Quick Quotes

We went to Fuel Pizza for lunch and L and I had the following conversation...

Me: What kind of pizza do you want?

L: I want mushroom! Where's the mushroom?

Me: Really? Mushroom? It's right there. You want that?

L: Yes! Yes! Yes!

Me: Ok....

A little later....

Me: L! Why are you picking the mushrooms off your pizza?!?

L: I don't like mushrooms.

Me: But you ordered the mushroom pizza!!

L: (pause) I don't like mushrooms on my mushroom pizza.

Nothing slows you down like being sick

Monday was a little less crazy than predicted. Tuesday dawned with only one thing on the calendar - a meeting with the insurance adjuster at the "Drive-In Claims" office. Thankfully, he works with the dealership where I'd like to get the cat fixed and they'll take care of that together. If they ever get hold of the guy who hit us, that is.

After the insurance thing, L and I made a major grocery run and headed home. But the small symptoms I had been trying to ignore for the past couple of days came rushing in full force and I had to admit that I had a sinus infection.

By mid-afternoon, I was on-line looking for a doctor.

I love my insurance company. They have a really nice search engine for local doctors online. I also discovered that the closest office to our zip code is an express walk-in office, which was perfect for getting drugs for this stupid sinus infection. On the way there, I passed two other urgent care/express offices with big signs. The one I was headed to was small, hidden in a little office complex, and was brand-new. So there was no one else waiting. Can you imagine? I just walked right in, got the prescriptions that I needed, got over to Target to get the prescriptions filled, and was home in just over an hour. Not too shabby.

I am determined to kick this infection out of the house quickly. How am I planning to do that? Rest! I have spent the entire day in bed. K did her school, L has been playing, they've watched a movie, gotten their own lunch, and played legos. K even made chai tea for both of them. There have been no arguments, no yelling, and no screaming. They made me cards and L declared herself my servant and brought me a glass of ice water. They seemed to need a quiet rest day as much as I did. L has been a bundle of frenetic energy and K has just been mean for the past several days and I think they were just wound up a little too tightly.

While it's been nice, in a few minutes I'm going to get up, take a hot shower (hey, doctor's orders), get dressed in nice clothes, and join the land of the living for the evening. Our HOA has it's first meeting tonight and I promised to attend. Tomorrow it's back to laundry, housecleaning, and Bible Study where it's the last lesson in our current study. Can't miss that.

You just can't avoid it

No matter what I say or how hard I work to avoid it, the busyness of the holiday season creeps in until you're drowning in a full calendar without any warning.

I hate full calendars as a general rule. I prefer to keep it down to just a few scheduled things per week and have plenty of time open for last minute stuff. I do love to go and do and hang out with friends and I've found that having a busy calendar makes it so much harder because you've always got scheduling conflicts. As a result, I say no to a lot of activities and commitments and we're all much happier.

And then comes November.

And then December.

I've been trying to figure out when we can make a trip to Texas to visit the family and I'm having trouble finding a significant stretch of open days where we're not committed to 1001 different things. Mr. at Home is teaching, basketball is starting, we have concert tickets, K has a birthday party, there's a field trip, and a million Christmas parties for friends and groups of which we're a part. We don't have to do it all and we *won't* be doing it all, but there are enough "we really can't miss" events that it's overwhelming just looking at it.

Last week was the first hugely over-scheduled week (the girls were up late every. single. night.) and I survived because I kept telling myself it was just one week and the next one was much more quiet. Unfortunately, life intervenes. First thing in the morning, we'll be taking our car to the dealership because we got rear-ended on the way to church Sunday morning and by dinnertime, the check engine light had come on. After that, I have to make a run to the store to buy some chocolate for a friend whose son is having surgery in the afternoon. I have sat in that hospital waiting room myself while my own child has been the one with her life held in the surgeon's hands. I have to a least stop by for a few minutes.

Then L has dance and it's parent observation week, so I will be staying and cheering her on. We'll swing back by the house to pick up the rest of the family, drop Mr. at Home off at his uptown office, and we'll go commandeer a table the library so K can finish her schoolwork. At 3:30, we'll go to the hospital to deliver the chocolate, then it's back to pick up Mr. at Home, do a quick dinner, and he has to go back out to BSF while the girls and I collapse on the loft floor to watch a movie and unwind.

Thankfully, the rest of the week is still empty, but I have a feeling it won't stay that way.

A few things we're enjoying right now

Since there's not much/too much going on for me to put together an entire coherent post on one thing, I'm bringing a list today. So here are some short nuggets of goodness that are a big hit around here right now.

1. General Foods International Coffee, Sugar Free Chai Latte mix - My mom said we had to try it and after a bit of searching, we found it, brought it home, and discovered that it was the "sugar free" variety. I am not a big fan of sugar free as it generally means they used an artificial something or other that has an aftertaste. It also uses instant tea mix, which was a major strike against it. But we decided to try it anyway and this stuff is GOOD. The girls and I are loving it.

2. Kung Fu Panda - Funny, funny movie. Very cute, good message - can it get any better?

3. Rain - It hasn't rained around here in ages and it's been falling for the past two days. Yea!!

4. Golden Oreos - I know, don't mess with a classic like Oreos. It's a sacrilege. BUT. The folks at Oreo took their awesomeness to the vanilla side with amazing results. These things are delicious! And they go great with #1.

