August begins.

Right now I am biding my time waiting for the golf lover AKA my hubby and Patrick to return from a trip to best buy and the golf store.  It is probably more like they will be going to a few golf stores until Patrick gets whiny and Tom decides to come home.  Once they do I'm hitting the road and going for a run.  A long run.  Time will pass quickly today on my run as I'll be listening to Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance.  Midnight's Daughter is about a Dhampir which is a 1/2 human and 1/2 vampire individual.  I know very odd.  How would a dead person procreate?  Maybe that will be covered in the book.

Today I realized that if I had $1.00 for everytime I thought, I should go blog, I should really try and blog everyday if I am going to have a blog, then I could hire a maid.  Ahh how nice that would be for me!

I have a little confession, I accidently bought a Calvin Klien dress off ebay.  See it was my size, looked cute, and was NWT (new with tags).  You could have knocked me over with a feather this AM when I won the dress for $15.51.

On the food front, Friday I made the new Tastefully Simple Homestyle Beef Noodle Soup, or at least I think that is what it is called, I'm not looking at the box.  Anywho , the directions call for 1 lb of sirloin cut into bite sized pieces and water.  For me, I thought that was too much sirloin.  So I went to Jewel and they had 2 6oz Filet Mignon (sp?) for $7.00.  So I got that and used one of the filets and I added about 1.5 cups of frozen peas.  I also added 1 extra cup of water and 1 beef bullion cubes to stretch the meal out more.  IMO, the soup worked out very well.  The 6 oz of filet was the perfect amount and the noodles didn't overcook and get mushy.  Today (Sunday) I had a bowl of the soup and by gosh, it tastes even better as a leftover!  Yum.  I think I'll be making this when the weather cools off this fall.

Now Tom has arrived home and I am off for a run!

Much going on

Went to a baby shower today, it seems like all of a sudden a plethora of people I know are having babies or getting married.  Such fun times, tho in this weather it's a tough time to be in the last trimester of pregnancy for sure. It's been now 6 years since Anna was born and I am amazed at all the new stuff they have for babies, all kinds of gadgets and gizmos.  And along with that I rec'd an email today from an author who wrote a set of books called The No Cry Solution as in The No Cry Sleep Solution and the No Cry Potty Training Solution.  Her name is Elizabeth Pantley and you can go to her website to find out if the books are for you, and find out how to enter her book give away as well as a chance to win a $500 gift certificate to Babies R Us, you can get a lot of gizmos (or one fancy stroller) with that!

We were able to go down to visit my brother and his wife and children including the cutest baby ever, my nephew B.  We also made our first visit to my parents new home. had german food in Helen, GA, climbed Brasstown Bald, swam in Lake Chatuge (sp?) and visited the lovely Ridges Resort . At the Ridges they have a wonderful chef AKA my bro. :-D
See some pics below!

 

Free Ice Cream!

Saw this in an email, wanted to share w/anyone who might be in downtown Chicago:

Stop by the Tribune Tower next to WGN Radio's Showcase Studio (435 N. Michigan Avenue) for free Carvel Ice Cream Cake cups at 12:00 Noon on the following Friday's throughout the summer. Quantities are limited, so be sure to get there before they run out!




July 2, 2010

July 23, 2010

August 6, 2010

August 20, 2010

I have been working on writing fiction, so I have sorely neglected my blog.  I shall endeavor to post more tout suite. :-D

What I am reading now: The Cassie Palmer Series by Karen Chance.  It's great fun!  I am super glad that I downloaded the 3rd books as an audio otherwise I'd never know the correct pronunciation for one of the main characters.  Mircea.  It's supposed to be pronouncec:  Meer-cha.  I was thinking it was: M-er-so. 

One of those priceless things, 190 mycokereward points= one free game rental from Blockbuster=kids playing Toy Story 3 on the Wii and getting along! 

Summer, how I love you!

"Then followed that beautiful season...Summer....


Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape

Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


One of the best things about Summer is a nice breeze and a book at the beach.  While I haven't made it to the beach yet, since it is Memorial Day weekend and you know with it being hot yesterday 90s and humid today, the beaches are packed.  We are going to wait for a weekday.  The beaches are pretty empty during the week.  Wahoo!

I have found time to read, and am currently just starting book 6 of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.  Now it is not my fault I am in the midst of reading an action packed series of books w/Vampires and what not.  It is the fault of the girl I have been emailing with in Austrailia.  She said I would love the series, so it's all her fault. LOL   Most of the books I have been able to p/u at the library, which is great b/cause it is free and books 3 and 4 I *had* to download onto my phone. 

