Just freshening up!

2012 appears to be the year that everyone stopped writing on their blogs. I know blogs aren't dead, but all my friends and I stalled out several years ago and haven't had anything to say since.

So this is a post that updates my blog a bit.

A lot has happened since my last post. For one thing, the new nephew that I announced is now FOUR. Today. He just turned FOUR. So, instead of being a baby, he's running around telling jokes and kicking a soccer ball and playing with his brother. That's right. The first baby is now a big brother to a 1 year old.

We also moved from Nashville back to Michigan. I had to update my blogger profile because it was all about Nashville living and being in my early 30s, stuff that's totally outdated now.

On my own birthday several weeks ago, I went roller skating with friends. It was not as easy as I remembered it being when I last roller skated. Which was probably 20 years ago. At least. But eventually I got my skate-legs back and had a lot of fun. Also, it is better exercise than I remember it being all those years ago. I got sweaty. It was a total surprise.

The thought this year for me has been updating my "I haven't _________ since I was ______ years old!" statements. A friend gave me the idea about roller skating. I said, "Oh, I probably haven't been roller skating since I was 18 years old!" He said I should go roller skating now so that the next time someone wants to go roller skating I can say, "Oh, I haven't been roller skating for a few weeks!" It makes me sound much more adventuresome and current.

So, I'm thinking about my list of things that I want to get more current on:
1. Running a full marathon (since 2009)
2. Ice skating (since around 1990)
3. Sledding (since around 1990)
4. Going to the upper peninsula (since never)
5. Going cross-country skiing (since never)
6. Going downhill skiing (since around 1991)
7. Going to Europe (since 1993)
8. Going to Ireland (since 1994)
9. Going to the Pacific Northwest (since around 2006)
10. Seeing various friends who I haven't seen in years and years

There's a lot to do and not enough time to do it, but this idea is encouraging me to re-try some things and also break out of some old behaviors. And hopefully have some fun in the meantime.

New Nephew

I forgot to post here that I am a new Aunt! This is Ian Sumner Hunt, my sister's first child! He is five weeks old in this photo. What a little cutie!!

They currently live in Mexico so I haven't gotten to meet him in person yet, but this summer I will switch into full-on Aunt Lisa mode. It's going to be awesome!

Early on, he looked so much like my Dad, but in this photo I think he looks a lot like my sister. So excited to get to meet him in person and spend some time with him!

Visitors!

One of the most fun things for us is to host visitors at our home in Nashville. There are lots of great things to do in this city and having guests allows you to re-visit the various historic sites around TN and see them again with fresh eyes.

This week's guests were Les's sister and brother-in-law who live near the Orlando area. I took off a couple of days to hang out with them (poor Les had to work), and we visited The Hermitage, the Jack Daniel Distillery, and the tiny town of Bell Buckle. We didn't quite make it to the Stones River National Battlefield or the Country Music Hall of Fame or the Frist art museum, but you have to make choices to either runrunrun or actually have some "hang out" time. We chose the latter.

They head back home today. We had a great visit and are looking forward to our next adventure together!

Here's a photo of them outside the Jack Daniel Distillery visitor's center. It's a really great tour and we had amazing weather!!

Spring in Nashville

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are here visiting this week and we took a trip to The Hermitage today. The grounds are beautiful all year long, but I especially enjoyed the Spring scenery on this visit. I don't think we've ever been there this early in the year, so all the plants were just coming into bloom. The lilacs were tender and sweet-smelling, the daffodils were newly opened, the peonies were still closed but starting to unfurl, and each tree had little baby leaves. It was a rainy day, so everything was green and crisp and dewy. So lovely.

I grew up with dogwood in my front yard, so they have a special connection to Spring for me. My favorite Spring tree now is probably the Redbud (which are prevalent and beautiful here in Nashville), but for some reason I just couldn't resist taking a photo of these just-hatched blossoms.

Good Ideas Gone Wrong

This is what my living room looks like right now.

I just said to my husband, who was asking if there's anything anything at all that he can do for me, "Next time, remind me, before I embark in another curtain project, that I HATE CURTAINS!!!"

