Self Portrait.... Wednesday?

I am still working my way through the SouleMama archives and I'm only to the fall of 2006 and this weekly tradition seems to already be gone, but for awhile there at the beginning, she was participating in a little online fad called "Self Portrait Tuesday." Kind of fun to read every week, and then I got to thinking maybe I would try it. I hate, hate, hate having my picture taken, seeing pictures of myself, etc., but I've begun to think this might be slightly unhealthy. And Martin pointed out the other day that it's going to be sad when our girls are big and there are so few pictures of us together. So, I thought a way to get over that would be to start up the Self Portrait Tuesday blog tradition. But then Tuesday came and I forgot. So here is my Self Portrait Wednesday photo, which is not a self portrait at all, but a picture taken by Laura She and MaryGrace came over on Monday and kept me company while I made bread. My buttermilk bread recipe yields 4 loaves, but I've been getting frustrated with how small my loaves have been turning out lately. So I decided to only make three loaves per batch, and this is my reward:

Huge, soft, golden deliciousness. Never again will I be baking 4 buttermilk loaves at once. However, in about 5 days I'll hopefully be baking my first sourdough loaf and then may not be making buttermilk as often anyway. We'll just have to wait and see.

Yesterday was cool and rainy (AGAIN) and the girls and I took a late afternoon walk. It was a little cool though--Greta's little hands were frozen by the time we got home, even though I thought she was bundled enough.

Taking walks with the girls has gotten a little difficult. Nobody wants to ride--they both want to walk themselves. But when they are "walking", little distance is actually covered. They spend almost all their time picking flowers, weeds and grass to pile up in a little spot for the squirrels. And then Greta likes to climb every set of stairs we see, which is a lot when you're walking through a neighborhood that's on a hill.

Another little Tuesday tradition we've brought back is our Tuesday Date Night that came about when Martin and I were dating. When he was working for the State, we didn't always see each other as much as we would've liked, so we made Tuesday Date Night to ensure that at least once a week we had a date together, no matter what. And if we ended up seeing other every day, great! But we always kept Tuesday as our evening together. Our new Tuesday Date Nights are family dates, which is fun, and they are always to Starbucks because on Tuesdays at Starbucks you can pick up a little card with a code on it and get a free iTunes song! Music is "Aah!" in Anja language (along with trucks, lawnmowers, hairdryers and anything else that makes noise), so whenever we go now, she goes up to the counter and says "Aah! Aah! Aah!" very urgently and nobody there knows what she's talking about and probably thinks she's crazy. But anyway, it's a fun way to get a date once a week and a free song to build up our music library. And yesterday Martin got the girls each a chocolate cookie. Greta was not at all excited.

And Anja got a little hot chocolate, which is really cute because of the baby-sized cups.

Anja found this tulip tree blossom on our walk and carried it with her for the rest of the day. She also looked around everywhere for one for Greta. It was really cute. When she did finally find one, Greta didn't care about it and that was really sad.

And now I'm going to tell all of you blog readers that you should join in on the Self Portrait Wednesday tradition so I don't feel like such a narcissist. Happy Wednesday!