De-licious and Nu-tricious

Hello there on this glorious Sunday!
Here it is sunny and warm, about 75 degrees. Lovely.
We have the fans going in the house and a delicious breeze is cooling me as we speak.
Ahhhhhh.
So, since I was thinking delicious breeze, I thought I'd share a recipe with you that I made last night. Here is the first picture of it... i think I can kiss my "food stylist" career goodbye... Okay, so the recipe is for "Garden-Style Turkey Meatloaf". I got the recipe years ago off the lid of a quaker oats canister. Here it is, I am putting it as written and in parenthesis I am letting you know what I do instead.

1.5lbs lean ground turkey or lean ground beef (I use a mixture of both - 1lb turkey, 1/2 lb beef)
One 10oz package frozen chopped spinach thawed and drained (best part!)
1 cup quaker oats - uncooked
1/2 cup finely chopped onions
1/2 cup finely shredded carrots (I am generous with these measurements)
2 egg whites or 1 egg, slightly beaten (i used egg beaters)
1/3 cup skim milk
1.5 teaspoons italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt (I omit this)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1. Heat oven to 350. 2. Combine all ingredients in large bowl, mix lightly but thoroughly. 3. On cookie sheet shape meatloaf into a 9x5 loaf (or whatever, does anyone really measure that??) in center of pan. 4. Bake 45 - 55 minutes until medium doneness (160 degrees) and juices run clear. 5. Let stand about 5 minutes (or a bit more) before slicing.

Yield: 8 servings
calories: 150
total fat: 6g
cholesterol: 65mg
fiber: 3g
protein: 16g

WWpoints: ??? not sure, can't find my points thingy, can someone who has it available check for me and then I'll edit this to include that info? Thanks.

Ratings (on a 1- 10 scale, 10 being amazing):

Jenny - 10+
Jeff - 10
Abbie - 8+
Ethan - 10
Max - hates it (but one in five aint so bad!)

And a final shot to leave you with. It shows its texture well. This is fantastic cold the next day too on sandwiches. If you make it, let us know what you think okay?
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!! :)

So Many Pictures, So Little Time

Hello out there, and how are you doing today?
In an attempt to be "caught up" with my blogging I have lots of pics for you today. Since the last few posts have been all writing I figured you wouldn't mind.
So, here is the new color of most of the downstairs of my house. It is called "vellum". I kid you not. Once I found out the name of the color I knew it was for me!! The main room is this color as is the kitchen and the downstairs bath. Here is a closeup of my new curtains. I love them sooooo much. I never really had any in my old house so this is a BIG DEAL for me. I think they came out wonderfully. What I also know is that I have tried and tried to get a good picture of the wall color (which is a happy yellowish) and the curtains and weather it's sunny, partly cloudy, or night I can't seem to really do the colors justice. Guess you'll just have to come and visit so you can see them in person!!! :)

There are two places downstairs with an accent color of a sort of green. Don't remember the name of this one.... bet DH does though. Anyway here is the kitchen with the exit toward the garage. On the left is the door to the bathroom and the right is the door to the (yet unpainted- i want stripes...) laundry room.

The man who did ALL the painting (remember I have a two story room... yep he leaned up a really tall ladder and was able to do all the trim and rolling with NO splotches on the ceiling or windows at all! he's a great man that DH is!). Here he is hanging my drapes.
The other wall(s) with an accent color are the ones in the slider alcove. Tried to get a decent picture of it, I think you can get the idea. Do you like my little sun wall hanging?
Also during DHs most recent trip (Texas this time) I finished a couple of layouts from the weekend with Heather in February. Here is Halloween 2008. Yes, I have one with Abbie too, but there were so many of her in that devil outfit that I have a whole two pager mostly of just her. Not done yet though...
Left side...

Right side...
This is from January of 2008. Ethan is not in it because he had those cookies already with his class and was taking a snooze when Abbie and Max made theirs.

Well, I have to go do some organizing and bill paying. Hope you have a lovely day!!!

You're Invited...

...to my pity party!
Good grief, will I soon catch a break???!!!
(overreacting for dramatic effect here, just stay with me)

So, here is my day.
5:20 - awaken to the sounds of water blowing through the pipes. They had a "flushing" of the water here (first time I've had public water in years and years) and so there was air and rust in the pipes to be gotten through. A rude awakening. Scared Abbie too as it was she who turned on the shower! Since I couldn't fall asleep until after 1am I was less then thrilled to be up at this early hour.

6:00 - roll out of bed, decide to make the most of the head start of the day. Make a nice to-do list. Email Max's teachers about his splint, ear infection, and allergy issues. Continue laundry. Shower. Get boys up and dressed. Change Ethan's sheets (more laundry). Feed boys, pack backpacks, finish up some homework that we somehow missed (yes, during the bloomin 10 days we were "off"). Max runs behind - we miss the morning bus.

