Making Mr. Hershey
When I picked Kimmy up after school on Friday she was carrying a large Sprite bottle with a styrofoam ball screwed onto the top of it. It looked harmless enough until she informed me that we were going to turn it into Mr. Hershey.

The third graders are assigned a biography to read. Kimmy's is Milton Hershey, the chocolate king. They are to write a report on their assigned person and make a likeness of him/her out of the pop bottle styrofoam ball creation.

Before we ever got to the car I heard "Grandma, you and I do good crafts together. Let's make Mr. Hershey tonight." How could I say no to that? So we stopped at the store and bought some Sharpies and rubberbands. We used a tan colored tee shirt for his head, a black teeshirt for his suit, and a pair of white underpants for his shirt. It was quite the craft project. It kept us busy for most of Friday evening.

Kimmy did most of it herself. I did the basic anchoring of the knit materials and she did all the cutting, gluing, and detailing. Mr. Hershey doesn't look too bad, if I do say so myself. The important thing is that Kimmy is pleased with the way Mr. Hershey turned out. She was very protective of him on the trip to take her home and I hope he makes it to the classroom in one piece. I wish I had thought to get a picture, but he's gone now and I don't have one.

No doubt inspired by Mr. Hershey, Kimmy and I - mostly Kimmy - baked a Turtle Cake: German chocolate cake mix with a middle layer of melted caramels, pecans, and chocolate chips. Ghastly rich and very good. Three eggs. That's important because Kimmy's favorite part is breaking the eggs. If you love caramel and chocolate and nuts, give it a try.

Diet Update
Yes I had a piece of cake. Don't know how many Weight Watchers points it was and I'm not going to calculate it out. Kimmy and I have fun cooking together and she is turning into a good little baker. When she goes home, the baked goods go home with her.

My weight loss is stuck. I have nine pounds left to lose and they're not coming off. I've been gaining and losing the same two pounds for the past two months, ever since Weight Watchers started their new point system. Their new Flex Points System doesn't work for me, and I'm going to have to go back to the old points system to make my goal.

Any thinking person reading this is thinking that if I eat a high calorie piece of cake every week it's obvious why I'm not losing weight. But that is exactly how the Flex Point System is advertised. The dieter gets 35 extra points every week to use for unexpected and/or special eating opportunities. 35 points is approximately 2100 calories. That's even more calories than that piece of cake could have been.

In the old WW points system, I got 22 points a day, 154 points a week. In the new WW points system I get 20 points a day plus 35 weekly flex points for a total of 175 points a week. So how does WW expect that to work?

At least now I have a good idea what I need to do to maintain my weight loss. This is not a good time of year to be losing weight and I'm wondering if I should just maintain for now and finish the weight loss off in January. If I don't do something different, that is what is going to happen by default.