Exceedingly Mundane

Look what came in the mail yesterday!

Yes, it’s a candle, not a real pie! But, it looks and smells like a real apple pie. Isn’t that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I won this from Karen, at Mommy of Three, during the Doggy Dogs of Summer blog giveaway. It was specially made by Scentsational Creations Candles and Critters, and it’s called an Apple Pie a la Mode candle. After I opened up the box, I put it out on the kitchen counter, and when my husband came in the kitchen, he looked at it really funny and I could see the question going through his head (did she make a really small pie?!). He picked it up and smelled it and said “Man, this smells so good!”. I told him what it was and how I had won it, and he was like, “it smells so good and it looks so real”. I totally agree with him, and so far, I’ve been reluctant to burn it. I just love the way it looks and smells and am not quite ready to burn it yet!

Thanks again, Karen, for sponsoring this wonderful giveaway. I just love it!

Apparently, today is National Relaxation Day. Hunh. Sounds like a great day to me! Unfortunately, I’ve already been pretty busy today and have a lot more to do.

We hit a record yesterday, 106º. Ugh. Today is only supposed to be 103. Double Ugh. I’m just so very grateful that we have AC. My dad’s unit broke earlier in the week and he’s been without cool air for days now. He had the people out to service it on Monday, then it went out and they came back on Tuesday to repair a part. It was working when they left, but Dad said it was blowing hot air a couple of hours later. He’s still waiting on them to come back and fix it. I couldn’t talk him into coming up here to where we do have A/C – he wants to be there to “supervise” and have them fix it. I can’t blame him, but I do worry about him in this heat. He’s 84 and no AC at that age worries me.

Let’s see, Tim played golf late yesterday, again in this heat. I think he’s nuts, but he says he is fine and he’s “getting used to the heat”. 😀 We went out and ate Mexican last night after he got back, yummy. I’m already off my menu for the week though, which I dislike. I love my routines! 🙂 We went on our walk really early this morning, then we went to the Saints last day of training camp. They travel later today and have another preseason game Saturday night. It was moderately warm. I’m just grateful we didn’t go yesterday afternoon when it was so much hotter. I have to load my photos, then I’ll post some later over on my Project365 blog.

I have some cleaning and chores to do today, but mostly I plan to sit inside, in the air conditioning! Maybe I can get some “relaxin” in too, since it’s a holiday and all! 🙂

Have a great day!!!!

I haven’t really blogged much lately about what’s been going on with us. Tim had a big project that kept him busy at work for a while, although most of that is over now. He stays busy with golf, and I can always keep myself occupied with the computer and reading. Then there’s Netflix and all of the movies we’re getting in regularly and watching. So, basically things have just been humming along. Same ole, same ole, which is great, but it doesn’t make for very interesting blog posts!

We’re going to get pretty busy soon, though. The Saints reported for training camp yesterday at a local private college just a few minutes from our house. Practices start tomorrow morning (Friday). We’re hoping to get to go to several of their practice sessions (all of them are open to the public this year, both morning and afternoon sessions) Then, preseason will start and then the regular season. It took me several years to learn to like and even love football, but I do now and I’m excited about this season. Tim is always really hopeful about the Saints, but of course now, after their success last season, we really do have a legitimate reason to be excited! 🙂

Yesterday was a busy day for us, but a good one. Tim took a day of vacation and we spent the day together. I blogged about it on my photoblog, and posted some photos; you can check it out here.

Let’s see, I’ve been doing a fair amount of cooking. I’ve been making a concerted effort to try some new recipes lately. I blogged about several of them a week or so ago, and I’ve also made a couple of new ones since that post. I made a Beef and Noodle Bake that we liked, as well as a Sausage Skillet Dinner that we both loved. Of those two, the sausage one was definitely my favorite, and I’ll make that one again. It was easy and fairly healthy too. We both love sausage, and even though I used low-fat turkey sausage, it was still really good.

