Monday, April 28, 2008

From my 4 yr old

Maree was walking out of her room after I told her she could get up from having some quiet time, and this is what she yells in the hallway....

"Hang on Mom, I have to write something in my checkbook!" I giggled and thought maybe I had heard her wrong, so I went out to the living room (as I am working in my room), and asked her what she had said, and she says "Oh, I had to write in my checkbook." So I ask what she had to write in there (as nonchalantly as possible), and she says (as nonchalantly as possible) "Oh, I had to write something in there for school." Sure enough, she has a little notepad out that she was scribbling in. Also...she isn't in school. She just has a vivid imagination....especially since Mommy and Daddy never write anything in the checkbook, so I'm not sure where she heard that from.

:)

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Freezer dinners?

Anyone out there have any experience with freezer dinners? A couple of girlfriends and I are getting together this weekend to make freezer dinners, but I don't have any experience with this, and think I might be going about it wrong. I had intended on making a chicken enchilada recipe...just assembling it, not cooking it, then vacuum packing it in a disposable pan and freezing it. I know there are some great books out there on the whole process, but if anyone has any insight into it, any advice would be appreciated!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Amazing song

I downloaded the album Wake Up the World (2008) from Kari Jobe with this song on it. It's called Revelation Song, and I have it on repeat as I work. It brings tears to my eyes.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Surreal moments....and some frustrating ones too

Last night I went to a ballet with a girlfriend of mine whom I've known since we were both babies. We had a girls night and took both of our little girls out to dinner then to the ballet. At one point I looked over at her, as her 3 year old daughter laid her head on her lap, and my 4 year old snuggled with me, and just had this surreal moment. I've known this friend all my life, and here we both were with our own little girls enjoying a girls night. It was just so fun.

On a completely different note. Do you ever have those days where it seems everything goes wrong. Yesterday I had some really frustrating work issues to deal with. Then when I started my work day today, more and more wacky things were happening. Like my computer speakers quit working (they do that occasionally and I just have to reboot my computer...then they work again). However, when I reboot my computer I have to close out my email system and then the computer forgets all my contacts, and will not autofill anymore until I've entered a name at least once. It's not a big deal, just minorly annoying. So then I go to make a call on my work phone and all I get is dead air...no dial tone. Hmm that's strange. So I go check all the cords...all looks well. Call my DH since he has some phone technical experience, and he gives me some things to check, which I do, and it appears that the phone is the culprit..not my phone line. In the meantime I've emailed all my co-workers that my phone is not working and that they should call me on my cell phone if they need to get a hold of me.....but I failed to realize that my phone was still on silent from being at the Ballet last night...so I missed 3 calls even though the phone was sitting right on my desk. At one point I got a dial tone on my work phone and emailed everyone stating that my phone appeared to be working again...then right after that realized that it must have been it's last breath, because once again it was dead. There were so many other things that happened today that were unusual and frustrating, and kept me from getting all my regular work done. Then I spent 3 1/2 hours gallivanting around town trying to find a replacement phone. Since it is a work phone, and my office is in my bedroom, and the phone cord does not reach my desk without having to be strung over the door and around the bookcase (not what I want to do in my newly clean and nicely decorated bedroom), there were certain requirements for the phone that were difficult to find. It seemed no one phone had voicemail, and headset capabilities and was above 2.4 ghz all at the same time. So today I toured Office Depot, Costco, Walmart, Fred Meyer, Staples, Sears, and Target. After Fred Meyer I recruited my husband who had been at work and school to help (actually he knew I was so stressed and offered to go out with me and go a couple more places). Anyway, we finally settled on a phone that is not exactly what I wanted, but it should work fine. Also, at one point...around 4:30, I looked at my phone and I had received 96 emails from today....96!!!!

And more to come later in the week: My husbands new obsession with Big Brother.....

Friday, April 18, 2008

Busy Busy

I feel like a blog delinquent as of late because I haven't had as much time to check blogs and to blog myself. We've had some rearrangements at work which have made things a bit busier, which is actually a good thing, but an adjustment none-the-less. The weather has also been pretty nice (off and on), so we've been spending more time outside.
So here is some randomness...

