Ketchup

Who knew that you could have a dinner conversation around ketchup?  That's right that red stuff that you can put on just about anything.

We were having hot dogs for dinner that night and of course there was a bottle of ketchup on the table.  The question asked at the beginning of dinner was "Is ketchup a liquid or a solid?" To answer this in simplistic terms I just went ahead and replied liquid.  The kids were kind of unsure of this.  I didn't explain any further because I knew they wouldn't understand viscosity or much of the scientific terms.  That and I don't think it would have held their attention.

As dinner progressed and was nearing the end, we were sitting there talking.  The little one finished her juice box and in the blink of an eye...I swear it was that quick...removed the straw from the juice box, stuck it in the pile of ketchup on her plate and slurped it up.  Horrifically disgusted I grabbed the plate and straw and told her she was done. At which point my oldest says  "See liquid."   The little one just stood there looking at where her plate and straw had been in her hands and said  "but I like ketchup."  Ahh. Funny but gross. 

Busy Busy

I dislike coming up with titles for my blog posts. Sometimes it's easy but other times like today I just can't come up with one.  I'm horrible at naming things...ask my hubby. I'll have a game where you have to name a character and it will take me sometimes hours to come up with a name.  It needs to be fitting, like a blog post title.

Anyway....It seems like it's been eon's since I've posted anything on either of my blogs I've been so down right busy.  Construction is finally almost done on the house, praying it is done before the new year.  What was originally suppose to take 6-8 weeks has now turned into 7 months.  The inside is all complete on the addition and my mother is finally moved in.  Her house is now up on the market. 
So I've been busy loading and unloading cars full of stuff and cleaning and kids and....the list goes on and on. It's been CRAZY!!!

It's finally calming down now a little and I'm beginning to feel a little less stressed.  I just need 5000 more hours in the day to make up for the things that I've neglected for the past 7+ months.  Hopefully the craziness will wear off even more and I'll be posting more and more.

I'll leave you with a funny story and a picture of what my fridge says...

We went to Moe's Southwest restaurant for the first time the other week.   Let me just say the food was so good. Fresh ingredients made the burritos taste amazing. I rank them right up there with my love for Whole Foods burritos. I digress.  After we were done eating we were the only people left in the place so we went to refill our drinks and look at some of the cool look alike contest photos on the walls when I spotted my youngest, mind you she's 11 years old.  She threw out her trash and started dancing her way back down the isle to the song that was playing.  All the employees were standing behind the counter watching her.  She got about half way down the isle when I told her that everyone was looking at her. She was mortified.  All the employees started clapping as she shrank down and ran for the door.  It made my day.

So now our fridge say: "I love ur dancing at moes" 

P.S.  Dear Santa we would like some more letters for our fridge.

What my fridge says!

Ever since my kids were little my refidgerator has had magnetic letters on it.  Over the years some of the letters have been lost but what was left has still remained.  For some reason I have never had the heart to just throw them out, even though my kids are far past the age to play with magnets on the fridge. 
However there is a new game, if you want to call it that, that has emerged from having these mismatched letter lingering on the fridge.  What can you write with the letters that are left that is funny?  The hubby I think has the most fun with this but the kids enjoy seeing what the fridge says and changing it up as well.

We recently got a new fridge and of course the letters have been moved over.  Here's what the new fridge says:

Being short on letters means being creative with spelling. I think one of these days I might pick up a new set of letters to add to these.

Summer and Food

I've been meaning to post for awhile but life kind of got in the way. It happens to all of us..the craziness of summer is just starting to settle out and I'm hoping I can get back to working and crafting more soon.  The kids are going stir crazy with all the heat and humidity it is to hot to go outside or do anything, you just can't breath out there. We've been doing small things like a trip to the ice cream shop and the art store for some indoor fun supplies. They found this wonderful book on making fairies Forest Fairy Crafts: Enchanting Fairies & Felt Friends from Simple Supplies 28+ Projects to Create & Share at our local bookstore so they have been working on those and building with legos.

 I had the unfortunate run in with the doctor yesterday.  What was suppose to be a simple follow up to check my blood work (which I failed to find time to do with the insanity around here) lead into a 1500 calorie diet. :(  It's either that or she said I could do the South Beach Diet but looking at it gave me a headache. There's way to much, it looks so complicated. 1500 calories is not a whole hell of a lot considering I love food...Five Guys, Chinese, pasta and all my favorite local eateries. I have a bit of weight to loose so I figured I'd get started with the 1500 calorie counting and see if there's a less complicated version of the South Beach Diet later.  I want something were I don't need to cook 2 different things for each meal of the day...something the whole family can deal with.  

I have a secret though.....I have to admit I have a very bad habit when it comes to counting things, I did this bad thing when counting WW points.  If I want something to eat that is not so good for you and uses up most of my points I would and will go all day with little to nothing at all just so I can splurge and have my glorious not good for you food.  I know I shouldn't do this but my love for food leads me to do crazy things.

So this is day two of my counting calories and this is what I have:

Smart One breakfast sandwich - 210 
Lunch - tuna on a coco - 250
Honest Tea - Honey Green Tea - 70
Dinner - Had to run out and do some errands so we went to Panera Bread because we knew they had the calories listed.
            - U pick 2 - no side - Roasted Turkey Avocodo  BLT  - 240
                             - Onion Soup - 190
                             - Split half an oatmeal cookie with hubby for dessert - 195
                             - Acai Berry Green Tea - 0


Total - 1155  and if I happen to get hungry later I'll add a 90 calorie yogurt.


