Category Archives: Changes

Summertime and the living is easy….for those who have off that is!

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My view from the track for the next few months…BUT….it’s guaranteed cardio, so there’s that!

‘Tis the last week of summer for us and I’m taking off Wed-Fri to chill and occupy the children.  Except that I panicked at the thought of the next 4 months being utterly sucked up by soccer and cheer practice/games and any opportunity of any travel outside of games is POOF, gone, so I decided to make an somewhat-impromptu visit to see my girlfriend in Atlanta.  Taking my girls, of course.  (the boys aren’t interested…they are too cool for that, besides her boys won’t be there…)

what bored soccer players do at cheer practice…

It will be a busy few days, because that’s how I roll….all busy and hectic and such…it’s black and white with me sometimes–ok mostly.  Balls to the wall busy or slug.

Anyway, possibly a day trip to Gainesville to see my pregnant friend before she enters the world of 4 kiddos, birthday skateboard shopping for our almost 15-year-old!  WHhAaTt?!??!?!  Meet the teachers.  Pick up middle schooler’s schedule/locker/etc.

But first….let me get my arse off the chair and get ready to GO VOTE!

Have a great day and hopefully will have some fun stuff for you at the end of the week!

Ciao!

Manic Monday

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After the whirlwind weekend comes crazy Monday….

Starting off innocently and with bright hopes for the day with a great boot camp, shower, some quiet time and then off to wake up the littlest (our older girl had a sleepover) and then…..at 7:22 a.m. as I was gently waking her and asking what she wanted for breakfast….I realized….I……was the early person.  Yes, the person who “opens up” at 7:30 a.m.  Oh.  crud.  Bless her heart,she opened those eyes and joined “Team Mom” and dressed and got ready in record time as I made lunches and got myself ready.  I made it to work @ 8:06 and FORTUNATELY had NO patients waiting…..phew!!!

Nothing like a little adrenaline to start the day.

The evening was apparently a bit of a peek into what the next few months have in store for us with dueling sports/practices/games going on.  We’ve done this before and I guess enough time must have passed that I forgot how psycho that time was….kind of like being pregnant/giving birth/babies.  So….here we go again.  Lord, have mercy on us.

We have a cheerleader for a Pop Warner football league and a soccer player entering the club bracket for the first time.  We will have NO.  LIFE.   for the next four months. So call me.  maybe.  or text.  or email.  or Facebook me.  or read my blog, it may get interesting as the seasons start (because we’re still in “practice” with no games until September)….on a plus side, I’ll be getting lots of cardio in during the practices, so there’s that.

I thought it went fairly well with Hubby on “deliver-the-girls to practice” duty and me on pick-up.  I had son #2 put dinner in the oven and Hubby would be home in time from his swim to dish it out and get the sides ready, except………somehow…..the oven didn’t actually get turned ON.   Therefore….pancakes, eggs and hash for dinner.  And it was ready.  My Hubby rocks.  and he makes great pancakes, too!  😉

So…..little speedbumps to smooth out…but that’s what practice runs are for, right?   Boys and girls we learned a few good lessons today:

1) Make sure you know WHEN you are supposed to be somewhere.

2) Make lunches the night before.  Time saver here.

3) Teach the boy to push the button PROPERLY…

4)  Always have  pancakes, eggs and hash on hand.  oh, and chocolate chips.  they go good in pancakes and in a REAL crisis you can just eat them by the handful.

Spastic Sunday….

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Sunday.  A day of rest.  After our “shopping Saturday melee” you’d think I’d really take advantage of that….and the day started out innocently enough:  Mass and donuts and then home for a “Teamwork” chores activity and by Noon, the house was clean, laundry was going, it was raining (again–thankfully!) and we were one kid down for a sleepover.  Then I don’t know what happened.

I had to take our youngest to get shoes (shoes and supplies are essentially all that’s left on the school shopping list) for her and her sister, who told us what she wanted…we ran a couple of other errands (buttons to bling up her backpack and a new pillow for my awful, aching neck), somehow managed to drop her off at her friends (now down two kids to friends) and made it home.

Love this cookbook!!

Sitting for a few minutes I remembered I really wanted to cook a few meals ahead and freeze because we have an insane couple of weeks with practices nightly until 7:30 and it’s so much nicer if dinner is READY when we get home.  So I began.  Sometimes when I do stuff like this, it is utter chaos….controlled, mind you….but there is nothing anyone can do to help me because it would take WAY too long to explain the stream of consciousness going on in my head and here’s the breakdown that took place in the two hour period:

(It’s kind of like “If you give a mouse a cookie“….I am the mouse.)

