Pictures, get your pictures! Oh yeah, and I have to rant - what else is new?

We went to the museum on Tuesday for their homeschool open house. That just means a free museum day to us! It was, of course, crowded, but we had a great time.


Kali thought these dinosaur bones were awesome. She loves dinosaurs.


In the natural disaster section. Hannah liked the car that was all dented from hail.


Over in the kids zone area. Hannah was making faces. Hmm....what else is new?!


Kali was making block bridges. Notice the "I'm not happy" look on her face? I kept wondering about this all day. I think I finally have it figured out, but I'll talk about that in a bit. I promise she's normally a happy girl! Well, unless you're irritating the snot out of her.


We went over to the butterfly garden. Hannah thought they were all going to land on her. ;)

We had a great day at the museum, ate lunch outside before we started to melt, and played a bit more. I do believe that the aquarium is having a homeschool open house next month. Yay!

On Wednesday we went over to Orlando to see Mary. :)


Look! All I could get were their legs!! Her bed is sooooo high off the ground. Of course, the girls loved that and wanted to stay up there the whole time.


Oh gosh, whose children are these?!?!?!? I hope they don't do that stuff out in public. ;)

We had fun, brought Mary some chili for her freezer, hung out in her dorm room for a bit, and then went out to eat. Typical starving college student was desperate for mama to take her out. Hopefully we'll see her again soon.

Speaking of food, I made some pasta yesterday.....




It was yummy.

I made some chicken stock, too.


It's hanging out in the freezer now. It was yummy, too.

Now, back to my sad Kali face. I love cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. Goat cheese, cheddar cheese, any cheese. Give me cheese. Kali likes cheddar cheese, lots and lots of cheddar cheese. I made chili - lots of cheddar on top. I make grilled cheese - lots of cheddar. I made quesadillas - lots and lots of cheddar. When I took all the girls out on Wedneday, Kali had a grilled cheese. Yesterday she cried for 1/2 the day. Hmmmmm..... Hannah said "um, mom, what makes the cheese orange?!" OMG. So I fly over to the computer (well, more like walked fairly quickly) and looked up cheddar cheese on every site I can. Annatto makes cheese orange. It's natural, right?! Yep. However, annatto, though freakin' natural, causes reactions just like artificial dyes do. Crap. So now I have a child who cannot have ANY artificial dyes and now no annatto!!! And why does cheese need to be yellow anyways? Poor Kali. I apologized profusely to my poor girl and promised I'd buy her annatto-free cheese from now on. What's next for the girl?!?! Hopefully I have found the majority of things that she reacts to. She's much happier this morning already. I am making a stromboli for them later, but it will have mozzarella cheese in it and that's not yellow!

Pictures!!

Here's some recent pictures of various stuff. :) Enjoy!


Check out my simple syrup here. It seems to be smiling at me! Freaky.


Awwww........couldn't you just eat her up?!


Her, too?!


Bread dough resting on my counter before it got shoved in the fridge.


Fresh out of the oven. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.


Croutons that we had with our dinner tonight. Yes, they are as yummy as they look. Made with the same bread in the previous picture, though not that exact loaf.




OMG, this stuff is like the balsamic god. Thank you, mom!!!!! She sent me this fabulous bottle of balsamic from Williams-Sonoma. I made a balsamic dressing with it tonight for our grilled chicken salad. Holy hell, people!! This stuff rocks! Kali even gobbled up lots of lettuce, and that's one thing she normally doesn't eat lots of. Dinner was fantastic. I could just sit in the corner and drink this stuff!

Wednesday the girls and I are headed off to Orlando to see Mary and bring her some of mama's chili. I have in all in little bowls for her, in the freezer, just waiting to go.

Tomorrow we are going to the museum in Tampa. It's the yearly homeschool open house; that means free day! I'll make our lunch tonight so we can leave early enough to beat the huge crowd that will be there.

A bunch of nothing.

I figured I hadn't posted an update in a week, so I thought I'd write something!

