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.