Trace Part Two

Today we did the second run on the Trace with Cathy and Kaitlin.
We drove up to Lawrenceburg and got on the Trace and drove to just below Colbert's Ferry at Florence.

Our last stop was the Coon Dog Cemetery:

Huntsville Hikes

We had a great day today, first Jake tried on the base for his costume, so we had to go to Huntsville even though no one had rehearsal!  

That was over quickly and we went to the library and got some new books, picked up some pizza from Little Caesar's and drove up to Green Mountain and had a picnic next to Sky Lake.  

After that, we went to Mathis Mountain, which is a Land Trust property and picked up 2 geocaches there.

After that, I wanted to check out the Wildflower Trail off Cleermont, another Land Trust property and my favorite this time of year.

Matt enjoyed it as well, scoring another 2 caches.

Twenty

I had these 20 pounds I wanted to blog about losing.  Then, they became 22.5 pounds and I wanted to never admit any of it.

My recent activity increase followed by my even more recent...purging has them down to 15 pounds.  Now it seems kind of dull to chat about.  Who doesn't want to drop 15 pounds?  Other than Heather, who does not have 15 pounds to spare.  Well, maybe if she shaved her head.  Karen is also really scrawny...hey, and Cathy.  hmmm.  Okay, who other than me really DOES want to drop 15 pounds.  I need to meet new people.

My plan as of yesterday was to simply never eat again.  This seemed a sure way to A. avoid further bouts of puking and B. that 22.5 pounds would be history, along with most of  my brain cells and a couple of organs before someone thought to force-feed me.  I think it's just a LITTLE counter-productive that your body digests organs BEFORE the stored fat if you stop feeding it.  WHY does it store the fat, then?

My plan of today-that was before the wretched cramps of digestion set in-was to eat dry crackers and drink protein drinks and fruit smoothies.  7 crackers later and my stomach is doing a polka and I can FEEL the progress of the crackers like a rock in my belly.  Maybe I should have stuck with the no food at all plan.  I just thought 'food groups'.  Dairy and protein-shakes.  Fruit and Veg...smoothies.  Grains?  Oh, whole wheat crackers!  Nauseated pregnant women snarf crackers!  How can I go wrong?  I can't even think about rice or pasta after puking them both so recently.  Luckily, I had Little Debbie cakes that day-I only eat them on Tuesday, so that's something to begin with-and now thinking of THEM makes me queasy, too.  yay!  That blue-hat girl is a temptress and I have no willpower on my own.  LOL

The only food I will really miss is mac and cheese-the good kind.  It's like looking around your house at ALL your stuff and trying to decide what you would pay to have shipped overseas.  Suddenly, not much has great value.  The furniture can all be replaced.  You can take the computer and camera easily enough.  Should you ship the photos or just get new ones printed from a disc?  You don't need any of those nic-nacs or decorations or 95% of your books.  As long as your stuff is still out there waiting, it's easy enough to do without for a long while.  I realize I CAN still have food, I just feel like a break.  Until I find out what is making me so sick, nothing tastes good enough to feel THIS bad.  Not even mac and cheese.

So, I will post every couple of weeks, see where I am with the 20 pounds.  Maybe some small level of accountability will motivate me more than just thinking about it has.

Sunday stroll

or more like a hike!  What a great hike, I got back to the van sweaty and sore and feeling GREAT!  I needed that to stir my sluggy blood from the winter of fishing at Animal Crossing and sighing loudly over my Atlas and occasionally staring out teary-eyed at my poor lonely camper...


Anyhoo, loving the hike today!  New area, new falls, new everything.  It's hard to head down new trails when you are sure of the outcome with an old favorite, but I was ready to give it a shot.  Matt picked out 3 falls, but we only made it to the first hike, we were having so much fun exploring!  


I was loving the green-the moss, the tiny ferns, the grass.  I had the oddest compulsion to put the moss and the tree leaf buds in my mouth.  It just seemed like they would be delicious!  I told Matt I need some Green Goodness, if I can hide it from Ben, that is!


After the hike, we drove into Cullman and snagged some fresco bean burritos, which were really good, but freaked me out because they crunched!  LOL  I was sure I had gotten an old dried-out refried bean!  But no, that was some leafy thing.  After behaving so well with the fresco stuff, we got Chocolate Xtreme flurries.  That is the BEST thing I have had in a LONG time.  The chewy bits are what I love most.  We had a good guilty chuckle that the dessert was more than dinner and that after eating from the lite menu, we were hogging down ice cream studded with fudge chunks.

