This is just nuts!

Two hours. That is two hours worth of shoveling off part of the drive, shoveling the top layer off another part and using the plow to finish. Only about 3/4 of the drive done, but I can easily get out now. It is hard to tell from the pic (I should have had one of the kids stand in the frame) but the pile down the side of the drive is knee deep to me and nearly level with the rest of the yard. Great for sledding. Sucks to shovel.

I'm WHIPPED! Dang.

This is the cause of my frustration:

Snow + Ice layer + snow.

Dark layer is the driveway. White line in the middle is the inch of ice. Top layer still accumulating as I took this pic.

B holding a chunk of the ice layer with snow on top. This was the top half of what needed shoveled...because it was too heavy for the yard tractor to plow.

Winter is my LEAST favorite season.

I'd apologize for the dark pics but that's what you get in NE Ohio in winter...gloom, doom, yuk.

Makes me want to crawl in a cave and sleep for 4 months.

Though thankfully we have the snow front and back of this storm and not an "ice storm" like so many other do around and to the south of us. THAT nasty mess is way more worth of complaining about than what I have to deal with. I hope you all are safe down there!

Ten More

Must be the week for memes! Rebel snagged me today :-D. You guys are going to learn a lot of useless crap about me this week!

To Play: List 10 honest things about yourself. Make it interesting, even if you have to dig deep! Then tag 7 bloggers that you feel embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap Award (visualize graphic from Rebel's page).

Ten Honest Things About Me:

1. I am fascinated by genealogy. Finding out who is related to who and how just intrigues me.
And makes me miss lots of sleep time.

2. I know I've admitted this before but I love Dirty Jobs. Mike Rowe...yum. Drool.

3. I spent WAYYY too much time online, but you knew that. RR is charging me 46 bucks I'm getting every cent out of them. That and I'm making up for all that time over the years I've been online working 12-15 hours in an average day and hardly had time to check my own email. :-D

4. I have battled depression, a very private in-my-head hellish war, for years. Getting help is difficult when your mind won't let down the "glass is half full" exterior down in front of anyone.

5. I was born with a chunk of male brain. I love cars, engines, the burning smell of nitromethane and 7000 horses barreling down the drag strip, not to mention guns and target shooting. I loved to run big dirt ramps and jumps on my bike as a kid (to which my mother would have crapped if she knew).

6. I sing all the stinking time... except by myself in front of others. Family trait- we all sing. Any group of us together, and we sound purty dang good too!
Though I take too much meaning of some songs to heart and end up crying if I listen to country. Cannot make it through anything even resembling Wynonna, Reba, or Faith Hill and I'm a blubbering mess.

7. I'm not a fraidy-cat person and rarely panic over anything, but I will jump 20 feet in the air if you surprise and scare me. The profanity spewed at that point is immeasurable. Ask Mon. or Mr. FixIt. Or either of my sisters. I do NOT watch horror movies for this reason.

8. Definitely a Daddy's girl. Probably because I was the only one who would mow the yard (without carving my initials into it...ah hem middle sister) and help change oil, plugs and wires.

9. Other than kids' games, I don't play card cames. Family played Euchre for years, but I just can't do it. No interest whatsoever.

10. There is/was/or ever will be anything more satisfying than nursing my babies. Nothing has ever meant as much as the ability to nourish my own children.


MY TURN to tag (ahh ha haha):

Stephanie
Tanya
Insane in the Membrane
Julia
Nate
Hippy Chick
Deb
Misti
Crunchy Mama
Sandra

Granted, if you just did the 25 Things note then you are excused :-D

If you read this on Facebook and have wandered over to my blog, feel free to jump back and post yours in Facebook Notes. Or blog it if you have one...whatever floats your boat. I'm not picky. :-D

Twenty-five things.

I was tagged by Kim and Liz and if you're reading this consider yourself tagged...yeah all five of you!! :-D

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(If you're reading this through Facebook Notes: Go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people -in the right hand corner of the app- then click publish.)