The bummer part of the kindle app for iphone is 1. having to pay for books that I can't trade w/anyone.  the big plus is when I read on the phone I can read in the dark.  No book light needed.

When I picked up the black dagger brotherhood book from the library, I also grabbed a bunch of movies, cause again, FREE to borrow!  So far with it being a much nicer than typical Memorial Day weekend, we haven't watched much TV.  Tonight Tom will be all about the Blackhawks.  He needs to wear a heart monitor when he watches the games.  He is a high-strung mess!

I'm looking to make another run to Jewel today as they have this crazy good deal on Coke Products. 4 12 packs for 8 bucks plus then they have a coupon for a free pack of Hillshire Farms brats and polish sausage (value $.350)  So I am stocking up on the diet pop that I love, as well as Minute Maid Light Lemonade.  Plus I collect mycokerewards points, so every 12 pack is 10 points for free stuff like movies tix.

The other crazy good deal is I have a coupon for by 2 pkgs of Lays Potato chips and get $3 off produce.  And now thru Wed the Lays chips are BOGO for $3.99, so I grab 2 bags of chips 1 plain and one bbq and get some produce (like yesterday I got potatoes and today I am going to get a watermelon --watermelon is on sale for 3.48.  So that means:
4 12 packs of pop $8.00
1 pkage of cheddar wurst sausages free
2 bags of chips $3.99
1 watermelon $.48
So all that for $12.47 and I have a $5.00 off your next order coupon so my out of pocket for this stuff is:
$7.47 plus tx.
:-D  Love the Memorial Day sales at grocery stores!!!

Well I am just waiting for the storm that is coming our way to hurry up and rain on us and move on so I can go for a long run since Tom is home! 

House in Ogden Dunes, Indiana

House in Ogden Dunes, Indiana

how awesome is this vacation home. Anyone want to start a collection for me? I'd love to stay there!!! I will need a vacation soon, school is just about out for the summer. Yikes! On the plus side the weather around here has taken a turn for the summer, which I am all about. Love summer. I also love the Indiana Dunes. wink wink. LOL

Today Anna informed me that yesterday her teacher Mrs. Z was scratched in the eye by her dog and had to go to the ER where they took out her eyeball and gave her a new eyeball. Hmmm, are you sure Anna?

Wide-eyed she nods her head, "ah, yah."

Man I feel like Crap on Toast

I feel like crap on toast.  I woke up this morning with a pounding headache and a stuffy nose.  Either I have what Anna had, which I don't think I do b/cause she had a sore throat and a fever OR it's the cursed cottonwood trees that are spewing all over around here. 

A nap is about all I want to do at this point, and if I am going to take one I really need to get on that, as I am taking the children to Bryce's Cub Scout Crossover picnic thingy.  This AM even though I don't feel good, I made Bryce's little sailboat for the Rain Gutter Regatta.  Are you thinking, why did you make it, why not Bryce? My answer is, you are right he should have made it, but I wasn't in the mood to work with him, and Tom was going golfing, so I slapped it together and told him to decorate it with a permanent marker, by all appearances it looks like an 8 year-old made it.

The house is feeling very quite since Patrick's 3 overnight guests have left.  Now if it was clean in addition to being quiet that would be a little slice of heaven.  I should not complain. Life is short and one day I'll be whining about how my house is always too quiet and how I miss when the kids were little and liked being around me.

Ooo, I thought of something very positive.  There is food at the Crossover thingy, so I don't have to cook dinner.  I will have to force the children to sit down and actually eat instead of run around playing the whole time (it's like a picnic=y kind of event); because if I have to hear children asking me what we are having for dinner when we leave the Crossover, my head just might explode. 

Because of some really good cereal deals we have 8 boxes of Kellogs cereals in our pantry, so if they do start asking for food,  I have my answer ready: Cereal.  Cereal. Cereal.

There is a change in the background an a few words highlighted in this post, but I am too lazy to fix it.  Off to nap!

Anna is quiet today

Hotel for Dogs (Full Screen Edition)She has a sore throat, otherwise she'd be her usual loud and rambunctious self. Right now we are watching Hotel for Dogs, she says it is the Best Movie Ever!   I'm not paying attention so I don't know what is going on only that Emma Roberts is in it.

This morning when I walked into our pantry, I got a most wonderful surprise, Tom had clean and organized it.  Circle today on the calendar, that doesn't happen every day, every week, every month or even every year!

