Just a picture

This is a shot from inside of the Texas State Capitol. It's pointing straight up from almost the center of the building. Click on it and zoom in - this is a clear shot and you can even see the shadow that the letters cast in the word TEXAS. I'm rather pleased with this shot. I took it on a cloudy day, I wonder how the light would have been different if it had been a sunny day.

ditching more emails

I WAS going to go to bed shortly after putting Giselle down at 8. OBVIOUSLY that didn't happen! I'm going soon I promise! But I did get a lot more emails read and deleted so at least I was productive.

no time

Sorry, busy getting rid of the back-log of emails while watching "Transformers", which by the way is a really good movie! No blood, no sex but lots of action!

blog, blog, blog

I thought that I had nothing to say but I just saw a commercial for the new HEB Chase Visa Rewards card. We'll have to think seriously about getting one of those - you get double rewards when you use it at HEB.
School went well today - we started the 3rd grade spelling words and instead of writing 10 words 2 or 3 times daily each week she is now writing a sentence a day for each of 5 words weekly.
Well, that's it for me. Go click on all my favorites for better reading.

sunday but no seven ... yet

We slept until 8. I showered and got dressed right away so that as soon as one of the men woke up I could leave BOTH KIDS in their care (previously an unheard of event) while I went to the thing at B&N. Unfortunately both men slept in until 9 so by the time I got to B&N at 9:10 the event was over. I still shopped SOLO for an hour and got plenty of books with the discount - I saved over 25 dollars! Then I came home to find that the menfolk had gotten the kids fed, washed and dressed. The kids were ready a half hour before we needed to leave for church - it's amazing what they will do for the opportunity to watch TV before lunchtime.
After church we went to HEB to pick up the meat and a few of the veggies that I was missing for my friend's dinner. Then I cooked and prepped all afternoon. The roast was done at 5, we were pulling out of the driveway by 5:11 and pulled up at their house at 5:34. We hung out for a half hour and I got to hold the baby for a tiny bit - she had just woken up and was hungry so she didn't like me for long. When we got home I made cheese tortellini with ground beef sauce. The ground beef had been thawing in the fridge waiting for inspiration on my part. It's from the Jersey Bull that had attacked Edgar 2 months ago - they turned him into ground meat and are selling him for $10 for 3 1 lb packages. He tasted good! The meat is some of the reddest ground meat that I have ever seen - it truly is a deep blood-red color - and not a bit of fat in it at all!

We finished dinner early enough for me to finish reading White Fang to the kids tonight. Tomorrow we will pick back up with the Little House series, I think that our next one is The Long Winter. After that we'll read Charlotte's Web and then go back to Little House. Have any of y'all read the Boxcar Kids books? I saw them today at B&N and they looked interesting in a Bobbsy Twins kind of way.

I love to cook!

A friend of mine gave birth to child number 6 at the beginning of the month and tomorrow is my day to bring the family food. By the way, if you know of anyone about to need some food tending then check out this neat site http://www.CareCalendar.org . It's an online calendar that you can use to meal plan for someone.
But back to tomorrow. My friend loves collards but this baby, while still inside her, refused to let collards pass her momma's lips. So I'm doing a big batch of collards (fresh frozen from back in the early summer) with a smoked turkey leg for seasoning (they don't do pork so no bacon ends or ham will be used for seasoning). The rest of the meal entails rolls of some kind (I'm not sure if I'll buy some King Hawaiian rolls or make some biscuits), Pot Roast with carrots, potatoes, onions & garlic (I was going to do chicken but they are a bit 'done' on chicken), some fruit - either grapes or apples, and some raw veggies with dip (red bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower & celery). I'm going to bring a whole young ayote squash, uncooked, for them to have with some lasagna later in the week. Is that enough? Should I make extra pot roast so that they have leftovers? Yea, I'd rather they have too much food than not enough.

