I uploaded a few photos from Saturday’s soccer game. Eden turns out to be a pretty fast runner, but she’s not very aggressive. She doesn’t get in there and steal the ball away from all those little girls. But when she does get the ball, she runs up and down the field with a huge smile on her face – it’s totally obvious that she’s loving it.

After the game, over a roasted turkey sandwich at Quiznos, she said to me, “I’m having a rough day mom.” I asked her why she was having a rough day and she said, “because I didn’t make any goals.”

Doesn’t that just make you melt a little?

Monday
Green chile smothered burritos filled with leftover Chicken Taco Salad
(didn’t make the green chile last week)

Tuesday
Portobello Mushroom Burgers

Wednesday
veggie stir fry with tofu and brown rice

Thursday
Turkey and veggie pitas

Friday
tortilla pizzas with mushrooms and ricotta

treats:
Chocolate cream soda

I wanted to thank you all for your comments on my last post. I’ve been trying to write that post for the last month without sounding like a whiney baby. It looks like I still didn’t succeed. But I guess sometimes you just gotta whine!

In other news, I tracked down a local CSA that would actually return my call and my application is on it’s way to me. The list of veggies we’ll get at the peak season is WAY impressive. I’m excited about all the healthy veggi-ness we’ll be eating. (Jim is freeze drying McDonald’s for emergencies most likely related to tofu.)

“Children always know when someone doesn’t want to be around them and they act accordingly. As adults we sort of loose that.”

One of my knitting instructors said this to me today while we were talking about dysfunctional family relationships.

It was something that I really needed to hear as I’ve seems I’ve lost all of my childhood resiliency. I’ve struggled so much lately with the thought of friendship. It was like one day I woke up and found myself incredibly lonely. I’ve scrutinized myself relentlessly wondering if I’m not friendly enough, not approachable, not cool, not interesting. Wondering if I was difficult to love and what it was about me that made me difficult to love.

I haven’t come to a healthy conclusion. But I know that i need to thicken up my skin a bit and relearn how to be resilient. And I need to learn how to be content with being alone too.

I woke up this morning to big, fat flakes of snow coming down. The weather here has been very bizarre… (that Al Gore, he know what he’s talking about it seems.) But I’m always happy for cold weather because it affords me the opportunity to wear my knitting!

In fact, I forced my children to wear my knitting today too.

So, because of my perfect opportunity to wear my Sweater Workshop sweater, I have photos for you! (Most of the photos are by Eden.)

I need to start off by saying that I’m not in love with the neck. After washing, blocking and wearing a couple times, it gets more and more stretched out. Something needs to be done with it, but I’m just contemplating how much I want to rip out and re-knit.

(Honor took this one.)

As far as the sweater workshop method goes, I’m not convinced that it’s my favorite. My sweater is WAY big on me – but comfy. Part of that is my fault for not calculating in negative ease. Part of it is the stretchy yarn. And part of that is because the book adds no shaping for the waist and has you increase after the ribbing (hello belly balloon). I added in my own waist shaping and just did a folded hem rather than ribbing. But still! I did, however learn a lot about how sweaters are built and how I would like to build them. (And I’m pretty convinced at this point that top down raglans are my fav.)

Stats:
Rowan Felted Tweed – 5 balls I think?
US size 8 addi turbos 32″ for body 40″ for sleeves 2 at a time.
Use: for me!

And a couple silly pics for your enjoyment.

Yesterday, I came home from a long day to some very exciting mail. We found out that Eden was accepted to the school we were really hoping to get her in. See, we’d gone through a fairly involved application process to find that out of 100 or so applicants, only 22 would be accepted. And this was happening by lottery.

It wasn’t until that final meeting where we really learned more about the school, that I decided that she HAD to go there. In the whole elementary school, there are only 130 kids. It’s the only all day kindergarden in the district and she will have Fridays off. Honor will automatically make it in when he’s ready for school too. Because it’s sort of an experimental type school that’s out of our area, I’ll have to drive her every day, but I think it will be well worth it.

This comes as SUCH a relief. I was so worried about sending her to the school in our area. And I didn’t feel like any of the private schools provided a good alternative for us. Now the only thing that I have to freak out about is that she’s actually GOING TO SCHOOL. GAH!!

(Because I forgot to do this for her b-day, I uploaded a whole bunch of pics of Eden and created a new set. Click below to see the set.)

Until he did this, I was all set to write about the time he told his afraid-of-committment friend that it was better to learn to really please one woman than to have akward sexual relationships with lots of them. And I would have made you oh, so jealous. But now? Not so much.

(And PS, just so you can have a true idea of the WHOLE story, I’m allergic to cheese, the store is 4 blocks away, and he bought me fruit punch while I was puking. FRUIT PUNCH!)

I’ve finally got around to taking pictures of a few things I’ve finished (but not my sweater workshop sweater yet! I’m so lazy!)

A bunny hat from the book itty bitty hats. I love this book – I’d love to knit every single hat I think!

I used scraps of Pima Tencel, Cascade Sierra and GGH Samoa.

A baby bib.

This is a super simple knit, inpsired by the bibs in Mason Dixon Knitting. (1 Skein Peaches and Creme, size 7 needles about an hour, ta da!)

The Rutabaga bag

This is from the Spring issue of Knitscene. It’s super fun to knit and make a great re-useable shopping bag.

2 skeins of Cascade Sierra, size 10.5 24″ circs.

And Christina knitted this Rusted Root for a model for the store. I just happened to have her knit it in my size! (Don’t mind the hair, it’s crazy windy here today and the dog decided that he wanted to walk with me to the yarn store today, so I had to chase him down and take him back home.)

We found the sizing to be a little big and Christina ended up knitting the size Medium (36-39″ bust). It took 4 skeins of Cascade Sierra, and it’s SO super comfy!

And just one quick pic of my little photographer.

Monday
Spicy bean and pasta salad

Tuesday
indian spiced braised chicken (thanks Martha!)

Wednesday
veggie burgers

Thursday
Turkey sandwiches (thanks soccer practice!)

Friday
Green Chile smothered burritos – wanna come over?

Saturday
Date night! hopefully sushi

Sunday
Chicken Taco Salad

Something momentous happened to me yesterday – a real milestone in my life.

I woke up with my first ever hangover.

See, Jim was having his monthly “smoke night” with the guys at our house and arranged to get me out of the house. So “his girls” (ha, he always said he’d never work with a bunch of women!) and I went out on the town. I’ve really been in need of some girl time with people my age, so my elation of being out of the house without two yap-o-matics to keep track of caused me to loose all forms of judgement.

While I didn’t think I drank that much, oh. my. God. I have never been so sick in my life. I couldn’t even keep one tiny swallow of water in my stomach. I felt so bad last night that I just sat there and cried. I was very certain that I was on the brink of death.

Luckily, sleeping all day and all night helped tremendously and today I’m functioning. It was definitely a lesson learned (a lesson in humility too!). One that I don’t plan on repeating. Ever.