The Magic of Cup String Phones

 The girls are out of school now for the Christmas holidays and we were watching the movie Grownups with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. in one scene they are teaching the kids about cup and string phones. I started reminiscing about the time I had made those with my siblings and friends as kids. My girls of course did not believe that it actually worked.

John Mark was quick to remedy that situation and soon we had solo cups and butcher string to demonstrate how great they worked. Then we had several phones as Becca wanted to make them herself. Then we had lines running all over the house and different conversations happening about all kinds of silly gossip.

Who says cheap entertainment doesn't exist anymore and vintage never truly goe sout of style

FYI; They Can't Sign for it

Driving home this morning after taking the girls to school and I drive past the city cemetery.  Not typically anything I pay much attention to, but on this chilly morning i glanced over and oddly enough parked on the road is a Fed-Ex truck. I must admit to doing a double take and I wish I had thought to grab a picture on my phone. It of course begs to be asked....who exactly is he delivering too? So of course i had to come up with theories.

1. Someone seriously has the wrong address or is incredibly morbid about here they send packages too.

2. Fed-Ex employees take breaks in very random places. I don't usually think of a graveyard as a place to hang out, but i am not going to judge anyone else.

3. Some incredibly misguided soul send gifts to some one that is no longer with us.

4. Zombies are real and love Amazon.

Anyone else want to venture to guess

Decorate your Birthday Shoes

Regan asked if she could have a few friends over for her birthday so I asked her to talk to three of her friends at school and to get their shoe sizes.

White canvas Tennis shoes run about $5 at any cheap dollar store type place. I also have a ton of sharpies due to my scrapbooking obsession. Armed with shoes, sharpies, jewels and ideas; then give an hour of your time to decorate.

I divided each shoe into 5 quadrants and chose a theme. This time I decided to make fun shoes to wear to church events and when I work with the youth. I f you look closely you can read across the toes...Saved By Grace. I then removed the laces and just colored sections to match the colors I was using in the shoe. I did some tiger stripes, some polka dots, and scriptures across the heels.

Some of Regan's guests used school spirit scheme, favorite college team, and just a mash up of crazy patterns. we chatted and watched movies while snacking and decorating shoes. The girls thought it was fun and couldn't wait to wear them to school the following week. Another successful and frugal birthday party under our belts and everyone left with a great gift that was cute and useful.

War Zones as Vacation Spots

We have some very dear friends from church that are going on a mission trip. I have to admit I am a bit jealous which is not a Christian trait to have.

I have done several mission trips in my younger days and they are such a powerful events. Life changing even. Not only for those being served, but to bring God closer to you in your life by giving to others. It is something I feel called towards and don't mind a bit all the hard work and intensive labor involved. My Issue is that I can not figure our how to do a mission trip that is meaningful and impacting that I can involve Regan in.

Regan is the child that needs to see for herself how blessed she is in life. As far as disabled children in the world....she kind of won the lottery in all that we have done for her. Of course she doesn't usually see it. If she could see for herself the abandoned children in Mexico City, those who have been banned from reading the word of God, those who cry out in hunger, and those who suffer. My privileged child can't see past her own walker and her own immediate needs.

I am hoping with my friends Mark and Arthur heading to Afghanistan to share some soil and gardening techniques as well as the word of the Lord, that they will come home with stories that will help Regan to open her eyes to the greater world around her. So this evening I chatted with her about the upcoming mission trip and her first question was where were they going? When i replied Afghanistan she answered;
"That should be a nice vacation for the both of them,"
I couldn't help but laugh...I hope one day she can see for herself what an incredible thing that mission work really is.

Recipe: Pork with Apple and Bacon Compote

Apples and Bacon tend to be items I often have in the fridge so if you are looking for an easy and very tasty way to dress up pork, then this is the perfect sauce/compote. I have used this with pork tenderloin for company, pork chops, and even just the thinly sliced pre-packaged pork from the grocery store. it goes great with a side of rice and a salad.

For this recipe for all intents and purposes I will just say I am doing pork chops for a family of four

Ingredients;

Four thin cut pork chops
salt and pepper to season
2 medium apples peeled and diced ( I have used all varieties with success)
4 strips of bacon diced
1/2 white onion diced ( or one whole small one)
1 tbs butter
1/4 cup brown sugar


Season and brown the pork chops on the stove if you are grilling them that's perfect. this isn't a pork recipe but really just the topping is the star.

Cook bacon  until just  starting to be crispy but is still mostly chewy and drain the grease. Reserve the bacon to add back in. In a frying pan melt the butter and add the onions and apples cook til soft. Add the brown sugar and stir until it caramelizes and becomes a nice sauce. Add the bacon back in and serve over your pork chops.

My family adores this with pork. it is a perfect salty and sweet combination that pairs really well with pork. We served it at our family Easter one year with pork tenderloin and everyone really loved it.

