Sunday, March 24, 2013

Cooking

For Christmas Mom bought me a cook book from Weight Watchers called "Power Foods Cookbook." I have been working at trying to eat healthy and had even joined weight watchers in September, so it was the perfect gift. I have tried several of the recipes so far and I have loved every single one! I have been so impressed, that I keep forgetting to take pictures of my cooked creations before I eat them up! I thought I would share pictures from the book to give you an idea of the food. Over the last few weeks I haven't been able to cook any new or fancy recipes, so I am excited to get back to cooking!

The recipes that I have tried so far are:
*Maple Lemon Fruit Parfaits with Yogurt
*Cheese and Black Bean Nachos
*Vietnamese Pork Summer Rolls
*Quick Chicken Carnitas
*Cod with Roasted Tomatoes and Green Olives
*Spanish Chickpea, Tomato, and Kale Stew
*Turkey Scaloppini and Mushroom Sauce

The recipes I hope to try next are:
*Middle Eastern Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
*Crab and Quinoa Salad

I am going to put pictures from some of the recipes below and some pictures of me cooking the Spanish Chickpea, Tomato, and Kale Sauce.
















Friday, March 15, 2013

Study break!

So, what was going on in the basement you ask? Well see below?..I worked so hard! I uhh, well, I did two scoops myself :-p The basement is being framed and now getting ready to set plumbing for the new bathroom!











Thursday, March 14, 2013

Two More Weeks!!!

In two more weeks I will have finished this crazy two months of working overtime! I have grown really attached to the students I have been working with, but it will be nice to have my life back. I have been working a good 55 to 70 plus hours a week during these last few months split between my different jobs and master's school. This is why I haven't been able to keep up with everyone too much. So, how do i work so many hours you ask? Well, this is what i have been doing: My days start by arriving at my first school around 7:20 in the morning for before school orchestra. I was working on getting a concert prepared that we actually performed last Tuesday evening. I have two more concerts next week including a kinder musical and a big district wide concert the last week of March. At 8:30 I send the students off and make my dangerous journey through not one, but two school parking lots! If you have not been in an elementary school parking lot before or after school recently, well, there are a place of pure terror. I drive to my next school and arrive just in time to have five minutes to get my computer logged in, iTunes open with all of my music for the day(panic sets in when iTunes looses all of my music), get the classroom heat going - bad heating system - and have call classroom materials ready. I teach the full school day at this school. After school gets out i madly put my stuff away and clear the classroom for the after school orchestra that meets at that school. I do another run between two more school parking lots for my after school orchestra group. This is yet another very dangerous part of the day. I have had several close calls with speeding vehicles and blind corners from cars parked in the road and not even in a spot. I teach the after school group and once the last student is picked up I get to go home.....well on some days. On the nights that there are school concerts I don't necessarily get to go home. Wednesdays I go straight to flute lessons and teach until 9:00 at night. Thursdays I get to go home for a quick dinner before heading back out for flute lessons or symphony rehearsals. Now that the symphony is prepping for the concert, I also head out Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Some Saturdays I head back into school to catch up on planning, move furniture and set the stage for performances. This weekend Saturday, the entire day is for the symphony since we have a concert. We are doing a special second concert on Sunday too. Then, after all that, I try to get it at least a hour of studying for my masters exams with a full day usually devoted on the weekends. Luckily, I see the light at the end of the tunnel and will be back to a normal work day soon! I feel like I should be a billionaire, well at least bringing home big bucks for all this work. I hear that is what those rich folks do, they work this many hours, but it still doesn't seem to be panning out for me. I am just hoping that I get to keep working for my school in the future. It's a good school and district, so hopefully this will help me stay there.

On to some fun pictures:

Spring has come a little early here....

And why am I not studying right now, you ask? We worked extra hours to do conferences earlier in the week and got to come home early today! Gasp!

So, why am I not studying? Well, Anthony is doing something with a jack hammer in the last picture, but you will have to wait for more. And yes, he asked if it was okay because he does know I need to study. I could use an afternoon after this crazy schedule!















Tuesday, January 1, 2013

2012 Photo Highlights































New Blogger App

I am still exploring this new blogger app. I can't seem to place my pictures where I want them. If someone has learned..let me know! But here is one sleepy kitten, well she was trying to sleep with me trying out pictures.



Monday, December 31, 2012

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time has been flying by so fast this last fall. I have been busy trying to keep up with work, school, and flute events. At work, I had several concerts including the big musical for the year in December. It is nice to have that done for the year because I feel like I can actually teach this next semester instead of being in performance practice until the end of the year. I have played my first two concerts with the symphony and also been hired out to play two different concerts for a local choral group. I even played in Titanic the Musical this fall! I spent many nights a week playing until 11pm after a full day of work, so I have been quite busy performing myself. This December I was able to organize a flute event where flute players from all over the Tri-Cities and of all ages played Christmas Carols at the mall. I may have some pictures to add later, but it was pretty awesome because there were at least 25 flutists from third grade through adults playing.


Christmas break was quite welcome after such a crazy fall. Anthony and I went up to his Aunt's in Idaho for Christmas. There were a lot of people there and it was nice to see everyone. The kids seemed to have a really good Christmas. The Shimizu's and Katey came up for Christmas this year and I was able to visit them a bit. Anthony and I (and it sounds like many of his family members) got sick with some wacky, no good bug. I guess it would be worse to be sick while working, but it sure put a kink into vacation.

It is getting cold here. I am usually okay with the cold and can even enjoy it, but I am already thinking about the warm days of summer. Right now a detour of Hawaii sounds grand. It has me thinking that maybe I should try going there for Christmas next year...well see though as it will probably be quite spendy.

Since it is the last day of 2012 I thought I should put down some of my goals. Having this blog as something to look back on down the road is nice, so it would be good to see later what my goals were and if I met them...or changed some. For 2013 I want to continue getting healthy. I have lost almost 15 pounds (14.8 on my tracker). I still need to loose 30 more to get back to my fighting weight. If I keep up weight watchers, I should get there! With health, I am also working on my strength and back. I am weaning out of physical therapy and I hope my back pain goes away while playing the flute. I also want to continue working on running. It would be good to actually find and do a 3K race this year. Other goals that I have right now including graduating with a master's degree, staying active and improving my skills as a flutist, spend more time with my brothers, and going on some sort of vacation this year. (Vacation is still on the brain)





















Saturday, November 3, 2012

Fall in the Tri-Cities

Just a quick post for today! I am busy trying to clean and catch up on the home front now that my exams are over.

I love that all the leaves are brightly colored and falling now. I only wish it would stay like this for a little longer than it usually does!