Saturday, March 26, 2011

Overachieving

I have gotten so much done today - do I dare try to blog about it? Risk overachieving? Yes, yes I do.

Today was rather dreary. It has been lovely all week long, sunny, warm but not hot, just very pleasant. Most people would have looked at today's overcast forecast and bemoaned the fact that all the nice days happened during the work week, but I was very, very happy. See, last week I hired a housekeeper, and they came for the first time on Wednesday. My house sparkled like it hasn't since we moved in, and it just made my windows look awful. So, overcast days are perfect for window washing because it reduces streaking as the windows dry slower than they do on a hot sunny day! Yea! Of course, messing about with the ladder and lots of water on a breezy fifty-degree day wasn't the most pleasant way to spend the day, but I bundled up, snapped on the rubber gloves, and got busy. Gracie helped me off and on, and Jerry windexed the insides as I worked on the outsides. Now I need some sunshine to stream through the windows so I can enjoy our hard work!

Other than that, I've done a bit of laundry, worked on school work, gone to the drugstore and the grocery store, cooked dinner, and taken my window-washing helper out for frozen yogurt! A very, very productive day for me - yea!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Spring Break Fun

Well, here we are, on the other side of Spring Break, and I am going to put up a blog entry if it kills me! I can't tell you how many partially completed blog entries I have deleted since January. Each time I get part way through one, something comes up, and by the time I get back to it, it seems outdated. So here - short and sweet, but complete!

Amy, Will, and Carissa came to visit for the first part of Spring Break. The cousins had fun running around the house, and I enjoyed visiting with my sister and totally blowing off my diet. (We even got a sister's night out at the Cheesecake Factory thanks to my loving and wonderful husband volunteering - without any prompting AT ALL - to keep all the kids one night!)

On Tuesday we put on layers and braved a chilly morning to head to the zoo. It turned out to be a great day for it - not too hot, so the animals were active, and not so cool that we were cold. It ended up being sunny in the afternoon - I ended up with enough sun on my face that I looked sunburnt. Because of the chilly morning we didn't see quite the record-breaking crowds that came the next day, although it was packed. The good thing is that the OKC zoo is so spread out it didn't seem too crowded, even though that meant a lot of walking.

We checked out the Children's zoo (new to us) and the new elephant enclosure, which was impressive. I took so many pictures I decided to make collages - I think if you click them you'll see a bigger version (I hope!)





Oh - and here's a funny moment. We were on our way to the zoo and we had all loaded into Amy's Tahoe. As were were at the stoplight one of my girls mentioned that in this car, we were way high up above the traffic. Will said, rather matter-of-factly, "That's why it's called a Tall-hoe!" Amy and I got a good laugh out of that!

Another fun thing was making dirt-bottom pie with the kids. In case you've never had it, you crush up Oreos and put them in the bottom (and between layers of) a bowl of pudding. I thought it would be a fun activity for the cousins to "cook" together, so I divided up the Oreos and armed the kids with meat pounders and rolling pins to crush the cookies (yikes!) We put it all together, but when it was time for dessert, Carissa wouldn't eat it - she said she didn't want to eat dirt! She would only eat the whipped topping off the top. Here's our chefs at work:

Crushing Cookies


Mixing Pudding


Finishing Touches


And now, back to our regularly scheduled chaos!