1. My children mean the world to me, of course.

2. I love to write in pencil, a freshly sharpened smooth-writing one.

3. If I had more time, money and space, I'd have more critters than I do now.

4. I actually enjoy "doing" laundry. I just hate folding it.

5. I always wished I had a brother. (prob why I've always had guy friends)

6. My daughter has inherited my procrastination skills.

7. Working hard is the sign of someone putting off something else she needed to do.

8. I could have been a surrogate mother for someone unable.

9. I miss the whole classroom "aah-ha!" moments of teaching a group.

10. Snow is beautiful- I hate it.

11. Mr. FixIt and I will have been together half our lives as of next year.

12. I forgive easily, but I never forget- especially my own mistakes.

13. Anything with print can distract me.

14. I'm not the least bit concerned to jump in the truck and drive 10-12 hours by myself or even with the kids. -Packing to go is another story.

15. I wish I'd paid more attention when mom was teaching me to play piano years ago.

16. I trusted Mr. FixIt enough to pick out and purchase a house before I ever set foot in the place. Admittedly I did have inside pictures, Google Earth views and sent my sister with him for a second opinion, but essentially I didn't see the house until after closing.

17. I consider myself lucky to have many good friends from many different places.

18. One pet peeve is my truck being dirty. Right now it's a filthy/snowy/salty mess. (That trait is my dad's fault!)

19. Veggie Tales still crack me up! Larry's High Silk Hat and Song of the Cebu are my favs.

20. I don't/can't/won't drink beer.

21. If I had a nickel for every time Monica made me spew something out my nose I'd be a millionaire. For close calls?? Billionaire- no doubt.

22. I have spurts of dyslexia and regularly wix my mords, sometimes just vowels. Yesterday I told Tyler to get his Blistex because his laps were chipped.

23. I'm a sucker for sappy movies that make me cry... and I keep watching them.

24. One day I will learn to play a violin.

25. Froot (yes, it's FROOT) Loops are one of my favorite junk cereals.

There ya have it! Only took me three days!!

Consider yourself tagged if you are reading...hehehehe!

The Man Can Speak

I don't care who you voted for or wanted to win, you can't deny this man gives hope.

Words this country needed right now.

Amazing.

You know it's cold when...

...sodas IN the fridge inside the sunporch explode!

In the fridge. In an enclosed sunporch. Soda slush frozen to all sides and every shelf in the fridge. Nice. Soda was apparently the size of a 15-pound watermelon.

Mr. FixIt brought in a can in that looked like it had been shot with a 12-gauge and said, "Exploding soda! Thankfully the beer is OK!!" So he brings in the few remaining sodas and puts them on the kitchen counter. Where they sit like ticking little bombs until they thaw a little.

God, I LOVE winter. I'm taking back my last post.

Let Me Count the Ways

There is no love lost between winter time and myself. Even so, I thought I'd dig down into the positive feeling and try to come up with a few good aspects of this wretched season in NE Ohio....so here goes:
(in no certain order)

- Potholes are full of snow!

- Get even with the children in the form of a few furiously beamed snowballs. Hehehehe.

- Can go 4-wheeling most any day of the week anywhere you drive! Yee-HAW!

-Chili- Lots and lots of chili.

-Rarely see sweat. Blood, guts, deer brains, and vomit from most any living creature does not bother me, but sweat dripping off someone's face? ~barf~ Gagging now just thinking about it. *My family knows I'm not normal, but thanks for thinking of them.

-Unrestricted use of my heated mattress pad topped with a really heavy down comforter. Mr. FixIt grumbles when I try to pass those off as "just changed the sheets, that's all" in July.

-Playing in the snow with dogs and kids burns double the calories as in the summer.

-The garage and sunporch double as additional fridge space for beverages.

-Christmas.
-
No hurricane season. --ok, a South Carolina winter happy thought, but I'm grasping at straws here to make at least 10 positives. :-D

I blew it

Man--so much for Nablopomo- totally blew it yesterday! Can't expect my brain to work when my body is in complete and utter shock of below zero temps can you?? I DID shovel the drive FOUR times yesterday between dance classes, lessons, feeding the hooligans and beating my husband because he hasn't put the dang snow blade on the tractor yet. WHICH I would have attempted myself IF I could have gotten the tractor out of the building and to the slightly warmer garage, but no. Tried to crank it before the real snow was scheduled to hit last week...it's dead. Physical labor stuff I'll do, batteries and electricity I DON'T. So it will sit there with a dead battery until he drags the battery charger down there--have fun dear! Until then I'm only shoveling my side of the driveway...gotta keep it clear for my kids, right?? :-D hehehe

Winter Storm Field Trip

What should you do with a day graced by a winter storm warning and soon-to-arrive wind chill warning?? Go to the zoo!! Sometimes you just have to do what doesn't make a lick of sense.