8:30 - Drive Max to school. 30 minutes round trip.

9:00 - One phone call, breakfast and then off to a few errands.

10:30 - home from errands. ethan and i are excited to spend the rest of the day together and i am excited to do my "to-do" list. hmmmm....

10:40 - call from elementary school - come pick up Max he has a headache. off i go. 30 minutes round trip.

Then til now... Ethan and Max bicker over a video. I can't take the walk I wanted to and leave Max alone. Fed boys and myself lunch. Did breakfast and lunch dishes. Reflected that it seems like we are still on "vacation" here. Debated having Max take a nap, but decided an early bedtime would be better for his body clock. Changed laundry. (One of these days you will have to suffer through an entire post on laundry... it seems to take up such a big portion of my life!) Soon I will need to go and pick Abbie up because I told her she would be early dismissal due to needing to pick up Max early for a dentist appointment. Thirty minute round trip with both boys, then drop Abbie and Ethan home, then take Max to get tooth filling. Then home, figure out dinner, make it, eat it, clean from it, early bedtime routine for all and then.... I am going to bed! I am bushed!!!!!!

In case ya'll were wondering why I don't have time to blog........

PS - wanted to put up some random pics from march and found I have very few and most were pathetic. vowing to take more this month. it's like i slept through feb and march. strange.

The Shedd

After the last two rather dramatic postings I thought I should share a little something lighter with you. As a closing to the spring break we took a family road trip to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Definitely check out their site... one of the best I've seen in terms of information and great nature shots. Anyway - I must confess that the trip wasn't without issues, but life's not perfect right?!

Here are some little wormy looking fish that I found amusing. Can you see their little eyes? I loved how they went up and down in the sand and were so wiggly. Very cute. Wouldn't want to step on one, but they were fun to watch. The "lovely" children enjoying the wave exhibit. You can't see it in this pic, but every so often a wave of water would come along. Interesting. Forgive my quotations around the "lovely" but my children's behavior was, at times, questionable. It got WAAAAAAAAY too crowded in there and it frustrated everyone. We will definitely need to go again but NEVER again on a weekend.
I kept waiting for them to dance. (click that linky, just do it...)
The dolphins were beautiful. Wonder why they swim upside down so much. Does anyone know???
The hit of the day was the 4D Planet Earth movie. Oh my was that fun. If you have been to Disney lately and saw the Bugs Life video, this is the same thing. We got sprayed, poked, wind blown, rocked and spritzed with smell. Very funny! Ethan liked it once it was over, but was not so fond of being randomly sprayed. The 3D part was cool too. Very informational and hosted by someone who either was, or sounded just like, John Cleese.

Did you do anything special this weekend?

So, Here's What Happened Next....

Okay, you know the first part of the story.

So... i hung up the phone and...

First was paralyzed. Just stood there like an idiot. If there was trouble coming I lost valuable seconds to fear. Not so smart. I always yell at people in movies that do that - just stand there i mean - and there I did it! Egad.

So, then I spun on my heels and got the heck out of the kitchen to the garage. Yes, it did occur to me that my cell was being used but I wanted my car and some part of my brain must have felt this was all silly and just go. So I did. Oh, as to caller ID, I did eventually look... guess what it was. Out of area. Nice.

So I left that house with lights ablazing (gloomy day remember) and high tailed it out of there. I checked my car before getting into it. Got in, locked the doors, and left. Even shut the garage door behind me.

Then what???

I believe i called someone in PA and someone in CT - not sure how I thought they could help. There was just a part of me that didn't want to call 911 in the middle of the morning and make a scene. Hmmm... So I went shopping for my 2 hours and attempted to calm down. Attempted to convince myself it was a prank call. Picked up Ethan and was faced with a new dilemma... should I go home?????

So, I drove by my house. All looked well. No signs of open doors or anything odd. Finally I did something sort of smart and called my dad who does live nearby and can help (makes more sense then the CT call... but old habits die hard). We decided to go through the house with cell phone in hand (yes, i do believe i saw my dad roll his eyes as i insisted he check under the beds - but hey! i was scared!). There was nobody in the house. No evidence there ever was.

So, I can only conclude it was either a very unfortunate wrong number, or a very mean random prank call.

What sort of stinks is that I keep having to deal with Jeff being gone. I have always been skittish being alone (kudos to single mom's out there everywhere) in the house overnight - now it is so much worse. I am barely sleeping four hours a night if Jeff is away on business (a regular occurance). I wish I could just shake this off. It seems I spend too many nights terrified to turn off the lights........

