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Thursday, July 26, 2018

Thankful Thursday - Edition 30

It's time for Thankful Thursday.  What am I thankful for this week?

1. Swim season is over and we got in our meet with no rain on either day!

2. I always stress about getting the tent set up for the swim meets and at the championship meet where all the teams compete, I always stress about parking.  They allowed us to set up our tents the night before and Dan was able to help me.  And the next day when we got to the meet there was the perfect parking place mere steps from our spot.  Not sure why no one had parked there yet but I took it!  In fact, before I parked, I even asked someone if it was okay to park there because why had no one taken this perfect space yet??  

3. Rain!  We finally got some rain this week and it's been very good for the grass and garden. Peter was able to mow yesterday finally and it looks much better.

4.  The perfect tomato sandwich. I love it when the tomato is so big that you only need one slice to cover the bread.

See?  It's the perfect size!!

5. Our jalapenos are starting to come in and while I hate to can tomatoes, I can can jalapenos with the best of them. 



6. Jennifer's daughter, Caity, has been dealing with a kidney stone for the past week!  Poor thing!  She finally passed it last night! 

7.Mani/pedi!  I got a fresh mani/pedi yesterday and boy was it needed!  Because not only was I overdue BUT....

8.  VACATION!!!  We are headed to the Cape tonight after Dan gets home from work and I am very thankful about that!  I'm looking forward to spending a lot of quality time with my family and seeing extended family members we don't see often enough!

What are you thankful for this week??

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

And now you are all caught up.

I honestly thought I would have so much time to blog this summer.  But glancing back since June and I realize that I've barely averaged two posts a week.

I think between swim practice and errands and random summer doctor's visits and just being, I haven't had a lot of time to write.  Or perhaps I've had time to write but the kids have been hogging the main computer and the laptop is so slow that I can't even with it.  Or perhaps my main subjects don't want me to write about them on the blog so what's to write.  Or perhaps I'm just lazy.

Most likely, though, it's a combination of all of the above.  With that said, here's what's been happening around these parts lately.

The County Championship swim meet was Friday and Saturday.  The 11 and ups swam on Friday and the 10 and unders competed on Saturday.  We finished the Friday portion 15 points ahead of the other teams but we completed the entire meet in second place.  Sarah was so upset!  But the nice thing about swimming is that it's a good mix of a team sport and an individual sport.  So even though our team came in second, my kids swam well and finished the season with improved times in all of their events!  And now Sarah is more excited than ever for the high school swim team.



And speaking of the high school swim team, Sarah got an email from the coach.  He is planning to do a meet and greet before school starts so the new swimmers can meet the upper class men.  She is very excited about this.

I just finally got around to completing all of their paperwork for the new school year.  I put that in the mail with a note that said basically "I hope I got it all.  Please call me if I missed a form!"  I had to put extra postage on that envelope it was so thick! 

And I also ordered Sarah's PE uniforms and school uniforms (Land's End 40% off sale for the win!) and got Peter a few new items as well.  The kids got their schedules last week so I also need to start checking on text books as well.  Once we have our last swim meet it always feels like summer is over even though we still have a month left.  I am trying to stay on top of everything because we leave for the Cape on Thursday evening!  And when we get back, there will only be two weeks of summer left!  YIKES!

The kids still need to do their summer reading and write their papers and Peter's math teacher has assigned a ton of work for them to do this summer which Peter has just now started to do.  I am hoping he can get it all done.They tell me they will be using their time on the drive to and from the Cape wisely by reading but I've got a feeling that's not what's going to happen. 

My Pinterest feed is already starting to fill up with fall things and I am refusing to look at anything pumpkin colored or pumpkin flavored. We are up to our eyeballs in tomatoes around here and Dan keeps wanting me to make and  sauces but y'all - making tomato sauce or even salsa is such a production.  It is so hard to get all the skin off and all the seeds out and then after all that hard work I still end up with iffy tasting sauces.  Maybe, if there is still a large crop when we get back from vacation, I can find an easier way to get rid of the seeds and skins and then just freeze them and use them as crushed tomatoes in fresh sauces.  Canning tomatoes is NOT my forte.  Although, I can can jalapenos with the best of them.  I don't know about the tomatoes though.  I'm at a loss.  Suggestions??

And with that, you are all caught up around here! 

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Thankful Thursday - Edition 29

It's Thankful Thursday!!

