.baseball.

Elijah is playing baseball this year and its been a world of learning and adjustment for me as I'm realizing this is a little glimpse into my future in a changing roll in my motherhood.  I've been so used to the kids tagging along with me for the first several years and I'm realizing that with school and sports, etc., its more of me tagging along with them now.  Its interesting to process because as much as I love them being active and learning, its hard, especially in a life of full-time ministry (that has its own crazy unpredictable schedule) to figure it all out as far as importance, time management and sanity is concerned! :)

Either way, Elijah is having a blast and we're having a blast watch him on his team, the Muckdogs.  They are pitching now to them now, which has been interesting and Elijah does really well.  Of course, there's lots of practice with daddy and grandpas too! :)

Birthdays

This is incredibly late but the kids had their birthdays the end of February (Elijah turned 5!) and Savannah's was the beginning of March (she turned 3), so we had a joint bday party at the park.  It was a lot of fun and actually warm all during the party.  As soon as the party was over, the clouds rolled in and it got chilly but it was a lot of fun! :)

Microwave Cake

I've been reading a lot lately about microwave protein cakes that you can make on some of the blogs that I read (like this one)...I tried one yesterday that was OK, but I varied it a little today to try and it was delicious!  I've included the nutritional info and wow...does it satisfy my need for pastry/dessert!  Yum!

HW's Microwave Cake

1 T whole wheat flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
1 packet of Truvia (or stevia to your taste)
dribble of vanilla
pinch salt
cinnamon (desired amount to your taste)

(combine ingredients in a microwave save mug sprayed with a bit of cooking spray)
Add:
2 1/2 T unsweetened applesauce
4 T egg whites

(Combine and microwave for 2 minutes on high) invert on a plate or eat in the mug after allowing to cool for several minutes.

I added a wedge of trader joes dark chocolate which adds 35 cal and 2.25 grams of fat but makes the cake turn into a molten lava cake (it gets all melty and fabulous)! A squirt of whipped cream would be a great add too, but then the calories start adding up, so decide how you want to spend them! :)

Nutrition Facts User Entered Recipe
1 Serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories		98.9
Total Fat		0.5 g
	Saturated Fat	0.1 g
	Polyunsaturated Fat	0.0 g
	Monounsaturated Fat	0.0 g
Cholesterol		0.0 mg
Sodium		56.0 mg
Potassium		90.6 mg
Total Carbohydrate		19.7 g
	Dietary Fiber	2.8 g
	Sugars	4.9 g
Protein		7.5 g

zoo

 The weather was so nice today and its my one day off during the week with just the kids, so I thought I would take them to the park.  Last July we decided to get a family membership to the Oakland Zoo, and I'm so glad we did.  The kids and I had a fabulous time.  The sun was out and there was hardly anybody at the zoo making for a very relaxing day.  :)

painting

Finally after years of having an easel for the kids, I bought some paint and today was the day...its WAY too windy to play outside, so we took the easel out in the garage for some creative fun.

They had a great time and this is something we'll definitely do more of!

The Dam Run 5K

Today I was able to run a 5K with my dad...something that I've always wanted to do. It was a chilly day in Orinda, but a beautiful January morning. We had a great time.



I'm proud of how we ran. I came in 4th in my age bracket and 15th out of 89 women. I finished at 28:07...

Kids/Guest Bathroom Re-do

The beginning of this month, we had one of the guys from our ministry move in with us until he gets married at the end of this coming September. Since the bathroom he is using is the one place we haven't touched since moving in except for replacing the toilet, we decided that it was time to make some improvements in there.

Here are a few before pictures:

This is the nasty fan that didn't work at all...
It was so caked with grime and junk. I was thoroughly disgusted when I was cleaning it out. I thought if we cleaned it, then it would work...I was wrong. We ended up replacing the motor and fan blades (which was much cheaper than replacing the whole fan)

The medicine cabinet was broken when we moved in as well, so we decided to remove it and Phil built a built-in to replace it.

I don't have a before for the mirror that was up there, but it was a pretty standard
gigantic mirror that stretched from wall to wall. We removed it.

Here are the after shots:

In this shot, we still didn't have a mirror...we do now, which will be my next post...but here, you can see the new paint color (which is the wrong color, so eventually we're going to re-paint the bathroom a shade darker)

Here you can see some of the wainscoting behind the toilet

We put up wainscoting all around the bathroom. We think it makes the bathroom feel so much more fresh and clean.

We put in a new low-flow shower head (which, by the way, we did in our bathroom as well). We just got our latest water bill and have already saved $10 off our bill just from our shower usage alone!

Here is the built-in Phil constructed. We still need to put shelves in, but I think this is a huge improvement from what was there...

Overall, this took us about 2 solid days and a few nights to complete...not bad considering what we did (new lighting, new shower head, built-in medicine cabinet, paint, and wainscoting). I still have new drawer pulls to install as well.