Missy Bristles likes long walks on the beach, Kisses on her cheek and tickles on her feet.

 

I came across the RAW format for the first time while working at Creative Marketing as a graphic designer, but didn't really know what it was other than a HUGE image file. Chris just emailed an article from Wired magazine explaining what it is and why we should use it. Pretty helpful! After reading the article Chris so thoughtfully emailed to me, I decided I'd give it a try. I am very happy with the results; a juicier image. I think I'm going to make the switch. I guess I need to go to Fry's and get another SD card. . . . . . Recently I've been thinking to myself, I do not get enough vegetables in my diet. That thought came mostly after my sister had me record my diet for a 24 hour period for an assignment in her nutrition class. Since then, I've been somewhat perplexed as to how to solve this problem. I don't really like steamed vegetables, because they're so mushy, relatively flavorless without loads of butter and salt, and the nutrients are pretty much stripped in steaming. Salads are wonderful, but salad makings seem to go bad so quickly in my fridge. Also, raw vegetables are often bitter, and a lot to chew. The solution to the problem came when my mother-in-law shared with me one of her issues of Cook's Illustrated: roast them! How utterly genius! We had some fabulous roasted green beans while she was here, and after she left I was thinking I'm going to have to buy more green beans it was so good. THEN, in a cooking class that I went to last week, Sheryl shared with us that pretty much any vegetable can be roasted, even romaine hearts!! For those of you who have already discovered this, kudos. For those of you who have not, here's the secret to fabulous, just right, tasty vegetables:

1. Cut up vegetables of choice into bite sized portions and place in a large bowl
2. Sprinkle just a little bit of olive oil, you could probably spray it with a light cooking spray if you want to spare some calories
3. Add some garlic, fresh or powdered
4. Salt and pepper to taste
5. Mix together
6. Spread on cookie sheet and place it in the oven at 400º for about 15 minutes, turning the vegetables over so you cook them evenly
7. Serve!!

Broccoli is great when roasted; it becomes slightly sweeter and the flowerettes become slightly crispy. MMmm. . . I was so excited to discover a new way to eat vegetables. If anyone has any ideas on other ways to have veggies daily, I'm all ears!! *I have to give a shout out to my friend Rachel and her husband, Knute for making the chicken and Quinoa salad. It was delicious.

Last week was record hot in Menlo Park. Chris and I have been here for nearly a year and haven't experienced this kind of heat. It got up to 100 degrees in our apartment. For about 4 days it was between 95-100 degrees. I think everyone in Menlo Park was suffering from some form of heat exhaustion. I was particularly concerned for my sweet Penelope. I knew she was really hot because she was fussy and bright red. I just didn't really know what to do. Chris and I agreed that we needed to get some kind of air conditioning unit, and fast! So, Thursday night we went to Home Depot and found the cheapest, smallest unit. We weren't quite sure what would fit in our window, so we thought the smaller the better. We went home and installed the unit to find out that it didn't even dent the sweltering heat in our apartment. Home depot had already closed for the day, so we were stuck for at least the rest of the night. Chris, knowing that Friday was going to be another hot day, woke up at 5:30 am to un-install the unit, drive to Home Depot and exchange it for a more powerful unit right as they opened at 6:00 am. My dutiful husband promptly came home and installed it so that Penelope and I could have a pleasant day inside. Do I have a sweet husband, or what?!? The 10,000 BTU unit worked a lot better than the 5,000 BTU unit we purchased the night before, but by the time 5:00 pm rolled around our apartment was at 85 degrees with the unit on full blast. Our neighbors found a 12,000 BTU unit at Costco for less than what we paid at Home Depot, so when Saturday morning rolled around we made the switch again for the even more powerful AC unit. I'm pleased to say this one works fabulously. It has kept us nice and cool (now that the heat wave is over), and it's more energy efficient, Yay for us for being green! I have to brag at how ghetto our installation is... Since we have side-sliding windows, and very small window sills, we had to improvise with the installation. We could have done something a little more graceful and appealing, but we never go out on our patio, and we never use that chair or that suitcase. Ta Fixe.

