Camden had a very successful 2nd grade year.  Wow, what an incredible difference from last year.  He finished with an “A” average and is now reading above grade level.  Last year we were told at his previous elementary school that we would need to retain him in 1st grade and they gave us a list of his problems.  They (the teachers & administrators) felt he could not be successful in the 2nd grade.  John and I (especially John) disagreed.  We decided to move him to our neighborhood school, McNair Elementary.  When we initially enrolled Camden in the other school district, I thought it was the best there was.  Boy was I mistaken.  Now I know that all that glitters isn’t gold.

Great job, Camden!

We had a magnitude 3.3 earthquake in Dallas, Texas yesterday. I didn’t feel anything in Denton. However, John was at work just outside of DFW International Airport and felt the initial earthquake along with an after shock a little while later. He was actually on the phone with me when the first earthquake hit.

How cool is this?  We are the featured blog of the week at Blogging Fusion.

This is what I usually come home to.  Ahh, the enthusiasm of seeing mom come home - sometimes it overwhelms me.

15.2 pounds gone!

Update 2/22/09 - 18.2 pounds are now gone.

Update 4/6/09 - 26.0 pounds are now gone.

Today we had a day off from school.  I can assure you that I may have been happier than my students.  All we’ve heard on the news since Monday was that an ice storm was approaching.  The build-up from the meteorologists was infectious - the students were all hopeful to not have school today.  I was also hoping for the same as I had a fairly long day planned, with an hour long meeting scheduled after school today.

Diet news - I have lost 11.4 pounds since I began my diet on January 4th.  I have found it fairly easy to keep track of my food intake with the iPhone application mentioned in an earlier blog post.  The only time I have difficulty sticking to the diet is when free snacks are offered at work.  Last weekend was the science fair - the coordinator had a table full of my favorite snacks.  I did manage to resist eating any donuts (Camden made up for it - he ate 3); however, the mixed nuts and snack sized Baby Ruth were just too tempting.

Last night I decided to renew all of the domains I currently own (13).  I seem to have an addiction to purchasing .com’s.  All but two of the domains below point back to leake-family.com.  I took Camden’s website down as I hadn’t updated it since 2004.  My former science class website was also taken down as the district that I work for wants us to keep our class site on Blackboard.  Here is a list of the .com’s in my repertoire:

After a fantastic holiday and a lot of overindulging on my favorite foods, it’s now time I go back to my diet.  I’ve been on many diets in the past (the Zone, South Beach, etc.) and I cannot seem to stick to them.  3 summers ago, I kept a food log on my laptop and lost about 25 pounds.  I decided last Sunday (exactly 1 week ago) to start food logging again.  The only problem:  I didn’t want to haul my laptop to work to keep track of my daily food intake - I wanted something portable.  Luckily, I found an awesome (and FREE) iPhone application that does everything I want!  It’s called Lose It!

     When you first open the application, you enter your personal info (age, weight, height, goal weight, and how many pounds you want to lose per week).  It then tells you your daily calorie budget and approximately how long it will take you to reach your goal weight.  I log each of my meals and it keeps track of my calorie and nutrient intake (fat, sodium, carbs, etc.) for the day.  It also has a nice weekly overview of this info.  I can also enter my weight daily (if desired) and it graphs my progress.  I have lost 4.8 pounds since last Sunday.  Woo-Hoo!!  For me, this has been the only thing that works.  I can see how much I eat for breakfast, lunch, and my snacks and determine how much of my calorie budget I have left for dinner.  If needed, you can manually enter your food information in (the application will store it); however, it already has a lot of the brand name foods stored in the program.  It also has numerous restaurant foods saved in the database as well. Overall, this is an awesome app that I highly recommend!

Now it’s on to one of the best Czech desserts - Koláče!  I’m not talking about the fake, American version of koláče sold in some donut shops and wanna-be koláče bakeries.  Those that I have tried are are NOT real koláče.  I’m talking about delicious, authentic Czech koláče like my mom used to make.  Mom would make large, 12-14 inch koláče with poppy seed, prune, apricot, and cream cheese fillings sprinkled with posypka.  During my 3 month stay in the Czech Republic, I would often go to a bakery and purchase small, individual sized koláče (about 3-4 inches in diameter) so that’s what I thought I’d try to make.  This is my first batch and I learned quite a few things in the process.  

Below is the recipe I used.  After baking, I realize there are some things that I’ll need to change next time I make these.  First, I believe I need to reduce the amount of yeast (to 1 tablespoon).  Second, instead of dividing the dough into 16 pieces, I might be able to get away with doubling that (to 32 pieces) resulting in koláče not as large as those pictured above.

Koláče Recipe:

1. Prepare the same dough as the Vánočka.  Allow it to rise in a warm location for 60 minutes.
2. Punch dough down, place on a floured surface, and divide into 16 pieces.  Roll into balls about 2 inches in diameter. **I will try making these into 32 balls next time.**
3. Place dough balls onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.  Cover with a dish towel and let rise in a warm place for 30-45 minutes.
4. Flatten the centers of the dough balls with the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in flour.  This will give you a nice, mini “pizza” shape with a rim around the outside to surround the filling.  
5. Brush the rim of the dough with whisked egg.
6. Pipe the desired filling into the center.  My ABSOLUTE favorite filling is cream cheese - see recipe below.  I placed the cream cheese filling in a gallon-sized zip top bag and cut off one corner of the bag.  
7. Sprinkle with posypka (see recipe below).
8. Let rise 15-20 minutes.  
9. Bake in a 350^oF oven for 20-25 minutes.  Cool and enjoy!

Well, I did it!  I made the one Czech food that makes me so incredibly proud once I’ve finished - Vánočka (Czech Christmas Bread)!!  My mom made it every year during the holidays and it just doesn’t feel like Christmas without it.

Below is the recipe I’ve used over the last few years - I leave out the raisins, other dried fruits, and the lemon rind found in other recipes (John won’t eat it otherwise).  Also, this is the first time I placed slivered almonds on the outside - I think I’ll pass on them next year as I don’t like the way it looks once baked.

I forgot to buy wooden skewers this year so when I baked my Vánočka, the top layer started to slide to one side resulting in a crooked loaf. 8-O