Hey Willy, See the Pyramids?

Yesterday I was picking up a book I had on reserve at the library (Hunger Games - Finally!!).  It was on the way to pick Emmaline up from school so I let Lil and Idgie go to the children's section quickly and each grab a book to look at in the car.  Neither girl is very picky and they just grab whatever book strikes their fancy.  Liliana selected this:

This book was so odd.  I spent the whole time reading it with her thinking just how weird it was.  The problem was when it was done - I couldn't stop thinking about it!  It was just so strangely GOOD too - even though the book made no sense at all!  Obviously it stuck with me enough to write a blog post about it.  I just had to share this great part.  I can't even explain why I like it - but I did!

"What is nothing?" I ask.

"Nothing is when you are given

a very small portion of ice cream

by an adult,

and you look at the plate

and at the adult

and you ask for more

and the adult says

you have a huge portion

and you say

'That's it?  That's nothing.'

"And that is nothing," says Lulu.

Giveaway!

Isn't that the popular thing to do?  To have a giveaway on your blog?

Well here are the details.

It is time for this blog to get renamed!  It is too girly (now that I have a boy too!).  It needs a new name and a new look.  However - we are waiting for that inspiration to come and it hasn't, so we are officially looking for suggestions. 

If we pick your suggestion, the winner will receive:

1 coupon for FREE Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs
1 coupon for FREE Bulls-Eye BBQ Sauce
4 coupons for $5.00 any Similac Purchase

That's all I've got to bribe you all with - so take it or leave it!

Leave a suggestion in the comments.

Street Signs

So yesterday we were driving down the road, and spotted two teenage boys walking down the sidewalk with 20mph School Zone sign under their arms.  After a brief discussion on what to do, I called the police and AJ started to follow them.  We kept our distance so they didn't know we were watching them and I told the police where to go.  We watched the boys walk into their house, and less than 5 minutes later, the police were knocking on their door.  I can imagine the scene - these two boys likely walked in the door, started to high five each other and decide where to hang they sign and then ....  *knock knock knock*

We actually got to watch from a distance because the cops asked us to stick around.  We were parked down the street and saw the cops knock on the door.  It took quite awhile for them to answer, and we saw the cops go around the back and check things out.  Finally the boys came to the door, and after about 10 minutes, we saw the street sign come to the door too.  I would guess no parents were home because we never saw them.  The boys weren't physically arrested but I do *think* they got citations. 

Eventually a cop came down to us and told us we could go.  He said that someone else had also called in, and that if we hadn't of called, they wouldn't have found the boys.  They even knew right where the sign came from, so that's good!

Rating:  5 Lollipops

Go Couponing, Serve Your Country

So my Brother-in-Law recently shared a fun story with me. Last year he was deployed to Afghanistan. From time to time I would send him little care packages of treats and toiletries. He mentioned once that the people there were in need of vitamins and that kind of thing. As luck would have it, around that same time I scored at a great sale at Walgreens and got a ton of women's multi-vitamins for free! I packed them up in a box and mailed them to him to give out if needed.

Apparently at one point after that, a man came to the medics saying his wife was sick. She was anemic and vitamin deficient. Unfortunately, the medics only had prenatal vitamins to give out and since the woman wasn't pregnant, they couldn't give them to her. So instead, my Brother-in-Law gave them the vitamins I sent. The wife took them and recovered nicely! He told me that as a result, it helped to foster some good relations between the soldiers and the people there, which of course is always a blessing!

So there you go - use coupons, get free stuff, share it, serve your country!

Rating: 5 Lollipops

Community Supported Agriculture

I learned about CSA's a few years ago and have kept my eye out ever since for one that might fit the needs of our family. Well I finally found one! For June - October we are paying $275 and will get a 1/2 bushel of produce weekly from them - straight from the field to my fridge! Also we get to go to their U-pick farm (that is open Sept-Nov) as often as we want! Some farms require that you volunteer time working at the farm or they decide what comes in your bushel basket. This farm doesn't have a work requirement and I get to hand select each week exactly what I want to bring home!
I can't tell you how excited I am! We spent $300+ in produce last year between June - October so I know this will be a great deal!

More about CSA's

Find a CSA in your area

Rating: 5 Lollipops

Huh?

AJ ran across this picture in the news today. It is of the big fire near Boulder.



Rating: 3 Fireballs

Tip of the Day: Shoeholders - not for shoes!

I bet you thought that those over-the-door shoe holders were for shoes.

You'd be wrong.

I once read a tip in Real Simple magazine about other ways to use them and so for about 4 years now I've been using one inside my linen closet door to organize first aid supplies and medications (we have a lock on the linen closet). Well yesterday I got two more of them! I now have one hung in the coat closet to hold mittens, hats, and AJ's "stuff" that he stacks on the counter every day when he gets home from work (wallet, keys, glasses, etc). Then the second one I hung behind the laundry room door - which also happens to be the mud room that goes out to the garage. I am going to use it for putting all those things that come out of pockets when you check them. I don't have any other uses for it yet in that spot but since it is on the way out to the garage, I am sure we will find some!

