Jared's Birthday

Jared, the love of my life, celebrated his 35th birthday today!! He is quite honored to have it on a national holiday. To celebrate, he decided to sign up to run his first ever ½ Marathon! And he had a great run time of 2 hours 15 minutes. All week, his boss had been bragging about having one of his soldiers run in the race. So to show their support, his unit was spread out over the course of the race and took turns running a few miles with him. Towards the end, his quads really started tightening up, but his coworkers kept him running strong to the end!!
For his birthday, I was trying to decide what I could do for him to help make his day a little brighter and more special than other days. He only asked for three things: an external hard drive, the Rocky movies, and garments. My family bought him 2 out of the 3 items, so I decided to send him his one big gift along with 34 other gifts. It was a collection of items such as:

1. External hard drive
2. Quilt that I made in my quilting class
3. Hershey’s Crunch (his favorite candy bar)
4. A book
5. A DVD
6. A pack of pens
7. A picture of the two of us
8. Can of almonds
9. 3 bags dried blueberries
10. 3 bags dried berries
11. Bag of coke gummies
12. Body wash
13. Sexy letter
14. Gift card for music downloads
15. Twix
16. 4-100 calorie snacks
17. 4 granola bars
18. Room freshener
19. Gum
20. Magazine
21. Crackers
22. Peanut butter
23. Case for external hard drive
24. Computer game
25. Newspaper
26. Crystal Light to go packets
27. Beef jerky

He called me the day he received it, and asked which ones he could open early!! He was disappointed when I told him that he had to wait to open all of them. He was so cute…he said, “You make me feel special. You didn’t have to do all this for me. You spent a lot of time getting this ready!” It’s at that time that all of the time and work pays off.

I celebrated his birthday by going to Pottenstein with a few friends to visit the cave and eat at a famous restaurant, Steak on a Stone. Steak on a Stone is a unique restaurant where you order the type of steak you want to eat (rump steak, T-bone, bison, ostrich, kangaroo, etc.) and they bring it to you an extremely hot stone and let you cook your own meat at the table. I had a T-bone steak, which was very good. The weather was wonderful, the company was fun, and the food was delicious, but I still felt an empty void from not being able to spend the day with Jared. Later that evening, he surprised me with a Skype call where I was able to see his smiling face for the first time in three months. I was so overcome with joy that I just wanted to sit on the couch and cry. I felt like we hadn’t seen each other in years. The picture and speech were not the best quality, but I was pleased as could be to see my best friend for a few minutes. It was kind of funny because we always seem to be able to have plenty to talk about when he calls on the phone, but we found ourselves in silence just enjoying one another’s presence.

Having spent our first “special day” apart from each other was harder than I expected it to be. If today was a preview of what the next few months are going to be like, I hope they pass right on by!


Tammy

Meals in a Day

Wow! I survived another first week of working at an elementary school. While it was very chaotic at times, I thought it went very well. My one complaint was that every teacher wanted my attention at the same time. I felt like I couldn't give anyone the attention they needed, especially the new teachers and staff. By Wednesday afternoon, I was ready to install a ticket machine and tell them to each take a ticket and I would help them when there number was called. But all in all, I thought that the days were smoother than some of the regular days we experienced last year.

This week it finally dawned on me that I haven't been eating very good. I get off work and get busy doing other things. Then about 8 or 9 p.m. I am starving. So I will grab a granola bar to eat or I don't eat anything at all. It is plain to see that none of which I have been doing is very healthy. I've been looking at a book called "31 meals in a Day" where you cook enough food in one day to last you for the entire month. That is a lot of cooking and freezer space. But I decided that I would try it out and make a few meals to freeze so I could come home from work and just pull a meal out of the freezer to eat for dinner. I intended on cooking three meals this afternoon, but I only had to stop and make a cake in the middle of all the cooking for my friend's birthday. So I only made two meals, stuffed peppers and manacotti. I'm not much of a leftover eater, so this will be interesting. I definitely need more variety, but I will have to increase my selection in the coming weeks. Since the weather is becoming much cooler, I think I will also make a couple of soups next week to add to the variety.

Anyone have a favorite recipe that would freeze well that you would like to share with me??


Tammy