Happy Thanksgiving!

More pictures later ... time to start cooking!

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Prayer Request for FIL and "Tidbits"

I'm coming to you guys with a prayer request tonight for my father-in-law. He went to the doctor today and found out that he has pneumonia. He's been sick a lot this fall and just can't seem to get over this "mess". So please lift him up in your prayers tonight

"Tidbits"

• I got my hair cut this afternoon and it's SHORT. Well, my hair is always short but it's shorter than usual. My stylist was cracking me up with a story about how she wished she had long hair and what she would do with it. We won't go there on this wholesome blog.

• I was outside watering my fall flowers this afternoon and the mail carrier drove all the way up to our house to deliver a package. By "all the way" I mean he literally drove up into our yard and pulled right up beside me. He never comes up to our house! If it doesn't fit in the mailbox, he either leaves it on the side of the road beside the mailbox or takes it back to the post office.

• I was totally excited to see that my cuz Martha posted a comment on my blog the other day! I totally didn't even know she was reading it. I hope to be able to see her family and the new grandbaby this weekend when we're "home" for Thanksgiving!!

• I hurt my car this morning on my way to work. D'Oh! I hate that! Don't worry, nobody was hurt.

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Sweet Treats

This weekend, I did all my cooking for Thanksgiving.

I always make some awesome homemade cracker jacks. They are sooooooo buttery and yummy. Emily was a bit fascinated by the popcorn air popper. I used like three batches of popcorn so she got to check it out quite a bit. (You'll have to excuse all the junk on the counter in this picture!)

And here are the cracker jacks cooling on the table. Mike says they "talk" when they come out of the oven.I made soooo much popcorn. It covered the dining table and filled four gallon size zip lock bags. Yum! Look Dad! This is what I'm bringing to your house!

I also made some white chocolate covered pretzels at Mike's request. I usually make these at Christmas, but ... I "sacrificed" and made them early. I was going to make something else, but oh well. Boy are they tasty!

Sweet or not, what's your favorite dish at Thanksgiving?

My favorite dish is sweet potatoes ... prepared any way .. with marshmallows or without, candied or not, pecans on top or not ... in a pie, on a plate or in a bowl. Yummy yummy yummy!

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Not Me! Monday and an Open Letter to MckMama

Well, it's Not Me! Monday yet again. Lets just dive right in ...

• I did not wake up thinking that I was not going to participate in Not Me! Monday this week. I'm just too tired and busy and besides, nothing noteworthy has happened in the Not Me! department lately anyway.

• I am not totally blown away by all the hits my blog has received as a result of the shoutout from MckMama. My blog did not get over 1000 hits before noon today. Wow! Wow! Wow!

• I did not tell my three-year-old child that the policeman was going to come knock on our door if she didn't stop screaming and crying. I did not use that line because I'd used it before and it worked. It did not work this time too. I do not promise I won't use it again.

An Open Letter to MckMama

Heeeeeeeeeey MckMama! Thank you so much for the honorable mention on your Small Fryday Contest. I'm glad you liked the post with all the links on it. I will admit (even without the cover of a Not Me! Monday) that seeing all the extra hits on my blog is almost as good as getting a real prize. I am also proud to say that my blog post has created some additional attention for the String of Pearls organization's website. (Also interestingly, I noticed that lots of people clicked out to the link where I mentioned that your kids have real names. I think many of your blog readers must be the curious sort.)

I just wanted you to know that I admire the way you put your faith out there for your blog readers to see. This was clearly demonstrated by the way you handled yourself and your family while dealing with the life-threatening condition that your son, MckMuffin, battled before he was even born. God is using your life story and your blog for great things. That is evident by the ginormous blog following that your story has created.

Over the past few weeks, I have begun to feel like God has led me to create this blog for a purpose greater than the obvious. My blog was originally created to help us keep in touch with our out-of-state family. But I think God will use this blog for great things! Sometimes I wish I knew what was in store for me, but it will all be done in God's perfect timing.

In closing, I would just like to thank you for being an example, a shining light in the darkness. I am still praying for you and your sweet family.

Love in Christ,

Jennifer

P.S. Feel free to link to my blog any time. ha ha

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Small Fryday Contest

Updated: Wow! I am blown away to be mentioned on MckMama's blog. And I am slightly embarrassed that I fully believed she would never visit my blog. (Otherwise, I probably would have left out that last paragraph in the original post!) Anyway, I hope you'll stick around and check out my Not Me! Monday posts and find out what's been going on with us. (Sorry, couldn't resist a little link action there.)

