Day 360 - Saturday December 8, 2012

Today it snowed like 10 inches at our house and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  We played Christmas music all morning and Mark got a beautiful fire started in the fireplace for us to enjoy.  Stephany and Bridgett worked together and put up the little lights on the banister and Mark and Tyler brought in the Christmas tree and got it all set up and looking (and smelling) beautiful.  We all love this time of year!  Stephany was pretty worn out after helping with the lights so we will wait to decorate the tree later on.  One goal that Bridgett and I have is to have her do more cooking and be able do more than just help me, which she does, but make things independently.  I should interject here that before the accident Bridgett really didn't like to cook.  In fact, she was pretty shrewd at getting around the whole cooking aspect of living independently.  One of her best secrets....date guys that like to cook!  She seemed to have an uncanny knack for this!  Many of the guys she dated would cook dinner for her almost every night and sometimes lunch as well.  I think that she always planned on marrying someone who loved cooking and would be willing and happy to assume this part of living as she never really enjoyed it.  But, now that we are setting goals for independence, we have set cooking goals.  I really don't think Bridgett remembers that she hates cooking and we are not reminding her! Instead we are using this window to try to get her cooking and liking it.  We'll see how that plays out!  We set this goal....each week she will cook a certain recipe with me (her choice mostly) and then later on in the week she will cook the same recipe by herself.  This week her choice...one of her favorite dinner meals....meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  Actually she started right out and said that she could do it herself and she did and it turned out great!  I did help peel some of the potatoes because by that time she was tiring out a little but otherwise she was in charge, followed the recipe and did great.  We are then compiling a list of recipes for her that she can cook by herself.  Somewhere in all of her packed things I do know that she has a recipe box filled with things that she learned to cook as a teenager but who knows where it is, so we are making another one.