My whole wheat blueberry muffins This morning I felt like baking... so I decided I was going to try my hand at baking some blueberry muffins, the only hard thing would be using my whole wheat flour. I've baked a lot with my grandma, but I'm hardly a pro, so I know nothing about substituting ingredients for others. I did a quick google about substituting wheat for white flour and found out that if you're going to replace all the white flour with wheat, then use 7/8 cup wheat per 1 cup white flour.

I found a recipe online, and altered it a little, mainly the flour. I also ended up adding more blueberries than what it called for, and afterward I think I should of added a little more, just to give more of the blueberry flavor. I also didn't have a cupcake pan, so I just used a sunflower mini-bundt cake pan. It made 6 very big blueberry muffins. hehe...

But they came out good! I was so surprised. I expected them to taste more grainy, but they really are a perfect blend. There's just enough sugar to make it sweet, and if I'd had Splenda, I would of tried using that instead. Even Carlee liked them, she's still working on hers right now. I think I will definately make these again, since the whole wheat is good for you, and these take care of a sweet tooth.

Here's the recipe I used and my alterations if anyone's interested:

1 cup milk (I used skim)
1 egg
1/3 cup veg. oil (I used canola oil)
2 cup all purpose flour (I used 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup blueberries (I added a little more)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Stir milk, egg, and oil. Add flour, baking powder, sugar, and blueberries. Gently mix with as few strokes as possible.
3. Put in cupcake pan and bake for 20 minutes. (I had to leave mine in for a few minutes longer, not much though, probably because they weren't as small as cupcakes. I just kept using the toothpick check.)  ¶ 5:22 AM 2 Comments

  I love tea I can thank my mom for my love of tea... lol. There's even duplicate boxes of my favorites that aren't in that drawer. This morning, I brewed a pitcher of 6 green teas and 2 raspberry zingers, and it came out reallly good.  ¶ 5:00 AM 0 Comments

  Another Trip to Base The trip to base can get boring... so we have weird conversations:
(Sheena puts in an old Avril cd.)
Tony: She's such an Alanis wannabe.
Sheena: Hmm... never noticed.
Tony: Whatever happened to her anyway? After she got married? She hasn't put anything else out.
Sheena: Yes, she did, but it's not like her old stuff. Now she's all in love.
Tony: She did? I never heard it. Avril?
Sheena: No, Alanis.
Tony: Oh. Why does everyone suck after getting married? Even Madonna did it.
Sheena: I'm tired of seeing Madonna in 80s gym clothes.
Tony: I know. She's what... 90 now?
...a few minutes go by...
(Sheena put in a Simple Plan cd)
Sheena: I was like this song back in highschool. I was friends with everyone, but didn't really fit in with anyone. I wasn't invited to parties and stuff.
Tony: Me niether.
Sheena: But at least you fit in with the percussionists.... Why do we only fit in with eachother?
Tony: I dunno. Your personality is like older than your age.
Sheena: I know.
Tony: Like, what are girls your age doing on the weekends?
Sheena: Drinking probably.
Tony: Exactly... and what were you doing last night?
Sheena: Cross Stitching...... Am I too old?
Tony: No, I like you just the way you are.

*isn't he just so sweet? haha. (I picked up a cross stitching project I started three years ago! Hopefully I'll get it finished... eventually...)

We were heading to base again.... This time I had a doctor appointment. Well, not just an appointment, a procedure. At my welcome to the island check up, the doctor suggested getting one of my moles removed. The edges were just a little irregular, and it was just a little bit bigger than what it should be. I didn't argue. So, today was the day. A few shots which stung like hell (but I just thought about having Carlee, so I handled it,) and in only a few minutes, I was done and stitched up. The complete procedure was done before my appointment was even scheduled to begin... and for Tony to get 6 stitches the other day at the ER took over 3 hours! I'm doing fine though. It only hurts a little, and tylenol takes care of that. Better safe than sorry to get it taken care of now.

This afternoon, I studied for one of my online classes! I started with Business 1301 first. Read the first chapter, and answered the chapter questions. Took me about an hour. It's going to take me a while to get back into the swing of school. By the end of the hour, I was tired of reading text book material already lol... and I had wanted to do the first chapter of my economics book too, but couldn't convince myself to do it yet. The classes seem like they're going to be okay. The Business class is more you better learn it yourself and make sure to pass the Midterm and Final Exams. While the Economics class is more structured with assigned quizzes and homework, chapter tests, and the exams. So, it will be interesting to do two classes with two different formats to them. But I'm still enthusiastic about it.