Original Post: One of the first blogs I started following was MckMama's My Charming Kids blog. MckMama is a Christian lady who lives somewhere in the central time zone and is mother to FOUR small but adorable children. She's very industrious. She's into baby wearing, baby food making, cloth diapering, and she has a lot of ultra cool, organic, earth-friendly ideas for kids. And even with many small children, she has time to take them to the community center and the children's museum and swimming and on and on! She's also got her own photography business. She's even kind enough to give photography lessons to all her blog readers. Besides all that, she's humble enough to admit that she's not perfect and God is not finished with her yet. She's also the wonderful host(ess?) of Not Me! Monday.

This weekend, MckMama is hosting a contest in honor of her (only) daughter, Small Fry. (That's her blog nickname, not her real name.) To enter, all we have to do is write a post on our blog and link back to MckMama's blog. If I'm picked, I could win a custom blog header and some other neat stuff. If you haven't already, you should stop by and check her out. You won't be disappointed. Also, take a minute to check out a very worthy cause: String of Pearls.

Heeeeeeeeeey MckMama! How's that for linking back to your blog?!?? Yeah man, I know you love all those links. (Note to the blog newbies: All those underlined words are links. You could actually click on them to go to different posts or blogs or websites ... if you wanted to do that.) Anyway, MckMama ... I'll bet I've got more links than any of your other bloggie friends! Yeah, I'm a lovin me some links. Mr. Linky ain't got nothin on me now! Haha. (Okay okay, MckMama doesn't really read my blog, but if she did I hope she'd be impressed with all the links. I spent a lot of time finding just the right posts to use.)

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Emily's Thanksgiving Feast

Today was Emily's Thanksgiving Feast at preschool. Her class was the Indians and another class was the Pilgrims. They all came together for a nice Thanksgiving Feast, provided by the parents.

They had all kinds of good food. Emily's Nanny made petite pumpkin pies with Cool Whip for the class.

This is Jackson .. one of Emily's classmates and one of my Cubbies kids.
Quite a few parents came to help out with the party

We had a room full of fun.

Emily said this little guy's name is Grant. He was running around the table after he got done eating. Yes, the lady in the green shirt is the teacher and she was telling him to stop. Slightly too slow, obviously. If you're Grant's mom, this is pretty much what he was doing after lunch. Don't worry, I don't think Grant's mom will be reading my blog any time soon.

This little girl in green was twirling around in circles ... the other little boy in the background played the piano for us. In other words, it was a really nice party.

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Christmas Songs

I realize that it's too early for this discussion, but ...

The last couple years since Emily has been big enough to know what's going on around this time of year, I've realized that I can't remember all the words to the Christmas songs that I once knew. For the last 15 years or more, I've had little reason to sing Christmas songs. It's not that I didn't like Christmas, but I think teenagers and young adults have little reason to sing Christmas songs. I'd say that most Christmas songs are sung by kids and parents of young kids.

Mike and Emily and I were riding home from Madison's party the other night and we started singing our favorite Christmas songs. Well, I tried to sing the 12 Days of Christmas, but I couldn't remember what was on some day. And then after I sang the 10th day, I totally thought I was done. Luckily, Mike remembered what went on all the days and so he helped me sing it. Actually, I was unsure of at least a few of the words on most of the songs I tried to sing. How sad!

I have been looking for a Christmas Song Book that has some simple sheet music and the words to a lot of my favorite songs. We had a book like that when I was a girl. I remember trying to peck out some of the songs on the piano. I was never good, but it was fun. So far, I have not been able to find what I'm looking for. Do any of you have a good Christmas Song Book or know of one that you could recommend?

Be sure to check out the Christmas shopping poll on the sidebar! I voted "Yes!"

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What do you see?

What details do you notice in this picture? Take a closer look and then post what you see in the comments. (You can click on the picture to make it bigger.)

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Love it or Leave it - Steam 'n Mash Potatoes

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the frozen mashed potatoes by Ore Ida.


Well, we tried them last night with my burned roast. (Yes, we ate it anyway.) I followed the packaged directions and nuked the potatoes in the bag for 10 minutes and then let it stand for two minutes. Then I poured the contents of the bag into my favorite mixing bowl and added butter, salt and milk then mixed/mashed them as usual. I noticed the consistency was a little different than my normal mashed potatoes. But the taste was pretty good.

If I made a batch of these and a batch of my regular mashed potatoes for a side-by-side taste test, would you be able to tell which one was my regular potatoes?

Mike: Yes!
Me: Yes!
Emily: Mama, can I have a cookie with my mashed potatoes?

The Verdict: Love it! (Well, not love it, but like it and would buy it again.)

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Happy Birthday Madison!

Tonight, we celebrated Madison's 9th birthday at Mazzios pizza. It was buffet night and the place was totally packed! There were even people standing around waiting for tables and the manager brought a bench from the lobby to one of the tables to give people more places to sit. Our party of about 20 people had enough tables, but we were split up. Half of us sat near the front of the restaurant and the others had to sit in the back. We still had a good time visiting with everyone though.