 3/4 bind with leather and wallpaper I found from the fabrix and more distribution. . .

Is this an appropriate post?? I'm not really sure, but Chris and I (and his parents) thought it was pretty funny. Chris's mom was in town last week, along with her she brought a magazine she recently started subscribing to; Cook's Illustrated. It's pretty rad. Each article showcases a recipe or a way to cook things, like roasting salmon, and the writers talk about their various experiments and what was successful and what wasn't. There were a few things that we tried from the magazines she brought. Among them was a recipe for meringue cookies. Linda was pretty anxious to try it out. I, on the other hand, was slightly skeptical because I've had little to no success with making anything meringue related. I was pleasantly surprised! The cookies turned out so delicious. After cooking them, Linda and I had a little brain storming session on different ways we could make them. I thought it might be good if you made them smaller with little wells and after cooking them filled the wells with caramel and dipped them in chocolate. Pretty much anything is good with caramel and chocolate, so of course it would taste good. Just after this little brainstorm, Chris bit off the ends of two cookies and stuck raspberries on top. He tried to see if Penelope would be fooled and try rooting around at the sight of them, but she's no dummy.

In the 3 weeks I've been a mom, my mom and mom-in-law have been taking care of me, and helping with Penelope. I'm very grateful for their help. I am so incrediby grateful to be blessed with such supportive and caring moms, they do so much for me. I can't tell them thanks enough. They kept my sanity intact, helped with doctor's appointments, cooking, dishes, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc. It was so much fun to have my mom, Linda and Cordell here just to hang out and play with the baby. Thanks, Mom and Mommy Linda (and Cordell) for all of your help! I love you.

This last week has just been a blur. Last Monday, after being in fake labor all weekend, I went into real labor during Chris's softball game. My water broke just as Chris was going up to bat (poor guy hadn't played at all the entire game!!), it felt like it could have been straight out of the movies. I'm sure it was a really strange sight for Chris's co-workers to see a 9 month pregnant woman, sopping wet, waddling towards the diamond in a hurry yelling for my husband. I was SOOO glad I finally went into labor! I had had contractions for about 3 days, and was ready to just give up and accept the fact that I was going to have a belly and contractions for the rest of my life. The labor itself went really well, I only pushed for about 40 minutes, and she popped right out in all of her trollish glory. She was born on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 4:04am weighing 7 pounds 15 ounces and 20 inches long. Now that the swelling and conehead has gone down, she's just a little doll. We've known all along how cute she was going to turn out. . . . My mom came into town Tuesday night, and has been such a huge help. Between grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, driving, doctor's appointments (pretty much everything), I haven't done a thing. She's taken care of everything. To be honest I feel a little guilty that I'm not so helpful around the house. My mom has done so much for me over my lifetime, and now she's doing even more. Since her arrival we've eaten so well. Before Nelly P came, our staple food was sandwiches. Chris and I are so appreciative of real food. The night we got home from the hospital, my mom made us the most incredible salad and muffins. I've not had food like that pretty much since we visited my parents for Christmas. I just had to take a picture of the meal. Doesn't it make you salivate just looking at it? It was also so nice to come home to a clean apartment filled with flowers!! My friend Carrie, gave me the cutest daffodils (which, I'm afraid, are dying– I'm terrible with plants), and Chris's work sent us a large bouquet of flowers. I don't think I've ever been given a bouquet that large. It's just amazing what live plants do for an apartment. I'm tempted to just spend all of my money on flowers in our apartment. They're just so fun! I'm just so incredibly grateful that our Nelly P is in good health and here with us. We have been blessed greatly with a beautiful daughter and such a great support system of family and friends. I'm so grateful to all of you that have called and visited!! We thank our Father in Heaven for blessing us with a healthy girl, and fabulous friends and family that love us so much. Thanks to you all. A thousand times over. I'm in the process of posting a page devoted entirely to our precious Penelope Pearl. We'll be posting more pictures and video!! Stay tuned...