When you are not up to Snuff

Well Regan has made the jump to high school at neighboring town 20 miles away, I am busy juggling getting two girls to two different schools which has made my life and routines incredibly difficult. The junior high at the school Regan is going too had a volleyball camp last week that Becca and her friend Kayla attended. There is the option of getting to play sports at the junior high without actually attending there. It is an option offered to the country school kids and there are several of the boys who take advantage of it to play football. The crux of it is that they accept everyone on the football team, but for volleyball they can only deal with so many girls to form an "A" team and a "B." team. So for 7th grade girls who would like to play volleyball i.e. all of them. There are tryouts involved.

Well Becca and Kayla went to the tryouts and both felt like they had made a good showing, but there were 26 girls trying out and he was only going to take 18. Long story short....neither made the team. I immediately received phone calls from mom's who assured me that the skills were there, but the coach had way to many in town girls to deal with and was fearful of taking two country school kids over two town kids. There were confidential asides, that it is all in who your name is. There were jokes that the coach already knew who he was planning to put on the team for the last two years.

None of these help an 11 yr old girl understand that if she did the work she was supposed to, why didn't she make the team. It is sometimes just good and humbling to understand these life lessons. It does me no good to go up to a school and demand differently for my child or bully our way onto the team and spout fairness claims. Sometimes in life you do not get what you want....period. Learn the lesson and learn it well.

The Art of Relaxation

I have always had a problem with teeth. It has a lot to do with being good-natured and internalizing a lot of stress. This leads to grinding of teeth and eventually root canals and cracked molars. On this particular morning I was headed to the local metropolis to see the oral surgeon for my 2nd root canal of my life.

This is when something peculiar happened, the nurse took my blood pressure so they could put be under anesthetic and start the procedure and after she got the reading she left the room to go get the doctor. it turns out he was worried about operating in me because my blood pressure was so high. This is odd, I never had this problem with either pregnancy and  my health besides my teeth has always been very good.

He cautiously proceeded with the root canal after my husband and i both signed waivers and promised to get to my family doctor immediately.

Later that week  I went to see our family doctor and to put to mildly, he was horrified. I am hardly ever sick  so I hadn't been in for anything personally in at least a year and my blood pressure was dangerously high. So High that i had to get started immediately on medicine and now scheduled to see an Internal Medicine specialist to track down the source of the High blood pressure. It is normally attributed to obesity ( my doctor assures me this is not my problem), kidneys, heart, or thyroid. I am in for lots of tests while we figure out exactly what is going on with my typically healthy life.

Review: Oasis of the Seas

We have had such a success traveling with Regan to Disney World and on the Disney Cruise that we thought we would branch out a bit. This summer we once again enjoyed the Caribbean on what is at the time the worlds biggest cruise ship. I'm not even joking, this thing is ginormous! 

We boarded with no problem and the ship had informed us before hand that they had not been able to accommodate us a family size handicapped accessible room so that to make up for it we had one accessible room and a second small two person inside cabin. Of course we were thrilled with the accommodating!  Who wouldn't want to have two rooms on vacation! Our first thought was that John Mark and I would take the nice big room and bring Regan in for all of her toileting needs and the girls could share the inside small cabin. Of course the best intentions were all for naught as we ended up with most of the time Regan and I with the beautiful balcony cabin and her easy to use restroom and space, and John Mark and Becca in the tiny crawl hole of a cabin.

Getting around the ship was not problem at all. Regan enjoyed the teen club, the shows, the pool area and of course the food. The above picture is at Johnny Rockets which was a nice bonus.  The only things Regan really did not get to be a part of were some of the bigger activities. like rock climbing, the surfing pool and ziplining....Of course I think she only really wanted to do the zipline out of those because she has ziplined for years at camp and did not understand why she could not everywhere.

Here is Becca excited that she can ride all the thrilling water rides. We enjoyed the boogie Boarder and the Zipline, but none of us ventured to the Surf pool. It just seemed a little to advanced for us. The Rock wall was tough and i thought i would be better at it than I actually was. Just a small blow to the ego.

The three stops on this cruise were. Bahamas, St, Thomas, and St. Maarten. We have been to Nassau, Bahamas before and  spent our time shopping at the straw market and downtown. We made time for getting our favorite Tortuga Rum Cake, and wandering the quaint shops in the downtown area. St Thomas was supposed to be our excursion snorkeling stop but we were completely rained out!. I was very disappointed, so at this time all I can say about the island is that i have docked there. the weather as so bad we stayed on the ship. Not a bad way to spend a rainy day at all! the last stop was St. Maarten and we truly enjoyed this island. We dined at a great beachside restaurant and wandered the town of Philllipsburg

 

Here are Regan and John Mark posing with the Clock tower. A really charming town. We tried to avoid the beaches because we had been forewarned about them being very European and just didn't want the girls to experience that just yet.

We had an overall wonderful experience with Royal Caribbean and I would definitely Cruise with them again. If you are a Disney Cruise fan i will point out the big differences that caught our eye. There is not the same attention to detail and service that you experience with Disney,but that is okay....it was not bad...just not the same caliber. the other glaring difference was food quality. We could not believe how mediocre the food was. Even in some of the pay to dine establishments, I was disappointed. Otherwise we had a wonderful time. we enjoyed and Ice show and got to see a Broadway caliber production of Hairspray. This was all excellent and we look forward to cruising with Royal Caribbean again.

