I made my first loaf of bread today!  Well, technically not first, since I make Tastefully Simple’s Bountiful Beer Bread all the time (I sell it, by the way!!).  It’s delicious.  But I’ve had this bread machine sitting in my cupboard, and it only gets used for pizza dough.  I saw this great recipe online, and thought it looked easy enough, and I’m craving carbs, so I tackled it as today’s adventure. 

I thought bread-making was a bit of an exact science, but I guess not… I didn’t have 1 full T of yeast, more like 2/3.  But it rose well, and it tastes FABULOUS.  Super easy!  Dump it all in my bread machine, turn on the 1.5hr dough cycle, take it out, form it into a loaf, put it in a greased pan, let it rise (on top of my oven, set at the lowest heat) for 45 min or so, and bake for 32 min.  Oooo man, I love me some homemade bread.  This is going to be a regular happening in the Toone house!

Josiah story for the day: On the way to preschool, Analise was munching on a
chocolate chip granola bar (Simple Harvest brand – so yummy and good
for you!). When she had to get out, she handed it to J, who finished it
on the way to the grocery store. When I went to pull him out, I found
he was smeared in melted chocolate chips. What a mess. So I cleaned him
(sidenote: just cleaned him up a little, really, bc somehow I don’t
care.  When did I get to be like that?
mostly I think, well, he’s a boy, he’s going to be a mess!  Besides the fact that he hates me to clean him up.). So in the
store, he got grumpy bc we weren’t heading to the bakery quick enough,
where he gets a free cookie, and I get 20 minutes of uniterrupted
shopping, until he finishes it or drops it, at which point he starts
grabbing things off the shelves… So 3/4 of the way through the store,
after he’s already tried to convince me (unsuccessfully) to give him some strawberries,
we’re browsing the cheese section, and he’s frantic for cheese (my
sweet little Wisconsin-blooded boy!!).  So I got a package of string
cheese, and gave him a piece (which I was going to get anyway, I
think). That placated him until we were in the checkout line. Where,
unbeknownst to me as I’m moving groceries to the conveyer belt, he’s grabbed a Reduced Fat 3
Musketeers MINT bar, gotten it open, and started chowing down   Little bugger. 75cents of my coupon savings down the drain So by the time we got to the car, he’s got chocolate everywhere. My little chocolate covered rugrat.

And the story from yesterday: I made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast.  We all enjoyed one.  Later J comes wandering out of the kitchen munching on a muffin. I’m
thinking, hmm… he got himself a muffin… it couldn’t have been that easy… Sure enough, I find the stool up to the counter, and the tops
are torn off 5 muffins, before he decided on the one he picked. Silly boy. And now they’re all contaminated from his snotty hands.

Analise
is ok. Drippy sick, grumpy bc her teeth hurt to suck her thumb. But the
dentist said the x-ray looked fine, and now we just wait. The teeth
could still die or abcess, but at least we know there’s no fracture in
the root. She was pretty good.  We actually have a regular dentist appointment for a cleaning and checkup in April, so hopefully nothing happens between now and then. 

There’s always something, isn’t there? Analise just stumbled and bumped
her 2 front teeth floor. Blood, tears, wiggly teeth… enough to make
this mom panic. I called her pediatric dentist, hoping he’d say it was
no biggie if they hadn’t fallen out
But he offered to see her ASAP or tomorrow for an x-ray. Analise was
frantic at the thought of seeing the dentist, so we’ll go tomorrow.
Hopefully the little wiggle will tighten up, though they’re still
seeping blood around the top an hour later. I hope she’s not following in the footsteps of her Daddy whose front 2 teeth are both capped.

I’m sure no one has noticed the lack of thumbnail pictures on the front page, but it’s a sign of how hard Brian’s been working. He’s swamped with school, directing the Science Olympiad which happens later this month, preparing a presentation for a conference next week, and designing a new website and business he’s hoping to roll out soon. He’s so excited about it, and aside from working, he’s spending all his extra hours programming and tweaking. Here’s a glimpse…

Before kids, the "fall back" time change used to be something to look forward to.  But now, it just throws a wrench into already not-so-good sleeping habits in our house.  But Saturday night, I happily realized that my kids normal 6:00 to 6:10 waking – as regular as an alarm clock – could likely be 7:00 on Sunday morning with the time change.  SWEET!  Sure enough, Josiah slept until 7:10, just in time to wake us up for church.  And I had to get Analise up at 7:55 so we could be out the door a few minutes later. 

