How we spent New Year's Eve Day

We spent the day in the front yard playing in the sprinkler. Well, I played with the sprinkler and the kids played in the dirt and mud after running through the sprinkler for 30 minutes.

The thermometer on the west side of the house showed that the high for the day was 82. Too bad that, as is usual, winter starts tomorrow. Historically, the cold seems to come to stay for 6 weeks starting tomorrow.

Giselle drew the most wonderful picture on the driveway today. She had me trace her body and then she colored it in.



The kids are watching TV for the next 6 hours (Reading Rainbow and Super Why, thank you TiVo) while they try to stay up as late as they possibly can - on New Year's Eve we let them stay up as long as they can. Paul made it to 11 pm last year while Giselle had to be shut down by me at 2 am. Maybe if I let her have more champagne this year she'll fall asleep sooner.

Totally out of the blue, Giselle just informed me that she likes it when people scratch the bottom of her feet but she doesn't like it when they tickle them. I keep thinking that she and Katie would make good friends, maybe we should start them as pen pals. What do you think, Donna?

picture deleted

funny stories

Go check out the contest and entries over on Kelly Jean's blog Laughing Always Helps. The contest is for an awesome organizer that she bought at Barnes & Noble this past weekend and to enter you have to give your most embarrassing/funny story.

Calendars

Where are all my free calendars?!
By this time each year I usually have way too many calendars and am sharing the extras with friends. Not this year. We have exactly 2 wall calendars for 2008. One of them is Giselle's Highlights calendar and the other is a Georgia O'Keeffe one that I got as a present from one of my sisters. Where is my USAA calendar, my Kraft Family & Food calendar, my Dr Richard Schulze calendar, my National Wildlife Federation calendar? Where are they? 2008 starts in only 2 days! What am I going to do? I need more calendars!!! I knew I should have bought them when Woot! had them on sale last week!

Olympus Cameras - opinion

I have an Olympus 720SW (SW stands for Shock and Water resistant). This is my second Olympus - my other is an Olympus film camera, point-and-shoot. We have a Nikon CoolPix900 that we bought in 2001 and my previous film camera was a Pentax.
Olympus has a good warranty program (for one year, if you break it they will replace it and you can buy an additional 2 year warranty for only $50) and good email newsletters with tips on how to improve your picture taking.
I would LOVE to have one of the really nice digital SLRs but since I also love to carry the camera wherever I go we went with the Olympus. It fits inside of a zipable wallet. A good friend of ours who used to be a professional photographer bought one of the 720SWs when they first came out to take on a cross-country motorcycle trip. He loved it and recommended it to us when we asked his opinion on what we should get to replace the 2nd hand HP that I was carrying around in my purse. I've had it a year and my only complaint is that they should have made this one squash-proof like the 770SW(?) is. There is a lot of user tweaking that you can do if you don't want the camera do do it all for you and there are 25 different preprogrammed functions that you can use or tweak to your liking (candle light, available light, behind glass, museum, nighttime, self portrait, landscape, movie, etc). I've seen comparable cameras out there but none of them were waterproof like this one is - you can take pictures and movies with it under water up to 10 feet deep - or shockproof. Too bad my phone isn't as durable.
If you want to take REALLY nice pictures, for sale quality, then any one of those high end cameras would do you good. I would check for compatibility on add-on lenses (I think that I've read that Cannon holds the gold standard on lenses). For the stuff that I do - turning them into 8x10's for the living room wall - the tweakable point-and-shoots work just fine.