OKAY!

My that's gloomy.

I need to end on a positive note here. Hmmm... well I made my "baby steps" goal of blogging three times this week! Whoo hoo!!! Next week I'd like to try for four and then keep it at 3 - 4x per week. We'll see how it goes.

Spring break went sort of well for the kiddies... except for Max who had an x-ray (not broken) an ear infection (woke screaming) and a dermatologist apt (excema again). Abbie had a great week and Ethan did too. Max had some fun as after his apt he got to go to Toys R Us and use a remaining gift card to buy a new lego set. He has been loving that!!!

I hope that all of you have a great weekend. I have a half hour to myself at the moment and so I am going to try to finish up a couple of layouts. I haven't scrapped since January really (a page in Feb too I think) and I think my not doing that is indicitive of my mindset at the moment. So I am trying to break the mold and get some positive vibes back.

I miss you all very much.
Be safe and have a fun weekend!!!!

Overactive Imagination? You Decide...

So, here's a "what would you do if..." for you.
This happened to me, for real, a couple of weeks ago.

I walk back into the ever gloomy house after dropping off child #3 to school. It is one of my RARE mornings where I have two hours to myself. Jeff is travelling with work and is out of the country which means I am running full steam ahead 24/7. Trust me when I tell you I NEED those 2 hours.

As usual I leave my keys in the car, in the locked garage. Cell phone is in there too, I usually leave it in my car and only bring it in at night.

So, I am settling in. Poured myself a cup of tea, plowing through a precariously piled pound of paperwork (p, p, ppp). In general trying to relax. My big plan is to work for one hour cleaning and then reward myself by "playing" with my scrapbook stuff (which misses me... i can hear it calling in the night... "jenny, jenny where are you jenny" ... it calls - pitifully) for the later hour. I begin to clean. I start with the kitchen. The kitchen is closest to the garage and the exit to said garage. Yes, this is a relevant factoid.

The phone rings.

Brrrriinggg.
Brrrrinnggg.
Brrrinngydingding.

I have sudsy hands.
SOOOO
I don't look at the caller ID, figured it was Jeff.

The conversation then went something like this....

caller: "hello"
me: "hello?" I had no clue who this was.
caller: "how are you today?" Whoever it was had a deep male voice.
me: "I'm sorry, and who is this???"
caller: "I'm here."
me: "hmmm?" (brilliant I know)
caller: "No, I'm HERE."
me: "I think you have the wrong number" (moving to hang up)
caller: "No - I'm - IN - the - house. here."

CLICK! I hang up HARD as I can.
I am, by now COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT. I mean, come on - horror movies start like that!!!!!!!

What would you do???
Leave a comment letting me know.
Wonder what I did? (well, clearly I survived - but I did do something)

Stay tuned... when I have a few responses about what you would do, I'll post the ending.............................

Baby Steps

Hi Everyone.

Yep, it's been awhile - again.

All I can say is that once too much time goes by it gets harder and harder to get back into the blogging groove.

So I decided to just take "baby steps" and do it. I am not going to try to fill you all in and catch you all up in one gigantic post. Just little by little. That way even if I only have 15 minutes i have a shot of getting something blogged. Jeff has been gone all week for work and so 15 minutes is about it for me.

I thought the most important thing to start with - what I have been in the clutches of!

Well, it's this book!

So far it's a trilogy - I think the fourth book is coming out this summer.

It's wonderful. Read it. I know the description makes it sound like it may be hokey.

BUT. IT'S. NOT!

I read the first book twice AND listened to it in my car. Read the second book once and am listening to it in the car and the third book just once so far. I am waiting to read book three again for May when it comes out with an advance chapter of book four at the end. I own the other two books already. The movie from this book is due out in December - but GO AND READ THE BOOK! There is no way the movie can be AS good as the book (heck, i'm hoping it's good... but it can't be AS good). You will like it. Read it. Then post your thoughts here okay???

By the way, Heather did guess the answer that it was a book. She emailed on the side and so a gifty is on the way. Congrats Heather!

Oh - another thing while I am on a recommendation kick.

I just saw August Rush.

It was such a wonderful movie. The whole family watched it, but just to warn you I forwarded past the unwed mom stuff for the kids. It's not graphic or anything - but look at it before you let the kids watch the whole thing. The ending is amazing. Truth be told in the beginning I was worried, it had a bit of a slow start - but the middle and ending were worth the wait.

Well, yipe.

That took me more then 15 minutes - most of which was spent trying to get a picture of the Twilight book off the internet and posted here. No luck. I'll have to consult my very reasonably priced Web Master for instructions.

Have an enjoyable weekend!