These Things Will Happen

This if for all the parents out there wondering if you are doing it right or wrong.

THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG IN PARENTING.  

Every parent is different - every child is different. 

I can tell you this, though.  If you are a parent these things will happen to you

YOU WILL BE NERVOUS

     If you are lucky enough to have a parent or some close friend come and stay with you for the first few days you are home with the baby enjoy it. Because when they leave and you are alone with that child you will be nervous. You will question yourself - what if he/she cries and I don't know why they're crying?

     What if I forget what time I fed the baby last? Will she starve because I couldn't keep my eyes open enough to see how much she ate?  

     The first time the baby sleeps for more than 3 hours straight you will worry that she died because you forgot to get up and feed her.  

     Relax -- all mothers and fathers go through the same fears. Trust your instincts - it's your child and you will know if something isn't right.

YOU WILL CRY

     

     Oh my yes - you will cry!  It's ok. Sometimes you won't know why you are crying. Maybe you just felt like the baby needed some company crying - after all she has been crying non-stop for the last 24 hours.  

     Maybe you are crying just because it was either that or loose your mind.  It's all right. 

YOU WILL LAUGH

     

     Oh the things that will make you laugh. Your baby's laugh (once you can get her to stop crying) will make you laugh. The faces your baby makes will make you laugh. The cute little way they mispronounce words will make you laugh. Their silly jokes will make you laugh

 YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES

     Hey it happens - don't beat yourself up over it. All parents make mistakes. They can be little ones some may be bigger but it's all right. Ask yourself - are we all still alive?  Are there any broken bones?  

AT SOME POINT YOUR CHILD WILL NOT LIKE YOU

     I know this might seem hard to believe but there will be at least one time your child will not like you. It might be at a young age when you tell them no dessert because you didn't finish your dinner. It might be as a teenager when you have to do the unthinkable and ground that perfect child for something you thought they would never ever do. But at some point your child will not like you.  

Remember, this doesn't mean they don't love you.

YOU WILL LOSE SLEEP

  

     Oh you can be sure of this one.  You start when they are babies and you lose sleep because they are up every 2-3 hours for a feeding. Then you lose sleep when you are up all night with a sick child who just keeps throwing up. Or they have a fever that just won't go down. Or they have a nightmare that keeps them awake. 

     There may be a few years when you think - oh I've got this the rest is easy.  Don't fool yourself. They turn into teenagers who go out. That's right - they have the nerve to want to go out at night with their friends. And you will wait up for them. You won't be able to sleep until you know they are back home where they are supposed to be. Or there will be away games that your child participates in.Or they will be the child who gets a job and works the late shift. 

Yep you will lose sleep.

YOU WILL HAVE FUN

     This I can guarantee - you will have fun. Every hour of sleep lost, every tear cried, every doubt you have will be forgotten in the fun. The fun of watching them learn to crawl, to walk, to run. The fun of watching your child become an individual with their own personality. 

   You will have fun playing with them. and I encourage you to play with them.  Have a tea party, play catch, color in books, turn a nature walk into a scavenger hunt, camp out in the living room.

Most importantly-  LOVE YOUR CHILD - ACCEPT THEIR UNIQUENESS - ENJOY EVERY MINUTE

Facebook Friends

I love Facebook. It has let me catch up with old friends from high school and family members.

I love the fact that my Facebook friends know me well enough to post things on my timeline when they see something that makes them think of me or even send me a private message if they see something. Most of my friends know I'm a big coffee drinker and I'm a HUGE lover of anything Christmas. So when I get those messages they make me smile.

There are some who know me even better and will post something that makes me spit my coffee out when I start laughing.  That's as good as texts I share with some of those same people. 

I know someone was thinking of me and cared enough to send me a message or post on my wall. That's a good feeling.  Likewise, I tend to do the same thing. I see something and share it to someone's wall just because it made me think of them.  

The other day I was scrolling through my Facebook feed catching up on my friends.  It occurred to me that I have some people on here that I'm not real sure who they are.  

You are probably thinking, "why are they your friends on Facebook if you don't know them?"  Well, I can explain that. 

I get friend requests. I don't accept all of them, especially if I don't know the person. And sometimes, I just don't want to be involved in the drama that I know they will bring with them if I accept their request. But sometimes I think, 'hmmm they sound familiar'. So I'll go look at their page, see who they are, who their friends are, etc.

Lots of times it's friends of my daughters' who want to be my Facebook friend.  Of course I'm going to accept those because I know it means that I'm going to get to see more pictures of my away-from-me family.  Never want to miss that chance.  Besides, I've met them often enough on visits that I think of them as friends anyway. 

