What I'm going to miss...

Starting at 9:00 tomorrow morning, I will be working from the office.

This is what I am going to miss the most.
I wonder if I can bring him with me?

On the Hunt

Today we set out to find a park. A new park.

We had several in mind, and narrowed our choice down to two.

With the addresses in hand, we loaded our pup up in the car and off we went.

Within seconds of getting in the car, Phil fell asleep.

We found park number one and were less than satisfied.

Back into the car all three of us went, in search of the second park.

Park number two was hidden, and was very hard to find. We drove, turned around, drove some more, called for reinforcements on the address, and then ended up in a dead end.

Cal thought that maybe if we got out and walked, the park was just beyond what we could see.

We got out, and walked. And the park was just beyond what we could see.

Isn't this a beautiful entrance to our secret park?
We kept walking and the park kept surprising us.

This is the second view we stumbled upon.

It did not take long and our pup wanted to get in the lake.

The lake was practically ice, but Phil did not take our word for it. He had to try it out himself.

Who would have known that this secret, hidden, B.E.A.utiful park was waiting for us at the end of a dead end?


I'm glad Cal had us get out and take a little walk.

We will be regular visitors to our new found hidden park.

At Long Last!

I have been on the search for a delicious whole wheat bread recipe.

My goal is to make home made bread as often as we need it. Bread that we could have sandwiches on, bread we could enjoy fresh and hot out of the oven, bread that could be made with our whole wheat flour in our food storage, you know...that sort of thing.

I know it is a healthier option when I am controlling the ingredients, when I know they are preservative free, natural, and I know the amount of salt and sugar involved.

My quest started over six months ago. I found several recipes that I thought I would try. I don't have a very great relationship with yeast, so you can imagine the trials that ensued.

For several months, Cal and I had some very dense, very small, and sometimes very taste-less home made wheat bread.

It wasn't working.

I found a recipe that although the bread did not rise properly [due to my lack of yeast knowledge], it tasted good.
Now the hunt was on for good tips and tricks, and even different kinds of yeast.

I needed something that was resilient. A kind of yeast that did not care the exact temperature of the water it was being proofed in. I needed something magic!

Then, I found this. It is pure magic!

For the first time, I made delicious, healthy, natural, bouncy, well raised, whole wheat bread.


Although I am still tweaking the recipe a bit, I dare say, it was a bit magical!

Stormin' Norman

Our Sunday evening was spent at my Parent's house.

Enjoying each others company and Hawaiian Haystacks.

Part of our night was spent watching Norm out the window 'play' with the neighbor dog through the fence. He is so hilarious!

It was fun to watch their two personalities meet each other through the fence!

At several points, the other puppy had both his paws through that little hole.
They also about had that piece of the fence broken off all the way.

They were having so much fun together!


After quite a while outside, playing with his fence buddy, he came inside to enjoy the rest of his evening with his most favorite person ever.


He is such a lucky puppy!

Celebration Saturday

For as long as I can remember, Cal has worked on Saturdays. This even goes back to when we were dating. Every once in a while Cal will get work off, but it is usually for something that we already have scheduled.

Today, today was a marvelous day!

Cal had work off, because of some other commitments, and they fell through! However, I talked him into still taking the day off.

I had him all to myself, for a whole entire, lovely, sunny, happy Saturday.

It was heaven!

It was definitely a Celebration Saturday.

We pushed aside our normal Saturday activities that usually happen, and decided to just enjoy each other, the day, the weather, and the entire Saturday that we had to be together.

We started the day off with fruit filled crepes topped with real whipped cream and cantaloupe.

Next, came a trip to the park with our Pup.

After the Park we went to a Matinee! Yes, in the middle of the day, on a Saturday! Whoot Whoot!

After our matinee, we came home and enjoyed our home made whole wheat pesto and veggie pizza. One of our favorites!

Cal and I like ours topped with sliced avocado, lime, and crushed red pepper! Delicious!


Today was such a fun Saturday.
A Saturday filled with time with my Handsome!
I loved every minute of it.

I can't wait for Cal to be done with school, so that this can be a weekly occurrence.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It is Tradition in our Mooney Family to go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

You could say that we are parade going people!

It is always so much fun.

I got up early on Saturday morning to attend the festivities. I was really sad because Cal had to work all day so he could not come.



My most favorite parts of the parade are the 'Irish' dogs, the Clydesdale Horses, and the Bag Pipes!






My Grandma was interviewed for the news. My favorite part of her interview is when she told them that if you don't wear green, you will get pinched. She also said that you can pinch the good children once, but the naughty ones? The naughty ones, you can pinch them twice! Ha!




Happy St. Patrick's Day! We hope you wore green, and if you didn't, we hope that you at least were good, and not naughty!

Why we blog...

In the last several months, I have strongly considered not keeping up our blog.

The decision always comes back to the fact that we love having a record of our days, our thoughts, pictures of us, our families, our pup, etc. We love knowing that we can come back to our blog and look back on the last several months of our lives and see pictures of the memories that we hold in our hearts.

We blog for us. For our memories.

We love our lives. Cal and I feel that we have the best of blessings, each other, family, and memories. It is important to us to keep a record of our life, Our life that we love.

But, we wanted something tangible.
We wanted something that we could hold, and look at.
I searched several avenues. I looked up numerous ways to "scrapbook", to put your pictures together with words, and sometimes without words. I even spent several hours and several dollars on trying to put some things together with the pictures of the last couple years of our lives.

It all seemed okay. Just okay. We love having our blog, but we were having the blog for our memories... so that one day, our children would be able to see what we are like, what we did before we had them, what our families and friends were like, our feelings and admirations, what their lives were like.

We want a record of our lives. Something more than just a blog.

One of the avenues that I was looking into was Blurb. It was so neat, except it did not support blogger. I had signed up with them and had also tried several ways that I could get our blog into a book with them. It seemed to take so much time since they did not support blogger...I felt it was yet another dead end.

One day my friend Jen came over, she told me about how she got an email from Blurb, and that they now support Blogger!

I was so excited and quickly got to working on our
2007-2008 Whitehead Family Book.

It is now finished and arrived at our house today. We love our book.

Blurb is so extremely efficient and easy. I am so glad that they now support blogger and I am so glad that this is the route we took with our memories. (Thanks Jen!)

Our book definitely took time to get everything just how we wanted it. It does take time to tweek this, and move this here, and add this there.

It was worth every second!

Here is a little snippet of how our book turned out.





[It is hard bound, and each page is printed on heavy paper, the quality of the pictures are great. There are many choices to choose from, including size, colors, fonts, backgrounds, etc. You can also choose to have a dust cover.]

It was so easy, you just let the program 'slurp' your blog, and then you begin the 'tweeking'. You publish it, order it, and they mail it to you.
Simple, easy, and oh so beautiful!

We love our book so much, and will now make a book for every year.

Our book, our memories, our words, our thoughts, our children; these are the reasons Cal and I have our blog.