Tonight we worked on the yard for a while. We finally found a nursery near Nas 1 that everyone keeps telling us about. They have really good prices! We wish we had found them first before buying 5 Euro plants at Auchauns. Grrr.... Today, the biggest plant (and it's pretty big) was only 3.90 Euro, and my pretty pink flowers for the window sill were only 1.50 Euro! Woohoo! We spent 25 Euro all together on a bunch of flowers and 2 bags of soil! The guy said they should be getting more flowers and plants in the second week of September, so I'm sure we'll be going back.  ¶ 2:35 PM 0 Comments

  yesterday's challenge Yesterday morning was a challenge... Carlee woke up around 8 (I had been up since 6:30 with Tony, since he had to go to work.) When I went to get her, she was crying, and even after I picked her up she seemed grumpy or something. So, I figured maybe she needed more sleep since she kept laying on me and giving a little whine. I laid down with her on our bed, and she drifted in and out of sleep. All of a sudden, she started gagging, for no apparent reason. I had no clue what was going on. She hadn't eaten yet, or anything. So, she spit up mostly spit and some mucus stuff. Well, I laid there for a while trying to comfort her (the gagging scared her really bad since she couldn't get anything up and couldn't breath in the process). She did it a total of 5 times throughout the morning.

I called Tony at work. I didn't know if I should take her to the ER or not... I mean, she wasn't running a fever, but this gagging was just freaking me out because she seemed like she was having a hell of a time with it. My only problem was that he had taken the car to work... nice. We decided I would try to give her some tylenol and give her some time before taking her in. She wouldn't take the medicine. I knew that if she didn't have a fever, the ER probably wouldn't even take her in anyways. But our thermometer was nowhere to be found, and the batteries are dead in it anyway.

So, I called a neighbor... she wasn't home. Called another, her thermometer was dying too. Finally, I got a hold of someone who had one and she brought it over right away. She helped calm me down (because by this time I was extrememly frustrated and stressed out,) and helped me take Carlee's temp. Not only did she not have a fever, her temp was unusually low, like 95 something on one reading and barely 96 on another reading. She told me it was probably a bug or flu, and that if Carlee's temp wasn't 103+ then they wouldn't take her. She gave me some pedialyte for her and gave some encouragement for me.

Carlee drank the juice... she held that down, so I gave her a few crackers. She held that down. So, at lunch I gave her shells and cheese baby food. She ate about half as she usually does, but at least she ate. I got her down for a nap, and when she woke up, she was fine.

I don't know what it was, but it was definately a challenging morning for me. It just sucked to be so new here. I felt so uncomfortable calling people I've barely known for a month at 9am in the morning. I just about had my one allowed overseas breakdown... lol...

She was fine in the afternoon, back to normal even, so we went to a birthday party that we had planned on going to for a while. She was fine! She played, she ate cake, she was perfectly fine. I talked to a friend there at the party, and she said it was probably Carlee's sinuses draining, because her daughter does the same thing when her's drain. So, I guess that's what it was. I just hope it doesn't happen again. It was a little scary.

She's also been teething for the past month, but the past two weeks have been hard. We can see a certain tooth trying to break through, we've been able to see it for over a week, but the darn thing just won't break through. So, she's a little warm today and I figured it's because of that. Gave her some tylenol. She's really latchy today. I don't know why. And she won't eat anything but crackers or goldfish today so far. I dunno... I really hope she's not coming down with anything. What's funny though, is she's not even acting sick. She's still playing, running around the house... or trying to rather. I'm making her wear her Hello Kitty house shoes. lol.. so she's really sliding around the house. Anyway. I'm not used to this. She's never been sick or had allergies. blah... hopefully it will pass soon. And she'll be completely back to normal.  ¶ 4:21 AM 0 Comments

  A recent pic of us This is us when we went to our friend's getting out of the navy party a few weeks ago. A friend took this for us. :D
  ¶ 12:41 PM 1 Comments

  A Stress-Like entry I got to drive in an Italian town for the first time yesterday... We were at Niscemi for a hail and farewell BBQ when something happened, and I ended up having to drive all the way to Nas 1. An hour total time... Why? Here's the reason:
Tony was playing volleyball with the guys for their PT, and jumped over a fence to grab a stray ball... and this happened. He wasn't even going to go to the ER at first... but I think the lesson he learned from hurting his foot in Florida convinced him to go. He got 6 stitches... by a guy who didn't really seem to have a lot of practice in doing stitches... but he was a good patient.  ¶ 12:32 PM 0 Comments

  yay, the toilet is fixed.... again A guy came and fixed the toilet this morning. woohoo! And this guy actually replaced a part, so hopefully it's good to go now.