It was a great day, I have really been enjoying my hiking dates with Matt, though I was so invigorated after this hike, I think I chattered his ear right off!  

Two creeks meet, both have falls!  Hard to get a decent shot.

This is the larger falls, further downstream, from the top.

The view of the creek as we climb down the bluff

Matt found a geocache-which had 2 items that had been logged as 'lost' for nearly a year!  

Who says you can't surf in North Alabama?

Next time-nylon pants!
My shoes were pretty sad, too!

Learning and Education

I have been voraciously reading Peter Gray's articles over at psychology today dot com since about 5 this morning.  That man has some insight, which is kind of rare in someone who has had so much education.

He talks about this concept, Trustful Parenting, which has been around in one form or another since...always.  The most vocal group of late are the attached parenting folks.  I admit, when I first read about attached parenting, I was put off by the amount of TIME it involved.  I did not want to be with my kids that much simply because I could not fathom being with my own parents that much.  Of course, I also seriously questioned my homeschooled cousin-who had built his first car, a 69 Mustang, from a wreck and a book by himself and drove it back and forth from Alabama to the university in Florida he attended on full scholarship.  Not about homeschooling so much as HOW did he learn to drive without taking driver's ed?  I mean, without that form signed by a teacher, did you really KNOW anything about it?  I needed grade point average proof.  I needed that for many years.

I knew, growing up with a teacher for a mother, that it was a big game.  Yes, there are involved teachers, but they have SO many hoops that after a few years, it's hard to find one that stands out or that has all that energy for the extras.  Or...a place FOR the extras in the 'teaching the test' school system.  Talking to teachers locally, it seems they work up the test until April, then spend May watching movies.  One mom told me she took her kids out to homeschool because when they went to the video store for family movie night, they could not find a dvd her kids had not already watched at school.

Another pulled her son out in October of his kindergarten year because at the open house, the teacher stressed the fun stations around the room and the reality was, the 5-year-olds sat at their desks all day working on penmanship and reading.  And often lost their 15 minutes of recess due to someone talking or fidgeting.  She said after 3 months in school, her son had not even opened his box of crayons.  Play and creation have no place in the No Child Left Behind system.

What IS getting left behind?  With all the emphasis on grade levels, test scores, numbers and performance-where is the individual?  The CHILD?

March One

Well, I am not actually huddled and shuddering, so this first of this month beats the first of last month so far!


I spent the weekend moving things around, cleaning, tossing, recycling, stacking to give away and so on.  I went through my closet, bedroom, living room, the back porch and the kids did their rooms.  The kitchen is my eh zone.  I did clean out the drawers and cabinets, but the fridge needs some scrubbing and I have all the camping gear stacked under the laundry table at the moment.  I will go through that maybe during this week, or next week.  The last thing I want to do is haul it out and make a mess and lose interest!


I am very pleased with what's left, with all I have gotten done and mostly with the marked decrease in winter gunk like dust, pet hair, spiderwebs and dead ladybugs that hide underneath everything we own.  


I have started a list of what's next-sealing the tiles and replacing caulk around the tub and checking the windows.  I want to wash the windows inside and out, I want colorful curtains and a couple big throw rugs.  I want to recover the couch and fix the saggy seat where the fabric ripped out of the middle part.  I found directions I can actually follow in a magazine Matt's sister sent us this weekend.  She hooked Chan up with a half-dozen t-shirts and skirts, which kind of makes me sick both ways in that my daughter and SIL can share clothes.  That Erin is so scrawny and that Chan is that big.  LOL  


I will do pics this evening, the lighting in this house is horrible during  the day.  It's either blinding or black.  


In other news, all the snow is gone in Animal Crossing.  Jake gave his game slot to Matt, who has been as bad as I was at the start about playing.  I had to use the mommy voice the THIRD time he got on there yesterday when I needed help moving furniture!  Chandler and I installed sidewalks all over town to mark a path of most use, hoping to get some more grass to grow.  We have been planting trees and flowers every single day, but still the environmental score is 'D, maybe a C'.  We did manage to contribute enough money to get a new bridge, but of the 3 choices, NONE were where I wanted one.  

Today marks the arrival of 4 new bugs and 4 new fish as well as the departure of mole crickets, string fish and  pond smelt among other fish-I think octopus are gone and squid and bitterlings.  I have been forbidden to get on the game until someone is home from work because he wants to catch the new stuff first.  *sigh*  


I have my final mortgage paid off and now I have a flagpole that I can change the flag design on by using my phone to call Rover.  It uses your own selection of designs, which you can edit anytime you want.  I love it.  My flag is currently bright purple with a big blue E on it.