Friday Foodblog Fun

Sometimes a momma just has to escape the house to get a good meal. OK, that would soooooooo not be the case at my house...but I did make some "just for me to enjoy" food for my work weekend. First was Warm "Chick'n" Salad, which I served over freshly cooked brown rice. I have enough for another meal yet this weekend :-)


Since I *heart* Hungry Girl, and since someone gave me...for free...a nice butternut squash yesterday, I had to assuage my craving for Bake-Tastic Butternut Squash Fries. I peeled and sliced the squash at home and brought it to work so I wouldn't have to share ;-) Since I don't have convenient oven access at work, I modified the recipe slightly. I cooked the squash in the microwave until it was just tender, and then sauted it on the stovetop in a very small amount of olive oil to brown it. Delicious, and I have enough for two more batches :-)

Teaching common sense

Where has common sense gone? I have to wonder sometimes...although the "lack of" is job security for me and my dh! As we say, "There ain't no cure for stupid!" Anyway, I stopped at an accident last night. It was raining cats and dogs. To set the scene...the expressway has a crossover due to bridge construction, and there's a spot that collects water when it rains. It's clearly signed. Those yellow diamonds (ya know, WARNING signs!) that say "Water over road" do mean something. I think. Anyway, so this chick plowed thru the flooded roadway at 60 mph and spun out. She TOLD me the speed limit was posted 60 mph so that's how fast she was driving. Ummmmmmmmmm, right. That's where I wonder what has happened to common sense? Ya know, that little voice that whispers to you that perhaps you should slow down and drive in a prudent manner, as dictated by road conditions? Doi!

One good thing about those lacking common sense is that it affords excellent opportunities for us to teach common sense to our kids. We often discuss incidents like this, in terms of how a particular situation could be avoided, or what could be done differently. Hopefully by the time my kids are of the age of majority, we'll have drummed at least a shred of common sense into them and they'll actually REMEMBER what we've taught them!

How to completely surprise someone...

I don't do it often, but tonight, I did it. I pulled something off on my dd11! She was away for a few hours, and during that time, I arranged for her to spend the day tomorrow with her best friend. (Best friend lives several hrs away but BF's grandparents live 45 minutes away. BF is visiting grandparents this weekend...AND...my dh has a class to attend, in that same town. So, dd is riding over with him and spending the day with her BF.) Anyway, dd had no inkling whatsover that I had done anything of the sort, until BF called her and told her. The mild eruption that occurred in my house at that moment closely resembled activity at Mt. Redoubt at about the same time...perhaps those webicorders were really recording my dd, and not a volcano????

Anyway, ds6 and I get some quality time tomorrow. With only one child to educate, I may actually have time to breathe. What a thought!

The Well Educated....

Are you well educated? Could you be? Any homeschooler has probably at least HEARD of The Well Educated Mind so that's a good place to start, right? How else could you be well educated? Let me count the ways!

We find out that NH Imports the Well Educated.
Your well can be well educated too...now isn't that a deep subject, LOL?
And just what DOES it mean to be well educated, anyway? (Great article, btw!)

So anyway, I'm pretty sure you didn't predict the direction this was going to go...but my cat is well educated, too. Here's the proof!

Every time I sit down to read to my kids--that's the Sonlight Core 1 schedule on my lap, btw--Butterscotch appears. I know it's because he wants to learn. Otherwise, why would he insist on being as close as possible to the great books we're reading?

Current snow & ice pics

Would you believe, I had to post OLD sledding pics on Saturday because I didn't have any current ones? I have remedied that!

DD11 coming down the hill

DS 6 (aka "The Blue Marshmallow!" on the zoom

We had a minor flood a couple of weeks ago. Since there was still ice on the river when the water rose, unusually large chunks of ice broke up and were carried by the water. When the water receded, most of the ice sheets receded too, but a few were left behind on the riverbanks. They're HUGE!

"Icebergs" marooned on the river bank opposite us.

