Monday, October 29, 2007

Our "Snuggly-Warm" Pumpkins

Ever since our trip to Dewberry Farms where we picked up some pumpkins, Gracie has been asking us every night if we can carve pumpkins. We had told her we would do it this weekend, so she's been counting down the days.

Jerry thought larger pumpkins would be easier to carve, so in addition to the two we picked up at Dewberry Farms (that had to be small enough for the girls to carry) I went to Walmart and picked up four humongous pumpkins. There's barely enough room in our house for us, so I put them around the front porch area, all decorative-like. Jerry decided on Saturday morning to bring them back into the house to give them a chance to warm up before we carved them. When Gracie found out that was the reason they were in the house, she immediately got her tumbling hearts blanket from her bed and tucked them in. When Jerry asked her about it, she said it was so they would be "snuggly and warm" when we carved them. Jerry even convinced her to sit on the pumpkins like a duck sits on its eggs to get them warm faster.



Sunday afternoon we finally got around to carving the pumpkins. The girls stood firm - they wanted to carve the pumpkins from Dewberry Farms, so we helped them do theirs first. Maggie thought hers was, "not too scary, but kind of nice too." Miss Gracie characterized hers as, "Spooky, and not kind at all!" Then Jerry and I decided to carve up two of the bigger ones ourselves - with the girl's help of course. Jerry went with a friendly-pumpkin theme, and I got creative and made a cat. We took pictures - I thought we might could use this for a Christmas card, but I guess a Halloween Christmas card would be too weird:

Other than pumpkin carving, I have been unusually non-productive this week. I think after our road-trip, I just kinda felt like not doing anything for awhile. The only thing I did this week was get a haircut, which I am worried may have been a total mistake. It's medium length, and is very "kicky". I may have to drive to Houston to have Larry fix it for me. He's the only one who truly understands me and my hair, I think. (Sigh. . .)

Well, If I'm really going to get something done today, I better post and run! Happy Monday!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

There's No Place Like Home

There's nothing like a road trip to make you appreciate being home, no matter how fun your trip is, you know?

Here in Oklahoma the schools have a fall break, so the girls had a five-day weekend this past weekend. Since Jerry is saving up his vacation days for our first real family vacation in November, he stayed and worked, but the girls and I went road-tripping to Texas to see our now-closer family. We stopped the first night and spent the night at Grandma's house, and then headed down to Houston to spend time with Aunt Amy, Uncle Brad and Cousin Will.










The first day we mostly hung out in the backyard. Gracie found a little baby toad in the first 15 minutes, so we made him a habitat in a big bucket and watched him until nightfall, when we made the kids release him back into the wild of the backyard. The kids also took great delight in picking all the limes off of Amy and Brad's lime tree - they picked 68 limes before the weekend was over.

Friday we got the kids and their car seats all crammed into Amy's backseat and went to the Zoo. As soon as we got there I realized that I had left my camera at the house - ugh! We had a great time at the zoo, but have no pictures to show you. The Houston zoo has been updated quite a bit since I had been there last. The girls liked the sea lions, and we got to see a baby giraffe getting bottle fed. Mind you, the average size zookeeper had to hold the bottle above her head to get it to the top of the baby giraffe, but it was still a very small giraffe! We also got to hear some of the monkeys giving a free concert - they were whooping to each other, and they had chin pouches that stretched out as they made noises, just like a bullfrog. On the way back to the car we stopped and rode the Hermann Park train. I was amazed that I had spent several Saturdays in Hermann park when we lived in Houston, but I had never seen or known that there was a little train that ran through there. How did I miss that? Of course, there were many new things to look at as well, such as the light rail, which was being hotly debated when we lived there. The Astros no longer play at the Astrodome, and the place where the Rockets used to play is a church now - a new big arena has been constructed for them. AstroWorld is GONE - totally demolished. It's not the Houston we knew - it's even BIGGER - and I really didn't think that was possible.



Saturday we went to a Pumpkin Patch west of Houston, Dewberry Farms. This place not only has a pumpkin patch, but a barrel train, and a corn maze kind of like Sutherland Farms in New Mexico did, but this corn maze is huge! It's around 7 acres, and you really can get lost in it. We didn't go through the maze, but maybe when the kids are a bit older we will. We had plenty to do without the maze. We started off in the play area for kids. They had lots of tractors and trikes to ride around the area - Will was in heaven! The girls especially liked the rubber duck races. You put your duck in a trough, and then used a hand-pumped water pump to float your duck down the trough into a big tub.

