Friday, April 16, 2010
Not the winning ticket
Ok, we didn't win the lottery. *sniff* *sniff*. But it was our first try. It's up to 220 million. Could we not use some of that to get NY out of debt? That's a poop pot load of money. Did you like that? I made it up. Even if you consider taking half out for taxes (ironic isn't it?), it's still a poop pot load of money.
Package!
Hello my blogger family. I hope you have had a fabulous Friday so far. I know I have. I am sitting down to the computer after exhausting myself from this morning! I got three of the munchkins off to school and fed and watered to the two smaller munchkins and started getting things together for dinner. heehee! I am SO SO SO excited to make dinner today because of two reasons. 1) it's homemade spaghetti sauce (I'm talking the Italian secret spaghetti sauce here, recipe from my mother in law who is 100% Italian! yummmmmm) Plus I'm adding some cheese ravioli to it this afternoon. and 2) I'm using my first package of the 300 pounds of beef we brought home Wednesday night!
I highly recommend buying organic beef. I'm not one of those complete fruit and nuts because I will eat candy and ice cream and chocolate, but I do LOVE LOVE LOVE my organic cow. We started getting organic cow shortly after having Grace and reading all the wonderful things they put into red meat (well, any meat really) when we were in Fayetteville. We had this really great place in Missouri that was about 45 minutes away that only accepted beef from certified organic farmers. They packaged it up for us in the increments of beef we wanted, like 50% ground beef, 20% roasts, steaks, etc, etc. They've been doing this a long time, so most often we said, the usual please!
Anyway, we used to split the cow with various friends and so forth, but we would run out of meat much faster then they would (and we don't really eat a LOT of red meat, but we do get about 1 serving a week, which according to RealAge.com is just fine!). So we started ordering half a cow and it lasted a fair amount of time.
Well, we moved up here and had to buy store bought meat for the first few months and in fact, I almost stopped buying it completely because let me tell you, there is nothing like fresh meat that has literally come off the field, slaughtered and processed and brought to your house within a week. It's the freshest tasting meat you'll ever eat, unless you find a restaurant that has a cow pasture out back... Anyway, we found a farm right here in Western New York, a little less then an hour from our house and they send the cattle off to be processed (to a nearby USDA meat processor) but include it in the cost of the cow and it's all organic, too. Now before you go fufu on me, and say, but those cows need their meds. or they'll go mad! These cows are vaccinated and given vitamins, but they are not forced to eat certain cheap grains, they are NOT given ANY growth hormones, and they are free to roam around on their HUGE land! Ricky said they had a gorgeous farm and I can see why, the meat ain't cheap. But the taste and the health reasons alone, balance the cost out just fine and now as I said before, there are 300 pounds of a cow in my freezer down in the basement. yummmm....
So my sauce got to stewing on the stove, I cleaned the kitchen, mopped, and vacuumed the entire house. I finished all the kids laundry, which if laundry can be a cinch, it is now that I own a really cool washer and dryer that are those side loading, high energy efficient machines? I can put a TON of laundry in the washer and by lunch I'm done with a weeks worth of kid clothing! Awesome. Not to mention, I'm helping to save the environment.
So the two smallest munchkins and I ate lunch and now they are resting comfortably with little G reading Marebear a story as she falls asleep.
So, to discuss my title! I got a package in the mail yesterday!! I LOVE getting mail. It completely makes my day. Sometimes I order stuff from Amazon, just to get a package. Just kidding. I don't really. But this package came from Amazon and it contained my two NEWEST books that I can hardly wait to read!
The first one is another great book from Scott Hahn titled, "Reasons to Believe, How to understand, explain, and defend the Catholic faith." I've heard a lot of great reviews over that one and I've read a lot of his books. He was a protestant preacher who found the Catholic church to be very biblical (shock!). He's a great teacher of the faith. If you ever want to learn more, I would highly recommend his book (cowritten with his wife, Kimberly) titled "Rome Sweet Home." Anyway, I can't wait to tackle that one.
