I have always enjoyed doing my girls hair. Some days more than others only because of time restraints. The reason I enjoy it is because I decided a long time ago that it was another perfect opportunity to spend time with them just talking - a little bonding time. (Some of you may argue that I'm a little "OCD" in that area, you're probably right.) Lately whenever I am doing their hair they play "What if". They have crazy imaginations and I don't know where or how they come up with these things. Yesterday, I was doing Maya's hair and she said to me, "What if someone could just touch their clothes and they would fall off?" WHAT?! And then again this morning, I was doing Olivia's hair (in two pig tails) and she said, "What if someone had 3 heads and they only wanted one ponytail, they would still have 3, one for each head." Huh?! I was just thinking that was a little odd and had no response. But Alexa was standing their and being the "logical" girl she is said, "Well, they could do it. They would just have to brush all the hair together and it would be one big ponytail behind one head." My only thought was, "What if we could have a normal conversation sometime while we are doing hair?" My thought now is, do they need some sort of therapy?
Hi! I have heard from a few of you that I am slacking on my blog. I promise I am going to be posting some great stuff real soon. Just hold your horses. While you wait you can Click Here and sign this petition. It is a petition I found that an anti-mormon group (and Mike Huckabee backers) put together. They want to send this petition to McCain to convince him not to pick Mitt for his VP. There is a box you can check and comments you can leave for McCain to say that you WANT Mitt as the VP. So hurry and sign it before they send it off. (If you don't want Mitt on McCain's ticket, just ignore the petition. Thanks.)
So it's not April Fool's yet but I thought I'd share this idea with y'all in case you would like to use it. One of our favorite things to do with our kids is to do April Fool's jokes on them. Not mean ones, just fun ones. I discovered that Family Fun Magazine has fun ideas. It all started when I did one for Alexa when she was probably 4 years old. We made her a fake grilled cheese sandwich. It was made by toasting two slices of pound cake and filling it with orange frosting. It really looked like the real thing. We told her to hurry and finish her dinner and we'd give her a great treat. She was so excited. After she ate I put the grilled cheese in front of her. The look on her face was priceless. She was so disappointed and said she didn't want that as a treat. We finally convinced her to eat it and she loved it. We've also done meatloaf cupcakes for dinner (also found on Family Fun website.) Anyway, back to why I am writing this. I witnessed a prank today during Sacrament Meeting. It was all I could do to not laugh. Olivia brought 3 colored pens to church today. Alexa and Maya borrowed them from her and when she wasn't looking they switched all the ink so they wouldn't match the lids and when she opened the one she wanted to color with, it was the wrong color. It took her a while to figure out what was going on. (It is Olivia, our little blonde, you know.) I asked Alexa if she saw that idea somewhere or if she just thought it up. She came up with it on her own. I thought it was clever but then again, I get all my ideas on-line.
Here she is trying to grab the camera to put in her mouth, of course.
I had to capture this moment. She drank her entire bottle with her leg in the air like that. Go figure.
I love the days when I feel like I am a great homemaker. It's a rare occasion for me so I try to find things that make me feel that way. i.e. sitting down reading stories with my kids, getting the laundry ALL done, having all the bathrooms clean all at once. Organizing a few drawers, having a meal menu planned out for the week, etc. My mom told me my sweet sister-in-law (who is about to have her 8th baby) says that she feels good when she has just gone grocery shopping and has her cupboards full of food. I have to agree with that one, it's a good feeling. I am sure I will never be caught up in my life and I will never stop feeling like I have lots of room for improvement when it comes to being a great homemaker so if I just focus on these small tasks that I have completed, one at a time then I think I will have the ability to feel better about the homemaker that I am. One of these "small" things that I think qualilfy as a great homemaker is when I can get dinner prepared WAY in advance BEFORE the after school rush hour hits. Today is that day. It is only 1:45 and dinner has been cooking for about 15 min. now. And when dinner time hits, we just set the table and eat up. No trying to help with homework, feed a baby, keep Maya busy while homework is being done, help with piano practicing and trying to get dinner done. Not today. I love it. Since dinner is done I am able to post this and thought I'd pass along this great easy recipe so all of you can have this wonderful feeling. I have to give credit to Tim because he actually made it up BUT I am the one who made it today. I also think it's worth posting since I fed it to my sister and her husband and they seemed to have liked it. Also, if you have a recipe like this that can be prepared ahead of time, pass it along.
One whole chicken (we buy the ones at Costco that are a 2 pack because they are so large and have a lot of meat on them. We have plenty of leftovers, which we like.)
2 cans chicken broth
2 cans tomatoes (diced, stewed, whatever you like.)
1 sliced onion (we also like to use red onions, but again, whatever you have in your cupboard.)
1/2 to 1 bag of baby carrots
A few stocks of celery (cut to about the size of the baby carrots.)
All you have to do is use a pot that is big enough for the chicken with the lid on. Heat it and pour some EVOO in it. Salt and Pepper the chicken and then brown it in the pot. After it's browned throw everything in the pot. (Actually, I throw the onions in first around the chicken just so they can sautee in the oil for a little while.) After everything is thrown in let it come to a boil and turn down to simmer for about 3 - 4 hours. Then serve with mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, or even baked potatoes. We do mashed so that we can put the chicken and all the yummies from the pot on top. The chicken will be so tender that it will just fall apart. No carving necessary.
Well, I have listened to my wife tell me ALL day today thatI needed to post the few pictures that I took from my trip to Ireland. Here is what I have. Sorry that I did not take more, but when you are all alone; a) you are forced to drive on the wrong/left side of the road (if you are from the UK/Europe, I guess that it is the correct side), b) you find that there are no street signs in the cities/towns & nobody knows where anything in the towns are (I stopped to ask for directions and nobody knew where anything was), c) it gets dark about the same time you get off of work. So here are a few of the pictures that I did take. If you want to know anything else about my trip, give me a call and ask, otherwise, take the trip yourself!!