Next we went to the barn to see some animals, and then it was time for the pig races! After that we were pretty hungry, so we went to the pavilion for some eats. The girls and I had a cold lunch, but Amy and Brad waited in the hot lunch line, so I took the girls and Will to the hay barn while they were finishing up. Will definitely has the right name - he is a very strong-willed little boy! He knows what he wants to do, and by gosh, no one is going to stop him! I told him that when he was with Aunt Suzy he had to hold hands. He didn't care for that, and kept pulling away, but I kept up with him and kept holding hands. It was hot, and he was SO tired - eventually he threw himself down on the grass, I think perhaps his original intent was to throw a fit, but he found the grass so comfy he just folded his arms into a pillow, closed his eyes and took a five-minute power nap. I just stood over him, shading him from the sun, and watched that cutie-patootie look around every few seconds before closing his eyes again. It gave everyone a much-needed five minutes of downtime. After that we rejoined his Mommy and Daddy, who were wondering what we were doing out there in the grass, and went for more fun. We played on the barrel train, swings, play fort, carts and roller slide before heading to the pumpkin patch to pick out our perfect pumpkins. My original intent was just to get each girl a

miniature pumpkin, but they were so adamant that they get big pumpkins I told them that if they found one they could carry, we could get it, so they both picked a medium sized one, and for the most part, they carried them. By the end of the day we were all dusty, tired, and I was sunburned. We had a good time.

The next morning we headed back to Grandmas house for another stopover on the way home. We were supposed to stop by and say hi to Mimi at work and Nanna at her house on the way back too, but Maggie woke up the next morning with an apparent stomach flu. We abandoned the rest of our visits and made a beeline for home. That night she seemed to feel better and was finally able to keep something down, so we got a good nights sleep in our own beds and headed back to school on Tuesday. A whirl-wind tour to be certain, but lots of fun!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Sometimes It Feels Like a Rut!!

As last week dawned, I was feeling rather resentful against my "rut". You know - the everyday monotony of life - the seemingly endless repetition of being a mother. I was about to reach critical mass when I went to my Bible Study Fellowship for the week. At the end of each lecture they hand out notes, and this weeks really hit home. Here's the paraphrase:

Do you despise the little places and people with whom you live? Do you despise your daily occupation? Are you willing to do your work today to show the people around you how the Son of God within you lives the homemaker's life to the glory of God? If it is God's will for you, it is workable if you will cooperate with Him and let Him work it out through you. . .

Ouch.

So with a deep sigh I tried to humble myself before God and my family, and guess what? As usual, when I stop thinking about me and start thinking about making God smile by doing what he has called me to do at this time in my life, it stopped being a rut, even though the same activities were still present. God is so good.

As for the rest of the week, on Tuesday we made an important discovery! Baskin Robbins has $1 scoop night on Tuesdays! I had told the girls that if they finished dinner and homework before 7:00, we would go get ice cream. They did, so we did. I got lemon custard, which took me right back to my childhood, when we used to go to Baskin Robbins as a family. When I found out about $1 scoop night, I decided we needed to make this a tradition for us as well. The girls, of course, gave me no argument about that!

In my last issue of Cooks Country magazine there was a recipe for Tres Leches cake - Jerry's favorite. It's not an easy recipe, but I decided to give it a whirl. Some four bowls, one pot, one mixer with whip attachment and three hours later it was done. I had high hopes, although past recipes had not measured up to the ultimate tres leches cake served at Churrasco's in Houston. When Jerry got home and I served it up, he took a bite, and his eyes opened wide, and his eyebrows went up. The verdict - "Hey, this is good - really good!" I think we have a winner!

Last week was Maggie's school program. It was a jungle theme - Let's go on a Safari - and she was a monkey. The kids were on one side of the gym, and the parents were sitting on chairs at the extreme other end, so my pictures weren't great, but they did make a very nice video that has several clear shots of our monkey girl. Speaking of school plays, I finally spent way, WAY too much time on a project I have put to the side for almost a year. When I videotaped Gracie’s kindergarten play last year, I ran out of tape, so it was split between two tapes. I bought the cable to transfer it to the computer a long, long time ago, but I finally got around to actually doing it last night. Then of course, I couldn’t just splice it together and slap it on a DVD – NO! I added titles, credits, chapter markers, music, etc. It looks pretty nice, although I can't recommend either of the programs I used for intuitiveness.

This week Gracie is Pooh's Special Friend at school. She gets to be the line leader for the week, bring things for show and tell, and in general be special. She gets to bring her favorite snack on Friday. I asked her what she wanted - cookies, brownies, rice krispy treats - what? Her choice: Goldfish. She definitely knows what she likes.

