Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Happy Birthday & Thanksgiving!


Happy Birthday to my FTS friends Melissa and Carolyn!!!
Melissa's b-day is today and Carolyn's is Saturday.
And Happy Birthday to my RL friend Necia next Tuesday!
Happy birthday ladies! Hope you all have wonderful ones!



And a very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!


Monday, November 19, 2007

Kitties, Busy week and Menu Plan Monday



Well, it's official, we gave in and let Brendan name the kittens. He of course named them Mario and Luigi. He loves video games and his new gameboy, and he was dying to name the kittens that. Wouldn't have been my pick, but I'm sure we'll get used to it. I'm already used to Mario, Luigi will take a little longer. lol Maybe we can call him Lou instead for short? Or weegee? lol

We are still enjoying them. They have discovered our outdoor stray cat that we've been taking care of, and they will just sit there looking and pawing at each other through the glass door. Mario was afraid of Ollie (the outdoor cat) at first and fluffed up real big, but now they both just have fun watching & pawing at him. And he's somewhat interested in watching them as well.







We had a pretty successful Christmas shopping trip Saturday. I am now about 1/2 done with all my shopping, maybe even about 65-70% done.


This week is another busy one each night after work. Tonight we have to meet Brendan's scout leader somehow to turn in his popcorn money. We just got the order form Thursday, and it's due today, yikes! We actually did pretty well though, about 8 or 9 people ordered some.

Then Tuesday the kitties have a vet appointment and Brendan has Tae Kwon Do. Wednesday he is in the school play at 8:30am (he is a tree in Snow White), then they have their Thanksgiving feast in their classroom, and it's a half-day of school so he comes home early. Wednesday night I'll be making the food we're supposed to bring for Thanksgiving. Thursday we will be celebrating Thanksgiving w/ Joe's side of the family at his sister's house, which is about 2 hours away from us.


As of right now I am not planning to go out at 5am for any of the Black Friday sales. I haven't seen anything in any of the ads this year that is worth it to me. Thanksgiving weekend we will be getting our Christmas tree (that's our tradition anyway, so I assume we will be), and decorating the tree & porch for Christmas. I also hope to get some things cleared out and organized...an always on-going task & goal.


Anyway, on to Menu Plan Monday...



We have been eating venison like crazy, Joe got some recipes from his boss so he's been trying out all sorts of things. Most have been really good! So, anyway, we are taking a short break from venison this week:


Monday: Garlic Lime Chicken

Tuesday: Shrimp/rice/veggie dish

Wednesday: Chili

Thursday: Thanksgiving dinner

Friday: Pizza/family night

Saturday: Beef stew in crockpot

Sunday: Venison Meatloaf or Venison burgers

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Holidays are Sneaking Up!

I cannot believe Thanksgiving is one week from today!!! Holy cow! That doesn't seem possible. I am definitely looking forward to Joe's mom's stuffing though. I never used to like stuffing until I had hers, and it is one of my favorite foods now! Yummm, I can almost taste it.

Tonight Brendan has Cub Scouts. Normally he goes to Tae Kwon Do on Tuesdays & Thursdays, but now scouts fall on some of the Thursdays. I am SO exhausted, I really do not want to go, but I'm almost positive he gets his popcorn selling stuff tonight, as well as his first earned award, so we have to.

Kitties still have no names. I want to get them named soon though, I'm tired of calling them just "kitty" and "hey you". Brendan is pushing for us to name them Mario & Luigi. He's into video games now, so he thinks those would be cool names. I'm not exactly thrilled with that, but I could live with it I suppose. Mario is fine, it's Luigi that will take some getting used to. lol We'll see. I do kinda feel like I should let him name them, since the kittens are technically for him & Adam. (although I really am enjoying them and loving them, and secretly feel like they are mine. lol)

This Saturday is our annual Christmas shopping trip. My mom, sister, aunt, cousin, grandma and I get together for one Saturday in November each year to go Christmas shopping. I am not a shopper, I don't like shopping, I don't like crowds, I'd rather do all my Christmas shopping online...BUT, I do enjoy this from the family tradition aspect and enjoy visiting with them all. We've been doing this since I was a kid, so it holds a lot of fun memories. It doesn't seem like it should be time to do Christmas shopping yet, but I guess it is since Christmas is only about 5 weeks away! ACK!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Our Newest "Little Ones"

