Happy Fasnacht Day

Happy Fasnacht Day

Today was Fasnacht Day...the day all the Amish Dutch peeps clean out their cupboards of their white flour, sugar and lard to make donuts. They do this the Tuesday before lent. While I was at work people brought in donuts to celebrate. It's a dutch thing I guess.

Huh, now what?

Most of you remember when I was training for my marathon in October, then I broke my wrist and stopped training. The marathon came and went...it was a bummer but I survived the disappointment of not running 26.2 miles for fun. Well for the past little while I have been training for a 13 hour mountain bike race that will happen in the middle of April. S came home today and told me all the race slots filled within one hour of registration opening...and now I am 50th on the waiting list...huh, now what?

I'm looking at races, but I'm sad...this was going to be a great race. I have to continue my research but I think I will be able to find a race soon. I'll keep you posted.

The Dutch Life

Okay I'm not very good at scanning, but I want you to click on the above picture. this is a local magazine that did me a favor and found all the great restaurants in the area. Now do me a favor and tell me the top 5 Mexican restaurants rated in the Lancaster area, I'll wait.

Yeah did you see that!!! Taco Bell! Sweet Heaven where on earth am I? As soon as I told my Mom that, she sent me 2 cases of refried beans from California, she figured I was starved for Mexican food. The 4 other restaurants that somehow made it above Taco Bell don't have great reputations either...food poisoning, fake cheese, and the name Charlie in one of them. I knew moving to the other side of the country would have it's challenges...but I thought that no matter what - Mexican food would be there for me...like a good friend. But no, those damn immigration laws!!! Open the boarders for crying out loud, I'm starving for chips and salsa!!!

Okay, okay okay I need to keep my cool...it's not the end of the world...I can just try a different type of food...you know I love good Italian food...who would they suggest?............................Olive Garden! Gasp! What about seafood, we are close to the eastern seaboard...RED LOBSTER!!! NOOOOO!!!!! (eugie takes a deep breath, drops her head and shakes it side to side slowly)

Okay then, I get it...I will just eat Dutch Country food I hear the Scrapple here is delicious! If you are wondering what Scrapple is, here is what wise old Wiki has to say about it:

Scrapple is typically made of hog offal, such as the head, heart, liver, and other scraps, which are boiled with any bones attached (often the entire head). Fans of scrapple sometimes boast that scrapple contains everything from a pig except the "squeal."

I hear the Dutch cooking here is Yummy...I think I'm going to vomit...I just want chips and salsa.

Family and Friends

This is Uncle Fabulous, that's his real name. You ask Fisher were Uncle Fabulous is and he will go straight for him. They are the best of friends always getting in trouble hunting for rocks and trying to tame great beasts.

Fisher's BFF invited him over for a lobster dinner with live lobsters...Fisher had a blast playing with his food before it was cooked. Once it was cooked he didn't want anything to do with it. I think he just got too attached to the lobster while it was alive. Sad.

One thing I find completely heartwarming is how Fisher loves both sets of his Grandparents. It makes me so happy that they all care and love our child as one of their own and as many of them had said, maybe a little more. However I am worried that Seth's dad will be a negative influence...he's always getting Fisher into trouble, trying to sneak him out of nursery on Sunday to take him to 7-11 for a Slurpee and hot dog, or teaching him to run with scissors. I have to watch those two...always up to no good. That is why Fisher adores him.

Wedding Cake

This last weekend Seth's older brother got married to an amazing woman. Anna, she is fabulous and is a great addition to the family. However she is a little nuts because she asked me if I would make the wedding cake, and of course I have never made wedding cake, needless to say I accepted and was so excited to make the cake. I called my friend Webber to help me with this project. Webber is good with all things regarding food.

A week or so before the wedding Webber and I got together and did the test cakes. Then 3 days before the wedding we got together to make the cakes...it did not go so well. We made cakes without salt, other cakes did not bake evenly then collapsed, cake batter spilled in the oven when we put it in, and it goes on and on like this...but 6 and half hours later we had a 6", 9", and 12" lemon wedding cake ready to be transported.

Wow, you know I was going to blog about how when we got down to Zion everything went wrong and it did for the first day...we forgot the whisk attachment to the Kitchen aid, we had to go to a restaurant and ask for theirs, which they lent it to us for 2 days. Equally surprising and awesome. Then the chocolate frosting was becoming a nightmare...blah blah, but I am realizing people won't really care. The important thing is that the wedding cake and grooms cake turned out splendidly. Most importantly they tasted really well...lemon cake with a whipped frosting. It was a lot of fun to do and I glad someone finally let me do their wedding cake. Jannasen (the couples Hollywood name) were really good sports about it.