We spent all afternoon outside playing on the playground at the bike race (pictures coming soon, I hope!), missed the sacred afternoon naptime, and came home just in time to fall into bed.  I’m not sure if it was all the playing and fresh air or the time change, but the kids slept great.  Analise was up just before 7 and Josiah was up just after 7.  I hope this trend continues…

Quiet day here.  I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with myself.  Analise has a cough and runny nose, so she’s snuggled on the couch watching a movie.  Josiah’s running around making a mess.   Just another day in the Toone house!   Happy Monday!

Yesterday was the last of the series of 3 training races Brian was doing. Of course, he was hoping for win #3, but it didn’t quite happen. Here’s his race report and links to some of the interesting HR and other data…

Yes that was definitely the hardest of all the races.
There was lots of attacks early and I tried to go with them or bridge
and everything I did was marked by the field. That’s why I was happy
when Wes bridged up to the break. I knew Wes was climbing strong and
would have a chance with whoever was up there. The orange team had a
rider in the break and yet they were keeping the pace pretty high on the
5th lap. I stayed near the front and marked Miro and Hurley who were
also riding immediately behind the orange team. I could tell that the
race was playing out similar to how last year’s 3rd race did so I knew
that there was still a chance to catch the lead group on the climb.

When we started the climb, there was an immediate attack from several
riders I didn’t recognize. I knew that you had to pace yourself on this
climb as I had learned from blowing up on it last year. So I let them go
and marked Miro who won the race last year. We quickly caught all the
attacking riders in the first switchback except for one rider from
Mellow Mushroom who was putting some time into Miro and I. I was still
feeling good enough to pick up the pace, so I came around Miro and
gradually pulled back the Mellow Mushroom rider. After the next
switchback I had caught everyone in the break except for Will, Stuart,
and Wes — but I could see Stuart and Wes just up the road. I was
closing fast on them, so I attacked as hard as I could thinking I had a
pretty good chance to pass Stuart for second but fell short by about
half a bike length.

Here’s an interesting comparison between the climb last year and this
year:

1st graph — last year’s HR data for the climb showing the "blow-up"

point where my legs gave out and my HR followed.

2nd graph — this year where I was able to increase my HR all the way to

the top

3rd graph — HR for the entire race.

http://www.toonesalive.com/cycling/hrdata/hr-climb2007.gif
http://www.toonesalive.com/cycling/hrdata/hr-climb2008.gif
http://www.toonesalive.com/cycling/hrdata/hr-gsmr3-2008.gif

Just for your entertainment, here’s a funny video clip I took during the race. This was starting the 5th and final lap. We’ve decided I can either cheer or take pictures/shoot video. But I don’t do well at trying to do both! Brian wasn’t in the front, and I struggled to find him in the pack. See if you can hear what his mom says in the background.

Whew.  It’s a lot of work to get some good looking photos.  Of 31 photos taken at our favorite Portrait Innovations, we only had 3 to choose from.  Josiah was mad as a hornet because he couldn’t ride on a little rocket riding toy that he spied as we started the photos.  3/4 of the photos had his pouty, big bottom lip and teary eyes, and I actually considered choosing one of those photos, since it’s a look that’s very much him 🙂 But we settled on this… still no smile from Josiah, but good enough to hang on my wall.  When did Analise turn into a young lady?  And Josiah was every inch the handsome little man today.   Please excuse the fact that it’s a picture of a picture.  Too lazy to work the scanner, and we only got the $9.95 package so no disc of images.  Oh, and excuse the little glimmer of snot below his nose.  You can really only see it on the big photos 🙂

I just discovered a cool website called Shabby Princess, that is all about digital scrapbooking.  I don’t know anything about digital scrapbooking, ‘cept that I’m a little interested in it.  But on their blog, they’ve got some free kits to put pages together as well as some downloads for monthly computer desktop backgrounds that you can insert your photos in.  Here’s what I created for March:

If you want my cute kids as your desktop background, leave me a comment and I’ll email it to you 🙂  I think it turned out so sweet!!  I might have to try digital scrapbooking!  Or, if you’ve got cute kid pics you want in there, I can do it for you if you send me the pics.  But who would want anyone but my cuties? 🙂 

When it gets too quiet around here, I get worried.  Analise was playing in the hallway, and I’d been taking care of something at the other end of the house.  I went in search of Josiah.  Not in his room, not in Analise’s room, not in my room… but the door to my bathroom was closed, and I heard him chattering in there, bumping against the door.  I tried to open it… it was locked!  AG!