With this total I'm figuring I should be able to add a 100 calorie snack between breakfast and lunch and then again between lunch and dinner.


250 Calorie Tuna Melt

1 can tuna - 80
3 tbsp olive oil may - 180
1 tsp dijon mustard - 0
1 tbsp chopped onion - 4
1 small dill pickle chopped - 5
dash of salt
dash of pepper


Combine all ingredients mix well.  I kind of mash my fork into it to get some better flavor out of the pickle and onion. 

Spread half of the tuna mixture on a Coco - 16 calories - (So you want to know what a coco is.  It's a multigrain puffed disc that Whole Foods makes.)  Lay one slice of american cheese - 100 calories- on the top and broil until the cheese is melty.

I could bring down the calories a little more by using less mayo but I like my tuna creamy. 

Strawberry Rocks

Today while out at the garden I noticed the strawberry plants were in full bloom. I can't wait for some nice fresh strawberries. One of the problems with strawberries is birds. We have a lot of birds around and from what I've read they like to peck and eat the strawberries. One of the ways that I have read to prevent this from happening is painting little rocks to look like strawberries.

The idea behind this that the birds will see the rocks as berries and peck them.  The birds will not like this and will eventually not want to touch the actual berries.  I figured we would give this idea a go this year so this was the kids craft project after school today.

Just a side note - The strawberry plant I have was a sad little clearance plant from Lowes last year. I paid all of a whopping fifty cents for it. It actually grew back the first year year I had the plant and we got a few small strawberries from it. It formed shoots and now we have 3 plants, not bad for a fifty cent investment. 

Strawberry Rocks!

Materials:

Some small rocks from around the yard.'
Red, Black and Green Craft Paint
Paint Brushes
Water for washing brushes
News paper or painting surface

1.   Lay rocks on the flattest side on news paper or painting surface.

2.   Paint the tops and sides of rocks with red paint and let dry.


3.  Paint some green where the "tops" of the strawberries would be and let dry.

4.  Take a small sized brush and paint black spots on the red to mimic the seeds of the strawberries. Let dry.

5.  Take the dry rocks and lay them out among the strawberry plants.


Here's my kids strawberries:

A Day for the Wild Life

Today was all about strange encounters with the wild life around here.

It started this morning when I took the puppy outside. We had deer just on the other side of the rock wall that borders our property.  The deer usually take off when the dog and I come outside but for some reason today was different.  I stood very still and the puppy went around smelling.  Then all of a sudden the deer took off toward us. They hopped the rock wall into our yard and ran across the back. Just so use to them running away from us, it even scared the puppy a bit.

So hubby and I go run our morning errands, grocery store, post office, coffee shop for beans. When we finally get home there is the turkey vulture flying in real low toward the side yard. He lands on one of the trees that is leaning over from all the storms and just sits there. We get out of the car slam the car doors, make all kinds of noise but the only thing he does is spread his wings. Hmm...they only show up where things are dead.  We go inside and unpack the fridge stuff grab my camera and figure if the bird is still out there maybe I'll get a picture of him.  Get outside and he's sitting in the yard. I got an okay picture of him, guess it's better than nothing.

After taking the pictures we start off walking toward the bird, just want to make sure it's not injured or anything. It takes off fine and flies off into the field across the street. So we go walking over to where the bird was sitting, wondering what in the world this bird was doing in the yard. We'll we found it....a rather large dead grey field mouse. Sorry to have disturbed his lunch.

Then tonight on my way back from therapy with my oldest we were driving down the road almost to the house when this turkey darts out in front of the car. He takes one look at the car, freaks out (I swear I saw his eyes pop out of his head), suddenly changes direction and starts running down the road in my lane. Now he's running all swirvy and back and forth like, (if he was driving I would have though he'd been drinking.) He freaks out some more takes another sharp right turn into the yard and runs along the fence. I drive all of a whole 5 mph while all this is going on, wondering what was up with this bird. My oldest is all like why are you driving so slow. I say that when there's one there's usually more and I don't want to hit any of them. It turns out that's the only turkey to be seen. No more were around. He's a lone turkey on the loose.

Weird Car Troubles

So yesterday I took my hubby's car on a trip with the kids. When we were ready to leave I went to start the car and nothing...no beep or lights, nothing at all. I open the door to get out and the alarm goes off. I use the remote to shut the alarm off, some how this still works.  I check to make sure none of the doors are open (don't ask me why I thought this was the reason) I check the gas tank, trunk door everything I could think of. Get in the car try again and nothing. I get out of the car only this time the alarm goes off when I close the door. Use the remote to shut the alarm off, pop the hood and take a look. We just put a new battery in so it couldn't possibly be that. Drop the hood, get back in the car, try again and again nothing. I use the remote to lock and unlock the doors and try again. This time like magic the car starts. How strange.

I didn't stop, shut off the car, the whole way home. I get home and hubby wants to take his car to run some errands and go to dinner with the kids. I ask him if he was sure after the trouble I had. He was all for it. He gets in and it starts right up. We run our errands no problem.  We go to go eat dinner no problems.

After dinner we go back out to the car and it won't start. HA! I told him we shouldn't have taken it. He pops the hood and looks. We're at a loss as to what it could be. He checks the terminals on the battery and low and behold the negative was very loose. I go in the back of the car and grab an adjustable wrench. Tighten up the terminal and low and behold the car starts right up. No issues.
We are sitting in the car talking to the kids about how we just put a new battery in the car and the terminal was loose so the car wouldn't start right. The youngest looks at us and say "so the guy that put the battery in the car didn't put it in right." I burst out laughing. Yep daddy put the battery in wrong.