Last night, I took Carlee to the park. Daddy had duty again. We ran into our friend's 2 daughters who were being watched by their nonna (grandma) and zia (aunt) who are visiting from Naples. I had met them before when we all went out to eat at Caltigerone, and the grandma rode with us. They don't speak English, so I got to try to say hi in Italian. Buonasera (good evening). They said it back, but knew I wouldn't understand much else. lol... They are really nice, and they adore Carlee. :)

Today, Carlee lost the back of one of her earings... :( So I had to put a different pair in... that was fun. not. lol... she acts like I'm trying to murder her or something, and all I'm trying to do is put in a new pair of earings! I finally got them in though.

It's almost lunch time... I wonder when Tony's going to get home. He was supposed to have a physical therapy appointment today for his knee, but since he was out at Niscemi and the car is here, I don't know how he got to base. I'm sure he figured something out though.

This weekend we were going to try to go to Palermo to visit the catacombs. There's an ITT trip on Sunday, but the bus leaves at 7 am, and Tony has duty on Saturday and won't even get home until 11ish on Sunday. :( I'm hoping to find a pamphlet or something with the hours on it when we go to base tomorrow. Maybe if it's open in the evening we can drive up there when he gets off of work. That would be fun...

Oh, and Carlee is 15 months today! Wow.

More later...  ¶ 4:30 AM 0 Comments

  just a tad frustrated... Our master bathroom toilet is not working... A G A I N !!! Good grief! They "fixed" it last Wednesday, and Thursday night it was broke for the third time. Had to wait until this morning to head over to Housing and put in another trouble call. The front office guy is finally calling the contractor instead of just the handy guys. Maybe it will be fixed for good soon. The water just keeps running and running and the toilet won't flush. Thank goodness it broke after being flushed this time... lol. This is annoying.

Today, Carlee and I went to the Mom's club meeting. It was nice. I made another friend, today, turns out her husband works in Tony's company too, so that's cool. Carlee had fun playing with all the toys and being held by other moms and stealing thier kid's animal crackers... lol.

Today for lunch, I tried to make healthy MacNCheese... hehe. It's a little harder than I thought it would be. I used whole grain elbow macaroni, and then tried to melt cheese in a little bit of milk, well, it melted, but when I tried to put in on the Mac, it didn't coat it. It just hardened up again after cooling off. lol.. So that didn't work. I tried to see if Carlee would eat it anyway, but she turned up her nose. I decided to flavor it a little with some dressing, and then she liked it. I need to find a recipe for making some kind of cheese sauce for the macaroni.

That's all for now... I'm going to try to take pictures today. But just keep in mind, we're still not completely set up yet. :D  ¶ 7:36 AM 0 Comments

  Catania Take 2 Yesterday afternoon, we drove down to Catania with a couple of friends. The guys were in search of a tattoo studio. When Tony asked if I wanted to go, I said, "Sure... as long as we get to do something else too, like eat dinner in town or something." So that we did. The drive to Catania is about an hour from home, and Carlee hates being in the car for more than fifteen minutes.

We arrived in the middle of riposo so driving into town was a breeze since no one was on the road. Our friend said that the last time he drove through the same street, it was three cars wide in a street with barely enough room for two. We also easily found a free parking spot! woohoo! So, we began our search for the tattoo studio, in the hottest part of the day no less.... we finally found it after asking a local where the street was, but it was closed. So, we went to a second studio which was open and looked around. I wasn't too impressed with the flash on the walls. Tony found one that he liked, but wasn't convinced to get it there. Our friend made an appointment, and we left.

We walked down the street a ways, and stopped at a bar. The guys had beer, and Carlee and I shared a water. And I almost got ran over by a vespa. lol... the tables were out in front of the bar, and no cars are supposed to drive down there, but people on vespas do about anything. So one drove right behind me, probably less than an inch away. Anyway, after that we headed back to Mineo, and stopped at a restaraunt about ten minutes before home.

The restaraunt was pretty good. Fast service like American restaraunts, unlike the one we went to in Caltigirone the other night (we waited for two hours to get our food, and another hour for our check.) We'll probably eat there again someday, since it's the closest thing to the house.

Anyway, so the overall feeling of the day was that we weren't impressed with Catania like we were the very first time going. After being amazed at the old buildings and such, you then start to notice all the other things, like trash all over the place, pointless grafitti saying stupid pointless things everywhere, even on the nice department stores. Anyway.... that was our day yesterday.

Today it seems we're just going to hang out around the house. Tony thought about going to Auchaun's (which is like Italy's walmart) but it's in Catania... and we don't feel like driving all the way back up there and wasting all that gas... so... yeah, we miss all the convenient things that the States has to offer. lol... :D  ¶ 5:32 AM 0 Comments

  The evilness of Trans Fat..... Eww.... So, I first heard about the different types of fat on the Oprah show, when she had Dr. Oz on as a guest... You remember that show, where he brought the bags of fat on stage? yeah, so since then, we've wanted to start eating healthy, just to eat healthy, plus because high cholesterol and diabetes run in my family. I know to some it seems early to start worrying about it, but I think once you have a kid, then all of a sudden you want to live as long as possible, well, that's how I felt anyway. So, Dr. Oz made sense... but the show went by too fast to let the details really sink in. So, I've been reading up on some healthy diets and food, etc.