Momentary panic ensued as I rattled hard, begged him to unlock it, shook the door.  Of course, nothing happened.  Josiah started to get a bit upset.  I called Tom, and he told me to find my tiniest screw driver to see if I could get it in the lock to open it.  The first one didn’t fit, and I didn’t have much hope that we had anything else.  And I was not pleased… my bathroom is probably the LEAST clean place in the house.  I clean it about half as often as the other bathroom, so the thought of J in there for an extended period of time was not fun.

But the 2nd screwdriver slipped right in and turned the lock easily.  Whew!  Josiah was pretty distressed by now, but not so happy to get the stern words I had for him and then get swept off to the other bathroom for a thorough cleaning. 

I also now know that we’ve got little "key" on the top of the outer doorjamb in the hallway.  Good to know!

Brian’s second race of the season was yesterday.  It was #2 in the series of 3 training races starting off the season.  Long story short… he’d hoped to launch one of his teammates into the breakaway, but that didn’t pan out very well.  So Brian took off with another guy on his wheel, and the two of them broke away, and Brian won the sprint.  Another win!  Another $25!  Hehe.  Hopefully the good riding will continue and the prize money will get a little better 🙂

Last night was another stormy night, nearly identical to last week.  No tornado sirens, though, thankfully.  But Analise doesn’t like thunder, so she was in and out of our bed several times.  We’ve struggled with her dragging bedtime out, with one request after another, up and down.  Tonight, she was really good, though, only getting out of bed once to tell me something.  Yeah! 

Her teacher told me about this moment from school:
Analise and her friend Laurel got into a little disagreement, and Analise was upset.  She cried a little to Miss Brenda, and told her, "I don’t like Laurel.  I don’t want to sit by her.  I don’t want to be her friend."
Miss Brenda said, "Now, Analise, what does our Bible verse say about that?"
Analise sighed a BIG sigh. "Be kind to one another."
Miss Brenda: "Yes, and is it kind to say that you don’t want to be her friend?"
Another BIG sigh from Analise. "No.  But sometimes my mouth says things that my head doesn’t want to say." 
How true is that, from the mouth of a 3 1/2 year old??

That’s what Analise said early last evening as she struggled to fall asleep.  They were actually very prophetic words.  Brian and I had planned a nice in-house date night with coffee, dessert and Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire on the agenda.  Analise was out of bed several times after her initial 8pm bedtime (half an hour late).  She finally dozed off, and something woke Josiah into a crying fit, of course waking Analise again.  Josiah needed tending to a couple times before we finally settled into the movie without interruptions at 9:45. 

Amazingly, the kids were sleeping soundly when Brian and I were jolted out of bed by the tornado sirens, which are less than a mile from our house.  I’ve always wondered if we’d hear them in the middle of the night.  NO QUESTION about it.  The kids still slept, somehow.  Brian decided to check the TV or computer to see if we needed to head to the basement.  Often, the sirens go off but the storm is in another part of the county.  It was very quiet outside, and the only sign of trouble was crazy lightning in the distance.  I listened to the storm pick up while Brian was checking things out, and about 10 minutes later, the power went off.   Brian came in to tell me that the storm was moving east at 40mph and heading our way in just a little bit.  There was no actual tornado, but something indicative of one on the radar. 

So we gently woke the kids, grabbed some flashlights, blankets and pillows, and made a big sleepy pile just inside the basement area, listening to the worst of the storm blow over us.  The kids were so good, and we stayed for about 20 minutes before heading back to bed.  The power was still out, and the storm was still raging.  I thought Brian’s parents were surely up, due to the sirens, so we called them to see if they had power and could tell us what was going on.  Whoops… they were still sleeping, and they had power and had never heard the sirens.  Tom assured me the worst was over (though I don’t think he got up to check!), and we tucked the kids into bed.  Josiah went right back to sleep, but Analise flopped around in our bed, scared of the thunder.  She finally fell asleep, and Brian took her back to bed, at who-knows-what-time-bc-the-power-was-still-off. 

Early bird Josiah decided it was time for us to get up at 7, and our power finally came back on at 8:15 or so.  Whew- the house dropped to 66 degrees!  We started a fire and heated water for coffee and warmed up our waffles on the stove 🙂  Analise talked about the nighttime adventure all the way to school, and I’m sure all her classmates and Miss Brenda got to hear about the thunder, lightening, ‘nado and the power going off.