You get an evening like tonight…

I had dinner all planned out.  Brian was going to be gone for a weekly training ride.  But as I was cleaning up the kitchen to start dinner, the drain started backing up on one side of the sink, and when I rain the disposal, it came up the other side.  ARG.  I tried to plunge it but splattered junk all over.  Brian came rushing in bc he’d had a bike problem he needed to fix and wanted to fill his water bottle.  I was looking for something in the cupboards under the bar area of the kitchen, and came up to CRACK my head really hard on the corner of the counter.  OUCH.  It was the final straw and I broke into tears.  Analise HATES to see me cry. 

I scrapped dinner plans, loaded A& J into the car for a $5 Little Caesar’s Hot & Ready Pizza and breadsticks.  We spread out a blanket in the driveway and had a picnic.   The kids played outside for an hour and a half until it got too chilly as the sun was setting, and I cleaned out the car.  Whew… am I glad the evening turned around! 

The house is still a mess as we’re unpacking from a whirlwind trip to Indiana for Easter with my family.  It was a nice visit, but way too short with family (um, 36 hours including sleeping) and way too long in the car (24 hours!!!).  Brian is amazing for driving nearly the whole trip, largely at night, and the kids were troopers to be tied into their seats for so long.  We’re so lucky to have such good travelers! 

I’ve made 2 more loaves of bread!  This is becoming a delicious, healthy new habit!  The current recipe of choice is a yummy honey wheat oatmeal bread.  Brian’s eating lots of PB&J sandwiches 🙂

Ok, enough rambling.  I’ve got to get the kitchen cleaned up so it’s ready for all that tomorrow has to offer. 

Courtesy of Martha Stewart… these cookies live up to their name!!

Humor me, as I watch my baby boy grow up 🙂  He’s so cute… I love his new haircut and all the soft neck I have to snuggle when we’re reading and I’m carrying him to bed. 

Analise and I colored eggs this afternoon, while Josiah played with a couple bowls of water and some plastic eggs.  Oh, and a granola bar.  That’s what he had the most fun with in the water.  He dissolved it into little grain pieces, and called, "Mo water!" 
We started out with a pretty swirly coloring kit, but it didn’t work well.  Analise was more than happy to use her watercolors and paint away.  So glad she doesn’t need much crafting extravagance to keep her happy!  She was so serious, she spared me one tiny smile as I tried to duly document the memories…  Oh, and you can see that her hair is quite a bit shorter (maybe 3 inches), but it’s kind of scraggly because this was right after naptime. 

I feel like this was the end of my baby boy 🙁  It was so bittersweet.  But I’m always one for a deal, and though I wasn’t ready for his first haircut, a local salon was having a grand-opening special with $1/year of age haircuts for kids.  Can’t pass that up! Besides, his sweet little strawberry blond hair didn’t look too bad from the front, but he had a little tail in the back.  I kept hoping it would curl, but it never did.  *sigh*  Brian’s mom didn’t cut his white-blond baby soft curls until he was 3!  I guess 21 months is older than most boys for a first haircut…

Ok, I didn’t get the final haircut picture, but you can see his little curls
(which are only there when his hair has been wet), and his soft, clean baby neck. 
Um, he’s sorting through Analise’s hairclips and bows to find the right one to match his Elmo pj’s. 🙂
I’ll post a picture tomorrow of my handsome little man.  He looks like such a big boy!  Very clean cut!

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.