1. Dan will be home tonight after being gone since Sunday.  Unfortunately his Uncle Jerry died so he will be flying to Boston tomorrow morning for the funeral.  I am thankful that Dan's Uncle is no longer suffering and I'm thankful that Dan will be able to attend the funeral. Please pray for Uncle Jerry's wife, Barbara, and their 5 grown sons and their families.   

2. Flying out over the weekend for his meetings meant Dan got to spend a little fun time in San Antonio.  He visited the Almo and the River Walk. I'm always thankful when he gets to have a little fun because he works so hard for us.  He also got some really good Texas BBQ and that made him happy as well!


3. See this little guy? 


He's been literally hanging around the last couple of days.  The first day, he was hurling himself against the kitchen window trying to get in and would rest up on the feeder and then hurl himself up against the window again.  He repeated that cycle multiple times until I finally opened the back door and for some reason that caused him to fly away in the right direction.  But then he showed up the very next morning just sitting on the feeder.  I'm thankful he didn't hurt himself on the window and I will be happy to see him sitting there again this morning if he decides to hang around again.  Yellow birds make me happy!

4.  And speaking of yellow making me happy - our sunflowers have bloomed!  The rest of our little flower garden did not come up this year.  Not sure why.  So I am extra thankful the sunflowers bloomed.  Although, I will say, they are a lot shorter and thinner than they normally are.  Dan uses seeds from the previous years crops (he's been doing this for 5 or 6 years now) and this is the first year we've had an issue.  Maybe it's the dry weather? 


5.And speaking of dry weather...it has been so dry around here this summer that the grass is brow and dry.  The only green parts are near the septic system and/or are weeds.  BUT  - we had a nice little thunderstorm in the middle of the night a few nights ago and a really quick shower during the day this week as well that I was very thankful for.  Rain means I don't have to water the garden!  I am hoping that it doesn't rain for during the two day swim meet tomorrow and Saturday but rain any other time would be good!

6.  Sarah has discovered all these videos on my phone from 2013 of her signing and dancing.  We have really enjoyed watching them and laughing.  She has been cringing through each video but to see her 9 and 10 year old self and to hear her little voice has made me so happy.  And even though I stopped using the video recorder years ago and really wish that I had taken more videos of them when I got a smart phone, I'm thankful for the digital memories I do have of them.

These are just a few of the random things I'm thankful for this week.  What are you thankful for?

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Car work, food, and more food....

It's 7:35 AM and I'm currently sitting in the waiting room of a car repair place.  When I was getting my lock fixed at the Honda dealership a week and a half ago, they strongly recommended that I get the drive belts, water pump and timing belts changed since I had just recently passed the 100K mark on the odometer. The service tech said I could probably go to 115k but after that I would risk a belt breaking and messing up the whosey whats-it and possibly breaking the thing-a-ma-jig.

Since we are heading to the Cape at the end of next week, I couldn't bear the thought of messing up the whosey whats-it and possibly breaking the thing-a-ma-jig while making that long trip.  So I decided to be proactive and actually get some preventative maintenance done.  It's going to take them all day but my parents are on their way to pick me up once they get done doing their workout at the gym.

While I'm sitting here with nothing else to do, I thought I would give a few updates from around this neck of the woods...

Wally likes to check out the hummingbirds:

And they don't seem to care that he is there watching them.  He sat there for about 45 minutes the day I snapped this picture and he was out again this morning in the same position.

Sarah and I made a really yummy lemon pie.  The recipe is from my bestie, Joanna Gaines.  It was easy to make.  It was creamy and rich and delicious.  However, it was not overly lemony or overly tart which I appreciated.  However, my dad enjoys a nice lemony pie so I think he would have appreciated a lemon more pucker in this pie.  We are definitely going to make this again but next time we might up the lemon juice.  Not sure if adding more juice would mess up the consistancy of the pie though.



In an attempt not to gain weight this summer eating a ton of BMT sammiches, I ordered some zero carb bread.  I paid an arm and a leg for this bread so I was hopeful that it would at least taste 70% like real bread.  It is extremely chewy due to the huge amounts of fiber in the bread and although it looks 100% like bread, it tastes only about 10% like bread.  I imagine eating a slice of this bread is very similar to eating a slice of cardboard.  I guess I'm going to use this bread for toast since it was very disappointing on my BMT.  I'm going to to try to  a good girl and eat my BMTs only once a week on real bread as a treat and find other delicious ways to eat my tomatoes.  (Although nothing is more delicious than a BMT with extra mayo and garden fresh tomatoes. There's really no place for lettuce in this sandwich but there's always room extra mayo - hence the name BMT!)