I love cooking for other people! And I love cooking at other people's houses, but I have to bring my own seasonings since I can't depend on other folks keeping on hand my seasoning staples. Spike Seasoning, cumin, oregano, ginger, garlic, onions, Old Bay Seasoning, fresh ground pepper, pesto.

Now to plan tomorrow so that the roast is done at the right time. I think that I'll use one of those Reynolds Brown-in-Bags. Tomorrow is the Homeschool Educator Reception at Barnes & Noble at 8 AM - 25% discount for those with a educator discount card - and then there's church - Giselle wants to go to both Sunday School classes - and grocery shopping and cooking and the 30 min drive to my friend's house.

All moms HAVE to listen to this song!

Oh my! I just listened to this video/song written and sung by Rechelle at Country Doctor's Wife and it made me cry. Go listen and tell her how much you love it!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LLejY_fak8

thanks

Thanks Marie for sharing your cake with me - I ate most of it for dinner. The kids enjoyed the brownies. They each ate one before dinner, then ate a bowl of mac & cheese, then they ate the rest of the cake that I couldn't finish and Giselle ate her 2nd brownie. Paul couldn't even finish his piece of cake because he was as grossed out by all the chocolate and sugar as I was. Good boy! Our thanks to you for giving them to us and our thanks to Fran for making them. Our thanks to Costco for making the cake that grossed us all out for the rest of the night. Joe can have Paul's second brownie if he didn't already gross out on desserts when going out to lunch and dinner with his friends today.

Dogs

Is there anything that just totally freaks out your dog? Tell me about it please!!!!!

Our dog is afraid of fireworks which is a fairly common fear. She is also afraid of guns being discharged which is similar in sound to fireworks. She is also afraid of the sound of those bubble wrap bubbles being popped since they sound like fireworks. She is made a bit uneasy by thunder because it sounds like fireworks (notice a pattern here?) but that fear is 'cured' by giving her some Rescue Remedy. In the last year she has become afraid of people chewing gum because they blow bubbles that pop and that (say it with me) sounds like fireworks.
So the latest is that she runs and hides in the other room whenever I eat carrots. "Carrots?" you say "Why would a dog be afraid of carrots?". Think about it, if you don't have your lips closed when you bite a baby carrot in half it makes a loud popping noise that (yes, you know the routine now) SOUNDS LIKE FIREWORKS! I can't believe it!
She was never this bad before and I've been eating baby carrots for the entire 12 years that we've owned her. I've ALWAYS popped my gum and she didn't freak out before. I blame it entirely on Joe and his habit of letting her into his room when it storms - he's feeding her fears by telling her it's OK. He needs to stop mocking Cesar Milan and start watching The Dog Whisperer more!
Chicken Dog!

Happy Birthday Joe

My gift to you for your birthday is to change the blog song from Juanes "Camisa Negra" to DeeLite "Groove Is In The Heart" because I remember how much you liked this song when it came out. Sorry, but you know that I will never play some of your other favorites here so your'e going to have to take what you can get. Maybe next month I'll put on FatBoy Slim or Beck or SugarRay for you.
Love you!

Marie

Happy Birthday Marie!
Be sure to bring the leftover cake to the park!

Paul and I went to Nordstrom to look for shoes this evening. They don't have any wides in store, just mediums, so the search continues. Next I'll try Dillards.

A Breast Cancer Fact

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month I will pass on some information that I learned today.
If you have had breast cancer previously, walking at a moderate pace for just 30 minutes DAILY can decrease your chance of recurrence by 25%!!
WOW!

Yuck!

I actually stayed inside ALL DAY! With the exception of 15 min that we played outside this evening - we all ran 10 laps around the front yard and I got the mail from the mailbox. It looked rainy all day even though it never really did and the temperature was rather cool. When I put the kids to bed I opened the bedroom windows up a few inches - I absolutely LOVE to smell and hear the outdoors while I sleep. I think that I'll open some windows up right now!

Ahh, I just opened one of the front windows and put the vertical fan in front of it and opened the back door up. I have to actually leave the AC on because if I turn it off and forget to turn it back on then somebody (not me) will wake up hot and cranky in the middle of the night. Hmm, maybe we'll all have open windows except for AC man - he can just use the window unit in his bedroom if he gets hot.