Eggs

I used the last of our Finc Pura Vida eggs this morning making breakfast for some of the family. Joe had 3 of them with his 3 pieces of bacon, Giselle and Paul each had 2 of them with a patty of sausage, Thomas had a bowl of cereal (I think that it was the Hill Country Fair Brown Sugar Frosted Mini-Wheats), the dog had 2 eggs too - she gets the ones that have broken yolks. I had something but I don't remember what it was.
I'm supposed go get some from the store today so that we have some for tomorrow's breakfast but I haven't managed to get there yet.

done

I got the list all done.
Paul was too scared to stay up at the alter with all the other kids dressed up as Marys, Shepperds, prophets, wise men and the 1 Joseph so he came running back down the aisle to me. He was dressed as a Shepperd, complete with his stuffed lamb and his walking stick and his head scarf that Giselle did up for him. Giselle was Mary again with her Bitty Baby Sarah sitting in for baby Jesus.
The craziness should start about 7 and Paul will have eaten all the candy in his stocking by 8. The Baked Blueberry French Toast should be done cooking by 8:30 and be all eaten by 8:45 so present unwrapping should start by 9. By 10 I'll have all the paper and boxes and bags put away or in the trash and I'll be ready to start thinking about working on the turkey.
Oh, I didn't tell you about the turkey, did I?
It's a 17 pound Heirloom turkey that Edgar and Gayla killed and cleaned for me last Thursday. The turkey was hatched and raised on the farm this past year. It's a beauty and you wouldn't believe the amount of fat on that bird! The skin is really thick so that should roast up wonderfully tasty. BUT I'm not going to stuff it; I don't want to loose any stuffing inside of the bird so we'll be having dressing instead. And as an extra treat, the feet were inside of the body cavity with the neck and gizzards. The kids really got a kick (haha) out of seeing the feet no longer attached to the body. Paul wanted to know where the head was, Giselle wanted to know why they had cut off the toe nails.

I'll leave you with a quote that I read in a Land's End Christmas email that I got earlier today.
"A hug. A kind word. A hand to hold. The greatest gifts of all. May you give them freely and receive them abundantly. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year"

today's list

Still to do
Get turkey defrosted
Make the french toast for tomorrow
Wrap the rest of the presents
Make meatballs (we at the last of my frozen stash last night for dinner with ravioli)
Clean the playroom
Cut the dog's nails
Go to the 5 pm church service
Make the pizza for dinner
Put the rest of the gifts under the tree
Fill the stockings

Done

Finish Laundry

Vacuum

Clean the back yard

Clean the front yard

Feed the neighbor's chickens

too busy to post

I've got too much going on to post.
- still have presents to wrap (I think I finished the shopping last night when I went grocery shopping last night after the kids went to bed).
- was going to make pralines right now but the link on Jamie's blog doesn't work anymore!
- need to do laundry.
- need to finish cleaning the laundry room.
- need to re-organize the playroom to make room for the incoming mess.
- need to finish cleaning up the bedroom.
- need to vacuum the house.
- need to make sure that I have EVERYTHING that I need to make Christmas dinner.
- Joe thinks I need to help him clean up the back yard and redo the areas that I sodded the other day. I think THE KIDS need to help him as I already have enough to do.

Gotta run!
Do YOU have it all done? Shouldn't you be taking care of that instead of reading my blog?

my head is full of goo

What with this head cold, my monthly visitor and trying to get presents wrapped every night after the kids go to bed, I haven't had time to blog.
I cancelled school yesterday since it was sunny and 72 degrees. All we did today was finish Volume 1 of Story Of The World and once we are all ready we'll be heading out to Park Day for the day - it'll be 74 today! We'll be flying kites, playing with stomp rockets, and running around enjoying our normal Christmas weather.
Not gloating, just thankful that this is where I live.

busy

I was so astounded by the fact that I had MORE THAN 400 visitors to this blog on Monday that I had to lay low for 2 days.
Yesterday, after we finished school at 1 pm, we went ice skating (indoors) for about 3 hours. Then we went looking for food, then we shopped for 10 minutes, then we actually ate food, then we went to go look at Christmas lights on 37th street. Then we drove around Central Austin looking for/at lights. Then we drove home and looked at more lights on the way. We stopped at Derick and Cyndi's house to look at their train. Then we finished driving home and I put the kids to bed. Then Paul woke up at 10 with a very horse cough so I went to bed.
Sorry about the boring post but my head is not 100% either - I think we caught this at the party on Saturday night.