Side note, Fisher was their ring bearer and did a good job with that, but when the Martinellis started flowing with the music blaring Fisher got crazy!!! He was a dancing machine, he was such a trooper, it was such a long day with him and no naps...poor guy...but he was great...just keep him dancing and you will keep him happy.

Picture Time

Fisher's Grandpa is always goofing off with him. You really have to watch these two. The other night I came home Fisher came up the stairs from hanging out with Grandpa and he is covered in Post- it notes...then not even an hour later, those two disappear and when they re-appeared Fisher and Grandpa are covered in toilet paper because they were 'mummy's'.

Fisher loves both of his Grandma's like crazy!

More Snow!

My entire family all went to San Francisco plus most of my extended family. We had so much fun!!!

Digital Scrapbooking

It's a new digital scrapbooking program I have, it's great! I have been jealous of all you digibookers out there.

Scars

I have added a new scar to my collection.


Yesterday I got my cast off. That is when I saw my new scar, which to my surprise is not that bad. I thought it was going to look like this;

This morning I started to catalog all of my scars, and I counted 22 scars. That's kind of a medium amount of scars.

The worst part I have 9 scars from biking...apparently I suck at biking and can't keep the rubber side down.

1 scar from snowboard, I hit the back of my head on a tree...blacked out...didn't noticed I had a huge gash in the back of my head till the next day. Parents bought me a helmet that week.

1 scar on the tip of my right middle finger from when I was in 4th grade a blender attacked me. Took the tip almost off - 3 stitches.

2 from knifes - I'm not a cutter, just clumsy.

1 smile scar I got from my older brother when I was a baby. It was done with a pair of scissors and I will leave it at that.

1 scar I don't want to mention.

3 scars from my appendectomy.

1 from being a pyro when I was a kid.

1 scar on my bottom lip, I almost bit through my lip as a kid, you can kind of notice it when I smile.

2 on my knee not bike related...I have no idea what caused those. I probably fell or something.

I thinks that's it, of course I am not counting emotional scars...I mean those are almost countless.

Weird

Something strange happened this morning. It started out normal; Fish woke me up a little too early - I got him out of his crib - took him downstairs to feed him breakfast - once we got downstairs our eyes were burning because it was so bright downstairs! It took a second for our eyes to focus and we saw that it had snowed last night and it was covering the earth.
Now this is the strange part - I was excited! For the first time in a long time I was excited to see snow...not for my sake, but I was excited that Fisher would be able to go play in snow for the first time this year. I'm not sure what this means...maybe me being at the center of the universe is coming to an end. Maybe I am thinking more about him than me. Or maybe I just love seeing him happy, and what little kid doesn't love snow, or at least the idea of snow. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter we had a great time playing in the snow.

The Little Things #? - I Love Drama

When Mr. Tall Glass of Water and I got married I thought I really knew him...we had been dating for about 2ish years and had known each other for 4ish years, something like that. I really thought I knew him, but that all changed when July came. During July he changed on me, My Tall Glass of Water (TGW) became of sports fanatic! No joke, up to that point the only sport we would watch was lacrosse...well during July the Tour de France was going on. He was glued to the TV and internet and he had to know what was going on everyday. "What a waste", I thought. How on earth could he really enjoy watching a herd (peleton) of cyclists riding...yeah you're just watching guys ride their bikes...on a road...yawn! After a few days of pestering and mocking him, he had me sit down and watch the race...we had to watch it live and I was like 4 hours long or something ridiculous like that. Now how do I describe what happened next? Do you remember those 3D pictures that when you would stare at a pattern until you could see an image? Well that's what this was like...when I sat down all I saw were guys in lycra riding bikes...not too bad to look at, but not that interesting. TGW started to teach me about bike teams, jersey's and what the colors meant, tactical theories, and so on. I started to see a little bit of the image...then TGW started to get to the good stuff...who's who, and who is against who, and who said what about who, I don't think so! Sweet mother pro racing is a soap opera, drama, drama, drama, and it's awesome. Oh yeah there was so much drama with Armstrong and Ulrich, then this guy Mayo who shows up out of no where, now he's a GC guy, but he doesn't really do anything, then Kloden attacks Ulrich but they ride for the same team, but wait isn't that VINO, he's attacking , he's not even suppose to be racing, and Boonen's doing coke!...WHAT! It's crazy drama. That's just a sliver of the story line of "Mean Boys". It's a documentary musical based on the life of the Peleton that I am writing. Yes the image became clear...pro cycling is a Broadway music extravaganza similar to West Side Story that goes on tour every July to a sold out audience. So now I am hooked...I love biking and all that stuff, but pro races and behind the scenes is where it is at. For instance Lance Armstrong is having this mini drama with his ex team mate two time Tour de France winner Contador. I'll sum it as best as I can. Lance won 7 TdF in a row, that has never been done before. He retires, next year the whole tour was full of scandal Floyd Landis or some Spaniard Oscar Pereiro won it, who knows. The year after that Contador wins, then in 2008 his team was not invited back to race in the tour, again scandal and some guy Carlos Sastre won it but no big deal there wasn't any big competition there that year. In 2009 Lance decided to make a come back out of retirement and joins the same team Contador is on...okay I see conflict we have 2 champions on the team...Contador won in 2007, good for him but Lance won it from 1999 to 2005 some respect needs to be given there, love him or hate him, think he's a doper not a doper, doesn't matter...the guy has skillz. Well Contador didn't show any respect, Lance isn't humble so there are two big ego's on one team...when it came down to it Contador won in 2009...good for him, who cares. Now and since the end of July he has been taking all sorts of crap on Lance and visa versa, these two are always jabbing each other. Granted I think Contador is kind of a putz...he rode with 8 riders last year and each one of them left his team and all of them went to ride with Lance (that says something about your leadership), yes that's right, Lance left that team and started his own and he is preparing on crushing Contador, which is possible if they keep up this boy fight. For Lance to win he has to be angry, and I think this drama is making him angry and that is the worst thing for Contador...don't piss off Blue Eyes.