5. Sugarhouse Ink - I have officially ordered my Christmas cards. Ok, I have begun the ordering process. I sent in my order and my pictures and the lovely woman who runs the company is going to make my photos look awesome, adjust the card layout so that it will accomodate three photos instead of just the one it was designed for, redo the colors used in the design so that they match the colors in my photos, *and* send me a proof to make sure I like it before I pay and they print. All this without charging me extra. Talk about service.

6. Natasha Bedingfield and Taylor Swift - One day I was browsing around YouTube and found the video of Taylor Swift's "Love Story". The girls came up and demanded that I keep looking for videos of "that girl". I finally just bought them Taylor's first album and "Love Story" and put it on my iPod along with a couple of Natasha's songs ("Unwritten" and "Pocketful of Sunshine"). We've been listening to/singing along with them in the car often and the girls love them. Two days ago, "Love Story" came over the radio and Mr. at Home was amazed that L knew every word to a song he'd never heard.

7. Southern Christmas Show - Every year this enormous craft show happens and we try to make a trip over there to wander among the booths and look at the amazing stuff people make. We pick up a fruit cake and a Christmas gift or two, but mostly the girls and I just walk and take it all in. We're going this afternoon and K is so excited. This is the first year I won't have a stroller, so we'll just have to see how Miss L does because it's a whole lot of walking and a whole lot of "no, I won't buy you that." But there are beautiful displays and a collection of tiny dollhouses to look at, so it ought to be okay. Oh, I just heard the unmistakeable clink of money being taken out of the girls' allowance jars so it looks like they're planning to spend it today. Better theirs than mine!

If you give a mom some new recipes...

If you give a mom some new recipes, she'll pull out the little binder that's supposed to hold her recipe collection. She'll sigh yet again over all the papers stuffed between those covers in any old way. She'll think of all those time-consuming failed attempts at organizing those papers. Then she'll remember this post over at Rocks in My Dryer and she'll be inspired. She'll tweak the idea just a bit, pull out her scrapbooking supplies, and this is what she'll create.


Isn't it beautiful? It's a binder that I made a cover and spine for out of all those papers and doodads I have left from my scrapbooking days. Inside there are 100 page protectors. I pulled out all those recipes I've clipped, copied, printed, and begged from friends and family over the years. I didn't bother retyping or copying them all onto full-sized sheets of paper. I organized them into categories and if they were on small papers, I simply taped them to bigger sheets and put them all into the notebook in sections. Then I made colorful title pages for each section out of heavy cardstock so that it's easier to see those when I'm looking for a particular recipe. The whole process took a couple of hours and its *done*. No longer will I have to dig through an unorganized file to find my great-grandmother's recipe for homemade ice cream or worry about losing the yellow sheet where my mom wrote out the recipe for her italian cream cake. It's all organized and easy to find and use and I am one happy, happy cook.

My new recipe

Tonight we're having a recipe swap for the ladies of our Sunday Bible Study class. Almost 20 of us signed up to bring our favorite dishes to make the perfect holiday meal. When the sign-up paper finally made it around to me, there were a ton of ladies already signed up for dessert and appetizers. There were several main dishes and salads already spoken for, but there were plenty of spaces left for side dishes. It looked like I was bringing a side dish. The only problem is that I didn't have an obvious go-to recipe for a side dish and I had to write down what I was bringing on the sign-up sheet. Oh, what to do?!? So I wrote down "sweet potatoes" and hoped that I'd be able to find something fabulous between then and the party.

A couple of days ago, I actually started looking. Did you know there are all kinds of things you can do with the humble sweet potato? From soups to desserts, it's pretty overwhelming. A sweet friend of mine, Angie, said her mom liked a Paula Deen recipe, so I searched and added that one to my "favorites" stash. Then the vote went to the family.

Orange or apricot?

Sliced or mashed?

Marshmallows or not?

Unfortunately, none of my "favorites" fit the winners of the voting. So after some thought that included the fact that I really didn't want to do any more searching, I decided to...ahem...*tweak* one of the recipes I already had. So Paula Deen and I have "collaborated" and come up with an AWE. SOME. recipe I call

Orange Sweet Potato Bake
By Paula Deen and Valerie Stranathan

3 cups cooked, peeled and mashed sweet potatoes (about 2 large sweet potatoes)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup orange marmalade
1/3 cup melted butter
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. ginger
¼ cup heavy cream or half and half

Topping:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup walnuts or pecans
1/3 cup all purpose flour
3 T. melted butter

Mix all ingredients for bake except the cream. Beat at medium speed. Then add cream and mix well. Pour into a 2 quart greased dish.

For the topping mix all ingredients together with a fork and sprinkle over the top of casserole.

Bake for 25-30 minutes in a 325 degree oven.

A recipe for a neighborhood

Ingredients:

1 copper fire bowl
1 bundle of wood
1 fire starter block
1 lighter
1 bag of marshmallows
5 roasting sticks
6 folding camp chairs
16 flyers

Post flyers on the doors of each occupied home in the neighborhood and drop a couple at the sales office. Take all other ingredients to the cul-de-sac and set them up appropriately. Once darkness falls, build a fire in the fire bowl. Wait a few minutes and watch as shadowy figures come out of the dark carrying their own chairs and drinks. Sit around the fire with your neighbors and get to know each other as you scoot closer and closer to the fire because it's getting colder. Makes one close-knit neighborhood.