Boo Mama's Christmas Tour of Homes

Welcome to Casa De Galletti. This is our first year participating in BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes and I hope that you will enjoy your visit to our house and the view of our decorations. It's nothing fancy since last year we took down the front gutter and this year we got the house re-roofed and the fascia replaced so I can't hang any lights on half of the front of the house. And one of the two large glowing balls of lights (the red one) is shorted out from the rain earlier this week. But it's better than most of our neighbors (in real life) who have NOTHING up, not even a candle or tree in the front window.

A proper hostess has refreshments for her guests so here's your snack - a cold glass of eggnog and some gingerbread men. Be sure to bite the heads off of the gingerbread men first so that you don't hear them screaming! And try not to spill any eggnog on the carpet (keyboard) - it's so hard to get those sticky messes cleaned up.

Enjoy your visit!


These are the kid's advent calendars for this year. They are made by Playmobil and each day they get to open one of the attached little boxes. By the end they have completed an entire scene.

This is a side view of the advent calendars, our countdown-to-Christmas Santa nutcracker, the cute little momma snowman ornament that I won from Rechelle (she's too cute to get lost on the tree), and one of the two seasonal stick arrangements that are in the living room.

This is what Paul's Advent scene looked like last week, his is a king, prince and knight scene.

And this is Giselle's. Hers is a queen, princess and maiden scene.

This is the gingerbread house that we built - those little gingerbread men need to live somewhere!

This is a view of Paul's sides of the house. Notice Giselle's cute snowmen flannel pajamas?

And here are Giselle's sides of the house.

Here is this year's tree and stocking set up, and that IS an IMac Snowball there in the foreground (notice the sleek profile - it's almost invisible). The decorations are in different places on the tree and there are some some different stockings hanging up on the entertainment center because there are different people here this year...

but otherwise it looks just like last year's setup. We don't put out the gifts until Christmas eve since Mr Paul has very little self-control (he's getting it slowly) and I enjoy climbing up and down the ladder to the attic every night.

Woooo, every thing's all spinney! Look at all the pretty colors!
It appears as if you've had too much eggnog so I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.

Here's the front door. It was nice of you to drop by. Please come again next year!

Hey, you're going the wrong way, your car is up the street!

See, I told you that you've had too much to drink! Be careful not to drink and blog surf!

Ah, now that's much better!

Happy Holidays and all that good stuff! Thanks for dropping by! Please leave a comment (or a check for the damages) so that others can come by and egg your house, I mean drink all your liquor, I really mean so that I can get a boost to my blog self-esteem (you read me, you really do!).

No, really, please leave a comment and a link to YOUR Christmas Tour of Homes post (if you have one).

cold!

Now, I'm not going to whine about it going down to 22 here in Austin tonight since several hundred miles north of here got slammed with that ice storm and are dealing with much worse than our measly 2 nights of freezing weather. Nope, I'm going to show the varied weather that my family nation-wide is having tonight and tomorrow.

See if you can guess where they live!

1 - Overnight: Clear, with a low around 33. Breezy, with a west wind between 24 and 29 mph. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 43. Northwest wind between 13 and 20 mph. Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 28. Northwest wind between 5 and 8 mph.

2 - Overnight: A chance of freezing rain before 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 19. Breezy, with a west wind between 17 and 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 28. Breezy, with a west wind between 18 and 22 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 5. Wind chill values as low as -10. Breezy, with a west wind between 13 and 21 mph.

3 - Overnight: Clear, with a low around 28. West wind between 13 and 17 mph, with gusts as high as 32 mph. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 44. West wind between 11 and 14 mph. Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 23. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm.

4 - Overnight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 22. Breezy, with a west wind around 24 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 38. Breezy, with a west wind between 14 and 21 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 22. West wind between 3 and 10 mph.