We got Madison a box set of Boxcar Children books and a book light. I think she will enjoy the books. I remember reading those books when I was a kid and I saw that they are still writing more books in the series.

The three girls had a good time tonight, as usual. They seem to like to copycat each other. Seeing them together is almost like a stairstep effect because they are all about three years apart. Madison just turned 9, Sarah just turned 6 and Emily is 3. They are fun to watch.

Well, here are some pictures from tonight. The boys are Madison's cousins on the other side. They also have a four-month-old brother who is not pictured. He was being very sweet though. Just sat in the stroller kicking his feet and sucking on his tongue.

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Not Me! Monday

I know I already posted one of these this week, but I just had to say ...

• I did not open my crockpot to put in a roast this morning only to find that it was growing a full beard of fuzzy, smelly ?????? inside it!!!
• I had not used that crockpot in the last 3-4 weeks.
• I did not put the lid back on it and leave it to be dealt with later.
• I did not just put the roast in the other crockpot.
• I did not come home to find a burned roast inside the other crockpot. (Really, how does food BURN in a crockpot?!??!)
• I did not pour lots of bleach into the first crockpot after dinner tonight in hopes that it would just clean itself.
• I also did not consider throwing out the first crockpot although I love it more than the second crockpot.

So. Not. Fun!!!

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Not Me! Monday - Sunday Edition

• I did not fail to give my child a bath the night before we had family pictures taken. It had not been several days since she had a bath. She has not had a bath since then. Baths are not a difficult experience at our house these days.

• I did not find some weird stain on the shirt that I was going to wear for the family pictures. I did not put a jacket over it and wear it anyway.

• I did not eat one of the hamburger cookies before I delivered the batch to my friend Karen although she paid for the stuff to make them. It was not the one where the icing was a tad bit messed up.

• I did not looooooooove the buttercream icing on Sarah's birthday cake. I did not ask if I could have some of the extra icing on the side of the cardboard after the cake slices were served. I did not thoroughly enjoy it so much that I had Sugar Fantasies that night. '

• I did not wait to wash towels until every single towel in my house was dirty - kid towels, adult towels, guest towels, all towels. I did not wait one full day beyond that before I actually washed them.

• I did not buy *80* daffodil bulbs on clearance at Lowes yesterday. I did not realize there are *80* bulbs in there. No really, I didn't.

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Sugar Fantasies

Last night, we continued Sarah's birthday party at a local burger joint. We had to get together for the boy(s) and adults who didn't go to the Tea Party. All the kids were tired and getting silly by this point.

Sarah had a beautiful princess cake.

Mason got to sit at the "adult table", but he colored and got a paper hat.All the girls sat side by side, ordered the same drinks and food .. even the same shake.They brought the kid shakes out in real glasses .. so Mom had to help.Sarah blew out alllll the candles. Gary and Cherry and Aunt Pat
Jessica and Kevin

Sarah blew out all her candles. The icing on her cake was sooooooo good.

I don't know what it is, but every time I eat something really sweet like that at night I always have really vivid dreams that are usually somewhat scary. Last night was no exception. I dreamed that we were over at my inlaws house and a bunch of other people I didn't know were over there. We were all watching the weather on TV because they were reporting severe weather in the area. And it was showing that a large tornado was right near where we were so I got up and opened the door to check it all out and the tornado was coming RIGHT for their house! I was panicked and tried to get everyone to move to the storm shelter, but nobody seemed concerned. I was screaming that they have a storm shelter RIGHT THERE in their house and lets go, but they wouldn't do it. Thankfully, I woke up before the tornado came and carried me away. Mike says that he has had dreams like that where he really does get picked up by the tornado. That's what I call a bad dream!

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Tea for Ten and Ten for Tea

This afternoon, Emily and I attended Sarah's 6th Birthday Tea Party at A Spot for Tea. All the little girls got to dress up in frilly dresses and put on any/as many accessories as they wanted.

Everybody got their picture taken with the birthday girl This is the birthday girl on the left, Madison on the right and Emily in front.

They got a group photo in front of the fountain.My mother-in-law was there. She didn't know that I took this picture. I got a few pics of Emily while she was sitting on the wicker love seat.

She didn't want to smile. Then the girls went downstairs to have a fashion show in the lobby.Here's the proud Dad.Then the girls sat down to tea (pink lemonade with unlimited sugar cubes). They had fruit, finger sandwiches, cheeses, and muffins.

And Sarah had a very cute Tea Pot Cake.