At this moment, I also hate IKEA and their stupid "hemming tape," which is not actually that much of an improvement over machine-hemming (and I've mis-placed the tape for these red curtains, which means I'll end up sewing them anyway); I hate IKEA's ridiculously long curtains (I just had to cut 3 feet off a pair, and I have taller than standard windows); I hate ironing, which just gives you lots of meditative time to thing about what an endlessly stupid idea all of this was; and I hate the fact that I'm 3 curtains in with 9 to go and I am already SO over this project.

At this moment, I'm really regretting the big IKEA trip I made as part of my vacation time. Instead of chilling for four days, I'm several hundred dollars poorer and have been slaving away, assembling things for the last four days of my stay-cation.

Ugh.

Capturing this moment to serve as a warning to others, but especially a warning to myself.

Conversations with My Sister

This conversation with my sister from two Thanksgivings ago just popped into my head. Thought I'd share it here.

The scene: A three-mile hike through the woods of rural Virginia. Due to our fast walking pace, we've left the guys in our dust long ago.

Topics of conversation: Everything, including my brother-in-law and sister wanting to move to Mexico

Randomly...

Me: Sometimes living in The South just feels so "un-me." I'm not into big hair, big purses, and fashion.

My Sister: You're wearing a black, dry clean only shawl on a hike in the woods...

Me: (thoughtful pause)

Sent from my iPhone

It's Hot Chocolate Time

It is chilly enough outside (and inside at 67 degrees) now that we are in a hot chocolate mood here in Nashville. We've just gone vegan and I threw away our Swiss Miss in the great pantry clean-out, but I had several boxes of Abuelita on-hand still. It appears to be vegan and so I melted it down in a pot of soy milk. One cocoa block per four cups of "milk" makes a warm and comforting treat on a cool evening.

That wooden Mexican frothing tool (we picked ours up last Thanksgiving in Oaxaca, Mexico) makes it all the smoother and creamier, plus it's fun to use. A delicious treat that I'm sure will be a staple as the season progresses.

The Vegan Experiment

I'm about 68% (according to my ereader) through this book called The China Study and am feeling really convicted (well, scared, actually) that Les and I need to cut as many egg and dairy products as we can out of our diet. I've had borderline high cholesterol for the past few years, despite being vegetarian, and although blood cholesterol and dietary cholesterol are different, it seems worthwhile to try to reduce the amount of dietary cholesterol anyway. I'm also thinking that cutting high-fat dairy products like cheese out of my diet will lead to natural weight-loss.

We're still in the "eating through the bad stuff in the pantry" stage of dietary change, but we have started eating mostly vegan breakfasts and dinners. Overall, I've found many of the "fake" cheeses and the soy milk products to be pretty good, though we are trying to move down the path of whole foods rather than weird processed creations which just happen to be vegan.

We tried something like this about 8 or 9 years ago for a couple of months and didn't feel like we lost weight or saw any health benefits. Mostly we just found it terribly inconvenient because we couldn't eat all the foods that we loved (pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, ice cream, etc.). As you can see, a lot of those foods weren't really the kinds of foods that we should have been eating anyway, but at the time, it was more about what we couldn't eat and less about what we should be eating for good health.

Online web resources are so much more robust now than they were back when we did this before. My favorite online recipe resource so far has been www.vegweb.com. As a person who doesn't really like to cook and doesn't like trying new things, such a big dietary change is challenging, but so many of the recipes on vegweb sound so delicious and seem so easy to make that I feel like I will keep wanting to try new things and won't fall into the habits of making the same thing over and over again. Les is doing cartwheels of joy at this news. He loves new experiences, especially when it comes to food.

This week's vegan dinner menu is as follows:

Sunday: Baked nachos
Monday: Mock chicken salad sandwiches and soup
Tuesday: Rice and beans + salad
Wednesday: Chana Masala
Thursday: Pasta with peas and cream sauce
Friday: Mini veggie tacos
Saturday: Tofu coconut curry

I have to also give a special shout-out to East Nashville's local vegan restaurant, The Wild Cow, who showed me how good vegan eating can be and convinced me that just because it tastes complex doesn't mean that it's complicated to make.

Enjoying this challenge and having fun eating more healthfully!