A couple other ideas:
Use in small bathrooms for hairbrushes, hair ties, shaving cream, toothpaste, make-up, etc
Use in offices to organize crayons, pens, glue sticks, etc.
Inside pantry door for spices or to divvy out snacks for the kids.

The other big thing is that it MUST be a CLEAR shoe holder so that you can see what is inside of it!

I know - this post is useless without pictures huh? Well I'll get back to you on that!

Rating: 5 Lollipops

What I'm reading

Well I was "tagged" for a blog game - these are the rules:

Rules:
1. Get the book that's on your nightstand (or whatever you happen to be reading).
2. Open it to page 56 and find the 5th sentence.
3. Post the next couple of sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
4. Do not go and find your favorite book; it has to be the one you are reading now!
5. Tag five other people to do the same.


The only book I have on my nightstand right now is a Logic Problem book. I LOVE logic problems. So does my mom! She'll tell you all about how I used to swipe her books and use up her puzzles first! HAHA!

Page 56, sentence 5 reads: As they approached the tree, the five realized that their guesses had been wrong -- it was a money tree, and what they had believed were green leaves were in fact crisp freshly grown $100 bills!

Oooohhhh! I can't wait to solve this puzzle and find out what happens!

Rating: 3 Lollipops

Cell Phone

If you are one of the lucky few people of the world who know my cell phone number then you are no longer lucky. I have a new cell phone number. So if you are one of the lucky few people of the world that have my personal family email address, AJ's cell phone, our home phone, or my IM screen name then you may contact me in order to find out my new super-secret digits. It is a sad sad day that the number I have owned for 7.5 years is no longer mine. Let us have a moment of silence.

This message will self-destruct in 1 week.

matters of business...

Just out of curiosity - when you look at the header of the blog - is the title centered in the pink rectangle or is it off to the left? For me it is centered but on AJ's computer it is off to the left. Strange. Feel free to leave a comment and/or vote.

Thanks

Organic is "good"

Here in Colorado, every once in awhile PBS airs this new show that is locally produced called Big Green Rabbit. It is usually about dinosaurs or healthy eating or that kind of thing. Admittedly I find it to be an incredibly annoying show (and I even can stand Teletubbies just fine!) but today I think they took things TOO far.

The episode was about "organic". They had Charlie (the big green rabbit) talking to a cow. Here is how the conversation went:

COW: I'm no ordinary cow, I'm a cow that lives on an organic farm and makes organic milk!
CHARLIE: What is organic?
COW: Organic is a word that describes how food and animals are raised - naturally - without a lot of chemicals that aren't really good for you. Organic is SPECIAL Charlie, and it is GOOD.
CHARLIE: Oh I see. You do seem very happy, for a cow I mean.
COW: Oh I am VERY happy Charlie. Being organic means I was able to grow up NATURALLY - like I was born to - without a lot of chemicals and other things that are just not, well, natural.
CHARLIE: So organic is natural? Organic sounds like a GOOD thing.

Now - I'm not saying organic is a bad or terrible thing. Here is my beef (hahahahaha - beef..cows...beef...). It isn't the place of a children's show to give an opinion on whether something like that is "good" or "Bad". I mean, I have no problem with then educating about what it is - but to put a label on it as "good" and thus implying that the alternative is "bad". . . I'm sorry, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Rating: 5 completely chemical ridden inorganic Fireballs

Rice Milk Maker

After almost three months of being on back order, our rice milk maker finally arrived yesterday! Technically it is advertised as a soy milk maker, but it does pretty much any kind of milk you can name (except for cow!) in just 15 minutes. We saw the UPS man pull up in front of our house and we gleefully took the package from him and rushed into the kitchen to give it a try. Here is the verdict:


Bethany: "Pretty easy to use and only takes 15 minutes. It's a pain to clean though. I like that it uses a lot less rice than I thought it would - but I am disappointed that it only makes a quart at a time. Luckily Emmaline doesn't go through it that fast. Also frustrating is that it heats up the rice milk as it makes it so you have to wait overnight for it to get cold. As for taste...YUCK. It just tastes like watery rice. I need to find out the secret formula Rice Dream uses to make theirs so yummy. I'm thinking sugar might help."


AJ: "The taste leaves a lot to be desired. The overall cleanliness of the product is low - in that it is messy to clean up."


Emmaline: "I don't like this rice milk."
AJ: "Why don't you give it one more sip just to be sure."
Emmaline: "Why? - when I don't like it?"
AJ: "sigh"

UPDATE: Today instead of just reading the instruction manual, I watched the cheesy instructional DVD that came with it. Mostly it was like an infomercial and had instructions on how to make your own tofu and tofu burgers (ewww!) but I did catch a helpful tip where the person said that they personalize the taste of their soy milk with 1/2 tsp. salt and 3 T. sugar. I decided it couldn't hurt to try it with the rice milk! The verdict is that it tasted MUCH better - even palatable! Emmaline commented that the rice milk still tasted "different" but was willing to drink a cup of it and requested rice milk for dinner. *phew*

Rating: 1 bag of mixed Halloween candies - (for mixed reviews with good and bad stuff!)