Sometimes it's my daughters' friends from high school. Of course, I accept those. I know these people and I tend to have more interaction with them on Facebook than my daughters do in some instances. That's fine too. 

Sometimes the name just sounds familiar and I accept the friend request because, quite frankly, it's nice to hear from people from 'back home'.  Then as time goes on you realize - oh hey, that's not who I thought it was. Then I think maybe I'll just delete them. I don't really know who they are.  

BUT -- by this time I have been reading their posts and saying prayers for requests they have had. I know what's going on in their lives, sometimes more than I need to know. And I think perhaps I should keep them as my friend because it's pretty obvious they need some prayers. 

So for now I'll keep my Facebook friends I have. I enjoy reading all the posts even if I don't always comment on them.  I like seeing how the kids who grew up in my house are now, for the most part, responsible adults with children of their own.  

It's nice to know that when I get a Facebook request someone thought enough of me, or perhaps one of my daughters or grandchildren, to want me to be a part of their lives.  

How about you? Do you have friends on Facebook that you sometimes wonder why you have them as friends?  

What's For Dessert?

Do you ever hear, 'What's for dessert?' I don't know about you but dessert is not something that I grew up with.  Now don't get me wrong - we had cakes and cookies and even pies and puddings but we never actually had dessert with our meals.  Well, sometimes we did have Jello. They were more around to snack on.  One of my dad's favorite things to snack on was yellow cake straight from the oven with butter on it.  If you haven't tried it you should.

So recently our Lily-girl was baptized!  Very happy occasion for sure. However, circumstances did not allow us to have a 'special' meal for her then.  She asked to be allowed to choose our theme for New Food Night.  Can you guess what her theme was?  DESSERT NIGHT --- she has been trying to get us to do this for quite some time.

Grampa made a compromise. He would make a soup and then everyone else could bring a dessert.  Pretty good compromise.  So here you have our Dessert Night Themed Dinner,

As promised, Gary made a soup.

He went with Taco Soup.  Now this may not be new to you all but it's the first time it has ever been made at our house.  We really like it and I can see that we will be making this again.  It makes a lot so we will have to just share with a neighbor or friend.

NOW FOR THE DESSERTS

I made some Iced Pumpkin Cookies.

These things are addictive!  Just a soft pumpkin flavored cookie iced.  Yummers. I will make these again and perhaps add some cinnamon chips to them.

Miss Annette made Lemon Chantilly Crean

Now how good do these look?  Lemon pound cake, with cool whip flavored with some lemon zest and topped with raspberries and blueberries dusted with sugar.  OH! MY! GOSH!!  This is a perfect light dessert.

Lastly, we have Frozen Hot Chocolate.

This was K.C.'s contribution.  Some chocolate chips melted with milk, hot chocolate mix and ice all blended together!  What a great summer time treat.

Here's a picture of my dessert plate.

Yes, I also had a cup of coffee as I knew I would be eating a cookie (or two or three).  LOL

Here's a couple of other photos from Dessert Night.

The kids had bought some build-a-straw kits and Remington was trying his out at dinner.

So tell me, is dessert something you always have with your evening meal or is it a special occasion thing?  Or, like me, do you just have it around to snack on?

Our Munchies

Have you been concerned about how we are faring on New Food Night?  I'm kinda late on posting. Don't worry, though -- we didn't go hungry.  LOL  That's the last thing that is going to happen at our house.  

Last week we had decided that we were going to have an Appetizer Night.  This is always one of my favorites when we have it at home.  I love appetizers, don't you? 

Look!!  We have our sign on. That means it's time to chow down!  

Since we have a new house every gathering is considered trials on how we will work out Thanksgiving. We are used to having all the food on either the table or side tables in the dining room. Our current dining room size does not permit that so we are doing trial runs on how to set up the kitchen island and proceed to the dining room.  

Here we are having a trial run on filling our plates. 

Now, here is the food we enjoyed.

K.C. made some Jalapeno Poppers. 

These were really good. Jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped up in a crescent roll. What's not to like about this?

Gary made his favorite -- Fried Ravioli with sauce for dipping. 

Now he did not make his own ravioli he used frozen. He then proceeded, with the help of his able assistant Lily, to bread the ravioli and deep fry it.  What isn't good deep-fried? 

I made Spinach Cream Cheese Swirls.  Cream Cheese, Monterrey Jack Cheese, Garlic powder and frozen spinach. Spread this on puff pastry, roll up, slice,  and bake.  Man was this good!

Miss Annette made Pizza Strips.

These were really good.  I don't remember what she called them but I said Pizza Strips because they are cut in strips.  

