Wordless Wednesday: Pink, lovely and apparently delish

Please click to enlarge.



My lovely pink flowers that grow in my barrel. The puppy keeps snipping off their heads and eating them....so they usually just look like perky little stems. *sigh*

***To see more entries or to join in and do your own, go to Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom.***

Old business

I am currently in the process of moving the entries from my old blog to here, so if you saw that I had a bazillion new posts today on bloglines and came here to see no new posts...except for this one....it's because they are all from Jan/Feb of 2005. You can find those months in my sidebar where it says 'archives' if you want to read them.

Have a great day!

Friday Feast #188

Appetizer
Name something you would categorize as weird.

The fashion trend of sagging. Today at our second grade field day games, one of the little boys in our class lost a relay race because his pants were falling down. We were screaming his name as a chant, as we did for the other kids in our class when they were in an event. But as soon as I saw that, my chant became, "Wear a belt, wear a belt, wear a belt!"

It is a pretty strictly enforced rule at our school not to wear sagging pants, but if the child has a huge shirt on over the pants, it can be hidden. *rolling my eyes at the very thought again*

Soup
What color was the last piece of food you ate?

Deep berry-ish pink. (raspberry sherbet....very delish)


Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy being alone?

4 I really do not like being all alone. However I do enjoy being in a crowd or at a place like a mall or park and not knowing anyone. This way I'm not technically alone, but really I am. No one is talking to me and I do not have to be thinking of conversation or entertaining anyone. It would be really nice to be able to do this at my own home. I would be able to be at home with family members there, but they would not talk to me or ask me anything...and they would even prepare their own meals....just for one day. I think it would be SO relaxing and I would be able to really concentrate on things instead of my train of thought or activities being constantly interrupted and redirected.


Main Course
Fill in the blank: I will _________ vote for ___________ in _______.

I will resolutely vote for Pedro in 2008.

Dessert
Describe your sleeping habits.

It is now 10:04pm and I am lying in my bed, on my side and my laptop is on my night stand. I'm typing away at a lame blog post so that people will come here. (see, it worked....*points at you*) Later, about 10:20, I will start playing Web Sudoku, thinking I will slip in a quick game before turning out the light. At approximately 11:40, I will realize how late it is, berate myself about cutting my sleep hours short again and close the computer. I will fall soundly asleep within about half an hour and awaken 2-3 times to plod my way to the bathroom, waking for the last time at 5am, at which time I will be mad because I only have an hour left to sleep and it will be hard then to get into a good sleep. (mostly because I'm mad) My wicked, wicked alarm will go off at 6:11am, I will sigh a big mourning morning sigh and plod to the bathroom to take a shower and begin my day.



***Go to Friday's Feast to learn more or to do your own spread.***

Bragging

I got two letters in the mail today on my way to pick up Emma from school. They have been waiting to hear if they were chosen as missionaries for a local missions program for the summer. So when I picked up Emma, I handed her the envelope *the envelope, PLEASE.....drumroll* She is such a wimp. She didn't want to open it, saying she didn't think she got chosen. But after I forced her to do it, she started bouncing in her seat and saying, "I got it! I got it! I'm in!" Bethany got in too, but she did this last summer, so she was a shoe in.

Congrats to them!

I just wish that it didn't mean I will only have one child all summer. We'll miss them!

In other news, Hannah is doing very well with her new job, supervising visits with separated parents and children. She has gotten to like it after the initial shell-shock wore off. It is a very stressful job. She has to drive long distances with total strangers, keeping an eye on them at all times, she has to confront them and talk to them about things if they take advantage of the situation or are being sneaky, and she's has to take them wherever they want to go and walk around with them as they visit with their child in public places.

This is proving to be one of the hardest things about the job. The towns where she is working are small towns and she runs into people she knows or has known all the time, yet cannot tell them what she is doing. She says hi or a few words and then has to excuse herself and tell them she is working. That is a strange situation to be in. It is also *dreadfully* part of the job to not eat with the clients or leave their sides at any time. So that makes it hard on long visits......if you think about it. One of her visits is 5-6 hours without leaving their sides......for any reason....I think you know what I mean. That would disqualify me right away!

We are so proud of our girls....I just had to brag a bit.

A quilt and green enchiladas

It's feast or famine around here, I know. I get in the mood to write and post a bunch of things, then it's a week before I write again. Either life is quiet and uneventful or I am flying by the seat of my pants with busyness and don't have a minute to think for myself.

I'll just let you imagine which one it is now.

This afternoon I headed to Curves and then dropped by Bed, Bath and Beyond to see if their quilts were on sale. I have a gift card for that store and have been bedspread shopping around. I ended up finding one that was so cute, just right for Bethany's room (click to see it). So I got it and with my $25 gift card, I ended up only paying $18 for it after a significant discounted price! Yay bargain!