I tried a new low carb recipe last week that was pretty good.  It's called Green Chile Shredded Beef Cabbage bowl.  You basically cook a hunk of beef in green chilis in the crock pot and shred it.  Then you make a spicy coleslaw as the base and top it with an avocado salsa.  I modified the salsa a little and it was so yummy I was eating that salsa with a fork.  I used  diced avocado, lime juice, salt and cilantro.  Delicious!!

I snapped this picture before I added some crema.  Have you guys used crema?  It's a mexican sour cream but it comes in a squeeze container which makes it very convenient.  It added a nice coolness to this spicy dish

And here is a bowl of the salsa.  Isn't it lovely?


If I wasn't trying to limit my carbs, I would definitely be scooping this stuff up on a tortilla chip but since I'm trying to be good, I've just been eating it plain!

And since apparently all I've been doing lately is eating, here is my favorite snack when I'm craving something sweet:

Berries, splenda, and a splash of cream.  Yummy!

This is our last week of swim practice before the two day county meet.  Luckily we only have to go on Friday and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for no rain so we can get the meet in on Friday night without having to go back on Saturday after the little kids finish.

And now you are officially up to date on what's been happening around here!

Friday, July 13, 2018

Swim!

With the regular season over and just one week left of practice until the big county meet, I wanted to share a few pictures of the kids swimming.  It's very hard to get a good picture of them in the water.  It all depends on which lane they are in and what events they happen to be swimming in combined with the fact that I am horrible with my real camera.  In fact, the pictures I'm going to post here were taken with my cell phone and they actually turned out better than the ones I took the previous week with my DSLR.







At the county meet there is always a photographer that tries to take pics of all the events and all the age groups and usually I get lucky and there's one good shot of each kid.  I'm hoping I can get a good one of each from there.

I also had to post this because it makes me a little weepy and I just love it:

Peter, Cheyanne, Sarah, Caity, Cody, Colton
 2010 - Our very first year of swim team.  Sarah had just finished Kindergarten and Peter had just finished 1st grade.  Cody had just completed 4th, Caity 3rd, Colton 1st and Chey had just finished preK and was heading to K in the fall.)


And here they were a few weeks ago.  Peter and Colton just completed 9th grade, Sarah 8th, and Chey 7th. 

WHERE DID MY BABIES GO? 

Time is such a thief.  If I dwell on it too long I get melancholy.  Instead, I have to focus on all of the great times we've had with swim team and at the pool, all the other friendships these kids have made through the team, all the great exercise these kids have gotten and the structure of having something fun and healthy to do in the summer, all the dinners out after the swim meets, etc. When I focus on that, I am no longer wistful at the seemingly quick passage of these years and instead, I am left feeling extremely grateful.




Thursday, July 12, 2018

Thankful Thursday - Edition 28

Once again, I'm amazed at the speed the week has flown by.  It's Thursday so I am going to list a few of the things I'm thankful for this week:

1. Our little garden.  The Early Girls are ready!  They are small but they are ripe and delicious! 

2. Our lovely weekend.  I wrote about it here in case you missed it.  The boys went one way and the girls stayed close to home and we were all happy.

3. We had our last regular season swim meet on Tuesday. I'm always so thankful for our swim team and the fun and competition it brings to our summer. The county championship meet is next Friday so basically one week of swim practice left for the summer.  And once again I am shaking my head at how fast the days are moving.

4. These $10 flowers from the farmer's market have been making me smile all week.

5.Our White Althea bush is in full bloom and that is also making me very thankful this week.  I love summer when everything is in bloom. It's like God is speaking to us in every bloom reminding us that he made all of this for us so that we can feel his presence in the beauty.

6. Aldi. I am thankful for Aldi every week when I come out of there with a shopping cart full of food that I purchased at excellent prices. In addition to their regular items I also love their special buys.  Last week I picked up some marinated mozzarella and made this delicious lunch with tomatoes from our garden:

And this week they had adorable little succulents in tin pots for $4.99 each.  I picked up these two but already wish I had grabbed a couple of the other varieties:

Aren't they adorable?  I feel like Joanna is  responsible for these!  :)

These are just a few of the things I'm thankful for this week.  What about you?  What are you thankful for this week?