Then Sarah opened all her gifts. Each girl got to take her gift up to Sarah and sit beside her while she opened it. All the girls let out a collective Ohhhhhhh when Sarah opened her guitar. Her dad told me later that she played and sang with the guitar most of the afternoon once they got home. And, of course, there will be paybacks for this one. Of course.

Awwww so sweet!

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Hamburger Cookies

Updated: Emily and I were looking at my blog and she said the picture of her artwork was a TREE! I see it now .. a tree with fall leaves. Beautiful!

Last night, I made some cookies for my sweet friend, Karen. She asked for hamburger cookies for her grandkids, but I also made her some no-bake cookies because I know she loves them! She was very excited! She's a blog reader so I told her she was going to have to come on here and post a comment and let us know if they are good or not. But let me just say .. they ARE good. I hope her grandkids like them too.


And, of course, I have to show off Emily's latest art projects from school. This fall squirrel with leaf tail.

And this fall ... artwork.

Tomorrow, Emily and I are going to a tea party for her cousin Sarah's birthday. She's going to be six years old I think. She got her an awesome Barbie guitar. I kinda worry when I buy a child a toy that makes noise or with lots of small annoying pieces. I think a lot of parents remember what you bought for their child and get your child something just as annoying or moreso, if possible. I will admit that the sound of this guitar has the potential to be very annoying, but I think she will like it.

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AWANA Have Fun ... "I just wanna .. I just wanna"

Okay okay, I know that title was pretty lame. I was trying to throw in a Cyndi Lauper song reference, but I don't think it worked.

I just wanted to share a story from AWANA Cubbies last night. It was Cubbie Bear's birthday and so we had a party complete with balloons, party hats, and birthday cupcakes (mini muffins.) We only had three kids in our class again, but that's okay.

One of the little girls in our class is so cute ... any time we ask them what the verse is for the week, this little girl says "God is Love!" That was our verse the very first week of club, but she pretty much answers any question about the story or the verse with the same answer. "God is Love!"

Yes, He is!

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Turkey Feathers

This is going to be a short post tonight because I am watching Dancing With the Stars tonight. I'm rooting for Brooke Burke. She's a really good dancer and just so fun to watch.

I did want to share this turkey that Emily made this week in Sunday School. She was very insistent about TWO yellow feathers. Very cute. She's getting better with her coloring too.



Tomorrow I'll be attending a conference for work and then Emily and I have Cubbies. Hope the weather is better tomorrow than it was last Wednesday.

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Not Me! Monday

• I did not walk in to work using my child's Dora The Explorer umbrella this morning because I could not find mine and it was raining cats and dogs outside. I would be waaaaaay too embarrassed to be seen at work with a bright pink umbrella like that.

• My child did not put stickers on her dad's jacket and then let him wear it to work. Of course, I have told her 100 times that she can ONLY put stickers on her own paper.

• The waitress at our favorite Chinese restaurant did NOT tell us what we were going to order for our meals and drinks before we even said anything. We have obviously been going there too much lately and we obviously won't be going back any time soon. Check please!

• Deep down, I do not think that all Ice Cream Truck drivers are child molesters or serial killers. I do not cringe and run into the house whenever I see them or hear their creepy music. (I apologize if this offends anyone. If there are any nice and decent ice cream truck drivers out there, I am SURE I would like to know about it.) I was going to add this to the 15 Random Things About Me, but I decided against it.

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Tag - I'm it!

My friend Lisa has tagged me. I'm supposed to post 15 things that you may or may not know about me so that everyone can get to know me a little better. Wow, that's going to be a hard list to make. Lets get started ...

1 - My birthday is a few days before Christmas.

2 - I am a middle child. (Hi Daniel and Heather!)

3 - I showed livestock (cows and sheep) when I was a kid. I still have all the trophies and ribbons that I won.

4 - I played basketball for a couple years in Jr. High. I only got to play in one game and only for like two seconds. And when the coach put me in, I totally tried to get out of it because I hadn't really been paying attention and didn't know what I was supposed to do.

5 - I got kicked out of the marching band in high school. I played the french horn.

6 - I made a 30 on the ACT test.

7 - I attended college at Oklahoma State University. (Hi Pistol Pete!)

8 - I majored in Agricultural Engineering in college.

9 - I quickly changed my major to MIS. ;)

10 - I always wanted to be an elementary school teacher.

11 - I work as an IT analyst.

12 - I was married almost 7 years ago ... a very cold and snowy day in March.

13 - I love PINK cotton candy. (Isn't that right, Mike?)

14 - My favorite pizza is canadian bacon from Pizza Hut.

15 - I collect elephant figurines.

Okay so that wasn't too hard to write. Now I'm supposed to tag other bloggers to list 15 things about yourself. If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged! If you don't have a blog, feel free to list your 15 things in the comments on this post.

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