At the new location even! Now instead of weird long urls anyone can go to my main website and immediately get my blog which will include photos and new stuff.
It will take me a while to catch up with everything that has been happening with me in the last several months, but the quick highlights include: rearranging the house, having my mother move in with us, working for the U.S. Census Bureau for a couple of months, revamping the garden with my mother, and grounding the children for their inappropriate use of texting on their cellphones.
Post date: March 30, 2009
While problem solving earlier in the month for Treanna we found out that since she lost her little CD player (or had it taken) she has had a more difficult time getting to sleep. So we let her borrow a boombox that was sitting doing nothing. She started sleeping a bit better almost immediately. Somehow, I am still not sure exactly how, Alaric conned her into letting him borrow the boombox and turning it up loud enough they could both hear it. Thus 2 children who start sleeping better at night.
Now that we are seriously evaluating everything Devin and I realized we had a nice little stereo system in our room that was literally a dust catcher. We just hardly ever turned it on. With the rearrangements we have a far easier time getting access to music we want than the children do. So we offered it to Treanna. So she redid her bedside table to make room for this and I helped her move it into her room.
Now so far today, the first day of spring break I have hardly seen my children. For the most part they have been going back into their rooms to do things in their. For the last hour the only thing I have heard at all from the children is the muted echoes of their stereos through closed doors. Quiet, solitude and possibly a glimpse of the future.
Post date: March 26, 2009
I have been a reader of Apartment Therapy for a few years now. I came really close to participating in the Spring Cure last year but could not decide what to do so I skipped it. Well this year because of a variety of circumstances I am going to participate. Mainly because if I don’t take some before and after pictures I might forget what all things were.
In the next 2 months (hopefully less) we are going to be drastically rearranging our entire house. The back room/computer room is going to end up being gutted even more than it has been. Our bedroom is going to be trimmed and streamlined and put into that room. I am also going to be emptying out my things from the upstairs bathroom which includes finding a new place for my dressing table. The dining room is going to be tweaked as we are still unhappy with how the storage has worked out in that room. The end result should be a much more livable arrangement.
The main purpose for this is that we are making room for my mother to come and live with us. We are very excited but we know that the decision was not easy for everyone. It is for the best but there is a lot of work involved in making this happen. I am proud of how much she has been already doing.
Of course there is much more happening in my life but a start is a start for blogging again. I will be taking some “before” photos.
I have a deadline of a few weeks to make as much happen as possible because I am taking a temporary job for about 2 months.
Post date: November 4, 2008
I had promised Devin a batch of chocolate chip cookies over the weekend. When I called to discuss what specifically he wanted we talked about various alternatives like orange chocolate chip cookies that I make. Devin suggested mint but did not know if I had a recipe. Well I have been baking enough varieties just off from the original recipe that it is not that difficult to make something up. Luckily they turned out. Here is Devin’s new chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Mint Chocolate Chip cookies
½ cup butter flavored shortening
½ cup butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
4-5 drops of green food coloring
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
1 ½ cups chocolate chips
Cream butter and shortening with the sugars. Add eggs one at a time and beating well after each. Add vanilla and peppermint extracts. Add in green food coloring if desired.
Mix dry ingredients together and add to the creamy mixture. Can add up to 1/4 cup more flour if needed. Stir in chocolate chips.
Using a small cookie scoop or spoon drop by spoonfuls onto parchment paper covered cookie sheets.
Bake 375 oven about 7 minutes using the small scoop, or until golden brown around edges and a bit on top.
The green tint is just not really showing up in that photo.
Post date: November 4, 2008
This past halloween was the second year that we have let the children go trick or treating. I had a few simple rules for their costumes, 1 They had to be creative and 2 They had to be cheap or homemade. This is what the end result was.
Treanna as a Jedi Knight. She originally wanted to be Shaak Ti but struggled with the time to get my help making the head part. I told her we would concentrate on the jedi part of the costume as that would be our fall back plan. Thus:
Of course you cannot see her awesome hair do (a leia-like roll around the head like a crown), or her riding style boots and other small details that make the outfit. She has her Dad’s purple lightsaber in hand and a back up hanging from her utility belt.
Alaric as the 9th Doctor from BBC’s Doctor Who television show.