I ordered several more school books today since we're already halfway through Giselle's 1st grade complete curriculum book. I'll use these other books to flesh out all the stuff that they usually just breeze over in school. The second half of the school year will find us at the library a lot. Giselle's reading is getting better by the day so soon she'll be able to enjoy our trips there even more. I haven't decided what day will be 'Library Day' each week but I've got until Jan to figure that out.

I gotta go help Joe with the billing.

blog action day

Today is/was blog action day - a day on which all participating bloggers (over 15,000) posted about ecology and the environment and how important it all is.



Today in my neighborhood it was recycling day, as it is every Monday. I put out my blue bin filled with empty glass and plastic (only 1 & 2 here) bottles last night. Here's what it had in it: 1 Charles Shaw Cabernet Savingnon bottle, MANY Ozarka Spring Water bottles, 1 Zima bottle, 1 Pace Organic Picante Sauce Mild jar, Many Diet Coke w/ Splenda cans, a few root beer cans, 2 La Croix flavored water cans - one berry and one grapefruit, several baby food jars, and some assorted plastic lids. I had no yard waste to pickup, well, actually I did but I haven't put it in my reusable bin (I refuse to use those silly brown paper bags). I could have put out my brown paper bag of paper recycling but I didn't think that it was all the way full so I didn't. We had no cardboard bundled up so none of that went out either.

We did our monthly Wheatsville Co-Op shopping today and I used my own reusable canvas bags that I over stuffed to save room. At HEB I overstuffed our bags again (paper inside of plastic) so that I used fewer bags. Those bags get reused as kitchen trash bags in our house.

I condense all of my shopping and errands into one day so that I don't use the car everyday to run just one errand. Today we left the house around 11 and we: went to the post office to pick up new priority mail boxes, went to Target to get underpants and some tooth gifts, went to Sam's to get water, batteries and pretzels, went to Bark N Purr to get dog food, went to Wheatsville to get some groceries and lunch, went to Barton Creek Animal Clinic to get some Proin, went to the bank to deposit some LLL money, went to HEB to get gas, went to ballet lessons to drop Giselle off, went to HEB to do the rest of our grocery shopping and buy a grill, went back to ballet lessons to pick up Giselle, went back to HEB to get $2.88 for a coupon that the checkout guy forgot to ring up, and then came home. Tomorrow is Tuesday and we will go NO WHERE. On Wednesday we will go NO WHERE, actually this week I have a LLL Toddler Meeting so I'll do one trip that day. On Thursday this week I have a LLL PM Meeting, it's the semi-annual Couples' Meeting to go to but that's it. Friday I'll drive to the park.

Oh, my 11 year old car just turned over 100,000 miles today! In the 8 years that I've owned it I've put 64,000 miles on it with the last few years only driving about 6,000 miles a year.

I think that my carbon footprint is ok.

Sunday Seven will have to wait

I'm sitting here typing on the iMac Snowball so I don't have access to my Outlook Calendar. I can't do a proper Sunday Seven without looking at that. I'll post it tomorrow morning before our whirlwind shopping in the early part of the day, hopefully finishing it all while Giselle is at ballet.

the price of fun

We are all cleaned up with clean and conditioned hair after our bath & shower this morning. Now we are about to head to Dick Nichols Pool to get covered with public pool water that will strip all the oil from our skin and hair.
See Ya!

dirt and grime

Dirt & Grime
OK, the kids didn't get a bath before the market. Sad to say but I think that most of the dirt rubbed off in the bed during the night. And today at The Market we only got grimier so they are close to gross now and I'm not too far behind. Actually they just look like kids who have fun getting dirty. Unfortunately I took too long to get off of the sofa to make dinner so we ate at 7 and I sent them to bed without bathing AGAIN! Well, tomorrow is church and since we now go to the late service we will have plenty of time for all three of us to bathe and shower. Good thing that tomorrow is laundry day too so those sheets will get cleaned before we go to bed.
I'll have to get that done in the morning so that when we get home from church we can quickly leave for the pool - it's open from 1 to 4 on the weekends. Hopefully Roland and the kids will meet us there like last week and maybe we'll even see The J's too!

