What a week!

Just like our Texas weather to go from balmy 70 degrees to a brrr it's cold 39 degrees. But that is okay because we will get to build a fire tonight.

News on Angelique is guarded this week. She had a pretty bad spell where she stopped breathing and her heart stopped. She was moved to a bed with a heat lamp and was kept in a more sterile part of the NICU for a couple of days. She was moved back to her crib and taken off of oxygen yesterday. She was a little cranky (I guess I would be too if I kept getting poked and prodded), but she seemed to be sleeping comfortably and she took a full bottle of milk. They suspect a bladder infection was the culprit. She's on antibiotics, high blood pressure meds and who knows that else. She has tubes everywhere. At least the little snowball is doing better and hopefully she'll keep getting stronger each day.

I did get to tell her about the work in the garden we did and that she needs to get strong so that she can help her Nana. I can hardly wait for the kids gardening stuff to get in the stores.

She is up to 5 lbs 4 oz and she is just about too big for her premie clothes. I didn't get pictures yesterday because I didn't want to add another disruption to her day, but I'll be out there again next week to see her.

We spent the week splitting the wood that we had cut, cleaning up the yard a bit and I planted some Texas Supersweet Onions and Georgia Sweet onions. I'm excited about that!

We got a little bit of rain as well and our compost pile compressed a little bit. I weeded up a bit up front and have some poppy seedlings coming up. yoohoo.

I have the itch to get in the garden, but I keep telling myself that it's still winter and to wait a little bit before I start getting in the dirt.

At HD they had fruit trees out and we thought about getting a peach tree, but really in a couple of years we will be thinking about whether to move from here or not, so we decided not to get one. Why plant a fruit tree when we may not be here? We have a pecan and a maple tree planted so I think that those two trees will be enough for the yard until we make a final decision.

Listended to a smidgen of Howard and he said a way to organically get rid of weeds in the lawn is to use vinegar. Going over to his site to check this out because I don't want Huny to use weed and feed stuff on the lawn.

New Pics of Angelique

My precious Snowball. I hadn't seen her for a while and when I walked in she was wrapped in this blanket and looked just like a fuzzy snowball. The name stuck. She is now 4 lbs. 2 oz. and is in a crib, but still in NICU. She was still on a breathing tube but that should be coming out soon. Hopefully she will be home in another month or so.

Me and Angelique

Mom (my daughter, Cora) and Angelique smiling for Nana.

Resolution = Flexibility

So how many of us actually stick to the resolutions we make at the beginning of the new year? Not many, if any of us do. Resolution is a word that to many sounds so final and as if there is no flexibility involved. But maybe if we see a resolution as more of a lifestyle change, or as a goal to be met then perhaps those 'resolutions' we make won't be so hard to keep. Seeing a resolution as a more flexible way to change things in our lives makes the end result seem as if it is something we can achieve. Lifestyle changes and goals have the flexibility in them to move in the direction that we didn't see at first when we made the choice to change.

Everyday life is not set. We wake up one morning and the path we saw for the day is way off course from what we had planned.

My 'resolution' is not such a big one in the grand scheme of things. But I felt that I HAD to get it done and it HAD to be done NOW so that I would have it DONE for the next time I looked for a recipe. So I pulled out all the bits of paper, books, notes, copies, etc. of all the recipes I have on just ONE shelf and had it all spread out and was thinking that I HAVE to get this finished NOW. Talk about pressure and all for a recipe book.

At the end of a couple of hours I thought I'll NEVER get this done, just LOOK at ALL these recipes. WHAT was I thinking? This will take DAYS.

While going through this self-imposed pressure cooker, I was surprised to see how many recipes I have cooked. A pleasant surprise. And, I did manage to find the potato pancake recipe that I've been looking for since Thanksgiving - yoohoo! Of course, now I don't have any leftover mashed potatoes, but at least now I know where to find the recipe.

Taking a walk away and then coming back to see it all laid out on the couch I decided to get real. It was crazy for me to think that I could get it started and finished just like that. This will be a project that will take days to get finished, and then it will be an on-going project since I am a recipe-holic. I put the ones I had cooked in a separate folder and put the others in another folder and put it away. For now. Instead of trying to get it finished all at one time, I'm giving myself the flexibility to take my time with it. To work on it a bit at a time. I want to have fun with this project and I was NOT having fun.

So I went to Barnes and Noble to take a breather. While there I found a notebook just for the idea that I have to keep myself in order in the kitchen. I didn't get it, but it was a great inspiration tool and I'm again looking forward to working on this project.