5 - Tonight: Clear, with a low around 31. Calm wind. Monday: Increasing clouds, with a high near 60. East wind between 5 and 10 mph. Monday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers after midnight. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 51. East wind between 5 and 10 mph.

6 - Overnight: Mostly clear, with a low around 35. North wind between 10 and 14 mph. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 54. Wind chill values as low as 27 early. North wind between 9 and 13 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. Monday Night: Areas of frost after 1am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 33. North wind between 3 and 6 mph.

7 - Overnight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 24. Breezy, with a west wind between 17 and 22 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 39. Breezy, with a west wind between 15 and 22 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 23. West wind between 5 and 11 mph.

8 - Overnight: Mostly clear, with a low around 25. West wind 14 to 17 mph decreasing to between 6 and 9 mph. Winds could gust as high as 37 mph. Monday: Sunny, with a high near 43. West wind between 11 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 37 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 22. West wind around 6 mph becoming calm.

9 - Tonight: Patchy fog after 10pm. Otherwise, partly cloudy during the early evening, then becoming cloudy, with a low around 46. West northwest wind at 6 mph becoming southeast. Monday: Patchy fog before 10am. Otherwise, cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high near 61. Southeast wind 6 to 14 mph becoming west. Monday Night: A 30 percent chance of rain after 10pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 47. West southwest wind 8 to 14 mph becoming east.

This is us here in Austin:
Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 22. Calm wind. Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 60. Calm wind becoming south southeast between 5 and 10 mph. Monday Night: Patchy fog after 3am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 47. South wind around 5 mph.

All weather is courtesy of NOAA /National Weather Service.

We feel GROSS!

So, every once in a while we eat like the supposed average American. Tonight was one of those nights. Joe went to a client's Christmas party with Thomas * while the kids and I stayed inside where it's warm and dry. Since Joe was out having 'fancy food' at the party I decided to 'treat' the kids to junk so I ordered from Domino's Pizza. We got a large hand-tossed pizza with triple black olives and double mushrooms (we had a coupon, #331) and I felt greedy due to the post on Pioneer Woman Cooks so I ordered Cinna Stix. The guy on the phone said that for just $1 more I could get a 2-liter bottle of soda so in a fit of stupidity I added on a bottle of Orange Fanta. So for dinner the kids had 2 pieces of pizza, 2 cups of orange soda (diluted w/30% water), and 1 piece of dough covered with cinnamon sugar and fake butter. I had 1 piece of pizza, 1 cup of orange soda mixed with one Zima, and 6 pieces of dough covered with cinnamon sugar and fake butter. And now all 3 of us feel so gross that it's just disgusting. I don't see how people can eat like this on a regular basis.

Tomorrow night we're all going to a Christmas party together (in separate cars) in the freezing cold (and this time I'm not exaggerating - the low tomorrow night is supposed to be 31 degrees).

Monty Python

So on Saturday, while at the party after the birthday party, the kids watched the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the second time in 1 month. So now my 6 yr old and 4 yr old are every once in a while trotting around the house yelling "ni!" or randomly saying to each other "What is your favorite color?" and then shouting "wrong!" and making a blow-up sound.
Good thing they watch Charlie & Lola, otherwise they might not have been able to understand the accents.
Silly kids!

Alzheimers moment

Darn! While I was doing the dishes an hour ago I came up with the greatest name for this post and now, for the life of me, I can't remember it. AT ALL. It was something snappy about what I made for dinner. Oh now I remember it!

Quicker Than Take-out Homemade Lo Mien

Ok, I actually wrote this post after the other one but in order for it to read properly on the blog I had to re-do the time of the post to be 10 min earlier than the first post.

Last night was the rescheduled seafood night here at Casa De Galletti which this week meant that the kids, Thomas and I were going to share 1 pound of bay scallops and Thomas was going to have not quite a 1/2 pound sockeye salmon fillet. We would be sharing some fresh broccoli too. Giselle remarked that she was in the mood for Asian food.