The kitties are here! The kitties are here! (If you missed the story of what happened to them and how we came about adopting them, click here). I had forgotten what it was like to have little kittens in the house! lol Wow, I didn't go to sleep until 2:30am when I finally had to put them in the bathroom with a litter box, food and water and close the door. The one wasn't a problem, but the other one is a little wild man. He could not stay off of us while we tried to sleep. If he would just lay down at our feet it would be fine, but he insisted on walking up to our faces, on our pillows, drinking my cup of water, trying to get under the covers with us, pouncing on our feet, etc, etc. It's times like this that I really wish our bedroom had a door! lol (it's a loft with no door so the kitties can just walk right up the stairs and have full access to us). The one kitty stayed in the basement for most of the time, Adam scared him with his excitement I guess. lol

They are both ADORABLE though! Such cute little furrballs. I am enjoying them, and the boys love them. Joe likes them too I'm sure. We still haven't named them yet. I had a whole list (3 pages long) of pairs of names that go together, but none of them really seem to fit them. I had almost settled on Rocky & Rambo, but I don't know. I'm starting to think maybe we should just name them normal names instead of names that are a "pair". We also have another outdoor cat that was a stray and ended up sticking around. His name is Ollie (started out as Ali, as we thought he was a she at first. lol). So, do we try to make the kittens' names go with Ollie? That's kinda difficult. Although the funny thought of Ollie, Wally & Doodle did come up (you know the line from the song...Ollie, Wally, Doodle all the day...) lol But, I just can't picture calling one of the kittens "Doodle". By itself it sounds weird. heehee. So then I thought maybe we will just stick with the "O" theme, and just name them names starting with O. In which case I was thinking of Otis & Ozzie for the new kittens. But I'm not 100% convinced yet.

Anyway, here they are! Aren't they adorable?! I can't believe any human being could have possibly tied them up in a trashbag and thrown them away! That just disgusts me. Thank goodness they are safe and have a home now :)



Monday, November 12, 2007

Jam-packed Weekend & Menu Plan Monday

Whew! What a weekend. Joe made it home from Minnesota in time for us to have pizza, cake, watch a movie & open presents on Brendan's b-day Friday. Brendan was SO excited that we got him a Gameboy Advance SP! He's been wanting one SOOO badly. He also thought my dragon cake was pretty cool.


The boys' birthday party at a nearby gym went well Saturday evening. The kids all seemed to have fun. I did feel really bad though, because I discovered that not all of the invitations made it to all the parents, so now some of them probably think we didn't invite them! I started discovering this that morning at play practice (Brendan is in the school play- he's a tree LOL!) and I was chatting with one of his friends' mom and I asked her if they were coming to the party later that day, and she said she had heard about it but never received any info on it. What a bummer, because her son is one of Brendan's favorite friends. They had company in anyway, so couldn't go. Then at the party I discovered from one parent that another parent hadn't received their invitation either. *sigh*.






Joe's brother ended up staying at our house that night (unexpectedly, and boy was I embarrassed that my house wasn't all picked up and tidy) and he & Joe hunted in our woods Sunday morning. Joe got 2 deer this weekend- one on opening day Saturday morning, and one on Sunday morning. So, he is done for the season since he filled both of his tags.




The bad part is, that last night while shuffling around our cars, Joe accidentally backed my SUV into his truck! ARRGG! It was on the side of my passenger side door actually, he was backing at an angle to pull it to the other part of our driveway and apparently swung too wide and clipped it on the back corner of the truck. Of course the piece-of-crap-1984-rusted out-nasty truck didn't have a dent or mark, but my year-old nice SUV now has a dent in the door. *sigh*

Oh, and we were supposed to finally be able to pick up the 2 kitties, as they were the right weight for being neutered and sent home, but I called around 1:00 on Sunday and the lady who had been fostering them wasn't there. Theboys were really disappointed that we couldn't pick them up. They've been waiting for several weeks! But, I got a call this morning from her, and I can pick up the kitties around 3:00 today! So, we will have 2 little crazy furrballs running around our house starting tonight! The boys will be so excited!!!