We’ve been watching a ton of movies. I keep a list on my sidebar of all of the movies we’re watching this year. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve watched Ghost Rider, The Prestige, RV, Premonition, Yours Mine and Ours, Click, Shooter, Breach, Akeelah and the Bee, and several others. Of those, my favorite (by far) was Akeelah and the Bee. After that, I probably liked Yours Mine and Ours, Click and Premonition. Both Click and RV had a fair amount of crass humor, and we liked Click better of those two. Shooter was a good movie, and we liked it, but beware (there’s a lot of shooting, obviously, and a lot of head shots where they take people out with a sniper’s bullet). We had been told that Prestige was better than the Illusionist, but I liked Illusionist better (maybe because I saw it first!). Anyway, we have more coming from Netflix and I’m looking forward to more free movies 🙂

As far as books, I’m humming along with my reading. I’ve been going to the library which really helps me. The deadline to return them helps me read them in a timely manner, so I tend to read more when I have library books and a definitive date to finish them by. I need to do some book reviews, but I really sort of hate to do them. I’ve read several books, and while they are slightly different, in some ways they are very similar. Most of them are either Christian fiction or women’s fiction, or series books. Basically, I liked them all, and they were all very light and enjoyable to me. I hate to write reviews because that’s really all I have to say – I liked them, and I enjoyed reading them! For the record, I’m up to 57 books read so far this year, for a total of 17,125 pages read. I’m hoping to surpass my goal of last year, and so far I’m on track. We’re going to enter our busy time of year soon though (football and then hunting season), so I won’t get as much reading time in, but I still hope to at least meet my goal from last year. I really do love to read 🙂

Have a great day!

Just a quick update – I haven’t been on my computer hardly at all for the past two days. I need to do a lot of catching up, on email and blog reading, on housework and laundry. We’ve spent the better part of the last two days at the hospital. Thankfully, Tim’s grandmother is doing a lot better. She had the permanent pacemaker installed on Thursday and was moved into a room yesterday afternoon. The doctor was hopeful that she might be able to go home today. She seems to be doing better; when she came out of surgery, she said she was starving and asked for some eggs and bacon. 🙂

I was going to post earlier in the week about some new recipes that I’ve made. I’ll try to do that later today or really soon. Two new recipes on my menu this week were a hit at our house, as well as a new bread recipe I made (using my bread machine for the dough). 🙂

Thanks so much to all of you who stopped by and left us all of the wonderful comments, thoughts and prayers for our family. It was very, very much appreciated!

Hope you’re all having a good week and will have a great weekend.

Did you miss me? We’ve been at the hospital all day. Tim’s mom called this morning and said her mom, Tim’s grandmother, had had a heart attack and they were on their way to a hospital about an hour from our house. She lives in a rural area, and it turns out that at the small town hospital they took her to, she didn’t stay long; just long enough to stabilize her and transport her to a “big city” hospital. Which, thankfully, is in the city we live in. At first they said it was congestive heart failure, then later we heard the term “heart block” or “heart blockage”. Once she was stabilized, they took her in for surgery. They went in through her neck and inserted a temporary pacemaker this afternoon. Tomorrow (Thursday) sometime, they will go back in and insert a permanent pacemaker. At some point, we were told, her heart rate was down in the 20’s. So, a very tense, very scary day, but it is looking better. We had the waiting room packed (this is the side of the family that has the big family get-together on the 4th of July, with dozens and dozens of people attending). Tim’s mom is one of 8 children, and they were all there, along with a lot of the grand kids. Most of them went in to see her briefly, during ICU visitation, including Tim and his brothers, and said she was tired, but doing ok.

So, no Question of the Day today, or anything else witty or exciting. We’re just going to chill out and think happy, healthy thoughts for Tim’s grandmother. I had planned to post about a few things going on with us, on this Hump Day (specifically about some recipes and some movies), but that post will just have to wait 🙂

Hope you’re all having a good day!

Well, the much hoped-for rain was a near no-show at my house, although we did have a nice strong set of thunderstorms move through our area earlier today. We barely got enough rain to wet the pavement good (which means I’ll have to pull the sprinklers out tomorrow, boo-hoo). However, there was enough wind to knock down some large power lines somewhere. We were without power at our house for about 5 hours.

My sister Gail came this afternoon, right after the power went out, and we went shopping for a while. As she’s so fond of saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”. We all went out and had a lot of Mexican food for supper afterwards. It was so nice to come back to lights, air conditioning, and computers and TV’s with power. 🙂

We’re back now and hopefully all is well. I think we’re going to watch our first Netflix movie that came in (Yeah!) and I’ll try to blog some soon about a book I just finished, and the movie we watch.

