Daddy

My dad is really ill. I'd like to be the kind of person that wholeheartedly believes in the power of prayer, but I'm only 75% there most of the time. So whatever you want to call it - prayer, positive thinking, best wishes, I don't care...send them his way?

Bright Spots

Here are some things in the near future I'm looking forward to:

• The Cowboys game tomorrow
• The "Taste of Home" show (in person!) Tuesday night with Brandi
• The season finale of "Paranormal" Monday night
• The season premier of "The Office" on Thursday
• A date with Alan to see "Ghost Town" (hint, hint)
• Addison's 18th Birthday

Thanks for letting me think out loud. I just needed to stop and take inventory!

Four Foods on Friday

DeeBee participates in "Four Foods on Friday" every week, so I decided to join in this time. Mostly, I can't sleep and need something to do! If you want to play, go to Fun, Crafts, and Recipes.

#1. Share a recipe for something Italian.

FRIED RAVIOLI

Man, that Giada De Laurentiis knows what the heck she's doing. I watched her make this on Everyday Italian, and it's been a house favorite ever since!

Olive oil, for frying
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups Italian-style bread crumbs
1 box store-bought cheese ravioli (about 24 ravioli)
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1 jar store bought marinara sauce, heated, for dipping

Pour enough olive oil into a large frying pan to reach a depth of 2 inches. Heat the oil over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer registers 325 degrees F. While the oil is heating, put the buttermilk and the bread crumbs in separate shallow bowls. Working in batches, dip ravioli in buttermilk to coat completely. Allow the excess buttermilk to drip back into the bowl. Dredge ravioli in the bread crumbs. Place the ravioli on a baking sheet, and continue with the remaining ravioli.
When the oil is hot, fry the ravioli in batches, turning occasionally, until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the fried ravioli to paper towels to drain. Sprinkle the fried ravioli with Parmesan and serve with a bowl of warmed marinara sauce for dipping.

#2. Jam, jelly, preserves, marmalade, fruit butter or butter. What’s on your toast or bread? I like all of the above but usually have strawberry preserves or grape jam in the fridge. My favorite guilty pleasure is to have butter AND jam on toast. You might see some butter in my preserves jar and some preserves in my butter container. Oops.

#3. What’s your favorite Kellogg’s product? I have to go with good ole' Frosted Flakes.

#4. Do you like liver? What about liverwurst? Honestly, I don't want to know if I like it or not. I won't try either. Have you seen how much blood liver holds? Gross.

Skylight

"Irie, Mahn"

I should apologize for worrying people. I hadn't been blogging lately and sort of felt like I should explain why. But it's kind of crappy to tell people something bad is going on, and then not tell what it is. I was pissy and frustrated, yet trying to throw some dark humor into the situation. Only DeeBee (my sister) knew me well enough to know that. And okay, I suppose the Big Man might know me pretty well, too, and therefore forgave my irritation. I didn't, however, exaggerate in the least. It's been a rough few weeks.

On the plus side though, I absolutely love my job. I'm not being a workaholic about it, because home is where I need to be right now and will be as much as possible. I'll admit though that I have a stack of papers to grade over there on the couch...so much so that Alan knew he had the freedom to go hang out with friends tonight! ha. But I love the kids and love what I'm doing. This is what I imagined about teaching.

And on another happy note, Addison is a college student! She enrolled at Midland College this semester and is taking core classes until she figures out what she wants to do. Even if she decides that college is not for her, I'm proud of her for giving it a try.

So I guess what I'm saying on this September 11th, is that even on the darkest days, life will continue the following day and we'll be just fine. If you've never read September 12th: We Knew We Would Be Alright written and illustrated by elementary-age kids, go get it! It's an awesome book.

"Dear God, it's me, Tanya"

Hi there. We need to talk. I'm sure you probably say that everyday, but I can't hear you, being the mere mortal that I am. You may need to speak a little louder. Anyway...my plate is full, my heart is heavy, and I'm really tired. But you already knew that.

Amen.

Status

I reach these points where I can't post a single thing, and usually it's because I'm either too wrapped up in something uninteresting like my job, or I'm consumed by things I can't talk about on the internet. Or worse, I'm just plain ole BORING. Lately it's been a combination of all three. I don't know when I'll get back into the swing of things.

Ready for Friday

I'm having a good week, am loving my job and all 55 kids, but I is pooped. So we're headed out to dinner tonight with good friends, where I'll indulge in fried catfish and fun conversation. More when I've had a good night's sleep...

I'm not even sure...

Cats are weird.

Haunches

Room 204

Well, the time has come. "Meet the Teacher" night has passed, the room is ready, the pencils and crayons and glue and scissors are organized, and the door is decorated. Now all I need is a weekend of sleep and good thoughts, and I think I'll be ready.