Turns out, Trans fat is a fat that was invented not long ago, by taking oil and fusing it with Hydrogen then heating it up so much that it will never go back to liquid form. And since it's invented by man and not by nature, our bodies have no idea what to do with it. We can't digest it, we can't break it down... it goes straight to clot our arteries. Needless to say, I was a little disgusted with this, and immediately went to the fridge to check all the foods. The worse thing I found in the freezer were my Banquet chicken nuggets. The book I'm reading now says that it's not even being enforced for food companies to put the Trans fat content on the bag. (And they've been fighting having to put it on the labels, because it's THAT bad for you, and they don't want you to know.) Well, this bag didn't list the trans fat... big surprise. The author said to take the total grams of fat and subtract whatever fats they do list... whatever's left... is... guess... yep. Trans fat. So, after subtraction, for a 5 piece serving, there was 14 grams of trans fat in those chicken nuggets. Disgusting! And that's what I had been feeding Carlee for lunch once in a while. Can you believe that?!? No wonder we're so unhealthy today. That stuff is in the whole cookie and chip isle! And they cook with it in our restaraunts! American restaraunts anyway, Italians use olive oil.

So, we as a family are eating healthy. No more premade foods.... whole grain everything... no more vegetable oil, only olive oil, and some other points from the book. We're really excited. We couldn't believe how much stuff the food companies put in our food. Oh, and they hide it... it's hydrogenated oil (any oil, and partially can be in there too). If that's high on the ingredient list, then the food has trans fat whether or not they list it. It's really disturbing to think that the companies don't care what they're feeding us, that they're killing people slowly, as long as they make the profit. I wonder if they eat they're own food....  ¶ 3:30 AM 0 Comments

  exhausted... that's what I am right now... Carlee kept me busy today, a duty day... so it was just me and her... and she's becoming quite the handfull! She's starting to bite me, and I have no idea why... I don't really want to spank her yet, because I know she's still to young and won't understand why I'm doing it, so I'm a little frustrated, because my scolding is not doing anything... grrr... She's constantly into something these days, I can hardly take my eyes off her. But she's still fun and I'm sure she'll always be... well, until she "hates us" and doesn't want to hang out with us, but even then I'm sure Tony and I will be laughing at her, so we'll still be having fun... haha.

So, on the 28th I start my online classes. I'm weirdly excited. lol... I ordered my books... man were they expensive, I forgot how much they cost. Almost as much as the class itself. It's rediculous. But I'm looking foward to it. I researched how the class was going to go since I've never taken one online before. It appears to be fairly easy to understand, and neat too. There's a forum where you can discuss the lesson and talk to the teacher and students. I thought that was awesome. Anywho...

I just got done watching Corpse Bride again, and washing dishes... and I'm tired. I wish I had more time to write... then again, I haven't done much exciting things to write about. This weekend we plan to go into Catania with a friend. He wants to find a tattoo studio and Tony wants to tag along, I agreed only if we get to do something else also, like eat dinner in town or something like that. lol... We're also thinking of going to Palermo soon. It's the capital, and it also has neat catacombs. Can't wait to start doing stuff!

We set the living room up yesterday/last night. The arrangement finally looks really good. We just bought a new corner desk to keep the laptop and all my school stuff, and had to move the tv across the room, in the opposite corner, which was actually awesome because now there's no glare from the window, and now the tv actually looks it's size. Because before it was up against a huge blank white wall and got swallowed, now in the corner, you can actually perceive how big the tv is. It's nice. Now we're just waiting on a couch we're buying from a friend. It's a wrap around couch... Tony's intent on making our living room a sea of sofa... hehe. I'll take pics soon... I promise.... but for now... a hot shower and off to bed.
:)  ¶ 2:46 PM 0 Comments

  Niscemi Yesterday, we drove out to the town of Niscemi, where Tony works. On the way there, I got to see my first Geep crossing! I was excited, lol... I'm easily amused. Once we got to town, we walked up and down the main street and went into the shops. I found a few things to buy, but Mr. Tony forgot his wallet in the car! lol... oh well, next time. It was fun, and let us practice getting into the society in baby steps since it's not nearly as bad as Catania. I should of taken pics in town, but I didn't want to carry the camara around. :)  ¶ 11:21 AM 0 Comments

  nevermind i'm sick... sore throat or allergies or something.. so pics are going to have to wait....
ciao  ¶ 1:59 PM 0 Comments

  i forgot to take pictures of the house again...
tomorrow....  ¶ 2:28 PM 0 Comments