Category: Blog

Public shares of news and rambles

Blog, Diary, Kids

25 Days of Christmas; Days 1 & 2

I’m attempting to do something Christmas-y every day until Christmas. It is harder than I thought it would be, especially since I’ve been sick the past few days. Honestly, I also think this wasn’t the best plan simply because it can put a little extra pressure on me to come up with something every day. But then, I come up with so much Christmas stuff to do anyhow I do it to myself and poorly prioritize.

Day 1 – Canes and Cocoa

Cherokee Parks does an event called Canes and Cocoa where the kids come and have an Easter egg-type candy grab. This is the second year we’ve done it, along with the Boltons. Bags filled, we then all had hot chocolate and cookies, plus a chat with Santa.

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Day 2 – Botanical Gardens Lights

I so love Christmas lights and the Botanical Gardens has the best I’ve ever seen! Also our second year doing this, but I had the time to see and do more this year than last: the greenhouse that was like a fairy jungle (Lucas was kinda scared of this since it was so dark), the bridge walk through the trees (we were on the bridge over the road and i pointed Lucas back up behind us where you could see all the lights going up the hill and his comment?, “look at all the cars!”), and make s’mores. Of course Lucas was most interested in the trains and ran around all the different tracks with glee.

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just stuff

something kinda pathetic but as paul said “not surprising”….Disney Jr is a disney channel for preschoolers, and they came out with a movie, Sophia the First, which is basically an animated kids movie of the Princess Diaries plot. I’m way more interested in watching it than lucas, and actually told him to settle down, i was trying to watch the movie

I’ve discovered http://www.giftcardgranny.com/help/ which i think is the coolest thing ever and plan to start buying michaels, target, and amazon cards to basically use as currency.

i noticed arianna “cruising” today: walking along the edge of the couch while holding onto the couch

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The Great Lake Allatoona Cleanup

Today our Girl Scout troop went to The Great Lake Allatoona Cleanup, which is a big community effort to pick up trash along the shore line of Lake Allatoona. Sound boring? It wasn’t!

It began with a pontoon boat ride over the lake out to a cove where our group was dropped off.

It was very rocky; we climbed over fallen trees and driftwood and all over the place trying to find trash like a dirty Easter egg hunt. And unfortunately, we found a lot of it, including: a tire, a second tire that still had the metal wheel part inside, two hats, TWO SHOES (for those of you that know my thing about lost shoes…*I* was the one that found TWO shoes on the side of the lake), a toothbrush (??), and a ladder. 

After an hour of picking up the trash, the boat came back for us and we headed over to a park for a huge picnic. We got free food and drink and they had music playing. The girls tried yellow watermelon- something I’d never even heard of (WTG girls, trying something new).

Climbing around the rocks in the sun was some sweaty work…so what better way to cool off than go jump in the lake! We weren’t actually at a part of the lake with easy public access, but what do you expect will happen when you take a large group of kids near water in the heat?

Tina had gone off with Little Deb (her 3 year old daughter) for a few minutes. When she came back looking for us, she spotted her older daughter Heather out in the middle of the large creek running nearby. Just when she was thinking she was going to have to fuss at Heather for getting in the water, she realized we were ALL in the water, including me!!

 

The section everyone used to reach the water was this narrow, down hill mud bank…which I totally fell in of course. I’m 31 years old and still getting skinned knees.

 

We trekked out into the middle of the creek; this was a *lot* harder than it originally looked because the whole creek bed was uneven rock so finding steady footholds was hard. After a couple of slips, the girls gave up trying to stay dry and just sat down in the water. The water even swept Heather over backwards down a 6 inch waterfall like a White Water slide. In fact, some other kids were purposely riding the waves like that.

Trying to get back to land, we came up with a people chain to pass each other down the line towards the shore. “What’s gonna work? Teamwork! What’s gonna work? Teamwork!” (They were singing it).

 

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Jenn Saves the Day: a My Glorious Disaster Sequel

So I called up Jenn and said “We’re going to play a game. I’m going to name two ingredients, and you’re going to create a recipe.”

Jenn says, “alright,” (with a tone conveying her real meaning of  “I think you’re an odd one, but I’ll humor you.”)

I named squash and whipped cream, and having already read my previous post, she knew what I was dealing with. And magically transformed my gloppy mess into a casserole of yumminess that I plan to eat entirely in one sitting. Over the phone, off the top of her head (and here her years in phone tech support shine through), she correctly chose a pan size, the proper proportions of crackers and cheese, and a baking time to create  a squash casserole.

I think she has a super power.

 

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Another Glorious Disaster

From the kitchen of Chef Alison.

Seriously…why does Paul even allow me to walk into the kitchen.

I got some squash from a farmer’s market and wanted to try something different with it…mashed squash. Like mashed potatoes, but with squash. I’m not sure I could have screwed up my recipe any more. Maybe if I’d forgotten to put squash in it. Maybe.

I boiled the squash instead of baking it.

