs and a little cheese and drinking milk. That makes it a whole lot less complicated.

Thought I'd share our first triumphal vegetarian dinner recipe with you~

Veggie Pasta Salad

1 box Barilla Plus Rotini Pasta, boiled and rinsed (has extra protein and the omega 3s)
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole olives, drained
baby carrots, sliced into quarters and slightly steamed
brocolli, cut up and slightly steamed
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into strips
grape tomatoes, whole or cut in half if you prefer
fresh spinach, torn
italian salad dressing to taste (I used the Good Seasons mix kind)

Toss all ingredients together, sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top, stir.
Refridgerate a few hours.
Makes enough for two nights for a family of five.
Serve with rolls or fruit or whatever.

Good and Pretty!

Update: I'd stir the spinach in right before serving next time, gets really soggy.

Oh, Thank Goodness!

The 16 day weekend is Finally over!
Brent's back at work, kids are back at school. Fun is fun and all, but 16 days is quite enough!