So I'm back to trying to shape up my diet again, get back on the wagon, etc etc...
Instead of posting about Reece Cup Cookies , Trips to Cold Stone , or The Making of Fudge , I thought it might be best to post a picture of the pretty salad I made for dinner. At least this way you know I do eat more than sugar. Ha! Under the small amount of cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers is lettuce and some ham and turkey sandwich meat torn into small bites.
It was yummy!
Seriously!
I've had one of these for several days in a row. Call it my PB& J . I enjoy eating the same thing day in and day out not having to really make a choice about what I eat each day. I think it is probably why I really never minded hospital food the times that I've been in the hospital. You check a piece of paper early in the day and then you do not think about it again. Food appears.
Even going out to eat does not compare to eating the same lunch day after day. You still have to pick items off a menu, choose the restaurant etc.
I've gone through various stages, but the salad one is one that I do need to keep for a little while, but now that I've posted about it, will it loose it's appeal? Perhaps it will be a reminder to me that since I said it, I need to keep up with it and all-accountability you know.
Anyhow...here's to a good salad...and whatever else I find to add to my menu routine. Next week it may be something completely different!
My daughter (finally) got her driver's license today. She will be 18 in five weeks, and so will have to return then to get another one. Confused yet?
I know we were confused when we saw this license expired in five weeks at first. As we were driving down the highway, I asked my daughter when her license expired. She informed me that it expired on her birthday of this year. So we drove back to the DMV and asked her tester.
He told us that on her birthday (which is on a Saturday-so not sure how this will work for us yet) she will return and they will issue her another license that is for 18+ yr olds.
We're just learning as we go people.
She's had her permit for almost 3 years, having obtained it when she turned 15. We just were very slack getting her to the DMV after she had saved enough extra money from her job for her part of what the insurance was going to cost her since she is a "young driver" and all.
So now all is well. She can drive alone says the state of NC....At least between the hours of 5am and 9pm until she turns 18.
And her mama says...she is going to be 18 !?!
::faints::
I'm not ready!
Graduation, License, Turning 18 all in one year. It sort of feels like when she was a baby and within a week (when she was 11 months) she cut her first 6 teeth and started walking all at once. Only difference now? Then she was walking towards me both as we called her and as she was in teething pain. Now she is driving from us as she spreads her wings. Indeed she has just molted her feathers a bit more this spring.
We woke up today to clouds, which turned to rain, which turned heavier rain, which turned to lightning and thunder. As soon as we thought it might be safe to take a shower, it started all over again. It was probably 4pm before I finally got into the shower in between thunderstorm bands.
However inconvenient the rain was, the sound of it was wonderful. It was nice spending a day as a family at home in the rain. We laughed at how funny it was that neither my husband or I could get a shower until late. We laughed at how silly it was that we were sitting here watching the Jetsons and the Flintstones on You Tube. We laughed as we pulled out my '80 Trivia Pursuit Game and started playing, nobody really getting much right. (Though by the time we finished, I had three pies, as did my husband and daughter. My son had two) We are now ending the day watching a disc from Season 2 of Family Affair while our laundry runs and it continues to rain.
While the rains were heavy and hard, mixed with small bits of hail, they were welcomed. I think everyone needs a good rainy day that they can sit at home in their jammies every now and again-and today was such a day for us. I hear more thunder off in the distance. It may not be totally over quite yet!
We didn't have big plans for my son's birthday. Not like last year where I took my kids swimming and later to dinner. No, this year was much more low key.
The first hurdle was trying to figure out when we might eat cake and let him open his presents. My daughter works mornings, my husband works afternoon/late evenings.
We settled on my daughter staying up a little bit later and my husband coming home a little bit earlier. Had we planned things out prior to the day before, my husband might have been able to come home earlier than he did or my daughter might could have rearranged her schedule somewhat, but as we all know, hindsight is always 20/20 and we live and learn. (or we at least try to do things better next time around the block)
Last night, when my husband got home we ate a little cake. The cake actually had figurines on it (I'm not sure what else to call them-even though to call them figurines sounds a bit too frilly for some Nintendo characters to me) He loves Mario Karts so this was appropriate in this time of his life. The cake turned out OK. It tasted good, which is all that matters anyway, but what I saw in my head certainly is not what you see in the pictures.
My son, Christopher, also opened up some gifts from us last night. It was a fun hour, over much too quickly as is usually the case with cake and presents.
This afternoon when my daughter got off work, she and I took Christopher to his favorite Mexican Food place for a special meal. When he was six years old, Mac n Cheese was good enough for his special birthday meal. Today it was chips and salsa and some good burritos.
