This Halloween, we were soggy and wet - it poured all night last night, all through today, and all the way into trick-or-treating time.  There was one event that they had available to the littlest ones, and Anja just made the age cut-off to be able to attend and showed up in her adorable chef costume.  The one that I bought about 18 months ago and then lost.  Fortunately, I found it about 2 months ago and this time, it fit her perfectly and was so cute on her.

But do I have any pictures of her in it?  No.  I do not.  Instead, I have pictures of her from our night helping at a haunted house.  She was so good in it, too, right up until when she passed out on the couch in the loony bin and slept through the rest of the screaming and chain-saw-massacring and the rattling and the banging and the more screaming.  Maybe it was a self-defense thing to sleep through it all.

Late one night, I took it upon myself to color in one of Anja’s (many) drawings in Photoshop.  Don’t worry - she loves it and has given me the OK that it is acceptable.

It reads:

I am Grayson.  I lie a lot.  Oops, got to lie.  Good luck, I am going to lie about I did not eat cookies, OK.  OK.  OK.  Thanks.  Don’t tell your friends, OK.

This one was brought to me today.  It is, as you can tell, her feelings.

I guess I won’t be buying any more white cheese.

Losers sweepers!

And that is all.

Last night I became thankful for the never-used bidet right next to the toilet that can be found in hotels in this part of Europe.  It came in very handy when Anja spent the night in the abathroom utilizing both at once while she dealt with our family’s first incident of food poisoining.

So it’s day 12 of the South Beach Diet.  I have been doing incredibly well; I haven’t really cheated except for going out for dinner last night.  We went to a murder mystery dinner and the choices were chicken with pasta or brisket with mashed potatoes.  I opted for the chicken (far healthier than brisket) and only ate about 3 forkfuls of pasta, leaving the large majority of it on my plate.  I also ate most of my piece of cheesecake which was a definite no-no but I was able to get back on track right away.

I’ve been careful to explain to the kids why I’m eating the way I am - for example, I love bread too much, so instead of eating one healthy piece of bread I’ll eat the whole dang thing of it, which is not at all healthy.  And I’ll have to top it with a bunch of butter because I just love butter on my bread, so you do the math, it’s just not a good thing for me.  So no bread for now until I get things under control a bit better.

But somehow, they’ve heard that I’m “on a diet”, even though the couple of times I’ve heard them say it I’ve corrected them and explained that I’m just trying to eat healthier because my eating habits got kind of out of control for a while there.  They seemed to accept that just fine.

So today we have been out of the house all day and at about 2:45, B realized we hadn’t eaten lunch yet.  We headed over to the local pizza place on base where they were going to have a big pizza and I was going to eat from the salad bar.  However, 2:45 is Spanish lunchtime so it was packed.  Frustrated, we decided to go to Subway instead (I’d have a wrap).  We got there and again, there was a long line.  So we walked down to the Commissary and they bought pre-made sandwiches and chips and I bought a box of cherry tomatoes and a small plate of meat and cheese cubes.

As we settled down to eat - finally! - the base commanding officer walked by.  He is generally a pretty friendly and likeable guy and I’ve worked directly with him a few times so he knows who I am by name, so when he walked past he said, “Hi, LN1!  How’s it going?”  And my daughter responded directly to him by piping up with “My mamma’s on a diet!”

He chuckled as he walked past, and the rest of us maintained relatively straight faces until he was out of sight, at which point we all erupted in laughter.  My daughter is the Queen of Good Timing.

Anja came home with an assignment to create a paper doll that she felt resembled her. With the unusual opportunity to raid my scrapbooking supplies, she picked, designed and oversaw the assembly of her paper doll. All the ideas, papers, etc., were hers except the design of the necklace. She wanted diamond earrings but the doll didn’t have ears so I made her a necklace with one fiber of gold embroidery floss and a tiny silver bead. She has wavy (corrugated) hair, a glittery pink crown and a feria-style dress. And nail polish. And blush on her cheeks.  And pink high heels.  The only thing I vetoed was HER BABY.

This year we decided to put Anja in swimming. The kind where you’re on a team, the kind that I never would have been able to hack because I would’ve been busy sinking to the bottom. And I’m in the Navy now. So someone else can do the floating for me while I stay dry on top.

Anyway, Anja has been very excited about swimming. She loves the water. When her head’s in the game, she kicks some serious swimming butt. Her favorite stroke is backstroke, she has a hard time breathing during freestyle, and she learned how to do the breaststroke by watching Michael Phelps swim in the Olympics. And today was her first swim meet.

Because we weren’t sure how the whole swim meet thing was going to go, we decided to put Anja in the “Pup” races instead of the regular 50 meter races. The pup races are just 25 meters, the length of the pool. There were 6 kids that swam the pup races; the first 3 were cute little pocket-sized girls for whom 25 meters may as well have been a leg of the Iron Man triathlon. The second 3 were the group Anja was in that included Isak’s best friend and his brother, both of whom are older but are also just on their first year of swimming.

She didn’t pay much attention to the whole process of getting on her mark, getting set, and diving off, so when it was her turn she got a little confused about what exactly she needed to do and got a slow start, but once she hit the water she was getting back in it again.

I’m sure that it was because this was her first race, but rather than using her good technique, she needed to see what was going on at all times.

Had she kept her face down and just swam her strongest, she could have won but this time it wasn’t happening. It was close, though, and she placed a very close second in her first race.

Her next race was the backstroke, which she was very excited about. She had a better start on this one and swam much stronger.

Despite ramming into the lane divider near the end and thinking she was done, she still managed to finish first in her race!

She earned her very first ribbon and was very proud of herself!

Her last race was the 25m breaststroke, the one Michael Phelps taught her from Beijing. Of all the heats, this is the one she seemed to have the most fun with. She swam with a huge smile on her face!

She did such a good job, even if she did have a hard time keeping her focus. I’m excited to see her swim at the next meet!