California and Christmas Pictures

This picture was taken this morning when I let Fisher pick out his own clothes...well I didn't really propose this, it was just the only thing he would let me put on him. I think he looks good.

He is playing with all his new Christmas toys.

He especially loves his chainsaw!

He is getting to be such a big kid...what a joy!

I caught him playing in the leafs.

It's a thug life. That mean looking woman is my incredibly sweet sister.

Fish boy helping us pack.

I saw this house in California and I love it!

Here is Fisher waiting patiently to open gifts on Christmas Eve.

What's Up?

So I noticed that it has been a month since I've posted anything. It's been an interesting month...I'll do a quick catch up; On the 13th of November I had surgery on my wrist, they put a screw in the scaphoid bone. Two weeks after that I got a cast on - I still have it on...it's dirty and smells...luckily I get it off in a week. Thank heavens! Luckily it is water proof so I have been able to wash it, so I could not imaging how nasty it would be without be able to clean it. Not to complain too much but this whole broken wrist thing has totally sucked. Since I can't work, I decided Fisher and I needed to get to California for a few weeks. We were in Cali for 3 weeks and Seth came out for the last week. We had fun. Okay that it the level of catch up I can play. I will post this then post pics of Fish...and why wouldn't I? He is so cute!!!

Busted wrist...but not that bad

A little over 3 weeks ago I had a run in with a truck while I was on my bike...however I used my super powers to avoid the truck...that is where my super powers ran out and I hit a street sign...pretty hard. Even though I slammed into a street sign I still feel really lucky, that truck and I came too close to each other...way too close. It could have been soooo much worse...I feel really blessed! But ever since the accident I have not be able to move my wrist in two directions...it does not matter how hard I try I simply cannot move it...period, if I try really hard it just hurts...it doesn't move it just hurts. So I know something is wrong with it, I'm pretty positive it's broken...I mean come on people it can't move for crying out loud! But I saw 3 doctors all telling me it's not broken, or at least they don't believe it's broken and sends me to someone else to get me out of their hair. Then I saw a hand specialist yesterday...and the films and MRI I had done of my wrist were inconclusive so he did a physical exam and he thinks it's broken he sends me to get my 3rd set of Xrays and there in those films my fracture finally showed up...I indeed am not crazy I just have a fractured scaphoid bone. I was so glad to finally have an answer...the answer kind of sucks, but it's still an answer and after not knowing for 3 weeks...any definite answer is good.

What now? Well due to this style of break and my career we are going with surgery to repair it...they are going to put a screw in the bone to make me indestructible (evil laugh)! My career is with my hands, and for me to make sure I heal well and quickly we decided to...(you know what it is so hard for me to talk about putting a screw in my wrist with out making it sound vulgar....you know what I mean) put a screw in my wrist. The plan is that I will heal up faster and there will be less chance of that bone breaking again. I really need my wrist to be back to amazing! There is always a chance of something going wrong with any surgery...but I'm staying optimistic. Surgery is not ideal but the doc gave me good odds for recovery, and I need to think long and short term...and this is a good option. So all of that is kind of cruddy news but lets get to the good stuff...