Have a good one 😀

I was so excited when I won one of the Netflix complimentary subscriptions that Nan, over at her blog “Life is Like a Lunchbox” gave away last month. I’ve been burning a path to my mailbox every day since then, waiting for the information packet to come in. I had nearly given up hope, but a month after I won it, the package came! Yeah! I was literally jumping up and down and both Tim and Beau were eyeing me like I had lost my mind 🙄 I just love winning things, love having “fun” stuff come in the mail, and I love to get practical things that we really and truly will use. This is one of them.

I setup our free trial late Saturday night and immediately began adding movies to our queue. I’ve had a blast ever since then, trying to find movies for us to get, and reordering them in our queue. I was a bit bummed to learn that Netflix does not ship movies out on Saturdays or Sundays. For some reason, I think I was equating them in my mind to Amazon or someplace that worked around the clock, 7 days a week, to ship me my goodies 🙂 Anyway, the long weekend over, my first movies were mailed late yesterday (Monday) and we are hoping they come in the mail today. I’m so excited, I can’t wait 😀

I also downloaded and installed a plug-in for my blog, to show what we have at home from Netflix and also what is up next in our queue. Check it out on my sidebar, below and on the right. I think it’s so cool!

OK, so for my question – I have a bunch of movies in our queue, but I’m always looking for more suggestions! If you’ve seen a good movie, especially one that might have been a “sleeper” or not a blockbuster type movie that you’ve seen and enjoyed, let me know what it is! We see a lot of movies at the theater when they come out, and rent even more, so I’ve actually had a hard time trying to find movies. I’m finding some older ones, and some of the new releases that we haven’t seen yet to add to our queue. But I’d love to get more ideas 🙂 Leave me a comment and let me know some movies I should get!

Did you miss me? No, of course you didn’t. No one except a few family and friends knew that we were gone 🙂

We have been out of town on vacation since the weekend. Tim’s parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary a week ago, and as our present to them, we all went on vacation together as a family. There were eleven of us in all – us, Tim’s parents, brothers, one sister-in-law and our four nieces and nephews. We went to the Smoky Mountains (Gatlinburg, TN) and rented a large cabin. We had 4 bedrooms, a game room, two living room areas, 7 TV’s, 2 decks, a grill, a hot tub, jacuzzi and a bunch of other amenities. We had a great time! We went out to eat a couple of times, grilled out at the cabin, and had some wonderful meals together. We did a little shopping, some sightseeing, and Tim and I did some hiking/sightseeing in the Great Smoky National Park while the others went to a petting zoo and go-kart track with the kids (our nieces and nephews). I think Tim’s parents really enjoyed our trip, and I know we did 🙂 We loved getting to spend time together!

We got home just a little while ago, and have already retrieved Beau from what I fondly refer to as “puppy prison” (aka the kennel where we board him). I ran to the grocery and picked up some milk, bread, OJ and a few things to tide us over. We definitely don’t need to eat much for a while. I feel like I could not eat for a few days. Beau, on the other hand, appears to have not eaten at all while we were gone. Tim and I both thought he looked noticeably skinnier. He looks really thin and scrawny again 🙁

Now, I have to start working on transferring my photos I took, updating my Project365 blog, and starting on that mountain of laundry we brought home. Hope everyone is having a great week!

P.S. I experimented with the “pre-post” feature and posted a couple of blog entries while we were gone. I’m so happy it all worked so well 🙂

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and enjoys this day. Let us all remember that it’s not just a day off work, or a day to hang out with our families. It’s also a day of remembrance, for all of the lives that have been given for our freedom – in defense and protection of our nation. Let us never forget. I know I, for one, am very grateful to all those who serve us, and especially those who have given their life on behalf of our great nation.

Have a great day! 🙂

I just posted this photo over on my Project365 blog for today… not a great photo, but representative of my day:

It’s really hot and dry here, and I’m having to drag out the sprinklers and try to water the grass. Tim and I are both hoping that any new house we get in the future has an in-ground sprinkler system. Tim offered years ago to dig up part of our yard and install one for me, but the el-cheapo side of me didn’t see the need to spend the money. After all, I can get outside and drag sprinklers around as needed. Of course, the first few times I do this every spring or summer, I don’t mind a bit. As the summer wears on and the hotter and dryer it gets, it really gets to be a pain. 🙄

