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Showing posts from April, 2011

A Mormon girl and a bottle of wine...

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The situation: Recipe calls for 1/4 cup of wine. No one at home knows how to use a corkscrew. Mom tries anyway. Breaks corkscrew. Mo takes on the challenge...after all, we need it for the marinade! Here is a pictoral journey of her attempt: Hammer a nail through the cork to make hole. Ugh, can't get the dang nail out! Pry nail out with a knife and screwdriver.  We learned about levers here. Woo Hoo!  Nail is out! Time to pour.  What the?  Nothing's coming out!! Let's make the hole bigger... Trying to pull the cork out little by little. We've enlisted the pumpkin carver poker-thingy and it's helping to pull the cork apart!  Yay! CRACK!  Glass fragments fall off of bottle. Damn bottle---YOU WIN!!  Result:  Made the marinade without the wine.  Have funny story to tell. Revelation:  We are idiots.

Play ball!

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A boy. A sunny day. A camera... and a baseball game. And to top it all off, the final game of the first round of the Stanley cup playoffs and the CANUCKS took it!!  (oh yeah, this post is supposed to be about ma boy...) . I love foot shots Wondering what that bright thing in the sky is. Serious feet; ready for play. Uncaptured ball...rolling to freedom.... "Come 'ere you slippery little sucker." "Lookin' so good!  Gonna catch this one!" "Crap, I missed" Waiting for the big hit.... Denied! Gonna catch this one!  What the heck is that landing on my toe? Pop fly! Big league hit--pile drive straight down the middle!  Awesome hit!! Feet ready to leave first base... Serious Feel the tension. Flying to second Casually waiting to take it home. Bringing in a run. HOME! "Phew, nothing fell off during that last play..."

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah...

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As I laid in bed this morning wondering which job on my excessively long TO DO list I should tackle...should it be cleaning out the storage room, using my Groupon to get $40 worth of Body Shop products for $20, or how about returning the sheets that shrunk after one washing to Ikea...the idea hit me like a ton of bricks: COOK! What?! Cook?! Is my family getting tired of Dad's Shake and Bake chicken? Or his spaghetti sauce? How about McDonalds? Or even, packaged food? Aren't they thriving on all those chemicals and negative nutritional value packed food? They're all getting A's in school and winning dance and speech competitions so they must be okay. Nope. Time to do some cooking. So I rounded up the troops (read: children stuck at home because van has a flat tire) and we COOKED! And boy, did we cook! This is what we made: 1. 2 lbs of meatballs 2. cooked and froze 2 lbs of ground beef 3. cut up 4 lbs of pork shoulder to make curry pork 4. cooked a

Extreme Couponing--Baby Steps

Last week I watched my first episode of TLC's Extreme Couponing, and I gotta admit...I'm hooked! Not that I want 15 bottles of hand cleanser, 100 jars of mustard, or 150 bottles of extra strength Excedrin, but I am really liking the thrill of the hunt! Yesterday, the kids and I actually looked through the flyers BEFORE we went grocery shopping and then planned our menus based on what was on sale. This is a very radical move for me! Today, Mo and I saw that there was a sale on at Old Navy (all bottoms 40% off) so we went to get shorts for Zee. While we were there we noticed that a number of the items we had bought, ON SALE, earlier in the week were also part of this 40% off sale so we inquired about it and sure enough we were able to use the coupon towards our previous purchases! I know you're probably thinking 'Hey, sister, where have you been? Are you new to the planet? New to shopping? THIS is how it's always been done, Doughhead!' but you need to underst

More random insights....and I mean random!

1. I get bored very easily. 2. I like speed: I drive fast, I like things to be done quickly, and I walk fast. 3. I would love to learn how to play the guitar. 4. I don't like video games however, I will not turn down a game of Galaga. 5. Board games kill me because they don't move fast enough. 6. I can't process information that is delivered verbally. Write it down, point it out, draw me a picture, show me a video, send me a txt or email, but DO NOT TELL it to me. I will not understand, process, or remember it. I believe this is due to the fact that I am completely deaf in my right ear and so a part of my brain has never developed properly. 7. However, if I hear something enough times, like a song, I will remember it forever. I can still remember words to songs and commercials from when I was 10 years old verbatim. 8. I don't like that my body is aging. I refuse to accept it. I still want to be able to turn cartwheels but my wrists won't allow i

Oh Canada?

So we're sitting around watching hockey (of course! Go Canucks Go!) and between periods Zee decides to provide the entertainment. He finds a flag from the Olympics and starts waving it around singing Oh Canada. At one point it sounds like he says, "Oh Canada, our home and NAKED land," which causes us to all start laughing. Then Kiki pipes up with the following: "When I was little I thought the line 'we stand on guard for Thee,' was 'we stand on GOD for Thee. Can you picture it? Oh my gosh... (For my American friends, the lines go:1.Oh Canada, our home and native land. 2. From far and wide, Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee...)

All about me...

Some stuff I am learning, or have learned, about myself recently: 1. I don't like loud noise.  I can literally feel it grating on my nerves. 2. I don't like to  move things when I vacuum.  I work around it. 3. As much as I aspire to be, I am not an outdoor person.  Today the sun is shining and I should go for a walk (in fact my body is begging for it) but instead I am indoors cleaning toilets. 4.  I hate cleaning toilets. 5. I'm a loner and extremely antisocial.  True statement. 6. I don't laugh very easily. 7. Today I will buy my first pair of glasses.  Reading glasses.  Proof positive that I am getting old. 8. I pretty much always get my way. 9. I love having 'deep' conversations with my kids about God and the mysteries of life. 10. I have always treated my kids like 'small adults' by being respectful of their feelings, brutally honest and have always given more information than they probably needed. 11. My life belongs to my fam

A day of rest?

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So the other day when I said, "Turn off the TV and do something,"     this   is what I had in mind: NOT  this.... Sheesh.... (if my hubby ever reads this blog, I am in so much trouble...)