It's so clean I can share a picture:

And I am almost caught up on the Laundry, and basically that is an oxymoron.  Is anyone ever really caught up on laundry. I got a new/old washer on Mothers Day that I bought with part of my pay from my Tastefully Simple party the night before.  I love it.  It is about 8x as old as the one we had, It has about 1/3 the capacity and no electronic panel.  What it does have is all your basic washing machine parts that work and have worked for a long time.  While our 'old' washing machine:The Kenmore Oasis with Canyon something and a whisper package and no agitator, that is only 3 years old is broke again. 
Sears would like $75 to come out and more to fix it again, or we can buy a repair package that is good for a year for $225.  Ya sounds great, We did that when it stopped working about 16 months ago.  So I went on Craigslist last week, looked up garage sales and called around until this nice lady in Alsip said  she had a washer that worked but was nothing to look at and she'd take $75 for it.

On Sunday we picked it up.  It was my Mother's Day gift to me from me.  Then Tom and I tried to move it into the basement by ourselves and I had visions of the washer sliding down the stairs and landing on Tom.  The washer is just too heavy for me, I called Tom's brother and let them move it down the steps. 

Other exciting news around here is that our strawberry patch is bursting with strawberries.  They are not red as of yet, but when they are, fresh organic strawberries are the best!
+

So tired!

It's been one super busy day.  First off, I didn't sleep well last night, and then Patrick woke up with a fever and a sore throat.  Again.  This seems to be happening every few weeks.  I've got to call the doctor, maybe he had some kind of strep thingy, ugh.  Or it's the power of mind over matter, and his desire to stay home from school.  As he tells me all the time and usually in tears on Monday mornings, he hates school. 

Why does he hate school? He can't do what he wants.  What does he want to do?  Oh you know watch TV, play video games, write stories, eat a lunch at home. 
Only 17 more days of school and he'll be one step closer to being done with school.  I'm going to have to try that one on him.  He's already logged just about 5 years of school, might as well finish it up ( in 7 more years plus college-but who's counting!)

Tomorrow morning is the Teacher Appreciation Breakfast at Patrick's school.  I have been coordinating it with help of the PTA Pres, and this will be my first assignment as the new Hospitality PTA person.  I hope it goes well, of course my biggest worry is:
1. not enough food
2. not enough coffee.

I was cooking all day to complement the items that are being donated by parents and a few businesses.  I used a couple recipes from pillsbury.com because I needed breakfast-y caserole type options  and then I found a recipe in the coupon section of the paper from sunday for a Cheesy Bacon Egg Bake.  So I've got that along w/ Bacon and Cheese Tartlets (made with bacon bacon, so the muslim staff can eat it) and Bacon and Cheese Biscuit Quiche Type things.  (made with turkey bacon)  I also washed and cut up fruit, and made 3 different bagel spreads w/Tastefully Simple Products: 1. Bacon Bacon Spread 2. Sweet Strawberry Spread and for a veggie spread, Sweet Bell Pepper Spread.   And I went to the local Jewel a few time today to get additonal supplies. 

The exciting thing is that 1. all the stuff I made fit in the fridge and on one shelf, so everyone knew not to eat it tonight.  The neverwracking thing is getting 10 packages of turkey brown and serve sausages all heated up and in the crockpot w/o the middles being cold.

Wish me luck that is goes well and we have happy full teachers!  Don't tell anyone but I am hoping to get in a nap after the breakfast is over  :-D

Cancun Continued.

Black Magic Sanction (Rachel Morgan, Book 8) have to remember to go over to my library and pay the fine I owe for forgetting to return a kids cd-rom then I can finally get Black Magic Sanction book 8 in a series. This series of books rocks. I really love it, thax to Barbara who clued me into the series when she posted that the first book was free for kindle.


I'm also looking forward to the next book in the Mercy Thompson series. I love heroines!


Okay back to Cancun. The picture of me outside our room is right before we went to dinner on Friday night. We stood in line for the most popular/exclusive restaurant at the resort, which just means we had to wait in line, it wasn't like we couldn't get a table unless we knew someone. So we wound up have dinner with a bunch of other people at this restaurant that was called like Mo No Mama or something. The restaurant has Japanese/Asian Cuisine. They have chopsticks, if you want a fork, you've got to request it. Somewhat strangely in keeping with the Asian theme, the Mexican hostess has to wear a kimono. At least she doesn't have to bind her feet, she was pretty crabby already. I just looked at the chopsticks and tried to hold them like a couple pencils, and thought about trying to stab the maki rolls on the table. Lucky for me, my wonderful Tastefully Simple Sponsor, showed me how to hold the sticks and better yet explained to me how to hold them. So there I was grabbing sushi with my chopsticks, I am worldly now, I am wielding chopsticks. 