***Well, not so much remarked more like demanded. See we were at her friend Grace's house and we had to leave at 5 so that Marie could go get her hair cut. As we were leaving, Giselle informs me that she wants to spend the night there that night. I said no but that Marie and I would try to come up with a night before Christmas for them to do another sleep-over. As we pulled into our driveway (a mere 2 minutes later) Giselle tells me that since she couldn't eat dinner at Grace's and since she couldn't spend the night there either that she wants to go out to eat Asian food either at Dynasty Buffet or at Buffet Palace or some new place that she hasn't ever been to before. I said no, that we were eating at home. She said to me "How come Daddy gets to eat out tonight but WE don't?!" and I responded "Because Daddy works hard for his money and he can eat where ever he wants to. I've already bought the food for our dinner this evening and that's what we will be eating." She then said "Fine, but I don't want Asian noodle soup, I want something else like we get at the restaurants!"***

So the wheels start turning in my head and I realize that I have all the makings for Lo Mien. I cleared the menu item with the girl and set about making dinner. The scallops were rinsed and drained, then doused with Old Bay Seasoning and sauteed with butter over med-high heat for 3 minutes, flipped then cooked for 1 additional minute. They were removed from the pan, leaving the juice in there for poaching the salmon (7 minutes on med-high heat, covered). The broccoli was cooked in a big pot with a bit of water and loads of salt on it but it was a bust - too tough/old - none of us liked it so I pitched it into the trash.

The Lo Mien - everyone had seconds!
I put about 4 cups of water into a 3 quart sauce pan over high heat.
I poured in about 1/4 cup of Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Oyster Flavored Sauce (BTW, the kids tried tinned smoked oysters for the first time last week and they liked them - Giselle ate 4 of them and Paul stopped after 1.5).
When this came to a boil I added a 6 oz package of Caravelle Chuka Soba (wheat soba/ramen noodles).
After 3 minutes, I skimmed the noodles out of the pan and put them aside in a medium bowl.
I then added a 16 oz package of Central Market frozen mixed vegetables to the boiling broth/water.
After 5 minutes I drained out the broth/water and dumped the veggies into the bowl with the noodles.
I returned the empty pan to the stove, lowered the heat to medium-high and poured in several tablespoons of Spectrum Naturals Organic High Heat Sunflower Oil.
While the oil heated I poured about a quarter cup of San-J Organic Whole Soybean Shoyu (naturally brewed soy sauce) over the noodles & veggies in the bowl.
When the oil was fry-hot I dumped the bowl of veggies, noodles & soy sauce into the pan and stir-fried it long enough to evenly coat all the veggies and noodles with the soy sauce and warm it all back up.
When everything is coated, take it off the stove, dump it back into the bowl used before, set it on the table and watch it disappear.
15 minutes from start to finish if you include the 5 min that it took for the water to come to a boil (I use the double filtered water from the refrigerator so it takes a little longer to come to a boil).

wow, no post yesterday!

How did that slip by me?
We schooled in the morning, the kids played around the house for an hour after lunch, then we headed over to Marie's house until 5. After dinner there was more playing, then one chapter of Charlotte's Web and then lights out for the kids. I'm not sure how I filled the night hours but it wasn't doing blog stuff or wrapping gifts or watching TV. Oh, I was helping Joe with an Excel spreadsheet for a while and doing some eBay searching.
Back to school and I've got to help Paul find his missing Playmobil prince from his Advent Calendar. Oh, I need to upload those pictures!

Attic Space

Since the attic got cleaned out some (most of the contents are still stacked up in the laundry room) and re-floored there is currently loads of room up there. Absolutely perfect for storing unwrapped and wrapped Christmas gifts. I just have to be sure to remember to get it all down on Christmas Eve to stick it under the tree.