So there you have it our Appetizer, 'Munchies' Night.  Now I'll confess that I wasn't sure how filling our Appetizer night would be so I doubled my recipe. Now look through our pictures and most everything had a form of bread with it (Jalapeno Poppers, Spinach Cheese Swirls, Pizza) and bread is very filling.  Don't worry, I didn't let those Spinach Cheese Swirls go to waste.  I froze them!  So when I need a little 'munchie' I can just pull 2-3 out of the freezer and pop them in the microwave!  Win Win for me. 

So, tell me, what is your favorite appetizer?  

Road Trip Day

I know I haven't posted anything for a while but work has been busy busy busy.  I didn't want you to forget about me so thought I would post something.

Well as I said it's been super busy at work. It's the start of the semester which always means we are busier than usual but this semester it started earlier and just kept on. UGGGGG - some of the calls I have gotten.

I'm sorry but there are only so many ways I can say 'you must choose a payment option plan within one hour of enrolling in a class or you will be dropped for non-payment'.  Yes, I hear  you tell me that you keep enrolling and for some reason you keep being dropped from your class. I know for a fact that you have to mark that you have read that if you do not choose a payment plan within the hour you will be dropped from your class.  You have to mark that page as I AGREE before you can continue on with the enrollment process.  If you have enrolled in the same class five times and have been dropped five times you have a problem.  Calling me isn't going to change anything. You still have to choose a payment plan to stay enrolled. Telling me you have just enrolled for the class for the sixth time isn't going to keep you in the class. Again, you must choose a payment plan.  Telling me you have no money to pay for anything isn't going to help you either.  I'm not going to pay for your class.

Likewise, telling me you only today filled out your FASFA for financial aid isn't going to help you. I'm not saying you are not going to get financial aid, I'm just telling you that at this time we do not recognize that you have any financial aid so you must choose a plan and make a payment to stay enrolled in the class.

Can you tell it's been a rough month?  Well, Gary started back to work as well having had June and July off. His work week this past week has not been the best.  So we decided to take a little road trip today.  We do this sometimes now that he has weekends off. We will soon be married 22 years and this past year is the first time we have been able to have weekends off without re-arranging work schedules. We are sure enjoying it.

No major plan for our trip. We decided to check out Perry, OK. A small town a little over an hour away. We enjoyed the scenery on the way over and on the way back. Also scored a win when we stopped at a little consignment antique store in Perry.

I have some carnival glass. One of my pieces is a butter dish. Now the lid to the butter dish got broken and thrown away.  Could have been broken from to many moves or could have been broken by a child who is known to break many things.  (Said child has broken the lid to my carnival glass candy dish and taped it together on the inside with Scotch tape thinking I would never know.)  The particular shop we stopped at today happened to have the exact same carnival glass butter dish with an intact lid but broken bottom piece.  Score for me even more when the item was half price.

Now on our road trips we usually take little two lane roads. It's always amazing to see some of the most beautiful hug homes in the middle of nowhere.  Our trip today showed us a few things that make you wonder.

     1)  We were driving through a small small town - if you are from my hometown think New Hampton or Mount Moriah - that a sign posted stating; Sewage system monitored by surveillance cameras.  You have to wonder just what goes on around their sewage system.

     2) Another small town that likes for their public offices to really help out the town people all they can. Their tag agency also offered ear piercing.  How convenient.

     3) Now I have driven many many miles over many many different roads. There are areas in the country where it is not uncommon to see a sign saying WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS.  This is typically to inform you that there may be rocks falling down the side and could roll in front of your car or perhaps even hit your car. The sign we saw today said WATCH FOR FALLEN ROCKS.  I guess the rocks in this area make sure there are no cars around before they roll down the hillside. Very convenient.



   

Comfort with Kraft

My regular readers know that this is New Food Night week.

This post is a hard one to write. For the past 3 years or so we have been doing new food night. Our little group consists of Miss Annette, Mr. Rick, K.C., Michael, Remington, Lily, Gary and myself with occasional guests. We enjoy the time we spend together and look forward to the company and fellowship as much as we do trying out new foods.

Yesterday morning we received a call that left us all in shock and grief. Our good friend Mr. Rick had passed away. We gathered at our usual time last night for our new food night with heavy hearts knowing that we would have an empty chair at our table and that it would remain empty.

We had decided to do a Kraft night. Just this past Saturday Rick had been at our house hooking up our ice maker. He sat and drank a cup of coffee and we visited while watching the rain. We discussed the new food night coming up and he said he was going to be making some potatoes. So in memory of Rick, Gary made a dish of cheesy Krafty potatoes.

Rick always used hash brown potatoes and added cheese or cream of chicken soup and always used a 'just a dash of cayene pepper'. The Kraft portion was of course the cheese. Rick had talked about adding a package of cream cheese to his dish this week but Gary didn't use it.