Good stuff: I was reading my friend Ashley's blog and she was blogging about all these great deals she has been finding at flea markets and garage sales etc.. I think reading that helped me be more committed to rummage through peoples old stuff...heck why not right? Seriously she made it sound so worth it, you should go to her blog you will be jealous of her awesome finds, and she is a great photographer you will love her site just for that. So one of my doctor's appointment was next to a Goodwill...so I made a commitment to go there, and not just walk in then walk right out...I mentally prepared to find something...look and look till you find 'it'. Well I found it, it wasn't an cool old antique it was a brand new panini maker still in it's box. It was only $16 bucks. I love panini's and that is what I wanted for Christmas, but now I have this awesome one for less than $20 bucks. I was so happy with that...I also found a really cool dish as well. Yeah so that find pretty much made up for such a cruddy week. By the way I have been cooking everything in my panini maker even enchiladas...which look more like quesadillas. So that's my story. Life is still pretty friggin awesome.

Halloween

Halloween this year was awesome. Fisher went as the Credit Lyonnais lion from the tour de France...obviously. Basically what that is, is a podium prize for the overall tour leader...they get a yellow jersey, some flowers, and the Credit Lyonnais lion. We went trick or treating Friday night in our community...apparently each County in this part a Pennsylvania assigns each Township a date and time to go trick or treating...like some people were trick or treating on the 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th...I did not see anyone out on the 31st....also they assign times when you are allowed to trick or treat, six to eight. Weird huh. The weirdest part is everyone follows said appointment. Weird as it is, we aren't going to fight it...if we tried Fisher may miss out on the loot.

It was cute because Seth was so anti trick or treating, he thinks Fisher was too young for this...and he may be, but as a parent of a young child I understand it's not always about the kid...like their first birthday...they don't care, but we as parents care. Seth eventually took him out and he loved it...Fisher was so stinking cute...he and his friend Sofia we're so cute walking together and asking for candy...Fisher would say please in sign language.

Fisher's best friends - Noah baby pumpkin robot and Princess Sofia.

On the actual day of Halloween Seth had a cross race you can check out the footage here...he did great and finished 3rd which is awesome because FishLion was his podium prize. Ridiculously cute!

Truck vs Street Sign

Who would win in a fight?
Eugie on bike fighting a Ford F150 truck or;
Eugie on bike versus a street sign

Here's my thought process...if I were to be in a situation where I was on a bike enjoy a morning ride with family...and a big ole' truck coming in the opposite direction came into my lane head on with too much speed and steel would I have a fighting chance if I got hit by said truck...probably not...but I'm not that good at physics or statistics...I'm just relying on common sense at this point. Well what if the quickest way out of the trucks way was a sharp line off the road into a steel street sign. Would I survive? I'm thinking it would fight me but let me live. I guess if I ever was in this situation I would take my chances with the street sign.

That's exactly what I did last week.

The street sign put up a good fight...but I fought back...I punched it in the body so hard I think I broke my wrist...yeah...I know...total street fighter. That's just how I throw I down! Next post I will tell you how awesome it is to have one hand to use...just think about these fun tasks you could do with one hand.

Put on a sock,
change active 15 month old's diaper,
floss,
cut an avacado...or anything else,
pull your hair back to a pony tail, and
just about anything else.

Fish Face Boy Pirate Awesome

Our little boy pirate is 14 month old now - this kid is like a puppy! He wants to play and laugh all the time...he really is the happiest kid I have ever had!

Of course he is a boy and thinks like a boy so he loves rocks, sticks and dirt.

Fisher has been learning baby sign language and has been doing pretty well with it, he can sign a little over 20 words which has been super helpful and awesome. The other night he woke up crying and would not go to bed...once my eyes adjusted to the dark I noticed he was signing for water, so I went I got him water, he drank up and went back to bed without a fight. The best was when he was sick with a little flu bug and he was so sick he couldn't sleep for long, so when he was feeling better he would walk up to me and do the sign for 'sleep', then he would grab his blanket and walk straight to his room and grab his crib and wait for me to put him in there....once I did he went straight to sleep...he did this 3x while he was sick. Over the past few days he is doing 2-3 sign sentences i.e. more banana please or more water please. It just is amazing how alert he is. For example he picked up the sign for book and car in under 5 tries. Since he picks up on signing so quickly we have been using his skills to mock his uncles and have taught the boy some signs for his uncles...it would be too annoying to explain so I will take video soon and post it. Needless to say those are by far our favorite sign, those and apple. Apple really is the cutest sign ever!