Bedtime
There's a new episode of Torchwood being recorded right now on TiVo but I can't watch it without Joe and he's out at the Georgetown Saturday Night Car Show. Maybe I'll just drink my liter of water (number 4 for the day) and my Zima (number 1 for the month), read some blogs and head to bed early tonight. These days anything earlier than midnight is early for me. Although the kids and I sleep until 7:30 and then they let me have an extra 30 alone in bed so I do get 8 hours of sleep every night, which isn't bad at all. Especially since I don't get woken up every 2 hours to nurse someone anymore - just once a night is what we are down to.

Halloween
After The Market today we went to Party City (formerly Party Pig) to get Giselle's Halloween costume, remember that we got Paul's there last Saturday. She decided to be Cinderella again this year. So so far she has been .5 - a clown, 1.5 - a flower, 2.5 - a flower, 3.5 - a fairy, 4.5 - a fairy queen, 5.5 - Cinderella and this year at 6.5 Cinderella again. So when we got home, after she did her spelling words for the day, she and Paul got to put on their costumes and play for a bit. Gosh, her costume spreads glitter EVERYWHERE! I guess that it's time for me to start buying the candy since it's only 2 weeks away. Joe, if you have any special requests you better let me know before shopping day on Monday. And yes, I'll be sure to get you some Dots! OH NO, we still haven't gotten our pumpkins! I guess that will have to be put on the master list of things to do for this coming week.

Food
Dinner last night was a horrendous hot dogs and pizza bites and tonight wasn't any better - pizza rolls, tortellini and mixed veggies. Tomorrow should be better, maybe I'll make the Beef Stroganoff then. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll go take the sirloin out of the freezer now so that it's thawed in time.

See you tomorrow!

October 15 - Blog For The Environment Day

It's on Monday!

Park Day

Charles, Sara & Saul left this morning - we had a lot of fun in a short amount of time and we will miss them. I would enjoy it if they lived closer.
Giselle got an 85% on her test.
We didn't get to the park until 2.
We left the park about 6:20.
Dinner and bed, the baths will have to wait until tomorrow before The Market.

dinner party menu

Dinner for 6 adults (4 men and 2 women) and 2 kids with additional snacking on the chips and grapes by 2 more adults and 3 more kids.

2.5 lbs Sockeye Salmon - broiled, seasoned with Old Bay Seasoning, served with melted butter
.25 lb Yellowfin Tuna - broiled, seasoned with Old Bay, served with melted butter
1.5 lbs Fresh (never frozen) Jumbo Gulf shrimp - peeled then boiled with Old Bay, served with homemade cocktail sauce
White corn tortilla chips
Jardine's smoked tomato medium salsa (thanks Chris!)
Pace Organic mild picante sauce
Tamaleo tamales - black bean, pork & chicken - steamed, served with Daisy sour cream
Some other brand hot pork tamales - steamed, served with Daisy sour cream
Central Market Organics mixed vegetables - steamed/boiled, seasoned with Spike seasoning and butter
Big round loaf of sourdough bread served with French cream butter (thanks Chris!)
Pickled okra
Pickled carrots
Pickled beets
Charles Shaw Cabernet Savingon (thanks Charles!)
Diet Coke with Splenda
Hansen's Diet Root Beer with Splenda
Frozen and refrigerated black and red organic seedless grapes

Everyone loved the food and I sent Chris home with some leftovers of the black-eyed peas and okra that I made the other night. Thomas is out of town but if he had been here there would have been enough for him too. Oh, and I forgot to put the Organic Spring Mix salad that I had in the fridge out on the table until I was getting out the grapes for dessert so that didn't get eaten at all.