I remember growing up, I used to love it when my dad ran the sprinklers. I would put on my bathing suit and go outside to play in the sprinklers. I love getting wet and cooled off and playing in the water. I always thought if we had kids, that would be a fun summer thing for them to do. And along those same lines, I was hoping that our new dog Beau (who we got late last year in the fall, after we had put up the sprinklers for the year), would enjoy playing in them. Nope, no way. The dog does not like the sprinklers or the water hose. All fall and winter and early spring, the only time he was exposed to the water hose was to get a bath, which he detested. Now, consequently, he won’t go anywhere near the hose or sprinklers. We’ve both been working with him, trying to get him to drink water out of the hose. And he is getting better about that, but he still won’t go anywhere near the sprinklers.

So, how about a “Question of the Day” about sprinklers – do you have an in ground sprinkler system for your yard? If not, do you drag out the sprinklers or does someone else in your house take care of that? Do you have water restrictions where you live? And as for the kids and pets – do they like to play in the sprinklers? Or do you? 🙂 Leave me a comment and let me know!

Here’s a few things going on with me and with us…. and most of them are good things. Little bits of happy 🙂

I’m hoping this will be the last trip to the video store for a while. Thanks to Lauren for pointing out the Netflix giveaway over at Nan‘s blog – Life is Like a Lunchbox. Nan sponsored a contest this week, and gave away 5 free 6 month subscriptions to Netflix. I won one, and I’m still so very excited! Lauren won one also, and so did my sister Gail. Yippeee!! We love movies and have been wanting to try Netflix for a while now. This comes at such an opportune time. With all of our favorite TV shows ending for the summer, we won’t have anything to watch. We normally rent a lot of movies in the summer anyway, so this is indeed a blessing. Thanks so much to the folks at Netflix for offering this, and for Nan for organizing and handling all of this. I’m still so excited!

Hope everyone out there in Blog-ville is having a great weekend!

Ok, so if you remember, we bought a new dishwasher and refrigerator a couple of weeks ago. I love, love, love both of them and am still very enamored of my shiny new appliances. Yep, I’m that kind of girl. Appliances make me all giddy 🙂

I debated for a while about whether to leave my shiny new fridge all empty and clean looking, as it was in this picture here, or to put some of my pictures and magnets and memorabilia back on it. I finally decided that I had to put some of it back. I love looking at my family photos and I do make it a point to get magnets from when we travel to fun places. So, I put some of the magnets back on the front, and pictures on the side. I tried not to have it as cluttered as the old refrigerator I had before.

That’s today’s “Question of the Day” – are you a person who likes putting things up on your fridge, like notes, pictures, schedules, your kids art work, magnets, etc? Or are you a clean refrigerator kind of person, and yours doesn’t have a single thing on it? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Oh, and in case you are interested, here’s what I have on mine now. The front, with just a few magnets from our travels:

And the side by my countertops. I fix my bowl of cereal here in the AM and like looking at all of the photos of family and friends. There’s also a couple of reminders about doctor appointments, my weekly menu and a schedule for the local minor league baseball team 🙂

I just got back from the grocery store, and was once again struck by something I find so amusing. Every time I go to the grocery store, whether to the local one near my house or the Super Walmart a little further away, I see a few lost looking men. These men usually have lists in their hand, and they seem to be totally lost, wandering aimlessly through the grocery aisles. Most of them have cell phones stuck to their ear, or I see them fumbling for their cell phone, to call in a question. Most men, it seems, wander the store with the phone perpetually on, so that their wives or whoever can talk them through the entire shopping expedition. The rare exception – this morning I saw an older gentleman making tracks through the grocery. He had three things – milk, beer and some flowers. I found that mildly amusing too. 🙂

Anyway, I love the grocery store and love to go food shopping. Must be part of my whole inherent “love to eat” mentality. I sometimes try to stop and help these little lost male lambs in the store, but most of the time, they are on the phone, so I leave them alone. I think Tim would be the same way, except that he really doesn’t ever go to the grocery store for me. He’ll go if I ask him, to pick up a few things, but that happens very seldom, maybe a handful of times a year. I can’t remember the last time he went to get more than one or two things by himself. He’ll go with me occasionally to Walmart, and hang out in the magazines, sporting goods, automotive or electronics section until I call him on the cell phone to tell him to meet me up front at the checkout. He’s not thrilled about going, but he will go if I ask him. Such a sweetie 🙂

How about you? This can be a really quick “Question of the Day” – do you like to go grocery shopping or do you detest it?