Isabooties

Yesterday there was a package on the porch. It turned out to be a baby gift from our realtor who helped us find our house almost two years ago! The gift was the most adorable baby booties for pre-walkers. They are made of a suede material and have an elastic type opening so they don't fall off and get lost which baby socks and shoes are prone to do. To the left is a picture of the ones we got, but you can check the whole line here: http://www.isabooties.com/

Rating: 3 Lollipops (aren't they cute?)

Ceiling Fan **update**

Just wanted to let everyone know that sleeping with that fan on was just as wonderful as I imagined it could be. Also the fan has a remote control so it was pretty cool to wake up in the night and hit a little button to turn it down. Totally awesome. I also treated myself to a midday nap this afternoon and the fan was equally as wonderful then. *sigh*

Rating: 5 Lollipops (no explanations needed!)

Ceiling Fan

Now what in the world could be so interesting about a ceiling fan that it deserves its own blog entry? Well I will be happy to tell you - it is the fact that I now have one!!!!! Our bedroom had NO overhead lighting (the light switch was connected to a wall outlet) and was the only bedroom without a ceiling fan. Not to mention the fact that the window faces full west. The room gets REALLY hot. So today we finally got a ceiling fan installed and we couldn't be happier! Please look at the picture and admire how much it looks like a ceiling fan. :-P

Rating: 5 Lollipops (I've got my own personal furnace going on inside me - I need that fan!)

Fruits of our Labors

It was a gorgeous morning today despite the fact that both girls got out of their beds multiple times in the middle of the night. Liliana apparently thinks that if Emmaline gets up to go to the bathroom, that it means it is time to get up! Anyway, as a result, this morning started like any other morning does - at the crack of dawn.
It was nice and cool outside and a great breeze was blowing, so we all got up, dressed, and fed, and went outside. We weeded everywhere that needed weeding - including all the grass that has spread into the strawberry bed. Talk about tedious! We were pleased to discover that we have little buds growing everywhere - strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, and even a jalapeno pepper! This will sound crazy but who knew a little tiny jalapeno could be so cute??? Certainly cuter than my children at 3:00am....

Rating: 2 VERY Sour Patch Kids and 4 Lollipops

No Baby Bird

Sadly, the little egg that was left in the nest appears to be crushed. We can see little feathers inside the shell so I would guess there will be no baby bird for us. We are all sorely disappointed.

Rating: 5 Fireballs

Update on the Nest

Sadly the nest is down to just one egg. We have no idea what happened to the second one. We looked all over for it and didn't find any pieces anywhere. The nest is so low, and so exposed, that I wouldn't be surprised if another animal stole it for a little snack. Also it should be noted that it is NOT a robin's nest after all. We got a look at the mother the other day, though she doesn't sit for pictures, and she is gray with a longer beak. We are thinking a Thrasher maybe?
Anyway, today we noticed a crack in the remaining egg, which also seems strange because it hasn't been nearly long enough of a gestation. Though maybe some of the time the egg is inside the mother counts as gestation too??? I don't know. Anyway - maybe we'll have a little baby bird, and maybe we'll just have a dud egg. We'll see!

Rating: 1 Lollipop and 1 Fireball (good the egg might be hatching but bad that one is gone)

Flowers, Fever, and Feet

First thing this morning we went outside and planted the last of our flowers. We put pansies in around the mailbox and the tree in the front yard. Hopefully they do well! It was a real trick trying to plant stuff AND keep Liliana from running into the street.

Later in the day, Liliana started running a fever and is now very sleepy and cuddly with a low-grade whine. Not sure what is up with that so we'll just have to watch and see if it turns into anything worse. When Lil is willing to actually sit still and cuddle, you KNOW she doesn't feel well!


I also splurged today and purchased a PedEgg (As Seen on TV!!!). I have heard rave reviews about it from other people so I decided to give it a spin. Turns out it really does work great! Wearing flipflops does a number on my feet so I was very pleased with the results. The biggest trick was trying to REACH my feet. Give it another couple weeks I'll have to start making AJ give me pedicures. :-)



Rating: 3 Lollipops and 1 Sour Patch Kid

We're Expecting......birds!

We were very excited to discover this robin's nest in one of our trees today. The best part is that it is quite low so we should be able to watch the progress easily. Hopefully I'll be able to get some shots of the mama bird at some point. I looked it up - and the gestation period for a robin's egg is about 40 days. We are guessing that she just barely laid the eggs since there is no way they could have survived that hail storm so hopefully we'll see baby birds the end of June or beginning of July.

Rating: 3 Lollipops