The day started out with a hurried trip to the bank because I'm a dingdong and forgot the gas company, on it's every-other-month estimate, always-ALWAYS- way OVERestimates the bill in winter months. That bill is payed by auto debit, and I paid other bills a few days prior allotting $200 for the gas bill to be taken out with some extra of course. We had to put in a new furnace when we bought this house, it's high-efficiency, so the bills are not too bad compared others around us. The first of the month is the tight pay period for us because the heftiest bills are due. I checked the bank site to see how close I was yesterday morning and I was overdraft--WHAT?? The $60 bucks in fees certainly did not help that red number. Our old credit union would transfer money from savings to checking to cover if you accidentally went over, though I haven't had to to use that feature often, I'm guilty of retaining that mindset. No longer having that cushion cost me $60 extra bucks... crap. Thinking "Oh Lord, where did I screw up" followed by "Mr. FixIt's gonna crap" I started digging into the account --AhHA! The gas company billed/charged us $330 bucks for last month!! WHOA!! I did a minuscule victory dance in that it wasn't my fault, but I still had to pay $60 and run down to transfer $$$$ to fix this mess. Ugh! At least it wasn't as bad as last February when Dominion billed us $460 bucks (estimate) for a $220 bill! Which made the actual reading the next month almost nothing as we'd basically paid two months of gas usage in one month, I didn't need a double bill taken out at once! After that episode I found a place to enter meter readings on the gas company web site so they won't do an estimate...YES! Awesome! Over the the summer with gas bills ranging 20-25 bucks Mark and I both slacked off on entering our actual readings and WHAMMO- that slack hit me in the checkbook yesterday. Damn.

So seriously bummed and ticked off, kids still jet-lagged from the prior day of travel, I thought, "Let's go to the zoo!" Kids responded with resounding "YEAH! ZOO!" Yes it was snowing and bad weather to come, but the roads were decent, the temps were above freezing and supposed stay that way until afternoon. It's only 20 minutes away. Besides we have many back road ways to get home if the weather suddenly turns to crap and the highway conditions deteriorate. Full tank of gas, 4-wheel drive and the three of us dressed in layers...why not??



We had a blast! We weren't even that cold with all those layers. Some animals are off exhibit this time of year, but to see the penguins play, the lions, tiger and red panda out of hiding was definitely worth it.






The snow leopard we've rarely seen in all our previous trips because she's usually trying to catch a breeze in a very cool spot way up high on top of her enclosure rocks. She was giving herself a bath and paused for a minute as if she knew I was taking her picture. Look at the long heavy tail extending all the way up to her head.



Lion kept roaring at us, but he wouldn't come out. He yanwed about 10 times in as many minutes. Hard life being a lion I guess. The Sumatran tiger was gorgeous. He was sleeping when we walked up the first time and as we started to leave he came to the window, pacing in front of us, rubbing the glass with his head where we were standing and he'd purr.

Like he wanted some love...or maybe my kids for snack, I don't know, but you just wanted to scratch behind his ears. :-D As we left him, he kind of sadly roared. We went back on our way out and he sprang right back to the glass...poor baby.


You can see here just how big the tiger was by him passing Monster Man on one of his rounds.
He is in an enclosure, but both are standing on the same level.

Isn't he just beautiful?!

The Akron Zoo now has a Jellyfish exhibit with several different species and information about each one. The jellyfish section is a dimly lit, deep blue painted area with some low spotlights throughout so you get the feeling of being under moving water which was great to be IN, but taking pictures of it was a nightmare. You can see the fuzzy results below and using a flash (left) was way too bright.



So we had a relaxing day of learning at the zoo, visiting every open exhibit without necessity to peer between or around other people. Yay! We finished our day with a trip to the library for new books and a couple of DVDs. Both my kids are book junkies but Tyler has turned into a careless addict. It doesn't matter what the book is or which section, he randomly pulls books from here and there with a, "This looks good. That is awesome. Dad will like this. I'll get this one for you Mom!" and on and on he goes filling his book bag. I'm excited he loves books, but I do have to give him a limits so we can throw in a few books with some lesson purpose and not end up checking out half the library! Britt is usually stuck in either the Goosebumps, horse series fiction or the nonfiction mammals section. I have had a hard time selling her on anything Beverly Cleary, but late spring and early summer she dove into and devoured all but one of the entire "Little House" series -8 books! Needless to say I don't have problem getting either one of them to read, I just have to open doors and push them into new topics once in a while.

