Under the Weather

I'm not feeling so great today. My throat is sore, my neck is sore (which is odd) and my body just feels weak. Yuck! I hope I'm not really getting sick..especially since it is Friday afternoon and that would be crappy timing.

I did have a good Birthday on Tuesday. When I woke up, Jason had placed a vase of tulips and a sweet card in the bathroom for me to see when I was getting ready. Very sweet! Several of my co-workers took me to lunch at Taste of Thai that day - which was yummy of course. And, that night we went to Pesto Cafe in Fayetteville with my dad. Yumm! I love Pesto. I had the Angel by the Sea which is a bunch of seafood on top of some veggies and angel hair pasta, covered in a pink sauce (which I think is spaghetti sauce, white wine and some cream mixed together). Jason had bought a pound of chocolate covered strawberries for me since I requested that instead of a cake and we brought that to the restaurant for the dessert. However, the waitress apparently caught on that it was my birthday and brought us a yummy piece of tiramisu. We were not lacking in the sugar department! In the spirit of Fat Tuesday (and since I gave up sweets for lent) - I had no problem eating it!

My dad got me this for my birthday to use with my new camera. Actually, he told me to go online and order it so I don't actually have it yet - but should next week. I am LOVING my new camera although I'm not entirely sure how to use it yet. There are SOO many buttons. I will take some pictures this weekend and post them so we can see how they turn out.

Since in my family growing up - our birthdays always lasted the entire week, I am TRYING to get Jason to take me to Bordinos on Saturday. Not sure if I have been successful on that one yet - but I will let you know. Apparently birthdays didn't last the whole week in his household.

And - as I briefly mention - I gave up sweets for lent and it suck really really badly. I did it once in high school and either I wasn't as addicted to sugar then (entirely possible) or I had completely forgot how HARD it was because this really sucks. Oh well - hopefully in a few more days the cravings will subside...we shall see. Have a great weekend!

Good News and Bad

A girl that I work with is suffering a terminal, genetic illness. Her dad, grandma, aunt and several other family members died of the disease that she now has. She has been given a 5-10 year life expectancy. Today, we had a HUGE sample sale at our office to raise money for research of her disease. Because the disease is VERY rare (only a handful of families in the world have it) very little money is devoted to researching and curing the disease. We asked vendors in the community to donate product that we then sold like a HUGE yard sale. We made over $18,000 for her! I am amazed..that is SO awesome. A few people at our office did a ridiculous amount of work to make the sale happen, so I'm very thankful that all the hard work payed off.

The not so happy news is that Anita has to have a second surgery to remove more of the margin in her breast since most of the tissue they removed had cancer cells in it. Also the tumor is a little larger still than we had hoped. That news is disappointing, but it could be worse. I know and have faith that Anita will be completely healed soon. In the meantime, we will keep praying!

I'm also a bit unhappy that UPS delivered my new camera today but nobody was home to sign for it so they are holding it hostage until Monday. :( I was SOOO looking forward to playing with it this weekend. Oh well. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Prayer for Anita during her surgery today

Loving Father, we entrust Anita to your care this day; guide with wisdom and skill the minds and hands of the medical people who minister in your Name, and grant that every cause of illness be removed, Anita may be restored to soundness of health and that we all may learn to live in more perfect harmony with you and with those around us. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

We love you Anita and pray for your speedy recovery!

Long Time No Blog

Hello, sorry I've not blogged in such a long time. I am going to try and update periodically again. The main reason for this is that we FINALLY bought a computer for home! Yay! I don't have to rely on my work computer for everything anymore. I really like the computer we ended up with. It's an HP and the monitor is HUGE! Anyway - I hope everyone had a happy Valentines Day! I did. This is what I got: Canon Digital Rebel Xsi. I am very excited about it. It is actually a Valentine's/Bday present (I have a feeling he will usually combine those two since it is so close together) but that's okay. I currently have a sony cybershot that I got about 3 years ago. It works fine but strangely broke down on Christmas day (and promptly restarted that day AFTER Christmas) which got us talking about getting a better camera for when we have kids. I didn't expect to get one this soon...since we don't plan to have kids for at least a year or two, so it is exciting. We will still keep our smaller one for traveling, etc when we don't want to lug a big ole camera around, but the other one will be for special occasions. It should take really great pictures! Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to play with it because he finally purchased it on Feb 13 from a local camera shop and then right before giving it to me yesterday, he researched the camera on Amazon and found it $150 cheaper there. So we are returning the one I got and ordering the one off of Amazon. :( I'm all for instant gratification so that does not make me happy. I am for saving $150 though so I guess I'll live. For dinner last night we went to James at the Mill using a gift certificate my Dad had given us for Christmas. It was very good. I had the Mill salad, the filet, and warm chocolate cake for dessert!


So...I guess I should put something about food in here since this is in part a food blog. Today - I plan to make this chili recipe - which is my old standby. I really like it. For dessert we are having no bake oatmeal cookies. I am basically using this recipe but I cut out the butter and cut back on the sugar. For the peanut butter, we use simply jiff - which has much less sugar. I also made myself a small batch substituting agave for the sugar. I guess I didn't use enough because they are not very sweet at all, but I still like them! Check this picture out. On the front of our car we have a "house divided" license plate that is half TN, half AR. In the WM parking lot yesterday someone with the EXACT same license plate parked next to us. What are the chances??

Hope everyone enjoys their Sunday!