#251 Nomad Diary. 9-15 August 2025. 3rd week of 8 in Madison, Alabama Airbnb. Esther's 2nd Birthday! Nomad Notes: Whipping Cream Frosting That's Low Sugar.
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| Esther's Second Birthday with Owen |
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| Esther and Owen Enjoying the Decorated Cake |
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| Us at the Elkmont Trail Going North |
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| Elkmont Trail, Alabama |
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| Beautiful Sunset Sky |
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| Me and These Cutie-Pies |
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| Esther and Grandpa Talking to Darrell's Mom (age 91) |
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| Darrell and Owen Talking to Darrell's Mom, Owen's Great Grandma! |
Saturday. 9. Walk at Swan Creek in Athens, Alabama. Decorate Esther’s birthday cake. I got creative with a cake decorating idea when I learned a new frosting recipe on YouTube. It’s so much easier and less sweet than traditional buttercream frosting. I’ll put the recipe link and in my words at the end of the Nomad Notes. I got the new frosting recipe and the decoration completed. We arrived at the party at Eric and Erin’s house. Erin’s parents and brothers were there. One brother, Chris is married to Beth and they have a daughter, Millie, just a few weeks younger than Esther. There were a lot of presents and plenty of cake!
Sunday. 10. At church we had advertised a ‘family and friends’ day. It was an opportunity to invite friends or family for the morning. The building was packed. I invited our youngest son, Samuel who lives close by, and he came. It was wonderful to have such encouragement and for him to agree to come. We went back to our house and had tacos for lunch. Eric’s family came for lunch too. We had leftover birthday cake for dessert! Lol. After everyone left, Darrell and I talked about going for a walk, but it’s 90 degrees! We decided to go after breakfast on Monday morning.
Monday. 11. After breakfast, go to Elkmont for a walk in the woods. We enjoyed a 5 mile walk before lunch. It was close to 80 degrees and very humid. This weather was on the edge of tolerable! Lol. After lunch I tried to get our Brazil airline tickets purchased for December. Yesterday I also tried and failed. Today, the prices were up $100 per ticket from yesterday. I was trying to complete the purchase, but I again failed. The reasons are mostly around trying to use the GOL web site and something on that system not going through. After my attempt, Darrell was able to get on Expedia and purchase the tickets we wanted. He took a considerable amount of time to get through each of the details, but he succeeded! We have our tickets to Brasilia, Brazil to visit our son Jeremy with his wife Andrea and son Quinn. Our dates are December 9th-January 5th. We have some more details and another flight to purchase to get us to Miami for our nonstop flight to Brazil.
Tuesday. 12. 10 am Bible class at Capshaw church building. Online class with English church in Tunbridge Wells, Kent at 1pm. Time online together deciding on our calendar and travel in November. We are mainly deciding on when to go to Denton, Texas, just north of Dallas. This will be our second trip in 2025 to visit Darrell’s Mom at sister Cyndi’s house. We were last there in March at the same time that his Dad had a bad fall. From Dad’s fall he continued to rapidly deteriorate and passed away in April.
Wednesday. 13. Today after our morning routine and breakfast, Eric brought Owen and Esther over for a couple of hours. They played really well. The last 10 minutes before Eric arrived they threatened having toddler breakdowns. We decided to turn on a music video and Owen started whining that he wanted Paw Patrol. He even saw it as one of the selections on our tv! Lol. The music started and I told him that Quinn likes this one and he began to change his temperament to curiosity. Then Esther got fussy for her second time in the past 20 minutes. Darrell gathered her up and started dancing with her and she got happy. Then Owen came over to Darrell and wanted picked up also for this dance. Darrell got his work out for about 5 minutes of dancing holding these two kids! Lol. Eric arrived and we gathered their things and said goodbye until tomorrow. After lunch, Darrell’s alarm went off. He had forgotten that he had a doctor’s appointment today. He thought it was on Thursday. He got out the door and on his way quickly. Today we decided on our airbnb in Hot Springs, Arkansas for the week of Thanksgiving. We are happy with our selection and sent Mom and Cyndy the links to join our trip. They are acting pretty excited to be planning a meet up that gets them out of their routine life in Texas. It will be about a 5 hour drive for them, and about 6 ½ hours for our drive from Alabama. We are all looking forward to our weeklong getaway together. This is our first Thanksgiving without Dad. We also hope that Cyndy’s High School aged daughter, Kylee will join us for our week too.
Thursday. 14. After breakfast I went to Eric’s house and played with the kids until lunch time. Our best game today was a dance party. I turned on my You Tube songs with director Burt Kaempfert and we listened to songs like Surfin’ Safari and That Happy Feeling. While we were jumping up and down, I discovered that Owen and Esther were very good at following my movements. We kept playing with lively music for about 20 minutes together. I came home to Darrell and walked a couple of blocks to our closest Taco Truck. Darrell had been working on getting through our electronic visa for Brazil. This is a new process for traveling to Brazil. It costs $80 per person which is crazy expensive in my opinion. The price for a US citizen was $0 to go to Brazil, but since President Trump is interrupting former peaceful relationships, this is one of the reciprocal actions from another country toward the US. We are meeting our airbnb host, Seth this afternoon. He’s coming to replace a broken window shade.
