Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Good Morning

I crawled in bed last night to watch NCIS(my favorite show) and though I didn't fall asleep until close to nine I didn't get up to write in my blog. Since there's no rule on when a person can blog maybe I should blog in the morning. I'm more of a morning person anyway

All right already. I'm sick of winter. I'm tired of the cold but even more I'm tired of the mess of snow. You know that dirty salt ridden snow that is all over the streets. My car is a mess. Everytime you come in from anywhere there's tracks of it all over. Yuck. Yesterday I took 2 of our students grocery shopping. Love taking the kids shopping. You learn so much about them away from school. BUT we have to take a taxi. Not that romantic New York version you see in the movies or on TV. The ones where the taxi's are all clean and the drivers charming and comical. Oh no we have the dirty as in ooo don't touch anything dirty and the drivers well lets just say charming and comical are not the two c words I would use. This year in particular we've had some doozies. I can't imagine if you didn't drive in this town how often you would get out and about. I would definitely think long and hard about my trips if I always had to take a cab.

Do you know how you can tell it's winter in South Dakota? There's a table set up in the living room with jig saw puzzle pieces all over it. Yep we got one.

Friday is Kirby's birthday. I am at a total loss as to what to get him. 9 year old boys should be relatively easy. It must be because it's still so close from Christmas. I just am not ready to do the money thing yet, but it's getting closer and closer.

Must get ready for work. Good morning all!!!!!

Monday, February 05, 2007

Another cold day.

All winter I was thinking I'd feel cheated if we didn't have some good ol' South Dakota winter weather. Well we've had about 5 days of bitterly cold and now I'm thinking maybe I wouldn't have felt cheated after all. Really even though it's plenty cold I think it could and has been alot worse. We really haven't had much wind with this cold so it's tolerable. Hard to believe a month and a half ago it was Christmas and I don't think I was even wearing a coat most days. In another month and a half it will be toward the end of March and we'll be thinking spring. I'm not sure I have all my spring and summer clothes put away. Time really does fly when you get older.

For a Monday today went really well. Sometimes I think it all has to do with me and my attitude rather than all the things happening around me. Duh! The teachers at school in our Cluster program are getting stressed over the Dakota Step tests. The hoops that they have to go through to test whether our kids are proficient is unbelievable. And the time lost out of the classroom surely will lead to more kids not being proficient. Those who make these rules never come out and see whether they are actually practical and if its worth all the effort. They sit in their offices in some capitol somewhere and decide what will or won't work. It should be required that all policy makers should have to go into the field and implement those policies on a regular basis. Oh well so much for my soap box. But it is frustrating.

I cooked again. I made chicken tenders. They were quite good and really simple. I got the idea from tv this weekend. First you roll the chicken tenders in mustard and then in seasoned bread crumbs. Bake until done. Easy peasy and good. By the way who started that easy peasy thing anyway.

I've also done 3 layouts in the last day and a half. I did one of Sam tonight. Tears through the whole thing, but it was good to do one. I'm really in search of some good vintage elements. I have so many old pictures that I would like to do something with but I want the elements to fit with the picture. So many are elements from now made to look older or they are old things that aren't fitting with the style that I'm looking for. Someday I'll find something. I tried talking Amy into designing something for me, but it's not really her style. Too bad.

I need to take more pictures. I like blogs that have pictures in them. Note to self. Do something exciting so there's some pictures. No we're not buying a puppy just so I have something to take pictures of. But don't think that hasn't crossed my mind.

Goodnight all!!!!

Another cold day.

All winter I was thinking I'd feel cheated if we didn't have some good ol' South Dakota winter weather. Well we've had about 5 days of bitterly cold and now I'm thinking maybe I wouldn't have felt cheated after all. Really even though it's plenty cold I think it could and has been alot worse. We really haven't had much wind with this cold so it's tolerable. Hard to believe a month and a half ago it was Christmas and I don't think I was even wearing a coat most days. In another month and a half it will be toward the end of March and we'll be thinking spring. I'm not sure I have all my spring and summer clothes put away. Time really does fly when you get older.

For a Monday today went really well. Sometimes I think it all has to do with me and my attitude rather than all the things happening around me. Duh! The teachers at school in our Cluster program are getting stressed over the Dakota Step tests. The hoops that they have to go through to test whether our kids are proficient is unbelievable. And the time lost out of the classroom surely will lead to more kids not being proficient. Those who make these rules never come out and see whether they are actually practical and if its worth all the effort. They sit in their offices in some capitol somewhere and decide what will or won't work. It should be required that all policy makers should have to go into the field and implement those policies on a regular basis. Oh well so much for my soap box. But it is frustrating.

I cooked again. I made chicken tenders. They were quite good and really simple. I got the idea from tv this weekend. First you roll the chicken tenders in mustard and then in seasoned bread crumbs. Bake until done. Easy peasy and good. By the way who started that easy peasy thing anyway.

I've also done 3 layouts in the last day and a half. I did one of Sam tonight. Tears through the whole thing, but it was good to do one. I'm really in search of some good vintage elements. I have so many old pictures that I would like to do something with but I want the elements to fit with the picture. So many are elements from now made to look older or they are old things that aren't fitting with the style that I'm looking for. Someday I'll find something. I tried talking Amy into designing something for me, but it's not really her style. Too bad.

I need to take more pictures. I like blogs that have pictures in them. Note to self. Do something exciting so there's some pictures. No we're not buying a puppy just so I have something to take pictures of. But don't think that hasn't crossed my mind.

Goodnight all!!!!

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Long lost blogging!!!


Will I ever get to everyday blogging? Hard to tell. I think about it just about everyday but don't seem to get to it.

Well one of the reasons I haven't blogged is because it's very sad at our house. We had to put our dog Sam down last week. He had cancer. He seemed fine at Christmas but shortly after I noticed he was drinking more than usual. Pretty soon he was drinking all the time and drinking so much that he would vomit. We took him in thinking he might have diabetes. Not uncommon for a dog his age. They ran all sorts of tests and finally did some xrays and found a mass between his heart and his lungs. It progressed really fast and we just didn't want him to suffer, so last Thursday Steve took him in. It has been extremely hard. I should have known it would be bad since it's just been the three of us in the house the last almost 9 years. It is the first time Steve and I are truly empty nesters.

On to some brighter topics. I had a very productive weekend. I got up early Saturday and cleaned and then proceeded to make two batches of soup and some muffins. Today I made another batch of soup and a casserole. We took over three containers of soup and half of the casserole over to Steve's folks. I've been meaning to do that all fall and winter and this is now the first that it happened. The soups I made were a beef and barley, Rachael Ray's double chicken stoup and Bree's tomato lentil. I may be the only one who likes the tomato lentil one. The casserole was a chicken tetrazzine. So now I have some meals for the week and Steve's dad won't have to cook much either.

I even scrapbooked some. I've buying all these cool digi scrapping things and thought maybe I should use some before I convince myself I need to buy more. My daughter and her new store could put a dent in my budget. Like I told Steve though, it's cheaper than going to the mall, which I used to do about every other weekend.

It was really cold this weekend. Down in the 1o below zero range. We're just not used to that. It's been a very mild winter until now. The weather people said it's the coldest it's been in about 10 years. Yeah global warming.

Well it's half time of the super bowl. Should watch a little of the half time show.

Goodnight all!!!