First off, just a reminder for everyone - SPRINT SUCKS.  I shall say this until the day I can leave them like a cheap date.  Thankfully, I was able to buy a phone off of eBay to replace the one I dropped in the Busch Garden's parking lot.  It works like a charm. 

I didn't get up this morning to run.  Well, I was wide awake and ready to get up, but there was this really cute little girl in the bed with me.  She woke up, too, wrapped my arm around her, and said "mama, stay with me."  OMG, how could I ever turn her down?  I curled right up with her and went back to sleep.  I shall run in the morning.  I cannot wait until the weather cools off (eventually) so that I can run without the wet blanket of humidity hanging over me. 

Mary moved into her dorm room today.  She's very happy.  :)  I miss her like crazy and want to go hang out with her.  Hopefully we'll get to see her soon.  I still find it terribly crazy to have her not living here.  I am too young yet, and so is she.  :) 

So I asked this question on Facebook yesterday, and I'll ask y'all now.  Do people who say they are doing their best (in regards to whatever it may be) actually doing their best, or are they doing what's easiest?  It's almost like saying "I really want (whatever - to lose weight/learn something/accomplish something/be healthier) xyz, but only until something else comes along.  Like "I'm on a diet" and then they stop when the next piece of chocolate cake comes out, and you hear "but I did my best."  I often wonder why people say they're doing their best, when clearly, they are not.   Just my rambling thought for the week.

Tomorrow, Alex is taking the girls to Lowe's Build and Grow.  I think they're making a school bus.  :)  I'll threaten them with it weekly.  ;)  On Sunday I'm taking Hannah back to Williams Sonoma for their free cooking class.  This time it's about pizza and paninis!  Perfect. 

Speaking of school (well, school buses), my girls rock!  Hannah is zipping through multiplication like it's a bowl of cookies.  Kali is also doing a fabulous job in math.  I thought this past lesson was going to be horrible for her, but she got it immediately.  If only she had an iota of an attention span, I'd be okay.  Good thing she's so darn smart and cute.  At the end of the day today, the girls had some ASL flash cards out and were spelling words for me.  Hannah thought it was hyterical to spell out poop and have me figure it out.  Oh, you're just a riot, Hannah.  Tuesday is the homeschool open house at MOSI (the museum).  Since it's free *yay!* the girls and I will head over there in the morning. 

I have no new pictures at the moment, but do have something I need to work on.  Hopefully I'll get to that over the weekend. 

SheiKra.

First of all, Mary is here on semester break.  I'm so happy to have her here!!  ♥♥♥♥♥  And what do teenagers do when they're on break??


They do a lot of this. 

Hannah and Kali thought it would be fun to mess with her.


So they did this.  :)


Hannah thought it was awfully funny when Mary finally got up.

On Wednesday we all headed off to Busch Gardens in the afternoon.  It was mighty steamy outside....


Someone was melting.


Someone was trying to give me the evil eye.


And someone thought she needed to get on this!  Yes, wayyyyyy up there is Hannah on SheiKra.  OMG.  She's crazy.  Mary won't go on it, Alex won't go on it, and I won't go on it.  But she will.  It was her first time on this one.  Her friend came with us, and thankfully, she likes to go on it, too!  Brave girls.


Really, who in their right mind would go on this thing?!?!

Here's a video I found on YouTube.  It's not mine, but it was pretty darn good.  Made me realize, again, why I won't go on SheiKra.

Busch Gardens Tampa SheiKra POV Roller Coaster


It was really hot, so the girls went on the water rides.


They finally cooled off.

We had lots of fun and left around 8:30 when the mosquitoes thought we were their dinner.

Julie & Julia - the Movie.

(I started writing this on Saturday, but due to an impending migraine and some Tylenol PM, I promptly passed out at 8 and woke up at 7 this morning.  Hey, at least I got a good nights' sleep!)