My second book is called "Fatherless" by Brian J. Gail and if you've ever read any of the Harry Potter, or Twilight books, it's just as thick as those! Yikes! But it's a brand new Catholic novel just released rather recently that i've read bits and pieces of in reviews and it looks incredible. I'm diving into that one as soon as I finish this blog! I'll keep you posted on what I think. I know you'll wait with baited breathe.
Well, that's it for today. I might try to take some pictures of the cow in the freezer downstairs if I remember. So don't hold your breathe for that one.
God bless you today! OH! BTW- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POPE BENEDICT!!! WE LOVE YOU! WE THINK YOU ARE DOING WONDERFUL THINGS FOR OUR CHURCH DESPITE WHAT THE MEDIA WANTS THE REST OF THE WORLD TO BELIEVE. WE KNOW THE TRUTH. THANK YOU!
I highly recommend buying organic beef. I'm not one of those complete fruit and nuts because I will eat candy and ice cream and chocolate, but I do LOVE LOVE LOVE my organic cow. We started getting organic cow shortly after having Grace and reading all the wonderful things they put into red meat (well, any meat really) when we were in Fayetteville. We had this really great place in Missouri that was about 45 minutes away that only accepted beef from certified organic farmers. They packaged it up for us in the increments of beef we wanted, like 50% ground beef, 20% roasts, steaks, etc, etc. They've been doing this a long time, so most often we said, the usual please!
Anyway, we used to split the cow with various friends and so forth, but we would run out of meat much faster then they would (and we don't really eat a LOT of red meat, but we do get about 1 serving a week, which according to RealAge.com is just fine!). So we started ordering half a cow and it lasted a fair amount of time.
Well, we moved up here and had to buy store bought meat for the first few months and in fact, I almost stopped buying it completely because let me tell you, there is nothing like fresh meat that has literally come off the field, slaughtered and processed and brought to your house within a week. It's the freshest tasting meat you'll ever eat, unless you find a restaurant that has a cow pasture out back... Anyway, we found a farm right here in Western New York, a little less then an hour from our house and they send the cattle off to be processed (to a nearby USDA meat processor) but include it in the cost of the cow and it's all organic, too. Now before you go fufu on me, and say, but those cows need their meds. or they'll go mad! These cows are vaccinated and given vitamins, but they are not forced to eat certain cheap grains, they are NOT given ANY growth hormones, and they are free to roam around on their HUGE land! Ricky said they had a gorgeous farm and I can see why, the meat ain't cheap. But the taste and the health reasons alone, balance the cost out just fine and now as I said before, there are 300 pounds of a cow in my freezer down in the basement. yummmm....
So my sauce got to stewing on the stove, I cleaned the kitchen, mopped, and vacuumed the entire house. I finished all the kids laundry, which if laundry can be a cinch, it is now that I own a really cool washer and dryer that are those side loading, high energy efficient machines? I can put a TON of laundry in the washer and by lunch I'm done with a weeks worth of kid clothing! Awesome. Not to mention, I'm helping to save the environment.
So the two smallest munchkins and I ate lunch and now they are resting comfortably with little G reading Marebear a story as she falls asleep.
So, to discuss my title! I got a package in the mail yesterday!! I LOVE getting mail. It completely makes my day. Sometimes I order stuff from Amazon, just to get a package. Just kidding. I don't really. But this package came from Amazon and it contained my two NEWEST books that I can hardly wait to read!
The first one is another great book from Scott Hahn titled, "Reasons to Believe, How to understand, explain, and defend the Catholic faith." I've heard a lot of great reviews over that one and I've read a lot of his books. He was a protestant preacher who found the Catholic church to be very biblical (shock!). He's a great teacher of the faith. If you ever want to learn more, I would highly recommend his book (cowritten with his wife, Kimberly) titled "Rome Sweet Home." Anyway, I can't wait to tackle that one.
My second book is called "Fatherless" by Brian J. Gail and if you've ever read any of the Harry Potter, or Twilight books, it's just as thick as those! Yikes! But it's a brand new Catholic novel just released rather recently that i've read bits and pieces of in reviews and it looks incredible. I'm diving into that one as soon as I finish this blog! I'll keep you posted on what I think. I know you'll wait with baited breathe.