Speaking of the tree, did I mention that, thanks to Paul asking for it, we have a train going around the base of the tree this year. It's either James or Percy going around on a Thomas track with a generic second engine and two box cars in tow but it works for all of us. Fortunately we have plenty of AA batteries to keep him running.

I just need to remember to unplug the outside lights before bed each night. I can't put them on a timer since the extension cord that plugs into the inside socket is a 3-prong plug and non of the timers that we have in stock are 3-prong timers. I guess I could go buy one since I'm sure that I'd use it for many years to come. I'll add it to my list.

rain delay

It was too cold and wet for me to get motivated to finish the outside lights today! But I did win 2 Jane West and 1 Josie West dolls for Giselle and me to play with. Now to keep trying to get a horse for a reasonable price.

Half Done

The tree is up and decorated. I got most of the lights up on the outside of the house. The kids' advent calendars finally came in the mail on Friday so this morning before, during and after Sunday School I was putting all the little Play Mobil toys together that go into the little boxes that I had to make. They are now hanging on the living room wall. I plan on getting the rest of the decorations and lights done tomorrow so that I'll be ready to post pictures for Boo Mama's Tour of Homes - see the button in the sidebar.

tired

I don't want to post, I want to go to bed.
Up at 8, at The Market at 9, back home at 1:30, at the birthday party at 1:40, home from the birthday party at 10:00, helped pull a tooth at 10:15, checked email at 10:30, checked ebay at 10:40, checked blogs at 11, logging off at 11:21. Good night.

GI Joe

Thanks to EBay Paul'll be getting 4 GI Joe's for his birthday in January!

It's Soup Day

Even though it'll be in the 80's here today, here is a recipe for a hearty winter soup -

Vegan Split Pea Soup
makes 9 2-cup servings

4 C Vegetable Broth
12 C water
1 C lentils
4 C split peas
1/2 lb diced carrots
1/2 C chopped green onions
2 tsp Spike seasoning
fresh ground pepper - 1/2 on fine and 1/2 on medium
4 - 5 medium/large cloves of garlic - pressed
1-inch chunk of fresh ginger minced

Bring broth to boil. Add all other ingredients. Bring to 2nd boil stirring almost constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 to 4 hours - until the soup is the texture that you like. Pour 2-cup portions into containers that will fit into your smallest sauce pan (square ones aren't good nor are the tall skinny sour cream containers). Flash freeze overnight then pop them out of the containers and tfer into a big freezer bag. When reheating, add 1 C water for each 2-cup portion as the soup really thickens up after the first cooking.


Since I'm no longer vegan, I now add bacon ends at the beginning and some diced ham. I make it a little differently every time, sometimes adding more carrots nearer the end, sometimes adding potatoes if I'm not going to freeze it, sometimes throwing in some basil or cilantro.

windy

wow, it's a bit windy tonight!

shh, I'm going to bed RIGHT NOW!

Park Day today - I hope we get there before 2!
Market tomorrow - Giselle is staying home!
Birthday Party tomorrow afternoon - I better get those presents wrapped!
Church in 2 days - I get to wear my new shoes again!

Best Of The West

OK, so my next door neighbors and I had these action dolls when we were kids. They were the Best Of The West dolls. In doing research on whether or not I can still get them I found out that they were based on the TV show Best Of The West. I never knew that!
I wish that I still had my Princess Wildflower and my horses from this. I'm looking for them now for the kids (and me too). Wish me luck!

It's A Soup-Tacular

Boomama's got this going tomorrow
Join in!

Freezing green beans

In response to a question of mine, Garden Gnome @ http://www.momskitchencooking.blogspot.com/ posted instructions on canning beans. Unfortunately I don't have a pressure canner so instead I'm freezing the 7 or so pounds of fresh green beans that I got at the market this last week. Per my friend Gayla's instructions I blanched them for 1 minute in boiling salted water and then put them in a cold water bath. Once they had cooled I put them out on a cookie sheet and stuck it in the freezer to flash freeze. Once they are frozen I will transfer them into gallon freezer bags and stuff them into the big freezer. And we'll have fresh green beans for Christmas dinner. Oh, I've got to remember to make a turkey sign for Gayla for The Market.