  • I fried up some bacon because bacon=yummy dinner to my kids
  • I chopped and caramelized onions in the bacon drippings because kids don’t mind onions if they taste like bacon
  • I browned some ground beef added the onions and split it up for two dinners
  • I made some coffee and sweetened condensed milk ice cubes for my weekend iced coffees
  • I hardboiled a dozen eggs because we had a ton in the fridge
  • I had leftover SCMilk so I made a killer chocolate cake
  • I made two shrimp quiches and had leftover cream so…..
  • I made homemade whipped cream for the cake
  • I finished dinner for that night which was SOOOOO easy and so delicious that my 9-year-old daughter’s friend said, “Let me know the next time you have this and I’ll drive myself over here!”  Here’s that recipe:

Spray a 13X9 pan and place chicken breasts in pan

Pour a jar of Alfredo sauce over chicken

Sprinkle bacon crumbs over sauce

Grate Havarti cheese and sprinkle over bacon

Bake @ 375 for 20-30 minute (until chicken is done)….enjoy!

I ran out of steam and then had a mountain of a mess to clean up, but I am hoping that it helps our hellish evenings go a little smoother knowing that dinner is ready when we get home.  How do YOU prepare for your crazy nights without Driving Through and killing your budget???

Now it didn’t go as planned on Monday….but that’s another post!  Have a blessed day!

Sweet nectar…

Before and After, a DIY project

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We inherited my parent’s old entertainment center when we moved into our house 3 years ago and it was fine.  It provided a lot of storage and display space and served its primary purpose of housing the TV and DVR/Wii/CD player.  But……..it wasn’t really our “style”…not that I’m really sure exactly what our “style” is, but that wasn’t it.

A blurry catty-corner photo of the old entertainment center at Christmas…

We’ve been on  a little search for what we wanted to replace it with and LOVED the ideas on IKEA’s website (and trust me, I’m sure we will frequent the site again for other items….), however, we had the gist of what we wanted. One weekend Hubby came across and estate sale and found a great buffet that we could refinish into what we had in mind for the TV, etc.  Sadly, by the time I made it to the sale the piece was gone…….but, tucked away in the back of the house was another sideboard.  And lots of potential.  Hubby talked them down to $50 (from $95, by letting them keep the hardware that came with it–it was AWFUL and we were happy to let them keep it!).  And so we came home with our little DIY project.  (By OUR, please understand that translates to my Hubby, in which I will happily take joint credit.  We all should know where the real sweat and effort came from though, to be fair.)  Without further blah, blah, blah…here is the story in pics:

A view from the front-ish…apparently I don’t care for a head-on pic of anything….

All opened up

During the “sanding down” process and the top drawer converted to a fold down space for the DVD player to be housed/hidden

Lining up the new hardware

Coat 1 applied, pre-lacquer

Letting the 2nd coat and 2nd lacquer dry….was way too humid in the garage!!

New hardwarde….top: drawer pull and bottom: door pulls

It’s so hard to take a decent picture of a black-lacquered piece of furniture, so here’s a B&W view…..

…..and here’s a color view, in action! A little Jack Johnson on Pandora!

So pleased!!  Can’t wait to see Hubby’s next project….let me go find my list!  😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday: The Rainbow edition

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A Friday tradition is to join in with Jennifer and her international friends @ Conversion Diary and share a weekly wrap up, not only is it a great way to boost the stats on the blog BUT……it’s a great way to find NEW blogs to read. Win-win, people, win-win.

I’ll be doing this in (mostly) photo version today, mostly because I need to wake up a bunch of kids and get to work, and because it seemed I took a bunch of pictures on my iPhone this week…..so, I thought I’d share!

1.  We are ready for the Olympics!!! Are you???  We are so excited!!  In fact, several months ago we gave up cable (no one was really watching anyway AND it saved us about $70 a month), BUT….in order to watch the Olympics (not on the laptop) hubby put up an antennae to grab signal so that we can get the local affiliate and join in.  It took MUCH sweat and effort on his part, lots of brain power and in the end….a sweet, crisp picture and now we also have a few local channels (which is great for severe weather, usually we are just oblivious and watch the skies) and SEVERAL Spanish channels.  Bring on the Olympic torch!!

Set up and ready to go!!

2.  Speaking of Olympic prowess and excitement, my personal buff and ripped self 😉

came to a screeching halt this week when somehow, someway I managed to pull something in my shoulder/upper back and had to skip most of the week babying it.  My new best friend is:

These things are the BOMB! Seriously, they last like 8 hours!!! And as a bonus, I don’t feel like I’m 80 anymore!

3.  Also, in preparation for the Olympics, we bought a great little buffet at an estate sale for $50 (Hubby is a good negotiator!) and after much sweat (his), some cursing (his) and some muscles (mine and his, I had to help him move it around a little) it’s been refurnished and now is our new entertainment stand…more to come in a before and after post:

Much cleaner look than our previous entertainment center.

4.  In other entertainment news, my current read

This book is FASCINATING!!! Why did I take so long to read it?!?!

5.  My forgetfulness has come to a whole new level, not one but TWO reminders this morning from my little entrepreneurs…..

Apparently my mantra of “if you want me to remember, write it down” has finally sunk in!

6.  An awesome sight the other night

Something about rainbows…

Our daughter looked up and said…”God’s promise”. Love it. A double promise this time!

7.  No picture of this, but since I’ve been getting as much overtime as possible this and last week, I am super glad it’s Friday.  It will be worth it when it takes the sting out of the back-to-school shopping comes.  Soon.  Far.  Too.  Soon.

Blessings to you all!!