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Our fun weekend!

We all had a great weekend!  If you will recall, the boys headed to Gettysburg on Friday afternoon to cash in on one of Peter's Christmas gifts.

They arrived at their hotel room around 11:00 PM and then got up bright and early on Saturday. They spent the day at the battlefields where they were doing reenactments in celebration of the 155th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Saturday was spent watching reenactments of the Battle at the Wheatfield and another battle when Stuart's  Calvary arrived.  They also saw Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, watched a live mortar fire demonstration, watched a fife and drum presentation, and heard General Lee and his wife discuss their military years among other things.

They left and then headed to the museum at Gettysburg National Military Park where they started a three hour (26 mile) self guided car tour.  Dan said he would love to go back and do this with an official tour guide (that's an option but had to be scheduled ahead of time.)

After a long day they headed back to the hotel and then enjoyed dinner at Longhorn (my steak loving boy was in heaven) and then were up bright and early on Sunday.

There were two tents set up on Sunday morning - one for a Protestant service and one for a  Catholic service.  Peter was excited that they were able to go to the Catholic service onsite without having to spend time going to find a church for Mass. 

They watched a battle on the East Cavalry field and then saw Pickett's Charge which was the last battle.  And luckily they were able to get out ahead of all the traffic and made it home before 10:00 PM on Sunday night.

They were sunburned and tired but they had a great time.  Here are a few pictures they took:






At one point during the weekend Sarah said wistfully, "It might have been interesting to go with them..."

And almost immediately after she said that, Peter sent me this picture in a text with the caption, "The Confederate troops are coming onto the battlefield."

I showed it to Sarah and she exclaimed, "I am soooooo glad we aren't there!" And then when we heard they spent three hours on an audio/car tour we both knew we made the right decision to stay at home.  :)

But don't worry about us girls, on Saturday we went to her favorite store at the mall - Altar'd State, had lunch at Chick-Fil-A, went to Target and Marshall's and then headed home.  We went to Mass on Saturday night (so we could sleep in on Sunday) and had a nice dinner together at 2520 Tavern and Italian Ice afterwards at a new shop that just opened up. 

Then on Sunday we went out to lunch with my parents, brother and uncle and then we headed to the farmer's market and picked up these beautiful flowers for TEN DOLLARS!  (If you live near me, it is totally worth the drive to Sandy Ridge Road to get a gigantic bouquet for TEN DOLLARS!) We also got some goat cheese and and some cheese cake.  You've gotta love the farmer's market!

This picture of the flowers is the only one I got the whole weekend:

I guess we were having too much fun to even take a selfie!

And that was our weekend.  We split up and each of us had a really great time! 

Friday, July 6, 2018

7 Quick Takes

It's Friday.  It's been a while since I've posted. It sounds like I need to do Seven Quick Takes!

1. I'm sitting here at the Honda dealership while my car is being worked on.  The driver's side door lock no longer works.  Apparently I need a new actuator.  I went for a couple of months using the old fashioned key-in-the-lock method to get my door to lock but what a pain.  Also after having done that for a while, my key actually feels like it is going to fall apart at any moment and the last thing I need is my key stuck in the lock or the ignition because it broke off from the fob.

2. Sarah complained on Monday morning of a sore throat. I didn't think anything of it because I had a mild sore throat several weeks ago that went away after a couple of days. She woke up on Tuesday morning with a low grade fever and basically just stayed in bed all day.  She woke up on Wednesday and said her throat was really sore. However, her fever was gone and it was the Fourth of July so I couldn't take her to the doctor.  On Wednesday night though she told me that she had red spots on her throat and the roof of her mouth.  OH CRAP!

I took her to the doctor yesterday morning and the PA took one look at her throat and announced, "She's got HERPANGINA!"  Sarah looked over at me and her eyes were huge!  If she had been a cartoon character she would have looked like this:


 I must have given the PA a look too because she immediately said it's not herpes but hand, foot and mouth disease and that older kids typically only get the ulcers in their mouth and not on their hands and feet.   Since it's viral, there's nothing to do except take Tylenol and wait for the ulcers to heal.  Sarah's bummed out because it hurts to eat but we did get a good laugh though that the medical name of the disease sounds like herpes of the vagina. 