Still up

Still got some shopping to do so I'm doing some of it now. Actually, I'm taking a break right now. The kids are getting restless in the bedroom so I better wind things up soon.

Wednesday

We were finally going to get to play with Marie and the kids today but she woke up this morning with a mild case of what her family has had for the last week.

Last night I built the grill finally - it rode around in the car with us for several weeks and it's been sitting in the box on the back porch for the last month. Tonight I built a fire in it, using the charcoal that I've been carrying around in the back of the car since the day that I bought the grill. And after our dinner of mac & cheese with mixed veggies stirred in we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. Then I roasted two hot dogs. After they finished off the dogs they went to bed and I washed dishes. After the dishes were done I headed out to Target for their sale. I was there from 9 to 10:30 and got the rest of the shopping done for the kids. Got some for me and Joe.
I'm going to Google for them but does anyone know where I can find some GI Joes? My Joe says that they are too politically incorrect and that I won't find them anywhere. I said "There's a war going on, how can GI Joe be politically incorrect?" He said "This war is politically incorrect." I said "Vietnam was a politically incorrect war and that's when we all had OUR GI Joes." So what gives? Why no GI Joe at Target?

Schnitzelbank

Our latest favorite song is Schnitzelbank, courtesy of The Biscuit Brothers. Listen to a clip here http://cdbaby.com/mp3lofi/bicuitbros3-06.m3u and then buy it at their next live show or buy it on CDBaby. This version is great, firstly because it's by The Biscuit Brothers and secondly because it's in English so it's easy for the kids to learn it and make up their own lyrics.

I won!

I actually won in a blog contest! No, my blog didn't win anything, I won a contest on someone else's blog. www.countrydoctorswife.com
I'm going to keep the prize for myself since the kids won't be willing to share. Maybe we need to make our annual trip to Garden Ridge for them to pick out their own new ornaments soon.

Target is having a sale on their Our Generation dolls AND HORSES! Their horses are said to be superior to the American Girl horses according to www.justmagicdolls.com. While the dolls are not AG quality, they are great if your daughter likes to take her dolls outdoors to actually play with them. And you can't beat the sale price - $20 for the horses and most of the dolls. I need to get a sitter so that I can shop without the kids!

no more canning for this winter

at least no more tomatoes. Just before we left for ballet this afternoon I finished canning the full case of tomatoes that I got on Saturday. 18 1-pint wide-mouth jars. I bought 2 cases of jars while the kids were in Sunday School yesterday since I had already used up (by canning pasta sauce) the 24 jars that I had previously bought. My cabinet will be full and I have enough to last until next year.

Yesterday, after church, we spent the whole day working on the yard over at the new house. All the scratches that I got on my hands while trimming the lantana were screaming from the tomato juice this morning. Then we rushed home at 5, made meatballs, then ate fresh meatballs and homemade pasta sauce over mushroom ravioli, then headed off to see the live Nativity presentation at our neighbor's church. It was the 20th year they've been doing it - the church not my neighbors.

I don't remember posting on Saturday but the big news of that day is/was ...... I finally got my shoes!!!!!! On Thomas' recommendation I went to DSW. He had been dragged (drug?) there a few weeks ago by his girlfriend and afterwards he told me that they had some shoes that meet my specifications. He was correct! The kids did great, they were trying on more shoes than I was. We went to PayLess afterwards to look for new church shoes for Giselle but we found none so we went next door to WalMart where we found not just 2 pair of church shoes but also a pair of great dress-up shoes - pink jellies that look like princess slippers (no heels!).

Gotta go, Joe's already started watching part 2 of "Tin Man" and he won't pause it for me to go pee if I don't promise to watch it on the sofa with him.