Have you ever remembered something your parents told you when you were a child, that stuck with you throughout your life. Well, this is nothing profound, but I've always remembered it. I have always liked hot drinks like coffee/tea. My Mom has always been an avid tea drinker, and I grew up enjoying tea as well. When I was a teenager an espresso business started in my home town (Dutch. Bros), and I loved getting the really sweet espresso drinks like caramel mochas, or some other sugary drink. Well around that time I remember my Dad telling me that someday I would be drinking black coffee, and I thought, nah...gross! Well Dad, you were right. It's been a slow progression over the years, going from sugary coffee, to just cream in my coffee, to Americanos with cream, to just Americanos. Now for all you non coffee drinkers, and Americano is basically very strong coffee. For about the last year I've been making Americanos with a splash of 1/2 and 1/2 with our espresso machine. One day I made my regular coffee (3 shots, then hot water, and the cream) except I accidentally omitted the cream. Well when you make espresso right you get a nice layer of caramel colored crema at the top, plus when I add the hot water it creates another layer of bubbles on the top. I started drinking the coffee and thought it tasted a little different, but still thought it was good. It was only when I was half way finished with it that I could see that it was black coffee. Ever since then I've just made it black ...saves me a step in my pre-coffee grogginess!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Cell phone adventures

My birthday is coming up, and I had hinted to DH that I would really like a new cell phone. My current one had a crack in the face, and since I have a job where I work from my computer, I thought it would be oh so handy to be able to check my email and work even when away from my desk. Of course, the thing that is getting all the rave right now is the i*phone, so I had initially mentioned my interest in that. I knew that DH had done some research on the i*phone, so I wanted to make sure that it was actually the thing I wanted. Well, to make a long story short, I found through much research that the i*phone is really cool, and great as an i*pod, but not so great as a phone and not as great with the features I was looking for. So, basically I found the best deal on a family plan (what the DH had been researching), and basically handed the paperwork to my DH for him to order :)

I got my new phone (my birthday present)...I picked the AT*T Tilt...

Initially,I spent about 2 hours working on my contact list. You connect your phone to your computer and it downloads all your contacts from your email system. Well I had a ton of duplicate contacts.....contacts I didn't even recognize, and contacts I would never need on my phone. I also discovered a whole article on things you should do to your phone to make it more user friendly.... remove unwanted "bloatware" aka...software on the phone that you don't need...like trials of games etc, software you should add to your phone in order to modify some of the settings, etc. Well, turns out in order to get rid of all the "bloatware" you have to do a hard reset of the phone which gets rid of anything you've saved to the phone :) So all my contacts that I had modified were lost.
Yesterday DH and I spent most of the day working on the phone...not because it was hard...but it was slightly technically challenging to add/remove/modify programs and software, and I'm sure we did everything the hard way because neither of us completely understood what we were doing (I'm sure DH will disagree). Anyway, today, everything is working smoothly, and I'm really enjoying the phone. Being able to receive emails while I'm out and about is just so fun. Also having the ability to check the ratings on Ama*zon before buying a book at Target will relieve a great deal of anxiety!! Last week I had to call my dear sister from Target and ask her if she could look some books up for me on Amazon because I just couldn't buy a book without knowing what it rated...or how well other people liked it. (as a side note, I'm the same with recipes...I almost exclusively use allrecipes because people rate the recipes after they make them...so I only make recipes rated 5 stars). Anyway, I can think of so many things that this phone is going to be useful for when I'm out and about.....maps/directions, movie times, amazon ratings and prices, phone numbers for restaurants, and a myriad of other things.

Yes, I am addicted to the internet. I don't know how people live without it!!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Delicious new discovery

Tonight after work I had to drag the kids and myself to the grocery store for some much needed supplies. The kids had eaten dinner while I finished working, which left me hungry....never good while grocery shopping right. So I'm perusing the health food section, and came across this cooler thing full of these TV dinners. The pictures looked much more interesting that the regular TV dinners so I took a closer look. The had the word "health" listed on the front as well as "USDA organic", which made me even more interested. So I bought a couple because the nutritional data looked pretty good, and sometimes it's just nice to have a quick meal on hand. So I get home and pop the thing in the microwave per directions, and pull it out and take the plastic cover off. Well, it definitely did NOT look like the picture, in fact it didn't look all that appetizing at all. I let it cool down a bit while I finished unloading groceries. OH.MY.GOODNESS...this thing was downright tasty, delicious....best "TV dinner" I've ever had, bar none.

They are called "Helen's Kitchen", and the flavor I had was Thai Yellow Curry. Seriously it was delicious, and not in the ..well it's okay for a TV dinner type of way. It is made with tofu, which in my book is a better way to go then frozen reheated chicken. You so cannot tell it's tofu...it just tastes yummy.
Here are the nutrition facts:
Calories: 280
Total fat: 4.8g
Sodium: 390
Total Carbs: 30
Fiber: 2gm
Sugar 1gm
Protein 12g
Vitamin A: 40%
Calcium: 30%
Vitamin C: 25%
Iron: 15%

It is a pretty small portion, but perfect size if you are aiming for 5-6 meals a day. They were only $2.99 where I bought them, and I'm seriously considering going down tomorrow to buy all of them because I've never seen them anywhere else, and this is not a grocery store I frequent regularly. I also bought a hearty bean chili with veggies and tofu, so I'll let you know if it's as good as the Thai Yellow Curry.
Also, I had 5 things on my grocery list and came out with $105 worth of groceries...how does this happen?!? :)