Vacation highlights

We recently took our "winter vacation."  The first stop on our trip was to a new destination... St. Louis, Missouri!   There were lots of attractions in that city, but the ones we most wanted to see were these five sweet faces. 

 

If you visit St. Louis, a MUST is a stop at the City Museum - it defies description!  The museum is more then just "hands on" for children... it is "climb all over everything and into every little space" museum.  In a world full of rules and regulations ... this was an amazing contrast!  And this grandma tried very very hard to not utter the phrase "be careful!"   It was a blast, actually.

 

Our son and his family live close to the wonderful zoo, so that was another treat.

 

The seminary campus where our son is studying has fabulous architecture.  I went out one morning just to take some pictures of the fine buildings.

 

This is one of the many buildings that house apartments for the seminarians and their families. 

 

Our intent was to continue our vacation heading west, but a major winter storm was brewing so we thought perhaps we would skirt it by heading south a bit to Branson.  The storm covered such a vast area that we wound up in a hotel for 3 nights in Branson waiting out the storm.  We then abandoned our "westward" plans because ANOTHER winter storm was going to follow after the weekend... so we just decided to head on towards home, with a stop in Minneapolis to see these two grandkiddos for a short bit.  Now we look forward to our March weekend with another 5 grandchildren and their parents at a waterpark.  It better not be a snowstorm then!!

Breakfast is ready

I loved waking up to breakfast and coffee; both set on the timer. Here is what I have been doing in the crockpot and hubby and I both love it. I place a 4 cup pyrex bowl in the crock pot and put water in the crock pot around the bowl a few inches , cover it and put it on low overnight. In the pyrex bowl is 1 cup of steel-cut oatmeal, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of water, 1 T butter, a dash of salt and then whatever I choose to add: usually some brown sugar, some cinnamon, some raisins and some chopped pecans. I have also added a chopped apple or craisins. You can vary it. Since it is just the two of us, we don't eat it all in one morning and it microwaves nicely the next morning.

Fun with cookies

 This week had a little time to bake and decorate some cute Valentine heart cookies. 

I was bringing dessert to a friends home and I knew sugar cookies would be a welcome treat.

They were!

My therapy is decorating cookies.  Not eating them though.  :)

Rocks in a jar

I saw this cute visual for folks wishing to lose weight.  I fall into that category; it would be so nice to wear more of the clothes in my closet if I could shed a few pounds.  Since I am petite in height, every pound really shows - and if I could drop a few of those pounds, I would be very happy, indeed.  So I am using this idea someone posted on facebook - you put marbles or any object of your choosing into one jar - each marble/item represents one pound.  And as you lose the pound, you transfer the object (in my case, a chunky river rock) into the empty jar.  I look forward to filling up the empty jar by making good food choices, portion control and exercise.