Yes that is a sonic screwdriver prop. His cosutme is so dark you really cannot see how neat it turned out. He chose the typical v-neck sweater for his top and has slacks and oxford style dress shoes. The coat was the hardest to find but I did find it second-hand and he thought it was perfect (which is all the counts). I really wanted him to be the 10th Doctor but did not want to spend $70+ on a pinstripe suit!
They had fun and still have too much candy left over.
Post date: November 3, 2008
This seems almost like a dream.
Especially when just this last week I took this:
While I am excited about November, Summer seemed just like yesterday.
Tomorrow I shall post Halloween costumes!
Post date: October 22, 2008
Yes I know I have not been updating. I realized that I was having attitude failure and since I had decided to really only keep my blog positive and informative I was struggling with things to write. This is not a journal I don’t write everything, I keep this the high points of my life as a way to share with family and friends.
On the technical side it was time consuming to embed the photographs that I wanted of the kids and such. I am still undecided about how to do that part or make it easier to do.
I am hoping that since I am mentally in a place where I am wanting to post again that I will start doing so.
Post date: February 11, 2008
In November we took a family vacation. I don’t know if we had ever taken a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane that wasn’t to visit family. We like visiting family but we also wanted our children to experience a vacation where we went somewhere on an airplane, did touristy things, and stayed in a hotel.
We were gone for an entire week and we had a fantastic time! Devin only had to work a single day during the middle of the week to do presentations for the conference he was speaking at. The conference provided us with a huge suite and we paid a bit extra so the kids had their own beds which was smart! We only stayed at Mandalay Bay for 3 nights and then moved down to the Excalibur. Mandalay Bay was extremely nice! Excalibur was very middle of the road not that we were expecting great rooms for the price we paid.
Our swimming lessons were put to excellent use the couple of times we went to the swimming area at Mandalay Bay. That was fantastic, we all loved the wave pool and the lazy river ride. The kids really enjoyed the current and swimming in circles. Devin’s parents came down for part of the week as well and we had a wonderful time with them too.
So we did a ton of touristy things. We discovered this nifty passport thingy we could purchase that allowed us to do a bunch of different attractions each day for 1 price. We bought ours for 5 days. The things we did: Start Trek the experience. Treanna and Alaric did NOT enjoy the Borg experience so much so that Treanna refused to do the Klingon part of it. Devin regretted doing the Klingon part as he was quite motion sick afterwards. We did enjoy eating at the Cafe as well. The kids enjoyed their Glok! a traditional klingon dish. We also had the odd experience of a vulcan telling me that my children were excellent examples of humanity. I just about died laughing. However at this point our children were extremely tired and had been up for 12 or more hours.
We went to the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage and enjoyed it so much we went back another day with Devin’s parents. We went to the Eiffel Tower experience with Devin’s parents. We also toured all sorts of casinos and just looked! There was so much to see and it was all larger than life. We all really enjoyed the Bellagio fountains as well as the Conservatory inside the Bellagio. We went through the King Tut’s tomb replica at the Luxor a couple of times and the kids and I did the ride thingy they had there as well. I also went on the Manhattan Express roller coaster with the kids. They had not been on a roller coaster before so it was an interesting experience. I am still not sure how I convinced them to go on it again. Then they somehow talked their father into try it out. Devin and the roller coaster did not get along at all. We also went to M&M world as well as the Coca Cola store.
In all we had a wonderful trip and are looking forward to planning another family vacation next year. We did learn a couple of things, one of which that we want to look into renting a condo/apartment type thing for future vacations for meal planning. Because of various allergies and just plain choosiness eating was a struggle some days. The other thing was that renting a car was a good thing in Las Vegas, everything is so far apart that we still did a ton of walking but when we were at one far end of the strip getting to the very opposite end would have been more of a pain without the vehicle.
Post date: January 31, 2008
I just uploaded a couple of photos from our Vegas trip in November 2007. I am slowly working on figuring out what I want to blog.
This picture was taken on our way out to baggage claim at the Las Vegas airport. There are some neat large statue like things of various desert animals. The children being the geeky kids they are decided they wanted to pretend to run away from scorponok in the desert ala Transformers movie.
This one almost needs no explanation. Except maybe that we had lunch at Planet Hollywood. Not that any of us thought the food was all that good. The decor was awesome food not so much.
Interesting thing is, after looking through all the pictures I think this was the only picture of all 4 of us at the same time while we were in Las Vegas. I did get a few family pictures taken by professionals. If I can manage somehow to get my scanner working again, I might even try getting copies of them online.
Post date: December 25, 2007