Well, that's it for today. I might try to take some pictures of the cow in the freezer downstairs if I remember. So don't hold your breathe for that one.
God bless you today! OH! BTW- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POPE BENEDICT!!! WE LOVE YOU! WE THINK YOU ARE DOING WONDERFUL THINGS FOR OUR CHURCH DESPITE WHAT THE MEDIA WANTS THE REST OF THE WORLD TO BELIEVE. WE KNOW THE TRUTH. THANK YOU!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The Bus Stop and then some...
Ok, to give you a little bit of history. Big G started Kindergarten at a Catholic school, so did JT and so did Em. Matter of fact, I taught at the Catholic school they attended for two years before having Marebear and retiring from the teaching scene permanently. (I think my next career is Target, but that's another blog.) Anyway, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Catholic schools and would love, love, love to keep them in Catholic schools even up here, but Ricky and chose (on purpose all you doubters) to have a large family and just rely on one income. So with that, spending 5-8,000 a year on Catholic schools is just not feasible. Especially in the great tax state of NY where we spend 8,000 a year in property taxes. (BTW-that's is no exaggeration, it's actually 770 dollars a month on top of our mortgage.) But I can dream about winning the lottery one day We did buy our first NY lottery ticket this week, fingers are crossed.
Anyway, I'm getting off track, as I so rarely do *wink wink*.
So the first three years of school life I spent driving the kids to school and picking them up (or bringing them home when I worked). It was nice because they were with me so much. When I taught, it was great because I had eyes all over the building. Even after Marebear was born, they went that last year and I knew all the teachers, so the eyes were still there. Whenever any of my kids did anything, I knew it! (without the chain of tattle telling to back it up!)
Well, this past fall, we decided to enroll them in the Fayetteville public schools. Now, don't get me wrong, the Fayar public schools are awesome, that's not why I was sending my kids to Catholic schools. I wanted the kids to be reinforced at school with what we were doing at home... follow that?
So they went to Butterfield Trail Elementary and the very cool thing about that was they walked to school! It was a rule in the school system that unless you had some written excuse (which I'm sure in this culture of LAZINESS would have been easy to do) if you lived within two miles of the school you attended, you had to provide your own transportation. Awesome! The kids and I both loved it and it allowed us to further our learning on making the kids aware of all the dangers of "bad people." For you micro manangers out there having a mini stroke because I did not walk with them, I could post some stats on the % of children abducted while walking to and from school, but I will only say this, read some John Rosemond, he'll cure you of your micro managing child fears...
I digress again...
ANYWAY!!! Here in Lancaster, the school systems actually encourage you to ride the bus and not to drop the kids off. Less traffic, etc. Big G goes to a school that has over 1700 kids in it, so you can imagine the traffic at her school alone. JT and Em go to the Elementary school (K-3) and it's quite large, too.
So we send them out to the bus stop, which they LOVE, I am not so in love with it, but it's part of my letting my little birds out of the nest to test their wings program. They are doing great, the jury is still out for me...
Well, it's Thursday and it's going to be 71 degrees and beautiful today. I'm going to do a little body pump and head outside for a walk. Have a very blessed day.
The first picture is the actual view I have of the bus stop. As you can see, it's not very far, so the burning rays of fire I shoot, should be fairly effective.
Anyway, I'm getting off track, as I so rarely do *wink wink*.
So the first three years of school life I spent driving the kids to school and picking them up (or bringing them home when I worked). It was nice because they were with me so much. When I taught, it was great because I had eyes all over the building. Even after Marebear was born, they went that last year and I knew all the teachers, so the eyes were still there. Whenever any of my kids did anything, I knew it! (without the chain of tattle telling to back it up!)
Well, this past fall, we decided to enroll them in the Fayetteville public schools. Now, don't get me wrong, the Fayar public schools are awesome, that's not why I was sending my kids to Catholic schools. I wanted the kids to be reinforced at school with what we were doing at home... follow that?