And Bethany loves it!

Green chili enchiladas

I only had a few minutes to whip up some green enchiladas, so I made up a short cut that worked fabuously!

The turkey meat was all ready in the fridge, so I caramelized some onions, added green chilies, the turkey and some Las Palmas green enchilada sauce and warmed it up.

*shortcut The thing I really despise about making enchiladas is putting the corn tortillas in hot oil, then having to fill it and roll it up while burning the skin off my fingertips! So I put my dozen corn tortillas in a bowl, slathered them with canola oil on both sides, then drained off excess oil. I warmed them up in the microwave for less than a minute. They were just the right temperature....not scalding, but warm and soft. (It sure beat dipping them one at a time into a pan of oil)

So keeping them in the bowl, I put a little cheese on the top tortilla then turkey mixture, then rolled them up (easily and not burning!) and put them in a baking dish. It went quickly!

Top them with more green sauce, then cheese and popped them in the microwave until they were bubbling and the cheese melted. They were quite delicious too.

Wordless Wednesday: Hearts of stone

We found these in the creek during a recent visit to my sister's cabin, so we made them part of the rock border around the future garden.



***To see more entries or to join in and do your own, go to Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom.***

Elementary my dear

I saw this on someone else's blog and was too curious....so I entered my blog address in the little window and clicked "send".

For about 3 seconds, it 'computed' my blog, then it gave me this result:

TV Reviews

I don't know if I'm okay with it.

But then I do mention second graders a lot.

Hey, stop laughing....you're the one reading it!

Haiku for you

It's time for
Want this button?.

The challenge this month is to write a Haiku. Here is my effort.


Snow
Dark sky rains down white
Blanket of delicate flakes
Stills the earth....and me

Chariot of Change
Blow wind, do your work
Take the ice and chill with you
Usher in the Spring

Spring's End
Children skip home, free
Summer has released them...Whee!
Now mom's free days end

Switcheroo

I've been a little concerned about a little boy in one of the classes I work in at school. He loves to draw, but his notebooks and journal were filled (FILLED) with drawings of vampires and demon-types of creatures, all with red and yellow eyes. I figured he played a lot of video games or watched weird cartoons. (remember this is a second grader) Then one day I was looking in his journal to find out if he had done his entry and I happened upon a list:

1. Go k*ll yourself
2. Go k*ss god
3. (can't remember what this was because I was in shock)

Yikes Mike! I told the teacher and I have no idea if she ever mentioned it to the mother, but we did tell him those were not appropriate and he was not allowed to draw or write things like that at school. I also prayed for him....and I think the teacher probably did too.

Fast forward two months. Suddenly he has drawings of the Bible with a cross on the front on his notebook. That was curious. I looked closely at it to make sure it didn't have a fire under it or a dagger sticking into it. It did not. It was just a sweet picture. Today in the cafeteria, he called me over. He asked me, "Do you know what this means?" He pointed to himself, then crossed his arms across his chest and then pointed to the ceiling. As I said this, all of the kids around him said it with me, "I love God!" He smiled with a huge grin.

I have to say it was the highlight of my year there.

I'm so glad he told me!

*The letter i deleted so no one finds me on a weird search.

Go ahead....make my day

As a discipline/reward method at our school, children begin each day with a certain number of points. Whenever they misbehave or mistreat, they lose points. If they lose more than 7 points in a day, they do not 'make their day'. The next morning, they will NOT have a Make Your Day slip on their desk (and a note is sent to parents telling them their child did not make their day). Then they can trade in these slips for little toys when they collect a few.

Today on the playground I turned to see two of my second graders holding on to a Kindergarten window ledge, jumping up and down to see into the window. I called them over and rebuked them for disturbing a class. I told them to each take off 2 points for interfering with a class. Here is the rest of the discussion:

Me: So each of you take 2 points off when you go back to class. Why were you looking into that class?

Boy 1: We wanted to see if they heard the rocks we threw up onto the roof!

Me: You were throwing ROCKS on the roof??

Boy 2: Yes, but not AT anyone. No one got hurt.

Me: Boys, rocks are not to be picked up at school....at ALL. If you throw them on the roof, they might break a window (their eyes bugged out). And if you throw them on the ground or at a tree, you might hit a person. (they looked at each other)

Boy 1: Well I"m going to take 5 points.

Boy 2: I'm taking 4.

Me: Well I'm telling you to each take 3 points or whatever your teacher tells you to take when you explain this to her.

Boy 1: I'll take 5.

Boy 2: OK, I'll take 4.

Then they ran off, happily discussing the points they were going to take.