Kaylene’s Mommy Thoughts

My sweetheart took me to the temple and we were sealed for time and eternity.

Happy Tenth Anniversary to my sweetheart Kevin, it’s been wonderful! You are the best thing in my life, your patience and giving attitude are wonderful. I can’t wait for every moment more!

We’ve gone through SO much, surprise babies, secondary infertility, near death experiences, car accidents, heart break, life altering diagnoses, dishonesty, loyalty, huge moves, living with the in-laws, severe depression, super joy, young love, and so much more. It’s all made us stronger.

Two and a half years ago

At the Oregon Zoo on our trip to revisit his Mission area

A heart shape rock we found on the Oregon Coast

The two of us at Temple Square in the Tabernacle, one week before his Crohn’s nearly took his life.

Last Summer, on my birthday, and the day Michael was baptized.

Now if we could only get a REAL picture…

Kevin sent me a Candy Basket and a Candle through the florist on Friday.  These totally made my weekend as I was having a rough day (more on that later) and it was totally unexpected as it came three days early.

Valentines day was busy as my Mom and I helped with Aiden’s class party.  Kevin’s Mom offered to take the boys for us, so we could have dinner by ourselves.  I don’t like going out to dinner on Valentines because EVERYONE goes out that night, so you spend most of what’s supposed to be an intimate evening crammed into a small waiting area with a lot of other people or outside trying to stay warm, then you rush through dinner so you can make it back to the babysitter in a reasonable amount of time.  What’s the point?  Not my idea of romantic…  I’d thought of reenacting some of our early dates with Arby’s or movies we’d watched early on, but Kevin was a dear and brought home Arby’s for Dinner on Thursday night.  So we ended up making a steak dinner.

This is the table just before we sat down to eat.  Kinda informal for a tablescape, but that wasn’t the point.  We had a great time.

We had my Mother in law’s recipe for salad, it’s oh so yummy.
Spring mix and romaine
Red onions
Mandarin oranges

Tomatoes (ours were yellow, because that’s what came in our produce box last week)

Craisins
Cashiews (slivered almonds are great too)
It’s better with poppy seed dressing, but we had a raspberry vinaigrette.
It would also be a tasty complete meal with grilled chicken.

We had grilled New York steak marinaded with A1 pepper and onion marinade, with a side of garlic and herb pasta and store bought dinner rolls.  To drink we had sparkling cider with a tablespoon of Pineapple Coconut juice.

For Dessert we made Cinnamon Bread Pudding

I chunked up a little more than half a loaf of bakery fresh cinnamon bread and set it aside

Warmed on the stove top ~1/3 cup butter and ~2 cups milk

Mixed in another bowl
~2 slightly beaten Eggs
~1/2 cup sugar
~Plenty of Cinnamon and Nutmeg
~few twists of salt

I mixed up the bread and the egg mixture, then poured on and carefully folded in the milk and butter.

Baked uncovered in my crock pot (just the pot part) in the oven @ 350 for 45 minutes.

We ate it almost straight out of the oven with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.  Mmmmm!  What we didn’t eat last night, the boys and I finished off for Breakfast today.  This is going to be one of our go-to recipes now!  It was heaven in a spoon! It’s also nice to find a richer, more savory dessert that doesn’t contain chocolate as Kevin’s allergic to Chocolate, but craves the none fruity sweets occasionally.  Next time we’ll add raisins.

We went and got the boys, got them to bed and went to the Theater and watched the first half of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, we’d never heard it in English, just watched it with subtitles, before practically falling to sleep.

It was a very good day and night.  I wish we could have a day like that at least once a month!

and/or

+

+

=

Divine.

IMO, there is enough filling for two crusts.  When we made it, we did 7 mini pies and a regular size Oreo crust.

I don’t like having overflowing crusts unless it’s banana or coconut cream pies.

I was planning on writing a big thankful note, but I just spent my time enjoying my family instead.  Had a great time!

Here’s a few pics from our day.

It’s been long enough!

I went with Aiden to his fall field trip this last week, we had a blast!  We went to Living Planet Aquarium this weekend too.  It’s VERY dark, so very hard to get interesting pictures that aren’t blurry.

It’s been a big one.  On Friday October 16th 2009 our lives changed forever.  Things had been changing in little ways for a long time, but this was a freefall kind of change.

Kevin’s blogging over on his blog about it and I’d like to invite you to go read.  I think I’ll be blogging in the near future on my thoughts and feelings on our experiences too, but it’s kinda a big thing that can be easy to talk about or very hard, I never know until I get into it.

I’m now on day 10 of my weight loss plan, this is the most direct I’ve been able to be since I was a teenager dealing with my eating disorder.

I’m using a free application on my iPod that Kevin gave me. I’m kinda embarrassed to have such a nice toy, but it just worked out to come to me when Kevin needed to upgrade for school, he was going to give me his old one, but it wasn’t working right, we took it into Applecare, and it had something fried, so I got a brand new hand held mini computer.

Anyway, back to the reason for this post… I’m trying to lose weight. Whoah, I said it. It’s something that I avoid. I pretend that people see the person I am inside and not this big body. When I pass my reflection I look the other way as if trying to avoid a bully’s eyes. If I don’t see it, it won’t see me, right? When I’m faced with it I usually just say to myself “well I have a bigger than average [tummy, arms, thigh, wrists, neck, or fingers]” and pretend that I’m just irregularly disproportioned. I’m OK with my stretch marks, and when it really comes down to it I’m OK with my weight, but not what it does to my health and my ability to do my job as Mother and Wife.

I’m tired of being tired, of not being able to chase my kids around, of being judged, being a slave to the kitchen and what’s in it, and feeling self conscious. I really don’t eat that much. I do enjoy seconds and desserts, but I really think my problem comes down to lack of self control and lack of exercise. That and the fear of mentally taking this too far since I have before, I so strongly want to avoid making this the center of my life and just healthy habits.

I don’t have a scale at home, I’ve never been able to keep one working (jumping kids will do that), so I’ll just weigh myself at the doctors, or wherever else I find a scale (I think both my Mom and MIL have them). My goal is slow and steady. I want to lose 1 pound a week for 40 weeks. I’m tracking calories with loseit.com and feeling pretty well.

About three days ago I got extremely hungry and felt weak emotionally and about ready to throw in the towel. Then I put on these pants. A year ago these pants almost fell off, before my freak weight loss (AKA Kev’s surgeries), Two weeks ago they were uncomfortable tight. Today they’re almost falling off again! that sounds like progress to me! I have a doctors appointment Monday. We’ll see then how things are going!