How the Girls went from Carnivores to Herbivores

   If you have read my post where I have gone Walkabout, then you know there were lots of struggles going on in my life when I decided to take a break from blogging and focus on my home situation.  Here is the tale of how the school issue came to be resolved.

    In the Spring of 2010, Regan was all set to graduate 8th grade from the happy little kingdom of Cougars, and we had no game plan for her. It is an issue I had put off for sometime hoping a solution would somehow just manifest itself to me. With her special needs in and out of the classroom, and her desire to be treated as normal as possible it was difficult to figure out what to do. Here were our three options.

• Regan could go to the yard of the Bulldogs which is the town we reside in. The plus side was that it would be no effort to get her to school at all. The downside was the district has a lot of academic and discipline problems, and Regan requires a lot of one on one time. She also tends to be a follower, so I looked around at the kids who would be with her in her class, and found very few that would take the time to take her under their wing and develop a friendship with. Only two students from her 8th grade class would be going to that school and she wasn't particularly close to either of them. I was also worried that she would be lost in the large settting and not have the dream high school experience that I want for her.
• Regan could go to the Comanche tribe located in smaller town 10 miles south of us. I contacted the school district and was informed that although they do not usually take in transfers, that they might be willing to include us and our circumstances. It is a much smaller school and Regan knew a few of the kids that would be in her grade, although none from her current school. It has an excellent academic record , and very little discipline problems. It seemed like a very probable choice, and one worth looking in to.
• Regan could graze with the Brahmas located in medium size town 15 miles east of us. It was past the kingdom of cougars where I still intended to keep Rebecca for a while longer so I knew it would be easier to drop her off on the way. This school also had an excellent academic and discipline record. The superintendent was a good family friend who I had worked with for several years before she had changed to the bigger district. Most of Regan's classmates were going to attend here including the two she was closest too. When I called to discuss it with the superintendent she was thrilled to continue to be a part of Regan's education again, and it made our decision a little easier.

The final say we brought to the girls. I felt like they should have a part in their academic decision and know about all the options on the table along with the pros and cons. It was their future and I wanted to make sure they would be happy wherever we decided to put them for high school. They actually had a hard time with the choice of Bulldogs vs.Comanches vs. Brahmas, but it finally came down to the place that they knew more people, would have a really great support group of friends when they got there, and felt safe and academically challenged. So I guess you could say we just added two more to the herd....Go Brahmas!

On Walkabout

walk·a·bout

Australian .

a.

a brief, informal leave from work, taken by an Aborigine to wander the bush, visit relatives, or return to native life.


For lack of a better explanation this is what is going on with me at the moment. I want to personally thank all my readers for their time and devotion to my site, and I do have every intention of returning at some point. I am not leaving though without at least some explanation for what is going on in my life so I have broken it down to three major things. I hope this answers the Why, Who, and What the heck??? 

1. Overwhelmed- For many months now a family member has gone though some serious medical issues that I have declined to discuss on my site due to wanting to keep the privacy of said issue in the family. For lack of a better explanation though it has left me just numb. I am not sure what the outcome will be and I am hoping that it is resolved , but for the mean time we are just getting through it.
2. Apathy- My gift closet is overflowing (even with Christmas just passed) with the latest and greatest in gadgets and stuff, My freezers are full with the newest tasty tidbits, my bathrooms are stuffed with whatever hygiene issues you can imagine....and honestly at the moment I could care less. This is not good as a review blogger where my integrity and honesty with my readers means the world to me. I need to get back to the place where I can't wait to tell you what I like and sometimes don't like about the things I try. I want companies who partner with me to know I am honest when I review even if it is sometimes to their detriment.
3. Stressed- Regan is about to finish her eighth grade year, and we have no idea what to do next. I know what I do not want for her as part of her life/school plan, but deciding what the next step is....I am clueless. My spiritual life has taken a tumble as well, and we are deeply unhappy with our current church situation. We also want desperately to finish our house and put it on the market, but until we have job and school decisions everything is on hold.

For all of these reasons, it has been a tough few months, and I have put this off for far to long. So my Walkabout is born of necessity, and hopefully soon I will back to you dear reader with a new and improved me.

The Power of Blogging

I get a looooooot of email from companies requesting me to post about things. Some of which I do especially if it interests me or I feel like it would be of interest to my audience. This is the tale of an opportunity I did not post about, but has as a result changed the life of a dear friend of mine.

My good friend Jennifer coaches with me in the evenings. She is a stay at home mom to three young children and has dreams of one day starting her own photography business. So when an opportunity came through my email about a world famous photographer having a scholarship contest to empower three women in a photography business. Complete with camera equipment, mentoring, and business help..... I didn't post about it, but I did tell Jennifer. I forwarded her my email and she grabbed the opportunity presented.

Congratulations Jennifer on being one of the three recipients of the SOAR scholarship and all that it entails. It was no accident that this happened for me to help put you on your path...... It's a God thing, I truly believe.