Friday. 15. On a phone call this morning with my friend Laura trading EPT sessions. Met up with friend Melanie for lunch. Spent my afternoon working on my pc.
Nomad Notes.
Our current airbnb:
I’m enjoying this house we are living in. It’s a good size for us and the layout is quite nice. We usually are able to do our morning exercises on the back concrete patio in the cool of the early morning. We have a kingsize bed that gives us more room and comfort. We have 2 bathrooms and this is a roomier and more comfortable situation. We have two extra bedrooms, and one of the bedrooms has most of our boxes and crates from our truck in it. I’ve been able to start going through items and I’ve cleaned all of the Wyoming dust off the crates from our recent road trip! Lol. We also have a garage. This is very nice to park the truck in. We didn’t get a garage door opener and that’s a bit of a work-around to close the garage and go out the front door.
Our current diet:
I’ve decided to only weigh once or twice a week. Our diet is a sustainable way of eating. We are coming up on one year of beginning our tracking of certain macros. This change for us began with Darrell’s diagnosis in fall of 2024 with Non-alcoholic fatty liver. Since then, and being on this diet and losing significant weight, his labs are back to normal! Yay! I was already tracking last year, but changed my diet to increase my protein, limit saturated fats and increase fiber. This coordinated eating plan allowed us to streamline our shopping and cooking. It was a mental hurdle for me to agree to increase my meat intake. Darrell had to also go through this and other mental hurdles. We both decided to do the plan and see how it goes. It has gone very well. We have gotten better at understanding the plan as we are now about a year into it. I’ve lost about 10 pounds and gone down from a size 8 to a size 6! This was never what I expected. I’ve also had some very good changes with this way of eating. These changes include a lot less inflammation, no bloating, good intestine movement, a decade-plus eyelid issue is mostly cleared up, up to 4 hours between meals without hunger or food-seeking, and probably more things. I don’t save room for sweets or treats like I’ve done for most of my life! Lol. I’ve told myself that even though this way of eating is very different from how I was eating with my focus on vegetables, I am currently doing well. I am capable of changing to any diet that I need to at any time. For now, this diet is enjoyable, calming and beneficial for me in more ways than I ever expected from it.
The basics of our diet begin with:
Tracking foods and weighing portions.
I calculated my protein needs based on several articles and information for protein amounts for senior women. I went with the 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight.
I called my lowest possible body weight 108 pounds versus my current body weight of 135. This became my range for my protein calculation. I now eat between 108 and 135 grams of protein per day. Sometimes I eat a little more or a little less.
This amount of protein will put my calorie percentage of protein above 20% of my total calories. When we began this tracking in the fall of 2024, I was looking to get 20% of my calories from protein. It was really hard to work up to this much protein. It took effort to learn to eat this new higher level of protein. Turns out to be one of the issues with people over age 60, that they typically don’t eat enough protein for maintaining body mass! Well, I’m trying to recalibrate my eating and my experience as I age. So far, I’ve been very impressed with how much I’ve come to enjoy my new way of eating. It feels good and enjoyable for now. But it has been a learning curve and an experiential discovery in many ways.
One of my favorite teachers for this way of eating is on You Tube under “90-30-50 method” and “Courtney Kassis”. These numbers represent Courtney’s method of eating daily 90 grams of protein, 30 grams of fiber and 50 grams of ‘good fats’. My numbers are 108-135 grams of protein, 30 grams of fiber and less than 20 grams of saturated fat.
On Wednesday afternoon I ate a small ice cream cone and a small piece of cake. I’m not feeling satisfied with this ‘treat’. It doesn’t feel good or bad. I am not being drawn to eat more or to have this kind of snack again. It’s a good thing and very different from my younger self and how I always saved room for dessert! I always built dessert into my day. Now, I feel very indifferent to my emotional and my physical experience of having this dessert today.
Whipping Cream and Low Sugar Frosting Link.
The recipe makes enough for a two layer cake.
Chill your mixing bowl and beater attachment(s) in the freezer for 15 minutes.
I used a hand held mixer and this took about 5-7 minutes to complete.
Put into bowl:
2 cups whipping cream
2 tablespoons instant vanilla pudding
2 teaspoons powdered sugar
Mix on medium speed for about 5 minutes. Peaks begin to stay firm. Watch the You Tube video to understand how it looks so you don’t over beat it.
Add in 1 teaspoon vanilla, and any coloring drops.
Mix in. Spread or pipe onto cooled cake.
Refrigerate.
I went to ‘Five Below’ store and found little cone treats that were easy to cut to the height of the cake and look adorable as Ice cream cones! I used a piping bag to make the Ice cream top decoration. Then added some sprinkles. Owen and Esther knew exactly what it was and loved it! One of Esther’s presents was a pretend Ice cream cart! The theme was a surprise and fun for everyone. Everyone enjoyed the frosting and ate it!
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