What’s for dinner????

 

 

Umm, well, I’m hoping it’s not salmonella….

While I love to bake, I’m not really a fan of cooking.  I dread thinking about what to make for dinner.  Luckily for me, my husband loves to cook dinner and gladly takes over the chore if he’s home to do it.  He cooks.  I clean.  We’re both happy.

We live in Nebraska.  We eat meat with most of our meals.  I think it’s a requirement to be a resident here.  (That and love of the Huskers.  No worry.  That blog will be coming.  It’s almost football season.)  Unfortunately, I always forget to pull out the meat early enough for it to thaw in the refrigerator.  I have become a master of thawing meat quickly in hot water.  My husband has another….technique.

I frequently come home to find this.

To the untrained eye, this might look like a forgotten towel on the front porch, but you’d be wrong.

Beef….it’s what’s for dinner.  And for dessert, we might be visiting the local ER….

 

Free….not always a good thing

My husband and I play on a c0-rec softball league.  I know, with the olympics going on, you are probably envisioning me as this stellar, super-human athlete.  Well, I hate to burst your daydream, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I like getting out, playing, and being on a team with friends.  It’s fun to have my own activity to go to instead of always being the shuttle driver, but I worry that I’m more of a road block to my team than a help.  I’ve had a few hits at bat and scored once, but glory on the diamond has not been mine.  Every time the ball is hit when I’m in the outfield, I’m quietly chanting…”not towards me, not towards me.”

On a completely different note, I love free things.  I will admit that I have stopped my car to pick up an unwanted item that was discarded on the side of the road.  Hey, it was a free little tykes toy chest.  You would have stopped too.

Back to softball…

After a recent game, on our way out of the ball fields, my son stops and picks up something off of the ground.  He hoists it in the air and proudly exclaims, “HEY, FREE CHAPSTICK!”

Even I know there is a limit to when free is a good thing!

15 years and still enjoying the ride

WARNING – This blog is sappy and lovely dovey…. you have been warned.

Yesterday my darling husband and I celebrated 15 years of marriage.  I know, you’re thinking, how can that be?  They are too young.  Did they get married at 12???  Thank you…you’re too kind…no, not 12, but close.

Peter and I met when we were 18 and 20.  I didn’t date a whole bunch of people before I met Peter because I didn’t want to.  I would meet people and think they were nice, we would talk a little, and then I would get bored or annoyed by them and that was it.  When I met Peter, it all felt different.  I would think about him all the time.  I couldn’t wait to talk to him or see him.  We met in the days prior to cell phones and email and spent the first two years we dated living 3 hours apart.  I lived for weekend trips to one of our campuses and holiday and summer breaks.  We wrote long, sappy letters to each other and racked up horrible long distance bills.

I knew Peter was the one for me because the time I had with him was never enough.  The more time we had together, the more I wanted.  I was able to let him behind my walls.  He became my rock, my everything.  Everyday, every moment was an adventure, making me want more.  Every sunrise was prettier and every moment was more meaningful.

Now, of course, we have had our share of challenges and trials, but, when those times come, I know that I can get through anything because of the man I have beside me.  The trying times have made us stronger and have made me realize that I wouldn’t want to go through this life with anyone else.

Plus it helps to always have a lot fun along the way.

 

Not as sneaky as she thinks…

 

My daughter’s current career aspiration is to be a police officer.  That’s good, because she would make a terrible criminal.

Last night we had grilled chicken, rice, and veggies.  My family usually does the eat, drop, and run…scarf down the food, drop their plates in the sink, and run to their activities, while I’m left to clean up the mess left behind.  As I was cleaning off the table, I noticed this napkin.

My first thought was, “Not only am I supposed to clean up their droppings, but I guess I get to throw away their trash too.”

As I pulled out the napkin, I found it to be rather heavy for just being a dirty napkin.

Then I opened it.

First rule of hiding the food you don’t want to eat is getting rid of the evidence!

 

Slip Sliding Away

Aaahhh summertime.  The endless days of fun and play.  Bike rides, swing sets, camping, baseball, swimming, you name it.  All those fun outside activities you daydream about during the school year.

But as the heat wave continues, the day dreams fade and I’m racking my brain to think of things to do indoors, away from the 100+ weather.  Naps anyone?  My kids, on the other hand, were thinking….water, plastic and momentum.

Yesterday they broke out the old superman slip and slide.  I was never a fan.  I’m a neat freak and scared of getting hurt.  These two knuckleheads aren’t phased at all about running full speed towards a deathly slippery device and throwing themselves on it while collecting bruises, grass, and mud in various places.  While I’m not going to participate in the drippy mess, I’m more than happy to document it.

This is what pure joy looks like….

He’s Tebowing

Superstar!

When I watch them experience this and see these faces, it makes me both happy and sad.  I’m so happy that I have been able to give my children this innocence, this happy childhood, these lifetime memories.  It makes me a little sad, because I know there are children out there not being provided this same start in life.  It makes we want to hug them a little more, a little harder….and then spray them with a hose!

Ha!

So one of my pet peeves is text lingo.  I understand the original purpose, I do, but our cell phone plans are no longer stuck in the twitter world of limited characters.  We have advanced past T9.  We have full keyboards and talk to text.  We can type to our hearts’ content.  I know the original intention was to save time, but new shorthand pops up everyday.  How can stay on top of all that?

Anytime I get lingo that I can’t decode, it takes me more time to figure it out.  I either have to open a new window and search what TKMOINT means or I send a message back to the sender asking them to translate for me, thereby wasting more time that if the original message had just been typed out in the first place.

