a lightbulb moment…and other stuff too

Or, an “Oh DUH!!” kind of afternoon.

Today I picked up hamburger.  40 pounds of hamburger.  I took 10 pounds, divided it into meal-sized portions and froze it.  I took another 10 pounds, browned it, then froze that in meal-sized portions.  I put 10 pounds in the fridge to deal with tomorrow.  And the last 10 pounds?  Well…I wanted to make it into hamburger patties to freeze so that I didn’t have to do the work later.  After thinking through a whole host of options to get it done—all of which were rejected as too much work!—it dawned on me:  Put the whole log in the freezer.  Freeze it for a couple of hours, til it’s mostly solid but not frozen through.  Put it on the cutting board, slice into burgers, and freeze the rest of the way.  Place in a plastic bag and voila!  ready to grill hamburgers, with no fuss and very little effort.

See?  Told you it was an “oh DUH!” afternoon.  :)

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In other news, Logan is doing AWESOME at speech!  That boy works SO HARD!!  Today, he was putting out so much effort to complete the tasks before him that his whole body was shaking.  And he’s making progress.  A big piece of the focus is on core strength and building up his core so that he’s not perpetually compensating for his lack of strength.  Things like jumping on the trampoline, riding his bicycle, and chewing bubble gum (the hard stuff—hubba bubba bubble gum) are therapy exercises.  Fortunately, they’re fun to practice.  We’re seeing results, too.  Logan did 3 miles on his bike on a trail over the weekend.  He runs from our house to the park without stumbling or falling, and with a decent running form.  He’s mastered some of the ‘jaw strength’ exercises she wants him to learn.  The next step?  Developing lung capacity.  We talked about 2 options:  a specific whistle or a spirometer.  Logan’s eyes lit up at the suggestion of a spirometer and he said, “Grandpa has some!  I play with them at his house.”  Needless to say, a call was made to Grandpa this afternoon, and now we have a spirometer in our therapy box.  Logan spent the afternoon playing with it and the stopwatch on my phone.  It’s awesome when therapy is so much fun that he WANTS to play. 

School’s been much better the last 2 days, so I’m not feeling as desperate.  Fridays are low-key days on purpose, and we’re probably going to pick something fun to do when we’re done with our few things we have for school (Bible, reading, and science).  We’ve survived volleyball tryouts for Tori (varsity) and Jim (JV coach) and are looking forward to a nice weekend.  That’s a good place to be on a Thursday night.  :)