We made our way home for a quiet evening of playing games and watching TV. The day was cooler here (in the 80's) than recent days which added to it being a really nice day. All in all, his turning 16 was special, though watching the video that I made last year posted below really made me tear up this morning as I remembered the day he was born. I tell him, "You were cute then" with a grin.
Something I never thought I'd say as I introduced him. When holding him in my arms as a baby, thoughts did not immediately go to this. We had a lot of fun with seeing him dressed up, not to mention-there are a lot of funny one liners that came up as he did this Saturday. I told him he might could find a career working in amusement parks dressing up as a cartoon character. He did not think that would make a really good lifelong goal, but he did enjoy being the cow.
Thank you God for being my Father. Thank you for guiding my steps and showing me how I am suppose to live. Thank you for forgiveness and helping pick me back up when I fall and fail.
Quite literally, it looked as if it had been shot.
It had holes throughout it from years and years of use. We had tried to add to it's life by buying eggshell foam, adding old comforters and hoping one of those wires did not decide in the middle of the night to revolt and stab us in the back.
We really should have bought one years ago, but did not. It really didn't get that bad for sleeping until the past year or so.
In the 21 + years of our married life, we've never had to buy a new mattress. My parents had a spare with screw-in-legs for us to use that first year or so. My in laws had another older bedroom set (with another mattress) a year or so into our marriage. Later, one of my mother's friends was selling an old bed of hers with a mattress in pretty good shape for cheap, so we ended up with that one from my mother too.
I was quite surprised to find out that the "experts" (I'm guessing these are the same folks that oversee the mattress police that make sure that you keep those do not remove tags on your bed at all times) say that you should buy a new mattress every 7 years. Well given how long we have been married, we should now be on our 4th mattress....which we are-even if when we received the other mattresses they were way past their original 7 years.
So with our big old gas guzzler conversion van, my husband and I took off across town to Sams Club yesterday morning. Never mind he had not told me (to my memory) that his air conditioner needed freon. Never mind that we had to ride with the windows down. Never mind that our air quality here in the Triad, was about as bad as it could get due to a wild fire near the coast.
It was hot, it was sticky, I could not breath without going into a coughing fit. Before making the whole trip home again, we stopped off at Burger King to get something to eat and to cool off and breath good air. Getting back into the van got it all started once more.
We got the mattress inside and then all went our separate ways. My husband needed to scoot to work, dropping my son off at my mother's house along the way. I had my daughter to pick up from work. After a long afternoon of more errands (while popping halls cough drops all day), I finally found my way home to begin washing the new bedding I treated us to to go along with our new bed.
My son helped me get the old mattress down the hall and to get the new mattress to the bedroom. I climbed up on top of it-climbing is not something you did in the other mattress. The old mattress would kind of just grab you and suck you in. Climbing on the new mattress, it felt like we were climbing into a loft. I kind of think we need stairs for it. I know I might in the least need a guard rail like we put on our kid's beds when they were little. One wrong move and I will fall three or four feet to the ground now. It's a long way down.
There is no way Bayley, our dog, can make it up here now. I think he might have been offended just a bit when the kids and I all were sitting up here and I said, "We're on a boat Bayley and you're the shark". When Jay arrived home, Bayley had some choice words about the whole thing to Jay. (He barked, would look at me and the bed and then bark at Jay.) I really think he was telling Jay off, or tattling on me for calling him a shark. Does he not respect the hand that feeds him or what?
At 2 am our comforter was still drying, and somewhere in there my husband and I both were just laying here in our new mattress about to fall asleep. We decided to just grab another blanket to throw on us and go on to sleep. It had been a long hot day.
I woke up cold at 8 am. I'm not complaining as I would always rather be cold than hot, but I did miss the warmth of snuggling under our comforter this morning.
I started the dryer again and the comforter is all dry and on our bed. I look forward to making the bed up as the comforter will actually fit now (as will my alternative bedspread) without parts of it hanging off the bed. I look forward to many good night sleeps in this bed. It should happen too. When I bought new sheets I bought them in "chocolate". Yes, sheets are no longer just plain brown, or dark brown..My sheets are now "chocolate". Chocolate sheets should be good for some sweet dreams, don't you think?
They are no longer assembling the boxes my checks come in through the mail. The box came flat and I, the consumer, had to figure out the diagram and put together my own box to hold my checks.
I actually dont mind doing this sort of thing, and in fact find it fascinating. When I worked as a cashier at Rite Aid in high school, I remember putting together the display cases for special buys and products that would sit around the store. You know the ones made out of cardboard that you close to take out when you round the corner with your shopping buggy?
I have always loved putting things together like this, from those display cases, to the doll house furniture kit my parents bought me one Christmas, to the shelves and assorted inexpensive furniture we've bought over the years. Perhaps it's the challenge to see how well the actual instructions get me from point A to point B. Sometimes the instructions do well, other times, not so much. At the times when the instructions are horrible, it adds just another level of excitement (or frustration, depending on how you're looking at things) to the assembly.