For his dish Gary made meatloaf.

This wasn't your typical meatloaf though. He used hamburger, a package of Kraft stuffing mix, and Kraft Bar-B-Q sauce.  It was different - not bad but we probably won't use the recipe again. The Bar-B-Q flavor was good.

Miss Annette made macaroni and cheese.

She used the Kraft mac and cheese mix with the package of creamy cheese. She added some ham chunks and some peas to the mixture and topped it with more cheese.  Good stuff

I opted to make an easy Shepherd's Pie.  Yes, I know I have made this before but this was a new recipe.

For the meat mixture I used hamburger, some Heinz gravy mix and frozen corn. The recipe called for mixed veggies but I'm not real fond of mixed veggies so chose to only use corn.  The top was mashed potatoes with cream cheese and cheddar cheese - put on top of meat mixture and top with more cheddar cheese.

Are you noticing a theme of cheese here? I tend to think of cheese when I think Kraft.

Here's what the plate of food looked like.

Lots of comfort food here and we were in need of comfort.

We have to have dessert as well.  K.C. provided that with Pineapple Cheesecake.

What a great light summer dessert.  I forgot to get a picture of the slice on my plate but it had angel food cake cubed up. You made a layer of cake then topped with pineapple cream cheese mix and then another layer of cake then another layer of cheesecake mixture.

So we had our new food night, we reminisced about our friend, we tried not to acknowledge the empty chair at our table. We felt the presence of the empty chair and while we are still trying to accept the fact that one of ours is gone we rejoice that he is singing with His Savior in Heaven.

Moving Adventures

Gary and I bought a house.  We are so excited!

We had never gone through the process of looking for a house, making an offer, and then paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!  And then more paperwork.

Seriously though - it wasn't to bad and the timing was right for us. We are so excited and cannot wait to get everything unpacked and in place. But here is some of what we have experienced in our process.

We started looking at houses in January. We have been renting since moving to Tulsa almost 13 years ago and decided the time was right we wanted to own our own place. So we looked and looked and looked. We came across this house in March while attending an open house and thought it fit our requirements:  large kitchen, separate dining, large living.  BUT - we weren't ready at that time.

While the house seemed just what we wanted we did not act. Believing that if it was meant to be then when we were ready it would be available.  The house was taken off the market after we looked at it as an offer was made. The house was put back on the market. The price was reduced.

We took a second look at the house. The pink tiled bathroom we first saw had been reglazed!  WOW what a difference that made.  We made an offer, counter offer, etc.  Accepted and started the loan process!

Then we started packing. I had a lot of stuff in my attic.  We also decided to take our annual vacation to Corpus Christie. So we had a month to get everything done. We accomplished it. We had our vacation - we took our trips - we packed - we moved - we shopped for furniture.

Gary's job means that he has the months of June and July off (with pay) so that was a big plus.

We signed our papers and became home owners!  Happy happy dance for us.

Then Gary went and picked the grand kids up for help. They spent a week with us.

The first item I had them working on was washing the inside of my cabinets.

Looks like Grampa hadn't taken a ladder over yet. Way to improvise.

We had a great friend who helped us change out some light fixtures. Remington made good use of the styrofoam packing.

Hoover boards!

Every day they helped Grampa move the boxes that we had been packing. They would take 2-3 van loads over every day. Did I mention that we happened to choose the hottest week of the year to move! Of course we did.  The kids were troopers and by the move in date almost every box that was packed was already sitting in our new garage waiting to be unpacked! We had another friend who brought his pickup over and moved 3 truckloads of boxes in it throughout the week.

We had rented a U-Haul and picked it up at 7:00 am.  Friends came to help and by 11:00 am all our furniture was over at the new house and the rental truck had been returned!  We have some wonderful friends and family.  Now I'm not ready to show the inside of the house yet as we are still unpacking and organizing but here's some pics from our move.

The kids were impressed with the big truck.  Wanted to get a 'selfie' of us together.  However, I was not able to climb up there, although I did try.  By the end of the week I felt like I was ready for all the surgeries my doctors are recommending.  I could barely walk!

We comprised on this selfie:

The new house has lots of gardens! They need lots of work at this point!  The kids and I were sitting outside on the patio one evening and they wanted to 'explore the Jungle Garden'. The back yard garden is full of tall tall plants and bushes. So we went exploring.  We found treasure!

Remington came across a wrought iron bench end.  I did some searching and found the other end! We are way excited about this and plan on restoring it and adding planks so we have a bench.  I will post pics of all that later along with other 'treasures' that were found.

In the meantime, Gary and I will be busy unpacking and storing, and unpacking and unpacking.