I know it’s important to lingo so you can know what your kids are saying (or plotting) behind your back and since I work with teenagers and will have teenagers in a few short years, I will continue to try to keep up, but I’m not going to ever like it!

Here are two reasons for my dislike…

1.  It looks and feels lazy.  You are already texting me.  You don’t have to initiate a phone call, suffer through my small talk, get stuck listening to a long, drawn out story about something in my life that you don’t care about anyway, and now you can’t write me a sentence?

2.  It’s so over used.  I had one friend who would end every text with LOL.  Aghhh!   You are not laughing out loud.  You can’t possibly be.  “What’s Up” is not that funny….ever.

Having said all of that, I have found one situation where even I, a text shorthand hater, would actually to use one of those acronyms…

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….still funny every time I read it!

 

Welcome to Hell…I hope you brought sunscreen

Welcome to day number 857 of the heat wave of 2012.

What in the world is going on with the thermostat of this country?  I mean look at the forecast for the upcoming week.

Now I don’t want to get to deep and spiritual on anyone, but this endless heat wave, the nation wide drought, and the state to state out of control wildfires make me think that someone, hint, hint, the man upstairs, is trying to send us a message.  I wish I could decode it already, because this is unbearable.

Now, I am your typical sun worshipper.  As a teenager, I would slather myself with vegetable oil, Crisco to be exact.  I figured, if it could fry chicken, it could fry me!  Bad logic.  My oil drenched, dripping body ruined the wood finish on my parents deck.  If the sun was out, no matter the temperature, it was tanning time in my world.  More bad logic.  My parents declared it needed to be at least 60 degrees before I could go out.  Boo!

Despite all the warnings from the media and my Dermatologist cousin about the ‘dangers’ from the sun, I’m still out there every summer getting my bronze on.  After all, Vitamin D comes from the sun and Vitamin D is necessary to our survival, therefore tanning is necessary for survival…right?  (Hey, I took philosophy in college, it could be correct.)

But as the old saying goes, you can have too much of a good thing.  I was still getting more sun than I should and too many sun burns.  In my head, I knew that my sun time is not healthy and that I should curtail it, but the allure of that ‘healthy tanned’ look continued to win out.   I would love to say that reason and knowledge put me over the edge, but it was pure vanity.  Recently, I noticed discolored spots on my skin.  Sun damage in the flesh!

So I did what any reasonable and fashion conscious gal would do.  I went out and bought this cute hat!

You didn’t think I was really going to quit going outside, did you?  I’m still out, enjoying the heat when I can, but now, I’ve got my sunscreen on and this diva creating number to keep me safe!

Tax Season

Lazy Summer Sundays….Doesn’t that sound nice?  Well I tried my hand at having one yesterday.

After sleeping in.  (Don’t be jealous.  Sleeping in is 7 am for me.)   I had coffee on the porch with my book for an hour, then came in to watch CBS Sunday Morning.  I love that show.  Once the family was up, we had breakfast and headed off to the farmer’s market.

After surviving the heat of the market, I dropped the family off and went out for a little solo shopping.  Now, I haven’t been out just window shopping for myself in a while.  At the first store, found a skirt I’ve been looking for…score!  Then I went to the mecca of my happiness…the bookstore.  I wandered the aisles, back and forth, lazily looking for nothing.  And still I found something I couldn’t live without.  What do you think?

Upon arriving home, I decided it was high time for a long, pampering bath.  I was sitting in my bubbly bliss, hair coated in conditioner, face covered in an apricot scrub, slathering homemade ‘satin hands’ on my hopelessly dry feet when my daughter barges  into the bathroom, takes one look at me, and says…

“What are you doing???”

My reply….”Our taxes.”

I think I may have pressed my luck on the me time for the day!

Ummmm, yeah

Sometimes I have to just shake my head.

My kiddos had their finals last night for our neighborhood swimming pool‘s swim team.  As I’ve mentioned before, when the kids swim, they all write and draw over themselves as motivation.  My son, apparently, decided that this was motivational.

I thought it was something like angry racing stripes.  He says it’s a unibrow.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know why either.

Here’s the next conversation that ensued.

Me – “I hope it’s wasn’t a permanent marker.”

Trystan – “No mom.  It was a Sharpie!”

Me – (Blank stare…..)

The upside to unibrow is….. IT WORKED!!

The Westridge Waterstorm won their Finals!  Congrats to all the kids, coaches, and team organizers!

The 90s called….

And they are really pissed at me that I’ve been hoarding all the scrunchies!

In the never-ending world of the Soby House remodeling series, we have now moved on to the master bathroom.  The original intention was to just change out the vanity.

Beauty isn’t it!  Wonder why we want to change it!

Well, once we ripped out the vanity, a leak was found in the wall, so can you guess what happened next?  Yes, that’s right, I lost all the existing tiles and tore yet another room down to the studs.

At least we saved the toilet, but I don’t think I’m going to use it yet…

Two hard weeks of work yet again from my father-in-law and today he’s putting on the finishing touches.

It’s not quite done, but it’s far enough along that I was able to load up the new drawers with all my “stuff.”  As I was going through my old make-up and sample size beauty products, I came across the mother load…

Apparently I am the keeper of all the scrunchies from the 90s!  I mean look at these things.  I can not even remember the last time I actually wore one of these, but I owe more scrunchies than hair follicles.  There was even two packages of unopened scrunchies in there courtesy of my mom and Christmas.  In mom’s world, scrunchies are always a good stocking stuffer.

So I did what any reasonable lady would do…I gave them a drawer!  How could I part with all this awesomeness and, anyway, they might come back into style again.  It could happen.