Seth's favorite thing Boy Pirate does is this little boy squat, whenever something needs investigation or needs to be played with his does this little boy squat. He also likes to read books in his squat...also Fish loves books, he is always asking for us to read to him, and in the car if I give him a few books he will be thoroughly entertained.
He thinks he is such a big kid now, when I take him to the day care at work he only likes to play with the big kids...he doesn't like to play with the babies or kids his own age...so I will see him running after all these 4-6 years old. The day care is great and has a lot of space to play in and it also has a climbing wall, Fisher tries so hard to climb on it, but no luck yet. Also I see him reading a lot in day care...I will sneak down there when I don't have any clients to check on him and I just watch him for a second and it's cute because he will be off to the side reading a book. When I take him to the playground it's great he will go down the slide by himself head first. It's great and dangerous.

If you ask him where his belly button he will push his belly and laugh, so we now call it his laugh button. Sometimes he will just run around a room tickling himself. You cannot help but laugh! He also loves to tickle...if he sees any skin under the shirt he has to tickle you. He loves to make people laugh, he cracks me up...and he knows it.

Anyway that's a little update on One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

Sisters

You know how they say you can't pick your family. Well it's even harder when you can't pick the people who marry into your family. I will admit I have been pretty lucky on this...I have great sister and brother-in-laws...and now there will be two more additions. Both are on Seth's side, two brothers are engaged...I know it's exciting...it wouldn't be exciting if the women were lame but they're not. So meet my two new sisters;

This is Anna, yes she rolled up Fish as a Fish taco.She is hilarious and is always happy! Always! Anna is marrying Jansen Fisher's fabulous uncle.

This is Becky, and yes that is a live chicken she is holding and you are correct that is my mother in law with the chain saw...as you can tell...I am lucky. Very cool girls.

Becky is marrying Jarom...Fisher's deadly uncle...and the uncle he does not trust.

There's love and there's hate...then there's running

I have such a torn relationship with running. In my opinion few things could be better than running on a beautiful pristine mountain trail especially if you are feeling strong with a pep in your step...but in reality how many times does that happen? Sure you could trail run...but there may not be any pep...no pep...so without that pep it's just a run...you're running on dirt.

A few weeks ago I declared my commitment to run a marathon on January 6th...today I actually registered and it is really on the 2nd...cutting my training short 4 days...which sucks because I am desperate for more days to train...and yes 4 days would have made a huge difference. Huge!

For the past few weeks I have begun my training from scratch...really I haven't been running since September 2007...yeah 2 years ago. My runs have been slow and dragging, but on Saturday I finally had my break through run. A little background, Fisher has been really sick this entire week, and he is teething so he has been in a lot of pain and so upset and fussy...and a week of listening to your baby cry and not being able to help him is emotionally taxing...I was so wound up!!! I felt like I was going to lose 'it'...I don't know exactly what 'it' is but I was going to lose 'it' for sure. Saturday I left the boy with the hubby and took off for a run...and finally I felt like a got my legs back...I wasn't running just to run I was now running because I had to, because it was my therapy...it was raining and it felt great...the weather is cool and crisp. Autumn is here and it felt good to run hard and be strong again. In one hour run I went from hating running back to loving it...and I'm sure soon enough it will switch again...but as for now and while the weather is crisp I love running.

Life

So I guess I don't have much of a life without talking about Fisher...oh well. This is my 5th attempt at blogging this last month. To make sure I post this bad boy I am just going to vomit everything I need to say.

- Met with my personal trainer today for the first time...just typing this post is causing pain. I am so sore...but I am excited apparently this guy is the BEST...and I need to best.

- I signed up to run a marathon on January 6th...I am not in running shape and doubt that I will be on the 6th of January, but it's my only shot...so I am shooting for it. You will hear me gripe about here...lucky.

- I am going to open my cooking blog back up with my sister's help. So stay tuned!

- Summer is ending and I'm okay with it (not like I have a choice).

- My husband rocks!

- Oh I've been canning like a Amish woman....well maybe more Mennonite. Just tomatoes and jalapenos.

- Wow come to think of it, I guess I didn't have much to say....hmmm...my garden outside is amazing!

- Work is going really well. I am doing massage at a few places in town, it's nice to get out and interact with others.

Okay so that was the skinny...I need to give you the info so when I rant about above mentioned items you will know the background.

I Swear I have a Life

I realize that I mainly have been blogging about Fisher for the past year...I am going to try to wean myself off that...and maybe blog about other stuff going on in my life. But, I am not ready to wean myself quite yet. So here is a video montage of his first year, enjoy.

Click on link below.

Ode to Boy