Here is the hotel (the Slieve Donard for those that want to GOOGLE it and see more of it) that I spent 8 nights of my stay in Ireland. For those of you that enjoy spending time among the SNOOTY, then this is the place for you. I have never stayed in a hotel that, a) there was a dress code while in the hotel and b) you had to make reservations in the hotel restaurant. I did not particularly enjoy dining among those type of people, so I ordered room service about 50% of the time during my stay there. Even though the people and staff were a bit snooty, the place was amazingly beautiful. The grounds are spectacular and are right on the coast of the Irish Sea. I can only imagine what it looks like in the warmer months. I do not say summer months, because from what the locals told me while I was there, the summer is not much more than 4-6 weeks, and it is NEVER what we would consider summer months temperatures. WOW, that would really stink!!
The next three pictures are looking out of my hotel room window.
These next four pictures are from along the roadway driving from Newcastle (where the hotel was) to Kilkeel (where the facility was). I thought that it was really neat seeing the countryside from one side of the Irish Sea (it actually was a little inlet, or as they say in Ireland, a "wee" inlet). That is one huge house if you can see it from the distance I was. I was probably at least 10 miles from where that house sat on the hill. I talked to some of the people that I worked with, and from what they said, you people in CA would think that your houses are cheap compared to what they pay for a house in Northern Ireland. They said that a 2000 sq ft house, on 1/4 acre lot would cost upwards of £400,000 (as of 2/15, the conversion of £ to US $ was - £1 = $1.96131). So a house that cost £400,000, would be the equivalent of $784,512. Wow, now that is a chunk of change ($392.25/sq ft) to pay for a house.
This was the remains of some type of castle. I don't have any details, maybe the next time I am in the area, I will look into it.
I just thought that this was a cool old boat anchor. Again, I don't have any details, it was just on the waterfront, along the roadway on the road that I drove everyday to and from work.
Here is a church, one of many in the area. I don't realy need to tell you what religion it belonged to, I am sure that there are not many Baptist churches in Ireland. I do know one thing, there are not any LDS units in Northern Ireland. I looked and the closest one that I could find was about 50 miles away (that translated to about 1.5 hours of driving) and getting lost along the way. Refer back to my comments in the beginning about asking people for directions, this applied specifically to my experience trying to (with no luck) find a ward/branch to join for the day.
I thought that it was really interesting to find a building old enough to have a swastica on it, I am not sure if this was a remnant from wartime periods, or if it was fresh, but I would have thought that maybe someone would have painted over it. Again, I thought that it was interesting and we had a discussion about it within our family. Oh, and by the way, this was in an area where the people were selling JUNK!
This is the area equivalent of a strip mall. I thought that the picture setting was really neat with the Mourne mountains (I laugh at the term mountain here, I think that Alta Loma/Rancho/Upland are at higher elevations than these "mountains").
This is a shot from my seat on the airplane leaving out of Newark airport. You can see New York City off in the distance. I saw the Statue of Liberty and I reached in my bag for my camera to take a picture, just then the pilot banked the plane hard left and this is what I ended up with. It is still a neat picture of the city from an airplane perspective, but not the Statue of Liberty.
Here is a little bit of what I brought back from Ireland. NO, not the silly little girls, the rugby jersey's that they are all wearing. They wanted to pose and show that they had writing on the back of them. I bought all of them the same shirt so there would be NO fighting over who liked what color better. I did not do a very good job of sizing as Maya was the only one that I got pretty close on being right. I guess that they have different sizing in the UK.
Casey said that this picture makes McKenna look like a little boy! What do ya'll think?
Any more questions?
So, I've been love tagged by Jeannie. Thanks. I should be cleaning the house and getting going this morning but now I can't resist answering these questions. Since Tim has been gone for 10 days I am anxious to answer.
What is your husband’s name? Tim
How long have you been together? 12 years
How long did you date? We dated for about 2 years, with a few break ups here and there. Good thing we grew up.
Who eats more? I eat more of Tim's cooking than he eats of mine, that's for sure.
Who said “I love you” first? Ummm, I think Tim. Is that right?
Who is taller? Tim
Who is smarter? We have had many discussions about this. I think Tim is (he's the one with all them fancy degrees.) But, he says I am.
Who is more sensitive? Definitely Tim. He is such a softy. I have no sympathy for anyone (I'm told.)
Who does the laundry? Me, me, me and me. Oh, sometimes Tim takes the clothes out of the dryer for me. (Adda boy, Tim.)
Who does the dishes? Me mostly. Tim says the rule is that the chef never does the dishes but for some reason that doesn't always apply when I cook. But soon the girls will be able to do ALL of them all the time.
Who sleeps on the right? Tim
Who pays the bills? Me, only because I HAVE control issues.
Who mows the lawn? Both. While Tim was in school I did all the time. When I was pregnant he did most of the time, until I wanted to go into labor than I did it as often as possible. (Didn't work, what a waste of time that was.)
Who cooks dinner? I have been cooking for 10 days straight so I can say I do sometimes now. But really everyone knows that Tim does. I cook quantity but he cooks quality.
Who drives when you are together? Tim. Am I even aloud to drive when you are with me, Tim?
Who is more stubborn? I say Tim but I know he won't agree with that.
Who kissed whom first? Tim, definitely. He's a guy, what do you expect.
Who asked who out first? Good question. We got set up to play raquetteball but he says that wasn't really a date. After that he asked me out to lunch. So I guess he did.
Who proposed? Tim
Who has more siblings? Me. 2 brothers and 1 sister