Hash #8

Alright, I'm back I think. Life's challenges forced me to take a little sabbatical for a while. I'm just going to post some pictures from the last hash, which we hosted Saturday evening. I think it was the best hash yet, because of the trail, the weather, the company, and the good times. Click on each picture for a closer view.


Luke (and Holden), Brandi, Jason, Jackie, James, Naomi, Stephen, Alan, & Richard


Alan and Naomi


Jason and Jackie in the parking garage


We were kind of tired at this point. That's Luke, me, Jason, and Jackie.


Some of the trail symbols.

I is educated

I've spent the past couple of days playing musical chairs in what I thought was a class for adults. You know, if you want teachers to feel like professionals, don't treat them like children. I don't need to pretend I'm a statue, build anything with paper plates and cups, or sit in a circle and talk about my feelings, but I've done more than my share of that over the summer. Just hand me the book and let me go teach. I got it, thanks.

Nevermind

Recently I've been thinking I should get my hair cut short again, and then I go back through pictures and see this:

YOWZA! I'm thinking, NO.

The girls

I suppose it's another mom thing, but there's just something about seeing your kids together, like this, that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. When you have more than one child, you essentially are giving them the irreplacable gift of each other. Yeah, it's a little melodramatic, but true!

A much needed manicure

Most of our weekend consisted of yard work, and we'd let so many things go that there was a ton to do. Between the potato vine explosion and the passion vine that intrudes on anything in its path, it was like Little Shop of Horrors in the backyard. This is the potato vine "under control," but that's a relative term:



We also replaced the mulch in all the flower beds, both front and back, which ended up being two trips to Home Depot and 15 bags of mulch. I'm going to pass on telling about my Home Depot experience, for now. Anyway, I like the new dark brown:



But sometimes the best things in nature are those that happen naturally. We inherited this old chair when we bought the house, but I had nothing to do with the Morning Glory that popped up this year and made its claim:



Sweet!

My Chandler

If you've seen every episode of Friends like I have (and several more than once), then surely you know the one where Chandler and Monica try to have engagement pictures taken, but Chandler can't for the life of him take a decent picture. His smile was always contorted, or he smiled at the completely wrong time, or he just couldn't smile period. Well it seems Alan has developed what we call "The Chandler Syndrome." Used to, Alan smiled so much in every picture that it looked more like he was laughing. So we were kind enough to make him feel really self-conscious about it, and now he's thinking way too hard about what to do!









You should see the ones I deleted on the spot.

Graced with his presence

Been kind of busy with work this week, so today's another picture day. I snapped this photo yesterday, because it's rare that Junior will lie this close to anyone for more than 30 seconds, and this lasted maybe 15 minutes.

Inventory

It might be time to reevaluate how much cereal we eat. OR, not let Alan go to the grocery store by himself. I'm leaning towards the latter. We have thirteen boxes for three people. And I've been so busy eating my senior-citizen-high-fiber cereal, that I've lost track of how old that box of Frosted Flakes is.

Check it off!

Haven't you made that list in your head of the things you must do before you die? You're lying if you say you haven't. Well for me, going to a Braves game in Atlanta was on my list, so I felt pretty fortunate this weekend to be spending two days at Turner Field. It was awesome!

They played the Brewers, which meant we got to see Prince Fielder hit three homeruns and C.C. Sabathia pitch nearly nine innings on Saturday. Which really means nothing if you're not a baseball fan.



My partner in crime...wouldn't have been the same going with anyone other than Alan:



We put some time into making these signs and never made it on the Game Vision board! Seriously, I could write a whole post on the making of the signs. We planned, argued, debated, analyzed, argued some more, and finally compromised. Our seats on this day were nowhere near a camera man, which made all the difference. We tried to get the FOX camera guy to see us, but oh well...Alan still had fun showing our sign to any and EVERYONE throughout the day.



Good ole Bobby Cox!

Jeff Francoeur's not having his best season right now, but he's still awesome to watch in the outfield:

And lastly, my hero, Chipper Jones (that's him facing the camera). Did I mention that I didn't want to wait this late in the season to go to a game, soley because I WAS AFRAID CHIPPER WOULD GET HURT? Going in August was Alan's idea. THANKS.



It was a great trip, and the scenery wasn't too bad either (I spied a tree or two.) Something else interesting about being there was that we were definitely minorities, ethnically speaking. And you know, that's kind of a cool thing to experience. However, that one brief period when we were lost in the hood and could only think of all those episodes of The First 48 that were filmed IN ATLANTA...yeah, that was a little uncomfortable.

Hopefully it wasn't our last trip to Atlanta for a game, but at least now I can die peacefully. :-)