Looking upriver at some more ice sheets

You could slither completely under this ice sheet and down into the river, if you wanted to! Don't worry, my kids are NOT going to get wet feet...they wouldn't have been under there if I hadn't first deemed it to be safe. This ice sheet is the size of a small room...

probably at least 10' x 20'

This ice is over a foot thick!

Snow Fun!

When God gives you fresh snow, why not play? We got several inches of fresh new powdery stuff today, so the kids went out sledding, and after I finished shovelling the porch and sidewalk, I went to watch them. Watching ended up meaning "helping" because they chose to sled off of a steep hill. You just can't balance a sled on a 2-inch wide crest, without it sliding down before you're ready, right? So, with much sliding, slipping, and giggling, I held the sleds until they could get seated and then gave them a push. They excelled in trying to beat each other's distance records and tried to make it across the road.

Tomorrow I'm going out to take pics of the marooned ice chunks. Last week the river flooded, raising the ice, and some huge slabs got stranded on the riverbanks when the flood waters receded. Interesting!

Choosing where to live

"What are the most important factors for you in choosing which town to live? Some factors to rate are: weather, population, job market, accessibility, recreation, churches, schools, shopping, crime rate, etc."

Well, the HTML code for my prompt today got messed up somehow (I DIDN"T DO IT!) and it won't post correctly, so you get question only, no link today ;-)

Interesting question. I've never really had to choose where to live. When I left my childhood home, where I lived was dictated by my (now) dh's job. As a sheriff's deputy, he had to live in the county where he worked. After we were married, we did work together to buy 10 acres of wooded land and clear a spot to put a house on. We both liked the woods, and not having neighbors terribly close. Our main factors in choosing where to live was affordability of the land, being in the proper county, and the fact that we liked rolling wooded areas vs flat open acreages.

4 years ago, we moved again. We'd thought that perhaps it was time to move, since by then we were both commuting long distances to work and the kids were getting older and more involved in things that also required a commute from our old house. The blessing that happened was that the house next door to my parents...next door to my childhood home...went on the market, and we were able to purchase it! Our acreage shrunk and we're not in the middle of the woods anymore, but we now have a bigger house that works better for the size of our family, and a nice large yard to play in. I still look out my kitchen window at woods...it's just across the river now and I don't own it, but thats ok. It's still very quiet here, like at our old house. We're much closer to the places we need to go...church, shopping, kid activities, work. We're blessed to have my parents next door, and I know that as they age, it will be easier for me to check on them and help them with their needs.

The absent blogger re-surfaces!

suggested by throught the eyes of an everyday extraordinaire

"Let it be people, music, objects, or anything else, what inspires you in your life?"

Definitely music. Because of my gift of perfect pitch, I hear music very often. Usually it's multi-part harmony. Sometimes it's recorded music. Sometimes it's a little tune that I "hear in my head" and harmonize myself. Sometimes it gets stuck and I have a hard time getting rid of it...but that can happen to anyone. And sometimes it's so stuck that I still hear it over recorded music that I play to try to eliminate it, LOL.

Music has so many capabilities. It can stimulate or soothe...energize or relax. It can change your mood and help you release stress. It transforms our world from a dull, colorless place to a place that transcends ugliness. As a musician, I can express my very soul through what I play or sing. I can worship my God and Creator in music. I can stretch my mind as I think about the words I sing...about their meaning and how best to express that meaning. (That's something I'm trying to get better at doing...I'm a work in progress!)

Music is a universal language. I've played with musicians from all over the world. Musicians with whom I couldn't exchange a "hello" because of language barriers. Language barriers quickly fall when there is music, and instead, there is unity. Talk about fun!

My greatest wish is to be a musician in heaven after the Lord's Second Coming. I've not yet decided which I want to do first--learn to play the harp (surely it'll be easier in the perfect heavenly environment!) or sing glorious harmonies in that big perfect heavenly choir.