On October 31 there is a parade of storybook characters at the girls school. For Maggie, she has to do a book report, and then dress as a character from the book for the parade. At first she wanted to be Jasmine, but when I got the costume, it was too big, and it was purple instead of the aqua blue that Jasmine usually wears. Maggie didn't want it if it was not blue, so we returned it and looked at all the costumes. She finally chose a Barbie Princess Rosella one, so now we are reading that book. Gracie went to the store convinced she wanted to be a ladybug, but we ended up with a Little Mermaid costume. I can hardly wait to see what Jerry says when he sees her wearing seashells. Luckily, it has long-sleeved flesh-colored material under them, so we can wear long johns if it is cold.

Perhaps this week wasn't so monotonous after all. I guess it's all a matter of perspective, yes?

Monday, October 1, 2007

Searching for Intelligent Life

You know how, at each company, there is one person - or if your lucky, more than one - who can actually solve problems. I am in what seems like an endless search for that person at AT&T.


See, we have had the same e-mail addresses for 10 years now. I don't want to change it, because all my friends know that it's the best way to get ahold of me, and it's on all my business cards and most of all BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO!!!! For the last two years, we have actually paid an extra $10 a month to keep those addresses even though we didn't use AT&T for our internet service. So, now that we are back in AT&T land our accounts were supposed to merge when we got our AT&T high-speed internet service set up and we would be back to having our e-mail and internet service on the same bill. Well, the key words there are "supposed to". Even though we had an AT&T agent on the phone when we set up the account, I am still getting a bill for $10 for a dial-up account, and a new bigger better bill for a high-speed account with an e-mail address I don't use. I've tried to resolve this problem a couple of times, but have run out of patience before I got the issue resolved. So, today, I am biting the bullet and I am going to wade through as many customer service representatives as it takes to get this problem solved to my satisfaction. Here we go: Christina in Billing (5 minutes) -> Christy in High Speed Internet (7 minutes) -> Diego, a DSL / Dial-up Specialist (on hold for 26 minutes) -> Denise in 2nd Tier Support ( 34 minutes!)


While I'm on hold here with AT&T, let me tell you about our spectacular ending to September. First we had Family Fun night at the girls school. It was a big success for the school, with plenty of attendees. They had bounce houses and things set up, and we feasted on Cici's pizza, sodas and homemade desserts. My PTO given assignment was to take photographs - an assignment that was right up my alley. Unfortunately, the picture-taking was cut short by a playground injury. Maggie has been determined to make it across the monkey bars, and she was practicing under the watchful eye of her daddy while I went to take some photos. She was doing great until one of her hands slipped off, and rather than let go with the other hand and drop, she held on. Well, eventually gravity got the better of her, but since she was gripping the bar so tightly, some of the skin was pulled off the palm of her hand. It wasn't a major injury, except to Maggie, but we decided it was enough that we needed to go home and administer first aid. I'm not sure whether Maggie cried louder because of her boo-boo, or the fact that we were leaving, but either way, she wasn't very happy.

We made up for the leaving early by arriving early at the next night's event, Screen on the Green at Jerry's company. They have a large green area with sport fields surrounded by a jogging track across the street from Jerry's building. For this event they set up a large movie screen up at one end of that area, and all the families could either bring a picnic or purchase hot dogs and hamburgers there, and set up their blankets and lawn chairs and watch a movie - Charlotte's Web was the selection for the evening. At the other end of the big field they had set up bouncy houses, obstacle courses, and a big inflatable slide. They also had a caricature artist, carnival games, popcorn, sno-cones, and cotton candy. The girls were thrilled. Of course, the biggest fun was provided by mother-nature: There was a big hill that sloped down to the seating area, and the girls had the best time just rolling down the hill. It reminded me of the scene in "The Princess Bride" where Buttercup pushes Wesley down the hill and they are both going "Ow! Oh! Ump! OOH!" Yet they would get up and run back up the hill to do it again. Here in Oklahoma there is a definite change in seasons, and we could tell it was fall - by the time the movie was over, the girls and I were all wrapped up in a blanket - it was rather cool! The weather is supposed to make the fall colors really pop this year - I can hardly wait!


WooHoo!! After a little more than an hour, we are done! Denise is the intelligent life at AT&T! Way to go Denise! Now I'm going to head out - my tile guy called in sick today, so I can leave the house to run errands. I don't really need to do anything, but I'm going to make something up.

You know, as we have moved so many times, I have reached the conclusion that the hardest part is not the actual moving, although that is the hard labor part. THIS is the hardest part - now that everything is unpacked, this time where you are settled in and don't have too much stuff to keep you busy, but you haven't yet made a good friend that you can just call and chat with, this is the hardest time, at least for me. I'm sure I'm driving my sister crazy with all my phone calls, but I'm sure glad I have her to talk to!