I took Hannah to see Julie & Julia today.  Hannah shares my love of food and cooking, so I figured we'd both enjoy the movie. 

Before I tell you about the movie, let me tell you how excited Hannah was to go see it.  She, like me, is a list girl and had written down where the movie was, what time it was, when we were leaving, what time she needed to get up, etc., etc.  She even had her clothes ready last night.  She got up at 7:30 this morning and was raring to go. 

If you go to any AMC Theater and see a movie before noon, the tickets are only $5.  We went to the 10:40 show.  :)  We did sneak in some candy (candy before lunch?!?!  I must be crazy!) and I even got a huge Sprite to share with her.  Hmmm....this might partially explain the slight pain in my head right now.

Back to the movie.........

I cannot, cannot, can not say enough good things about this movie.  I laughed, I cried, and I blocked Hannah's eyes a few times.  ;)  She loved it and said her favorite part of the movie was the whole movie. 

I was little when Julia's show was on TV, but can remember watching it with my Mom in the kitchen.  Oh how we would laugh at her sometimes when she messed things up. 

(I will say that I am normally not long-winded on my blog, but prefer to put up pictures.  However, this movie made me think about a lot of things, and I might break out of my mold today.  Be prepared for pictures after this, though.)

While watching the movie and on the drive home, I had about a million things running through my little head.  In no particular order, they were:

1.  I want Julia's cookbook (Mastering the Art of French Cooking) and an Orange Le Cruset Dutch Oven.  Watching them both cook in the same Le Cruset pot just made me want one, badly. 

2. I don't have to try to be so dang perfect when I cook.  I hate it when I mess up, I always think that that should never happen.  Okay, we all make mistakes, but there's a reason I feel this way.....which led me to #3.

3.  I don't have a paying job.  My "job" is to take care of my family.  I wear many hats in this house, and one of them is a chef's hat (though I do not claim to be a chef!!!).  I don't want to screw up when I'm cooking, because my family needs to eat and I don't want them to be horrified when they do so!

4.  Food should not come out of a box.  If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well.  I say this to my girls every day.  There isn't always time to make a huge meal, but even with limited time, your food can be fresh and free of cardboard!  Potatoes don't grow in flakes and in boxes.  Consider this - if "you are what you eat" is true, do you want to be crap in a box?  I take care of my family, in part, by feeding them things that are good for them.  I'm trying to get the words in my head out of my head right now.........what I'm trying to say is that if I thought Alex and the girls were crap, I'd feed them crap.  But they are fabulous and wonderful - shouldn't they eat the same?  It's easy to open a box of easy-whatever, heat, and serve.  I just think that people are worth more effort than that.  This doesn't mean that every night you should be cooking for hours; you just need to plan ahead.

5.  Eating processed foods cost more money!  With the state of our economy, is that really where you want to spend your money?  Processed, chemically laden, expensive "food?"  That, in turn, raises your medical bills.  Yes, it does. 

6.  I need to take my girls out individually more often.

7.  I need to spend more time in the kitchen.  Sure, I just said that you don't need to cook for hours every day.  And you don't need to.  But I think I do.  I think I need to make more use of the things I have here, make more from scratch, and thus lower my grocery bill even more. 

8.  I need to find more things that I love.  I love to cook.  I love to sew (and haven't done much of that lately).  I love to run.  I love to homeschool (most days!).  I love taking pictures.  But sometimes I feel like I need something else, too.  Maybe I just need to do more of the things that I love.

9.  SPRINT SUCKS.  If anyone needs a new cell plan, DO NOT go with SPRINT.

10.  Julia and her husband were head-over-heels in love with each other.  He said she was the butter to her bread. 
Alex and I will be married for 9 years next month.  And while I'm sure we drive each other completely batty, he is the butter to my bread, and the sanity to my insanity.  I love him. 

11.  Food taste better when you share it with people you love.  Even burnt toast. 

12.  Y'all need to go see this movie. 

13.  I need to stop spending so much time on this damn computer.