3.  Peter and I picked up all the trash left in the yard from the fireworks and then headed to the dump to get rid of all the trash and all the packaging the fireworks came in.  While we were out he suggested we stop at Sheetz and get Sarah one of her favorite coffee drinks to make her feel better.

WHAT?

Sometimes my kids can be really sweet to each other. Sometimes.

4. I wanted to share this yummy salad dressing recipe.  It's a Pampered Chef recipe that came on the side of the PC Measure, Mix, and Pour I purchased years ago.  If you are looking for a light Asian dressing this one is for you:

Pampered Chef Asian Dressing

Combine the following:

1/3 cup rice vinegar
3 T. soy sauce
2 t. sugar (I always use Splenda)
1 pressed garlic clove
1/4 t. ground ginger
3/4 cup vegetable oil

I made a tasty little salad for lunch the other day.  I topped spinach leaves with this dressing, goat cheese,  and cashews.  Yum!


I also like to use this dressing when I'm sauteing sugar snap peas.  All the Cotells approve of that dish when I make it.  Finding a vegetable they will all eat is hard to do.  Much less one they enjoy!

5.  Dan and Peter are heading to Gettysburg this afternoon.  One of Peter's Christmas gifts was tickets to the reenactments they have going on there this weekend and he and Dan are definitely looking forward to seeing all the action.  Every year when we go to the Cape, we take the western route to get there and pass by the signs for Gettysburg.  Dan always sighs wistfully and says, "It would be really nice to visit there one day......"

Peter and Dan are happy to be going this weekend and Sarah and I are very happy that they will be watching the reenactments without us!

6.Wally is a very bad cat!  He knocked a pitcher that I was using as  vase off a dresser and broke the handle off it:


He also knocked some real flowers off another table and got water all over the leather chair and the floor.  BAD KITTY!  No one (except me) cares about all of his indiscretions.  They continue to think he can do no wrong.  Peter text me all of us this picture just yesterday when he found Wally napping in the empty laundry basket:

 7.  We have some gorgeous tomato plants with loads of green tomatoes on them.  We are impatiently waiting for them to turn red.  The first few that turned red had blossom end rot and we could not eat them.  :(  Hopefully we have fixed the problem - epsom salt - and we can get some juicy red tomatoes sooner rather than later.  I really need a good BLT!

Happy Friday, everyone!  I hope you have a fun weekend!

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Thankful Thursday - Edition 27

Oh my goodness!  I haven't posted since last week's Thankful Thursday.  I haven't really been that busy.  Mostly just swim practice, errands, gym.  Just regular life.  Regardless, here's just a few of the things I'm thankful for this week.

1.  Family, friends,food, fireworks, and the Fourth of July.  We invited my family and Jennifer's family over to celebrate yesterday.  We had a simple menu of a few easy dips (guacamole, spinach and artichoke dip, and jalapeno popper dip)and hot dogs with all the toppings, baked beans, corn salad, watermelon salad, and hash brown casserole.  And then everyone brought a dessert. 

After dinner we set off a ton of fireworks!  They were really good too now that we know which ones to buy!




And isn't Dan adorable (disregard my crazy brother's photo bomb!) in the shirt the kids and I got him?  Wally For President!

2.  The newspaper - on time!  We have had issues with our newspaper delivery person for weeks now.  My husband (and according to the Facebook community page many others as well) have been emailing and calling to complain about the late or undelivered papers.  They appear to have finally gotten a new delivery person!  I was so excited the other morning that I snapped this picture:

Dan really enjoys reading the newspaper before he leaves for work so he is very thankful for this new person!

3. America!  I guess I'm still feeling all the 4th of July feels but I love my country and I am very thankful for it.  It's not perfect but I still think it's the best country in the world.



4. Simple arrangements.  Look at this cute flower arrangement.  I saw a similar one online and tried to replicate it.  It's not perfect but it's a cute way to do something alittle different with a grocery store bouquet. I am always thankful for fresh flowers and cute ways to arrange them.

5. Front porch time.  My parents have a great front porch - it's wide and long and there's a swing and lots of rockers and we spend a lot of time out there with them when it's not too hot.  Our porch is much smaller.  When we moved in we put two rocking chairs on it but later removed those and put in the swing.  It's not ideal but the other night all four of us hung out on the steps and swing from after a late dinner until bedtime.  The cats even came out there with us.  It was a perfect way to spend a lazy summer evening with the ones I love the most.

What are you all thankful for this week?