Weight, weight... Don't tell me!

Well, you might as well all know the little secret I've been keeping. Ever since we learned about a couple different family friends who have experienced successful results following Weight Watchers, Momma convinced Stew to join the program with her in an attempt to curve his skyrocketing weight gain back down toward earth. Some might know the program assigns "points" to all different kinds of food, and you are allowed to eat so many points per day... which means you go to bed starving each night. But since it costs money to join Weight Watchers, I think Momma figured Stew would be obligated to follow the program. However, she's either in denial or has forgotten about the last time she spent money buying an annual family membership to the Northwest Athletic Club when we lived in Robbinsdale. At that time, Stew went to the gym about 4-5 times within the first two weeks but never returned. Anyway, Momma and Stew are in their third full week of the program, and the results are shocking. Stew actually lost 10 lbs in the first two weeks and is on his way to losing 2-3 more pounds this week. I don't know Momma's results... all I do know is that Stew is kicking her butt (although he has lots more to lose than her). Stew's goal is to get back to his "playin' weight"... which apparently refers to how much he weighed a couple years after college when he fancied himself quite the "ladies man" back in Pierre (which a handful of disappointed women can attest to). So, Stew's about half-way to his goal... but yesterday presented a few challenges. Allow me to explain...

Stew was in charge of baking Claire's Red Velvet Birthday Cake, one slice of which is probably a day's worth of Weight Watchers' points. Anyway, Stew says he baked it "from scratch" because I think he thinks making it from a box actually IS "from scratch" since he's not buying the cake from a bakery. Momma decided to just let this go since she was happy that he would take care of preparing a dessert. So first thing Thursday morning, Stew and Claire baked the two round cakes that would eventually become the Leaning Tower of Pastry shown in my previous post. All was going well, and Stew removed the cakes from the oven and put them on a cooling rack to, well, cool. About 30 minutes later, while Stew was following his daily ritual of responding to SPAM emails offering free Viagra, Claire entered the office and presented her hands to Stew and stated, "I got cake on my fingers!" This sent Stew bolting out of his chair toward the kitchen... where he discovered Claire's engineer/scientist gene had finally kicked in (the gene is complements of Stew's siblings). They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's about 3,000 words for y'all:
Despite Claire's ability to design a plan involving the placement of a conduit between the floor and the counter top in order to achieve maximum ascension for the purpose of digging into the cake, it still turned out alright... just a little lopsided. Fortunately, it actually doesn't taste all that good, so Stew doesn't think he'll eat any more of it this weekend while Momma is in Fargo. However, I do know he has plans to make a chicken-finger-chili-dog-pizza with gravy for dinner tonite (gravy on the side, of course). So we'll see how he actually fares with his weight-loss program.

In the meantime, more pictures of Claire opening some more birthday gifts! Please note the red around Claire's mouth is not clown make-up but is actually smeared on red velvet cake.

There's something furry inside here...

Bogey sniffs the monkey's butt to make sure he's kid-safe.
Claire has Momma's "hoarder" gene and is careful not to destroy the bow so that it can be used later... and I just sealed my own death sentence by referring to Momma as a "hoarder". Please pray for me.

The orangutan seems to be enjoying himself, too!

Now if we could only teach Stew how to brush Claire's hair... maybe eventually train him to put her hair in a ponytail or pigtails or even use barrettes. Then maybe Claire wouldn't look like a hobo child in school next to all the other girls whose stay-at-home moms know how to make cute hairdos. Then again Claire doesn't need a stylist to be the coolest kid in class!

And finally... a little hay ride before bedtime...