So they went to Butterfield Trail Elementary and the very cool thing about that was they walked to school! It was a rule in the school system that unless you had some written excuse (which I'm sure in this culture of LAZINESS would have been easy to do) if you lived within two miles of the school you attended, you had to provide your own transportation. Awesome! The kids and I both loved it and it allowed us to further our learning on making the kids aware of all the dangers of "bad people." For you micro manangers out there having a mini stroke because I did not walk with them, I could post some stats on the % of children abducted while walking to and from school, but I will only say this, read some John Rosemond, he'll cure you of your micro managing child fears...
I digress again...
ANYWAY!!! Here in Lancaster, the school systems actually encourage you to ride the bus and not to drop the kids off. Less traffic, etc. Big G goes to a school that has over 1700 kids in it, so you can imagine the traffic at her school alone. JT and Em go to the Elementary school (K-3) and it's quite large, too.
So we send them out to the bus stop, which they LOVE, I am not so in love with it, but it's part of my letting my little birds out of the nest to test their wings program. They are doing great, the jury is still out for me...
So I am including some pictures I took this morning of them at their bus stop. They are funny. I swear, I need a shock collar for JT because that little nincompoop was at the bus stop with all the kids and several parents (You guessed it - micro managers) tossing his silly putty he obtained from a SWAP thing in class yesterday (remind me to have a talk with his teacher about that) and then throwing the nasty blob at the other kids at the bus stop. And let me tell you, shooting xray fire at him from my eyes at my house does not phase him... the other children would absolutely be shocked and feel the flames, but him? He's got some anti-parent shield on his body that completely deflects the rays. I will have to do something about that. And you know, being the parent of five very busy children, if I don't write down right now what he did, I will forget to discuss (that's putting it nicely) the problem with him this afternoon when he returns home. Then tomorrow when I am watching him from the office window of my home, he will again be engaging in silly putty wars with the poor victims at the bus stop and I will kick myself for forgetting. Am I the only one who does this? Sometimes I think I must be.
The first picture is the actual view I have of the bus stop. As you can see, it's not very far, so the burning rays of fire I shoot, should be fairly effective.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Officer Buckle
Have you ever read that children's story about Officer Buckle? There is a little girl in the story who loves Officer Buckle and all the safety tips and in fact, she wears a helmet all the time, which actually wound up saving her in the story... You should find the book, it's really cute. I would run upstairs and try to find it for you, but I'm not. Too lazy. I only venture up there for necessary things, like bathing and sleeping.
Anyway, long story short, here is a photo of the little girl in the story, or maybe a picture of what she looked like when she was young.
Marebare will walk around the house with her helmet on all day long. It's absolutely hysterical. Maybe she's trying to tell me something.
Anyway, long story short, here is a photo of the little girl in the story, or maybe a picture of what she looked like when she was young.
Marebare will walk around the house with her helmet on all day long. It's absolutely hysterical. Maybe she's trying to tell me something.
Going to do this again...
I'm BACK... I'm going to try and do this again. Really, the first and only reason I blogged was to keep my family in touch with us without them feeling terribly sad that they never come and visit... (hint hint) but then they never checked it, and every time I asked, it was always, oh yeah, I forgot about that...
So forget it. Now I blog to keep sanity and maybe keep an online journal. With that being said, I love comments, but if you feel it necessary to demoralize any of my thoughts/concerns/dreams/etc, please keep in mind, this is my journal and you are free to contradict anything I say, IN YOUR OWN BLOG... stay kindly away from mine...
Alritey then. We've been in Buffalo, NY for about three months now and minus the terribly depressing feeling of knowing no one personally, it's really a neat area of the country. It's beautiful actually, and I feel a homey kind of feeling. Yea, that's a pathetic description, but my publicist is out to lunch.
speaking of LUNCH. Took Gi and Marebare to Friendly's today... Those of you from the south (ie Little Rock) can compare it to a Purple Cow, those of you from the south (ie Tennessee) can compare it to a Shoney's with an ice cream bar inside, which by the way, if I wasn't on a strict, no ice cream, bad dessert diet, due to the fact I can not do any cardio exercises yet because my cycling bike ordered 3 months ago is still in Limbo somewhere, I would absolutely LOVE the dessert there! There was a dessert called, well, I can't remember the name, but it had peanut butter, hot fudge, Reese cups, vanilla ice cream and brownies in it... HOLY COW! Talk about a mind boggling dessert... it looked to die for! But Gi settled on a healthy scoop of mint chocolate chip on a cone, and let me tell you, it was divine, too.... (hehe, she got "tired" of eating it and wanted to get down to the cone part--her favorite, yea, I made the sacrifice...)