We arrived home just as the temps started to drop and more snow started to fall. Score!

Long day

Up at 6:30 this morning.

One funeral mass for great uncle 2+ hours away.

Stop for lunch- see more family by complete coincidence.

One calling hours for great aunt 1 hour away from the first.

Lots of family.

Long drive home.

Quick stop for dinner.

Kids wound up like 8-day clocks from being fairly well-behaved and cooped up all day in the truck.

Dance class.

If I wasn't tired before- I'm DEAD now. Nighty nite!!

Are we related?

I jumped on my ibook earlier this evening to blog...near three hours of genealogy info later, here I am! I really need to decide on a family tree or genealogy software to buy or start using. I know at least one aunt and a great aunt who had recorded a good bit of info in the past, though the g. aunt is now deceased and not sure what happened to her notes. I started digging into genealogy several few years ago, but working full-time with kids I just didn't have time to do more than a few searches at 2 am then kick myself when that 5:30 alarm started screaming! I'd love to work on this more regularly as I've found a good bit of info on my father's family, only a couple generations before me put ancestors born in England and Germany and going back as far as I can family born in the first decade of the 1700s. Also a very informative book of my father's family was published in 1947, though I've found many sites online, with incorrect or missing information -such as most of my paternal grandfather's siblings as living when most of them passed many years ago. My mother's father's family is from deep in the hills of West-by-God Virginy (where I visited with Papa last summer for the first time in 25 years!) though they are harder to trace before WV, but I found some going back to England if I have the right line. Mr. FixIt's family is a bit more difficult to find, but some I made it back a few generations, also to England. Also found names misspelled and missing dates regarding his grandparents' info. So much information to correct, hundreds of holes to fill, and I can't imagine the amount of time it will take to tackle this. SO I need to contact my aunt first and see what she has, if she has the g. aunt's notes and if she's willing to share. I hope she has it all on paper and I'll gladly enter it into a family tree program. *Started searching for genealogy program with good reviews this evening. Then I need to pick my grandparents' brains, on both sides, and take LOTS of notes! From what I've read online, I need to have a decent size family file of info to upload and share in order to make corrections to what's wrong out there. Then after I've "shown mine" I can have access to other people's work and information that I don't have so that can be blended together and hopefully fill in many of the holes between mine and other far-flung family members doing the same thing.
I think I can do this. I can get lost for hours searching for this stuff anyway, I might as well be recording and sharing!

Friday Fill-ins

Finally! Finally! It's Friday and I'm getting a chance to do Friday Fill-ins!! I am usually reminded of it over here on Rebel's blog, though it originates from Janet, and it's RARELY a Friday when I read it! So I'm doing it today!

1. It's January; I really hate winter. I miss the Low Country of SC.

2. Real sunshine is what I crave most right now.

3. Cork and wine go together like a wrapper and Hershey's kiss.

4. A warm, long hug is so nourishing.

5. Let us dare to do the best with what we're given instead of whining and bitching about what someone else did/did not do.

6. Though I wish it was 600 miles south, I love my home.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to getting a great night's sleep, tomorrow my plans include trying to FLING, FLING, FLING junk from the Pit while the snow piles up outside and Sunday, I want to pay respects to a wonderful man, Mr. FixIt's great uncle, who has passed.

TV Night!!

Bummed that CSI wasn't a new episode this evening- dang! If you watch CSI you know Grissom will not be "with us" much longer. I hate to see him go, but I really, really WANT a new episode!! I don't think LV Crime Lab will be the same without Grissom. Ugh...so for another week, we CSI addicts will be twitching, waiting for the 15th.

ER- WHOA! Good episode tonight! I won't spoil it for anyone who's DVR'd it but Archie had a little bit of spotlight tonight, even if he's acting like a dufus. He's one character I can't help but love- he's either making me hide behind my arms embarrased for him, laugh at him being a moron, or love him for his big heart. I really could not stand Archie when he first appeared at County General, but have grown to love him. Of course, I've enjoyed many other fan fav characters throughout ER's long run, but I felt like picking on Archie tonight. :-D

Seems silly to get so attached to TV shows, but I really will miss ER when they sign off with that final episode. Dang TV!!