Apparently what I thought was butternut squash is not. It’s summer squash and like a quarter of the size. So when the recipe called for 2 butternut squash, it meant like 8 times the amount of squash I had. But I had already put in the ingredients to the recipe’s measurements. So the ratios are a little out of whack. Just a tad.

I didn’t have half in half, so I subbed heavy cream.

The salt was not kosher salt and was at the back of the cabinet, so I just didn’t put in any at all.

I don’t like pepper so I didn’t put that in either.

Then I skipped the butter, too, because I didn’t feel like putting it in there on top of all that cream.

At least I put in the brown sugar correctly. The only correct ingredient in this whole recipe.

I tried to mix it in my bowl with my electric mixer, but the bowl was too shallow so it splattered everywhere.

It came out goopy and not stiff like mashed potatoes. And ridiculously sweet. Kinda like squash flavored whipping cream.

Katrina likes it.

 

 

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Pinterest

I’m starting to love Pinterest. When Lauren first told me to join, I didn’t find it that appealing. I was looking at the wrong stuff! My wall feed when I first log in of the stuff my friends had pinned was just not stuff I was interested in. Homemade house cleaners? I can’t even bring myself to CLEAN my house…you really think I’m going to take the time to make my own cleaners for it? Cooking recipes? Yeah, right.

Well a Facebook feed of something caught my attention and I went by my account to give it a look. And discovered the Kid’s Stuff. Now I can’t stop looking at activities to do with my kids. As usual, a lot of stuff mine are still too young to do (but I’m saving the ideas anyway for later), but there is tons of great stuff I’m finding we *can* do. And hey, I’m even saving some of those recipes onto my own board, titled “Food I’ll Never Actually Cook.”

Tonight I tried my first Pinterest inspired idea. The frozen yogurt dots. Prep time took literally 5 minutes and now they are in the freezer to harden. Mine don’t look as nice as in their picture…more like yogurt blobs than dots. Update: they took about 25-30 mins to freeze and are pretty good. I’m going to experiment with mixing them with other ingredients b4 freezing.

 

Another project I did today was one I made up on my own. Lucas helped every step of the way as we made a weather folder. First he used a hole punch and punched the holes alone the sides of a file folder. Then with yellow yarn he sewed the two sides together to make it into a folder pocket. Next he used my paper cutter to cut paper cards. I drew different weather pictures on each one: a sun, a rain cloud, wind, etc and he colored them in. Finally I cut the letters for “weather” out on my cricut and he glued them onto the front of the folder. The last step is I will take the cards to be laminated and then have him attach Velcro to the back of the cards and front of the envelope. We then take the folder outside and he looks at the sky and chooses the cards that match the weather for that day and attaches those cards to the front of the folder pocket with the Velcro. Today he chose blue skies and windy. He said it wasn’t sunny because he couldn’t see the sun (which was on the other side of the house).

 

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Memorial Weekend

Whew. I’m so glad this weekend is finally over! While it wasn’t hard per se, like the kids weren’t too bad, it was very nonstop trying to get everything done. And that was including the *massive* help from my mom, like taking them for me allll day Saturday so that I could go to my friend Lindsey’s baby shower and then get stuff around the house done. I really, really don’t know how single moms do it. Paul is glad for it to be over, too. He said he is tired of doing Nationals every year. He’s still going to the Sept (or is it Aug) camp, though, for Andrew. As a reward (wd?) for making it through the weekend, we are going to Matt and Sarah’s this afternoon. They’re going to grill out on a new deck they’ve had built in their backyard. 
 
Other notes and updates:
Arianna rolled over this weekend! Mom or I would leave her lying on her back on the playmat, and she’d roll first to her side and sometimes to her belly. She has trouble with rolling over on top of her arm and getting her arm stuck underneath her. And true to Murphy’s Law, she is now drooling a ton after I commented about her not drooling. My new favorite past time is making her laugh (a new thing for her). Apparently singing Baby baby baby baby to the tune of Batman is hysterical. Painting infant toes is really hard; she is such a kickety-kicker!
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Lucas’s 3rd Birthday, Part 3

On Thursday, Lucas and Arianna and I had a birthday lunch at the Rib Ranch with Dad and Grandmother Stone. After lunch, I got Lucas a brownie sundae, which turned out to be both huge and delicious. Afterwards, we went back to Dad’s house and I showed them pictures and we looked at some genealogy stuff. I got some stuff from Grandmother’s side to add to my ancestry.com tree. Dad gave some Lucas some Cars Lego sets for his birthday. Lucas is a little young to put them together since they have lots of little pieces, but Paul put it together for him and Lucas had fun making the Cars race. Lucas always has fun at his Grandpa’s house and talks about Grandpa for several days after.

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quotes

“No to the power of No” – Nikita

“some family members are like cigarettes. You convince yourself you need them and then all they end up doing is taking years off your life and stinking up your house.” – The Firm

Leo:You think I’m going to talk to you about my boss because you bought me tacos?
Ben: They’re good tacos
…
Leo: You have a lot of questions….I’m starting to feel used and violated
Ben: I will buy you a sundae
Leo: Well now I feel like a dessert-stitute
– Fairly Legal