So we're here. At least for 3 years. Who knows, we may stay longer. All I know is that NY needs to fix it's tax system in order for us to retire here, it's WACKED... the funny thing is, every one here in WNY says it's all NYC and Albany's fault! Ricky thinks NYC should declare itself a state, and then the tax problem would be eliminated. I love him, he's sooooo smart with numbers, (he's an accountant ya know-really, he is!!) And he taught me all about NY's screwed up system... maybe he should run for Governor... NOT.
Well, that's about it for today. I might try to post some pictures, if I can remember to. I did get on here to email a friend back in AR, but totally forgot to do that... Sorry Cincy!
God bless you today. It's glorious on the second week of Easter...
So forget it. Now I blog to keep sanity and maybe keep an online journal. With that being said, I love comments, but if you feel it necessary to demoralize any of my thoughts/concerns/dreams/etc, please keep in mind, this is my journal and you are free to contradict anything I say, IN YOUR OWN BLOG... stay kindly away from mine...
Alritey then. We've been in Buffalo, NY for about three months now and minus the terribly depressing feeling of knowing no one personally, it's really a neat area of the country. It's beautiful actually, and I feel a homey kind of feeling. Yea, that's a pathetic description, but my publicist is out to lunch.
speaking of LUNCH. Took Gi and Marebare to Friendly's today... Those of you from the south (ie Little Rock) can compare it to a Purple Cow, those of you from the south (ie Tennessee) can compare it to a Shoney's with an ice cream bar inside, which by the way, if I wasn't on a strict, no ice cream, bad dessert diet, due to the fact I can not do any cardio exercises yet because my cycling bike ordered 3 months ago is still in Limbo somewhere, I would absolutely LOVE the dessert there! There was a dessert called, well, I can't remember the name, but it had peanut butter, hot fudge, Reese cups, vanilla ice cream and brownies in it... HOLY COW! Talk about a mind boggling dessert... it looked to die for! But Gi settled on a healthy scoop of mint chocolate chip on a cone, and let me tell you, it was divine, too.... (hehe, she got "tired" of eating it and wanted to get down to the cone part--her favorite, yea, I made the sacrifice...)
So we're here. At least for 3 years. Who knows, we may stay longer. All I know is that NY needs to fix it's tax system in order for us to retire here, it's WACKED... the funny thing is, every one here in WNY says it's all NYC and Albany's fault! Ricky thinks NYC should declare itself a state, and then the tax problem would be eliminated. I love him, he's sooooo smart with numbers, (he's an accountant ya know-really, he is!!) And he taught me all about NY's screwed up system... maybe he should run for Governor... NOT.
Well, that's about it for today. I might try to post some pictures, if I can remember to. I did get on here to email a friend back in AR, but totally forgot to do that... Sorry Cincy!
God bless you today. It's glorious on the second week of Easter...
Friday, June 19, 2009
First swim meet...
Ok, so I'm a bit behind... the first swim meet was two weeks ago... G, JT, and Em all did a fantastic job... Enjoy the pics... little me is trying to help me type...
Monday, June 8, 2009
Only the shadow knows...
I love my family... my kids and hubby are the greatest... I am cancer free... the margins were clear... here are just some pics from the last few weeks... Em finally got to have her birthday party... she was very excited... party at the park... CHEAP!!! Caught some of J following his daddy behind the mower... absolutely adorable... my boys... and one of the healing of my hand... much nicer looking... I like to call it my Voldemort mark... :)
Have a great week! We
are!
Have a great week! We
are!
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