There is pride in the finished product. There is an air of confidence. There is hopefully something sturdy and strong made in the process.
The checks I received today were sent in a flat package. As I opened them, all the checks fell out along with the flat box. I thought, "Brilliant"....a word I am trying to use more often as I expand my vocabulary.(LOL) At first I thought that it was a security thing, that finally they were going to change up how they mailed checks. Apparently that is just part of it. The other part of it has to do with the new postal regulations. That in itself is a post perhaps for another time.
But for now, my mind wonders who that person, or persons are that lost their job assembling my check boxes. Was that job lost long ago? Were my boxes put together by machines all these years and I was unaware? Did the person monitoring the machine loose his job? If so, I am sorry it has come to this for you. It is rotton to loose a job and I sympathize with your pain.
So with that, I'll assemble my check box with joy as I remember this day here in my blog as a day that someone somewhere feels replaced by security and postal regulations.
I have a personal fan, a larger fan and a ceiling fan all blowing on me right now in addition to the AC running as hard as it is able. With temps touching 100 degrees the past couple of days (with no relief in sight) we've had to combat it with running extra fans most of the day. Last night was horrible as you were either hot and sweaty or too cool (without covers) because the fans blew on your hot sweaty body, making it especially cold. There was no happy medium. I am one of those people who sleep best with the room cold, or at least cooler so that I can wrap myself in a cover. I have been dreading summer more than ever this year after last year's heat wave that didn't quit until early October. I have a shelf full of books and some other things lined up that can pass the time while I do my duty as wife, mother, taxi driver and teacher (you know, year round school) for my son.
And now, our homeschooling centers only on our son, Christopher as he jumps from 10th to 11th this summer.
Our daughter, Hannah graduated from high school last Sunday, June 1st. This was a first for us. As we felt our way through how we wanted "to do" graduation for her, others sometimes rushed ahead with gifts or asking us what we were planning to do for her. Had we been able to direct everything our way, people would have politely waited until we sent out the announcements before trying to initiate anything. I guess they assumed that since we were just simple homeschoolers, we didn't know what we were doing. I did get my feelings hurt a few times over this as I felt this was our thing. It was for Hannah, but as any homeschooler knows, homeschooling encompasses more than just the schoolwork. Homeschooling is a lifestyle. It is a way we live and really effects everything in our lives.
Homeschooling has been between the four of us for the most part. Nobody else from our families stepped forward openly embracing what we were doing. We knew it was God's plan for our family and so we walked in the footprints he placed before us, often letting Him carry us through those patches of schooling (like Algebra) that were uncertain to us. We took these steps in faith knowing that beyond the like minded people that God put in our path, we would be leaning totally on God.
Graduation for Hannah included attending a graduation luncheon at a church we've been visiting, ordering her diploma (that arrived yesterday in the mail) , giving her a balloon, some carnations and some luggage. My husband and Hannah both took the week off from their jobs, so it left us lots of time together as a family to go out to eat and just enjoy one another. We finished up designing and printing out her announcements today. They are addressed and ready to mail tomorrow. Below is what it looks like.
I have more to share, but did want to get back here and start posting again.
A Really Cool Post From Rocks in My Dryer Talks about this amazing giveaway you might be interested in. You also might want to check out WOW Online to see this great CD described as "19 of today's top Christian artists".
Last week, as I was running errands, believe it or not, I wrote whole posts in my mind. I had stories carefully crafted for when I would arrive home from doing what had to be done that could be typed for your reading pleasure.
Then I came home and forgot all about what it was I wanted to write about.
Sadly, this happened again and again. I thought about Saturday that I might could fudge things by writing a little for Thursday-well, now...but for whatever reason, anytime I had any time, it was zapped away doing something else or well, living the life I hoped to blog about.
I suppose this happens from time to time to everyone who tries to write, but I'm admitting this recent shortcoming so that those of you who try to blog daily, regularly to any degree will not feel alone.
To be honest, this week doesn't promise to be any better. My husband is off from work. My daughter took the week off too. While we have no plans to go anywhere, my hope is to spend as much time with my family now to tide me over when my daughter is working full time this summer and fall and my husband goes back to his long hours and days next week.
I may write some here this week in the down time, but in case this is it for a week or so, you'll know why and where I am. In the meantime you can enjoy these two pictures of Bayley wearing a sign I made for him to have around his neck. Quite possibly he'll be hitch hiking off the highway or in the busy intersections in the near future if we do not pull out the treat box soon. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that!
Salad, it's what was for dinner last night...
