Birthday celebrations

For Tessa's 6th birthday, they rented a swimming pool and invited more than 20 kids. It happened on Josh's 35th birthday. Here he is with Allie

Hannah looking in. She had no interest in swimming

the birthday girl

She loves purple  On her actual birthday, she had a purple cake

purple mouth

later this week, I went to the botanical gardens with a friend

Very nice sunrise this morning but still, very chilly. I can run in the cold but so far, for the entire month I have biked only 9 miles. Have a very long ride scheduled soon

March is flying by. I still haven't gotten to all those projects that I have saved up for when it is too cold to do anything else. I manage to keep busy though. For one thing, exercising takes a chunk of time and will even more so once I am able to bike without getting frostbite. Having 4 vacations in 4 months in which I was eating out of control has not been fun to undo. I am still 3-4 pounds heavier than I was most  of the fall which drives me crazy. But I still fit in my size 4s so I shouldn't whine so much. Plus in my wildest dreams, I never thought I could lose so much weight. I would have been satisfied with being a size 10, but now I am greedy.

The week before, I went back to the Cooking for Survivors that I had missed so much as my travelling days (or babysitting days) interfered. My friend with the many health issues was finally able to come too. Maybe half of the people there are actively fighting cancer and my heart goes out to them. Theme: healthy snacks for breast cancer survivors.  All cancers are invited but as they get a chunk of funding from the Komen foundation, they have to feature breast cancer a few times a year. And it does seem the number one cancer represented there. We do have a few people who never had cancer but are afraid they just might get it. Best snack: roasted cauliflower in Italian herbs. Yeah, I know, it doesn't sound so snack like. She did serve edamame which is always controversial as soy has pseudo estrogens. Not an issue for me as my cancer was not estrogen fueled. And cultures (Asian) that rely on lots of soy have lower rates of breast cancer. But they also avoid fats, dairy and lots of meat so who knows.

So we've gone to various birthday parties and lunches. We got Tessa what she wanted the most but so did her mom so back to the drawing board for that. With her zillions of guests, she got zillions of presents so it isn't like she is deprived. After a year of living with a temporary crown as I had used up all my dental insurance too soon last year, I now have my permanent crown. Yay.

I am not planning to return to a Spanish speaking country soon so I switched my online lessons back to Italian which I had forgotten so much of. And its grammar is so much more complicated than Spanish.

Tonight the Moms meet. My job: dessert. Most of my tres leches (which actually has 5 different milk like products so it should be cinco leches)cake has been made. Many Caribbean nations claim it as theirs including Costa Rica but it is probably Puerto Rican. Lots of coconut and rum so it should be tasty.