I took a second roll and popped into my mouth with out dropping it. Quite exciting. I held back from eating more sushi to make sure I had plenty of room for my entree, something that sounded like Beef Gideon. The waiter gave us our plates with some flourish and the entree sizes were reasonable vrs. the usual 4 servings on one plate you find at restaurant here in the States.  I even had a most yummy Mai Tai with my meal.  Then all of a sudden , I was done.  I couldn't take one more bit of my entree and I broke out in a sweat when asked about dessert.  I felt terrible.  So terrible I was afraid I'd puke on the way back to the room. I was in bed with the covers over my head by 930pm.

The next night we went back to the same restaurant because it was the best one at the resort, IMO, and Tom wanted to go back.  When we were seated Sat night, I looked at the maki rolls on the menu and realized why I was sick on Friday night.  All of the sushi rolls they serve, include avocados.  So the food their is great, it was me with the allergic reaction. Tom was relieved to find out it was me and not the food.

Actually on Saturday night we were supposed to eat with the same fantastic crowd as the night before, but we didn't make it to the restaurant to be seated with them because the door fell off our room.  The humidity had rotted the wood around the hinges and the door was almost completely off. It is the door's fault I fell for the second time.  With the door broken we could close our door and in between the time when the door broke and the maintenance guy showed up to fix it, which he couldn't, he thought it was a lock problem not a wood problem.  Whilst we were waiting for  him, every surface of our room became slick with moisture from all the humid air now streaming in to it.  This fact was made clear to us when I got off the bed, and on my second step to the dresser.  Splat on the floor goes me.  Tom was dumbfounded.  One second I was standing, the next I wiped out.  That is when we noticed our room floor had turned into a hockey rink.  This was completely apropos, as Tom was watching Blackhawks highlights on the laptop. Just in case you were wondering if it was the floor or mai tais, I don't need any drinks to fall, apparently I am super good at falling w/o any help.

They couldn't fix our door, so we moved down the hall to a new room, which was nice, the bellman moved our stuff and we got fresh towels and soap.  Because of the way the resort rooms angle out, maximizing any views for the guests, our room was just a bit different from the previous one.  You see each room had a big stone column, which gave a sense of separation between the bed and the bathroom.  In the middle of the night, I used the restroom and when I walked back to the bed I walked, wait for it,
yes! right into the column.  Can you believe it?  Tom is on his laptop right now taking out some additional life insurance on me. 

Sunday I was ready to come home, not because I wasn't having fun and memorable times, but because I missed the kids and home.  Being the incredibly caring wife that I am, I sat in the middle seat on the way home.  Fortunately I was able to fall asleep and not notice in was in the middle seat for most of the ride.

We arrived home to rain, temps in the 50s, but that was alright because I knew that we have the rest of spring and all of summer to enjoy. 

Now that it has been just over a week since our trip, the getting sick and injuring myself  parts of the trip are already fading in my memory into just a funny story and what remains is the first vacation Tom and I have had together in 11 years.  We spent more time together and talked to each other more than we have in a good 5 years. 

Now I have to do the mastercard thing.
Trip to Cancun: free cause I earned it, walking into a column: one knot on my forehead, finding out that I still like spending time with my husband: PRICELESS!

No really it's true, I went to Cancun and I didn't come back with a tan or a lousy sunburn!

This picture is from Friday Night in Cancun right prior to us going to dinner.  behind me you can see ocean.  Ohh Ahh I love the ocean.

Many nice people have asked how was my trip to Cancun.  If I can be cliche in a word it was memorable.  We drove off with our minivan taxi driver at 5ish AM on Saturday morning, it was cold for sandals.  I wore them anyway, the minute we were out the door I was on vacation. 

When I travel, as I do about quarterly thanks to my super awesome part time job livng the life of a jet setting Tastefully Simple Lady,  I like a few things to go a certain way.  Just think of me as a female version of Ryan Bingham in Up In The Air, without 97% of the issues.  I had my pre-boarding Egg McMuffin and Venti Starbucks (black).  Can I just say, this is the perfect traveling breakfast, as long as you are not adverse to using the plane's bathroom. (Venti is a lot of coffee).  I like to sit in the back-ish of the plane and must have an aisle seat. Ah aisle seats how I love aisle seats.  "Up in the Air" was the movie for the flight, a movie that takes place in airports and on American Airlines-the same airline we were flying. 