Sorry for the long post today, but this weekend was jam-packed! Now, onto my Menu Plan Monday:


This weeks Menu Plan:

Monday: dinner out with my grandparents
Tuesday: leftover spaghetti
Wednesday: Beef stew in the crockpot (I keep putting this on the menu plan but keep not making it! lol)
Thursday: Hotdogs for the boys (has to be quick since we have Cub Scouts)
Friday: Pizza (family night)
Saturday: on your own, I'll be gone
Sunday: Homemade chicken fingers & veggies (didn't end up making these last week).

Friday, November 09, 2007

Happy 7th Birthday!



Today Brendan, my 1st born, turns 7 years old!

Tonight we shall eat pizza, watch a movie, open presents, and eat the dragon cake I made (see post below for picture of cake). I just hope Joe makes it home in time. He's driving in from Minnesota (he was there for a couple days for work), and might not get home until the boys are in bed, but he's hoping to be home in time for dinner and cake and presents. Then tomorrow is the birthday party. Brendan is so excited. He even got dressed for school fast this morning because he said "I want to be good for my special day". lol

Happy Birthday Brendan!

We love you!


Thursday, November 08, 2007

My Attempt at a Dragon Cake!

Okay, so I took on a little project tonight after the boys went to sleep. See, Brendan is turning 7 on Friday, and both boys' birthday party is on Saturday (Adam just turned 3 & since their b-days are only 2 weeks apart, they share a party for now. I'm sure that will change as they get older). Anyway, they wanted their party to be dragon themed. In the midst of trying to search online for various dragon party favors and such, I accidentally ran across these instructions for making a 3-D dragon cake. Now, what on earth made me think I could even attempt this is beyond me, but the more I looked at the pictures and admired them, the more I thought about trying it. I didn't dare rely on it as the birthday party cake for everyone, just in case it turned out really bad. But in a moment of insanity I talked myself into trying a mini cake, for Brendan to have here at home on his actual b-day Friday.

The instructions call for 8" round cakes and ding dongs. I decided to do a mini version, and use ding dongs (instead of round cakes) & oreos (instead of ding dongs).

Now, keep in mind that I do NOT do cakes. I don't usually make my kids' b-day cakes, and I have rarely ever even baked or frosted a normal flat cake. (I'm more of a cupcake-making-Mom than a cake-making-Mom) So again, I have no idea what made me try this, but I did. (I figured at the worst it would look ridiculous and/or fall apart, and we could just eat the messed up ding dongs and oreos with frosting on them and no one would have to know. lol)

Although this is FAR from perfect, and definitely the work of an amateur, overall I think it turned out pretty cute :) Especially for a 7 year old and 3 year old who would like it no matter what considering it consists of ding dongs, oreos, lots of frosting, chocolate chips and fruit roll up...talk about being in sugar heaven! lol


So, here it is...


Now I'm off to bed.

Goodnight!

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Menu Plan Monday (on Tues again!)


Once again, I'm a day late posting this, sorry! This week's meals are for convenience and not the healthiest choices, but I don't care. The last couple weeks have been crazy and I need a break!
Monday= Soup
Tuesday= McD's after Tae Kwon Do class
Wednesday= homemade chicken fingers & veggies
Thursday= Kid Cuisine frozen meals for the boys (it's a busy night w/ little time)
Friday= Pizza & birthday cake/cupcakes (Brendan's 7th b-day!)
Saturday= Birthday Party
Sunday= beef stew in the crockpot

Thursday, November 01, 2007

My Little Spooks


The boys were both ninjas this year. I work at a Halloween event every year, so they came there to do games, activities, and of course get CANDY! I had not tried Adam's costume on him until the night before, and of course it was too small. So we improvised and had him wear navy pants & shirt under his ninja overlay thing instead of the jumpsuit that came with it. Worked out fine, but his head piece was so tight it couldn't be pulled down over his face, so he wore it more like a hat instead. Oh well. It was fine, they had fun, that's all that matters.