Well crud.

I am NOT going to blow NaBloPoMo this early in the month...I DID post yesterday.
It's hiding over here at 1st Class Ticket. Whoops!

Oh, if you click the link and can't view, leave me a comment or message me with your email address and I'll let you in.

Yay- It's HUMP Day!!
Now go get humped!! :-D
hehehehe

Did you wash your hands??

For anyone who saw me over the holiday season, my hands and nails were not dirty. Honest. They were scrubbed near raw from all the cooking and baking. The dark brown stains to the edges of my nails, cracks over my knuckles and every other crease and line was fabric dye. Like I had nothing better to do, I had the hairbrain idea to tackle dying a couch cover over the holidays. Mark that down as a big ole DUH!! Chocolate brown fabric even. If you didn't witness my lovely stained digits you can imagine how purty they were!

My "dirty" hands were Jake and Elwood's fault. I can honestly blame the little rascals! When they were younger and had more energy, they attacked this couch regularly. It was a constant battle of No-No spray, clipping their claws, flyswatters whooshing the air with the kitty cats as determined as James Bond hunting down the gorgeous blonde to deface my couch. The couch originally being covered with a somewhat rough and tight fabric- just perfect for scratching- did not help at all. Once I thought they were fairly cured from ripping my couch corners to ribbons, I bought some soft, not very scratch-worthy fabric and made what looked like protective corner pieces to cover up the destruction. Worked pretty well and both cats left it alone for the most part. I finally got tired of looking at it, even though the "fix" wasn't half bad, and decided I'd re-cover it. Nothing fancy, since it was just the den couch plus working more than full-time from home with Monster Man a toddler, I figured a throw would do. Nothing with frindged edges...that's all I'd need to lure Jake and Elwood back to destructive ways, so I found a plain one, I could tie up around the sides and make a better fit, but I didn't like the color. Figures. Bought it anyway. Put it on. Tacked it up. Not bad.

Fast forward a year and a half later, I still hate the color so I pick up some dye thinking I'll fix it before school starts. Suddenly Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is coming and that cover really starts to bug me. So two days before Christmas I decided to dye it staining my hands in the process because-
1. I have a front-load washer so have to dye fabric in a 30- gallon bucket which requires you stir/move/reposition the fabric as much as possible over an hour's time while in the dye bath. This is the ONLY reason I miss a top-load washer.
2. I took off the gloves after five minutes because the water was so stinkin' hot, I believe it was melting the gloves. I did use two long wooden spoons, but I still had to get my hands in there and grab the fabric. Mr Fix it had inquired when I started to mix the dye bath if it would stain my hands, and I said, "Usually not too badly." I should have kept my mouth shut.
3. I had seriously cracked hands, even though I'd been through bottles of Lubriderm, Eucerin, and MK Satin Hands, from all the cleaning/baking/washing which just sucked the dye into the raw skin.

Washing my hands in bleach after only burned like a son of a gun and caused me to cuss. A lot. Thankfully the children were too involved in early Christmas presents to notice. Mr. FixIt shook his head with an evil smirk while grabbing me a towel to dry my not nearly numb enough hands. I restrained myself from throwing my peanut brittle pan at him.

The cover turned out very well, very nice even color. Lessons learned-
Don't dye fabric during the winter months.
Don't dye fabric right before you are required to cook food for a family gathering...at your house.
Don't dye fabric without some heavy duty elbow-length gloves.
Don't dye fabric with smartass husband in vicinity.
Don't put off dying fabric until you have no choice but to not follow first four lessons.

Grandma's garbage

Grandma's garbage is one thing I loved about summers as a kid. She would start making her awesome beef and veggie soup early, using most the afternoon it seemed to put it all together so by the time dinner rolled around we practically knocked each other down trampling to the table! The soup was a mix of all kinds of veggies- corn, green beans, peas, limas and LOTs of potatoes -so all the shapes and colors mixed with the tender chunks and strings of beef roast made it look like slop, at least to us. So we kids would jokingly yell "eewwwww" and "yuuukkkk- garbage!" giving Grandma's soup its name. Most of the family still calls it by that name.