We’ve been incredibly busy the last few days. I’m still pretty tired. I feel like just crawling in the bed and throwing the covers over my head. Alas, that ain’t gonna happen. This is always a really difficult time of year for me, and I haven’t quite come out of the fog yet.

Let’s see, busy as a bee. Bzzzz. Friday was spent shopping with my sister Gail and seeing a lot of our family before a graduation ceremony on Saturday. We had pizza Friday night (hence the pizza poll below!). Saturday we went to graduation and a big lunch afterwards at a local restaurant. We got to see all of our great nieces and nephews, which doesn’t happen often, so that was all really nice. After the graduation festivities, Tim, my dad and I went to the cemetery to put flowers on my mom’s grave.

Sunday, we got up early to drive over to church with Tim’s mom and the rest of our family on that side. We all had lunch and hung out all afternoon, which was nice. We got home last night right before Survivor started. I was soooo disappointed that Yau-man was not the winner. I’ve decided this morning that Dreamz is now in my top 2 of all-time unlikeable Survivor players. He’s right up there with Johnny Fairplay as horrendous, unworthy, despicable characters on that show.

We rented a movie late Saturday night on PPV. It was one Tim and I thought we wanted to see, and we were wrong. Dead wrong. I won’t even tell you the title, because Tim said he is ashamed we even rented it and wasted money and time on it. He wouldn’t even rate it on a scale of 1-10 when I asked him what he thought of it. I didn’t make it more than 20 minutes into the blamed thing. Movies with horrible, abject violence and atrocious language (think the “F’ word every second sentence or more) are just not my thing.

I took a bunch of pictures over the last few days and have posted a select few over at my Project365 photoblog. Here’s one I liked that I didn’t post over there – one of me and Tim after graduation:

Hope everyone had a nice weekend and a Happy Mother’s Day. Here’s to a wonderful week ahead

OK, we’ve got a “Question of the Day” here, except that it’s got multiple parts, and it’s going to hang out here for the next couple of days. We’ve got a busy weekend ahead, and I may or may not have a chance to blog much for the next 72 hours.

My nephew graduates from college tomorrow, and we’re going to have a bunch of family over tonight to hang out and eat supper. We’ll either have pizza or maybe grill something. But, today’s topic is Pizza.

Here’s some of the questions I want to ask, feel free to answer any or all of them!

1. What kind of pizza do you like?
2. What toppings do you like or not like?
3. Do you like thick and crusty pizza, deep dish, or really thin pizza?
4. What pizza place do you like to get pizza from – delivery, a local place, a chain restaurant? If delivery, are you particular to one place, local, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, etc.
5. Do you ever make homemade pizza?
6. Do you have a family tradition of having pizza at certain times or on certain days of the week?
7. Do you eat the crust?
8. If you do eat the crust, do you like to dip it in something? Marinara or a sauce? (We LOVE the garlic butter sauce from Papa John’s).

Whew! Here’s MY answers:
I love pizza! I love ordering pizza and have it arrive piping hot at my door. I like different kinds of pizza than Tim does. Tim is happy with a “works” pizza, but I like things like a Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) or a spinach Alfredo, all things that Tim would really rather not eat. We both really love Papa John’s, but we basically never met a pizza we didn’t like. We have no self-control when it comes to pizza. We’ll eat until we’re absolutely stuffed. As for toppings, Tim will eat them all, and prefers a pizza with everything on it. Me, I don’t like green peppers, and I’m not fond of olives, but I’m trying to teach myself to eat olives, so we order them with it. I have never tasted an anchovy, but I really don’t think I’d like it. I’ve made homemade pizza and we like that. I have picked up pre-made pizzas at Sam’s and brought them home to bake in the oven and those are good too. We will eat the “cheaper” pizza like Little Ceasar, but we really like Papa John’s or Pizza Hut.

How about you? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Hope you all have a wonderful day, and a wonderful weekend! To all of you mothers out there, hope you have a great day on Sunday. If you still have your mom with you, hug her and tell her you love her. I miss my mom and plan on taking flowers to her grave this weekend. Then we’ll get to see Tim’s mom, which will be great 🙂 Gonna be a busy few days, but I’ll try to post if I have time, either to this blog or my Project365 photoblog.