Have you ever been to Cancun?  I really don't like wintertime and I am the one who says bring on the heat, I can handle the humidity.  righhhhttt.  Let me put it this way, people who live in Cancun like to travel to Florida to experience the dry heat.  When they visit Chicago in August and we are enjoying 90% humidity,  they bring a coat so they won't be chilly.  Walking from the plane to the baggage claim my hair went from straight-ish with some wave to boing!  Frizzy city.  The plus was I didn't spend any of my vacation on hair styling. 

Tom walked into the resort and looked around and his mouth dropped opened. He was impressed.  The resort is all tile and marble and has beautiful stainglass ceilings.  It reminded me of a Las Vegas Hotel big, sensory overload, and you have no reason to leave the place except to catch your plane home. When we arrived at the resort there was really really long lines for check in, which was bad because I was starving, and good because they had a cocktail bar and snacks next to the check in line.  Because I am almost 40 and wise in the ways of drinking alchohol, I grabbed a margarita, and no snacks.  I told Tom, I didn't want to waste my hunger on chips and salsa. 

Once we got to our room we checked out the minibar, which was included in the all-inclusiveness of the place so we opened the wine in our room, toasted to the view, took a picture of the liquor dispensers, checked out the robes and I made Tom get in the hammock for a picture. The courtyard our room overlooked had a bit of an ocean view, lots of palm trees and birds were singing.  I remarked to Tom that the birds reminded me of our honeymoon in Hawaii.

Clearly this picture isn't going to end up in the resort brochure touting how relaxing it is at their resort. 

We had a lovely room.  As we were starving we wanted to get right out there and enjoy the all-inclusivity, and I wanted to wear my most awesome shoes.  Micheal Kors sandals I got via mypoints.com daily deals.  Obviously the man didn't appreciate the awesomeness of the shoes.  Not only are they cute but also super comfy, except if you wear them for a night out then you might get a huge blister on your big toe like me!

I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but I am know for my falling.  I trip from time to time and fall and it is funny every time.  Something about seeing someone fall down is always funny. So there I was feeling stylish and trendy in my cute shoes and my casual dress walking around with my hubby with the ocean breeze.  A lovely stroll, and then I walk over to a bathroom over by one of the pools and whooops.  I slipped and fell right when another lady was walking out of the stall I fall smack on the floor on my knee.  The kind lovely lady says, "Are you OK?  I did the same thing!"  I laughed and made a mental note to text my good friend and let her know I had fallen again.  It's not a fun time til I fall down.  That lady probably didn't really even fall, she was just trying to make me feel better or she thought I was drunk and she wanted to humor the drunk lady.

In my defense of falling:

1. I don't fall that much, I just happen to fall around others.

2. I learned the hard way not to walk or run and look at my iphone.

3. I run 20-30 miles a week so on average I don't fall anymore than anyone else.

4. I didn't fall until I after I sprained my ankle really bad, I blame my bad ankle.

We had a really yummy dinner and I think I let the nice waiter give me a bit too many cervezas.  I mean the guy was taking my glass when it was 3/4 empty and giving me a fresh mug.  It was a fun night, Tom was Mr. Social and lucky for me I switched to water!

At the crack of dawn, the birds woke me up.  They were louder than my alarm clock and not welcome at all. Tom the morning person that he is, was up and working on a presentation for work and pre

paring for his conference call at 8am.  He was grumbling, and I dug thru my carry-on, found the ibuprophen and went back to bed.

On our walk to breakfast, we decided we aren't cut out for a vacation of drinking.  Tom said we should have been practicing by drinking frequently in the weeks leading up to our trip (tongue-in-cheek).

After breakfast Tom had more work to wrap up, so I took a nap, because I could.  Naps cannot be overrated. Tom's work was wrapped up and we finally got to check out the pools. When you have lots of freckles, such as I do, you learn how to put on loads of sunblock.  Much to the disappointment of Ms. Anna, we came back with no suntan. 

I have to share more of the trip, more falling, learning to use chopsticks, our door falling off our room. I'm going to try to tell the rest of the story tomorrow, but I might not get to it since at 7pm tonight (Thursday) I realized that Bryce's 1st communion is at 10AM on Saturday, and he doesn't have a suit to wear and I have to get an xray on my toe because it's probably broken.  Too funny!  Really I am organized, and in great health!  It just doesn't sound like it!