I made some of Grandma's garbage today and only made one change to her recipe. I can't change much or it just isn't "Grandma's" but I used a deer shoulder roast, cooked in the pressure cooker with 2 cans of beef broth as my meat and base for my Garbage instead of beef. Hardly any fat to pull off the top, so was very lean and man, was it GOOOD! I love it when a dinner turns out well and it's icing on the cake when that dinner makes the whole house smell like grandma's. Kind of makes the snow and blow of NE Ohio weather not quite as bad....well, for a minute anyway.

Three Stooges

Ditzy, Scaredy and Stubborn. If Ben was in there we'd have Grouchy!

Oh no, wait, those are Dwarfs. I'm in the wrong show.

Larry, Curly and Moe. That's better. Yup. Right on the money.

And Chicken Curly there in the middle is 6 months old today! She's slowing down in the weight department; only 58 pounds by the vet scales yesterday. She's over a yardstick from nose to butt stretched out. Add in those long legs and big-as-my-palm feet and you might as well forget getting a chunk of the floor, bed, your lap--she'll hog it all. Thankfully, she's not allowed on the beds very often and sleeps on the floor during the night or I'd have to worry about her smothering the kids!

The Three Stooges, Grouchy Ben and Mr. FixIt are on their own today...I'm working in the Pit of Sh!t aka my Office aka Ratty's room aka I-don't-know-where-to-put-this-so-I'll-throw-it-in-here room.

No really, I am. I'm just taking a bloggy break. Really.

Fire in the Hole!

*SPOILER- Gross out potential below!*

The New Year normally equates change for most of us, but some things never do...like the world-famous 7-alarm chili Monica and I make. Ok, only three or four households know its existence, but it's good DANG chili! After all the holiday feasts and treats why not start the year with a BANG of some chili?! We're all stuffed and puffed anyway, right? Calls for a good gastric clean out and a fantastic bowl of chili is just the answer! It tastes a lot better than that nasty jug of pseudo juice* the doctor would give you and works much faster! Proof being Mon is probably running for a bathroom right now just reading this intro...sorry, Mon. WARNING-Double check you are NOT nearly out of TP before you attempt to make chili!

It's really easy- brown some ground turkey, add some onions, lots of chili powder, sometimes a handful of diced green peppers, some cayanne thrown in for good measure, couple cans of Bush's best chili beans, dark kidney beans, pinto beans, large tom sauce, some beef broth, a spash of milk (makes it creamy and cuts down on the heartburn..really, it does... tablespoon of sugar because Grandma T says so, more chili powder and you have Y-U-M in just an hour! Let it simmer a bit longer to fill the entire house up with gut-ripping chili-tastic smell! Watch the family appear instantly in the kitchen, bowls and spoons in hand, drooling like no food has crossed their lips for six months.
--There goes Mon to the bathroom again.

This time I added some leftover deer loin Mr. FixIt had cooked a few days ago, ripped it into small chunks. Very tender, very yummy!
--Mon runs again to the bathroom at this point because she doesn't like venison, lol.

Fill your bowl, grab a handful of Fritos to dip with or a fresh baked chunk of cornbread and woohooo!! Let the burn begin!! Even Mr. FixIt can usually only handle one large bowl. You'll need some napkins and be forewarned that belching could be hazardous to those around you. All candles and open flames should be extinguished!

During this evening's chili fest, Monster Man excused himself from the table, bowl of chili not even half gone, "I think I need to go..." Works like a CHARM, did I not tell you?! The poor boy darts for the bathroom, both hands on his lower cheeks, shouting, "My bottom's gonna 'splode!!" Thankfully he made it just in time. Whew! Not long after we finished, Mr. FixIt's innards had marinated long enough to force the rest of us out of the den, running for gas masks and Oust spray. ~GAG~ Yes, this chili is worth running around the house with kleenex stuffed up your nose for a few post-dinner hours until the stench clears. Really.

Moral of the story is, no matter the stomach pain, trips to the bathroom, or cans of Oust spray we go through, "chili night" will alwasy be part of this family. I don't expect that to EVER change.


*I do honestly know the real name/s for "pseudo juice" but they didn't have quite the same ring in that sentence. :-D

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Yes, it's the new year by only a few minutes and I'm on the computer--ha! Ok, well I have had a nice glass of wine and headed for another one but wanted to give a quick HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!

Have a safe holiday and hope you are all out there having a great time this evening!!