Exceedingly Mundane

Well, another three months have come and gone and no blogging from me 🙂 What else is new?!

It’s January 6, 2014. It will take me a while to get used to writing 2014, I had just gotten used to 2013 and now it’s in the books.

My favorite time of the year has come and gone, seemingly in the blink of an eye. My birthday in October (Tim took me shopping all day the day after and bought me every piece of clothing I could find that I liked, so half a new wardrobe!), Halloween (mostly rained out, but Gail was here, and Kathryn and the kids came), Thanksgiving (Gail and clan were at Disney, so Tim and I went to Mount Olive at Aunt Becky’s, while Daddy stayed at Ridgeland Pointe, as he was not feeling well), and then our 3 Christmases have all come and gone. The regular football season is over (Saints were 11-5 in regular season and have won the first wildcard playoff game, Seattle is next) and that is always so sad for me. Football season is hands down, my most favorite time of the year. Christmas is packed and put away, all the lights from the tree, my garland and my Snow Village are gone and I’m just about over missing them.

Let’s see, I accomplished my goal for 2013 (I never set goals!), which was to read through the entire Bible. I’d tried in the past and never made it through the early parts of the Old Testament. In 2013, I used the YouVersion Bible app on my ipad and read through the One Year Bible, which uses the format of a section from the OT, a section from Psalms, a section from Proverbs, and a section from the New Testament. It was very doable for me, and I was able to accomplish my goal, yippee! Now, I’m going to make that a goal every year, and try to read through it yearly. I need to spend more time reading Scripture and less time watching tv and playing computer games 🙂 I bought the MacArthur Study Bible and a chronological one called Reading God’s Story, and I’ve decided to do the MacArthur one this year.

Let’s see… we’re currently having quite a cold snap, so I’m happy to stay inside and enjoy winter! Today’s high was supposed to hit 26, not sure if it made it. Tonight should set a record, 12 degrees. As Siri says on our iphones, Brrr! Needless to say, we’re not walking. It’s harder for me to get out and walk without Beau, and convincing Tim to go, so when it’s cold, we just don’t go.

Tim has now successfully figured out a way for me to wish for spring and golf season to get here faster (whether he realizes it or not!). Normally, I enjoy winter and having him home more (which I still do), and being able to spend more time together. However, he’s making me do P90X with him, and now every day that we do that, I secretly wish for winter to be over, so he can go to the golf course and I do NOT have to do that stupid exercise program. I don’t like anything about it. He did it last winter and lost 30 or 35 pounds. Me, I’ve been doing it since October and maybe I’ve lost 2 pounds. Sigh.

Last year was all about my dad, since he fell in mid-February and we moved him here shortly after. We lost Beau in March, and I’ve missed him every day since. I’m hoping this year is going to be more focused on us. We have some plans for this year (including a dog, hopefully), that I hope will come to fruition.

I don’t know if I’ll get back into blogging or not, but I’m going to try a bit. I’m not cooking much (so no new recipes to share and no food photos) and I don’t have Beau (so no cute Beau photos or videos). I’m not posting much on Facebook because of those things, and because Tim doesn’t like me to post when we go places (movies, out to eat, etc). Sigh. Hard to come up with things to blog about 😀

Ok, not much of a catch-up post, but a start. I always want to look back on my blog and see what we are doing, that’s hard to do with these 2-4 month gaps I’ve been having, LOL!

Some more things going on around here… mostly just for me and my poor memory!

June actually seemed to go by pretty quick. Now July is here, and typically, July and August are my least favorite months of the year. BY FAR! I will be so glad when September gets here! Holidays, football, birthdays, September through New Years is my most favorite time of the year!

* Tim got the stove installed early on (it was ready for me to use on Saturday June 8), and I quickly began work on christening it. The first thing I used the oven for was homemade pizza. I have had to learn to use the smooth top ceramic burners, but I think I have it figured out now. They seem to take longer to heat up, but boy once they do, they stay warm. I made sloppy joes for Tim a couple of weeks later, and my recipe calls for simmering the mixture for 20 minutes. Once I got the mixture to a boil, then lowered to low, it was more than a simmer. I actually had to turn the burner off for a few minutes, just so it wasn’t bubbling furiously 🙂 I really like it though, and have been using it a lot. It’s so much better for baking things. Before, when I’d bake cookies, brownies, bread, etc, I’d get uneven results. Sometimes things would be overdone on the outside and still doughy in the middle. Now, I get a very even bake. I don’t think the oven is technically convection, but it does have a fan in the back, and I hear it running even after I’ve turned the stove off. It’s a Whirlpool Gold with Accubake, and Tim says that means it is convection. Whatever it is, it sure is a heck of a lot better than my 20 year old stove!

* I’ve also pulled out my Cuisinart ice cream maker and made a couple of batches of ice cream. Nothing like homemade fudgy brownies and homemade vanilla ice cream in the evenings!

* In spite of the new stove, we’ve still been eating out occasionally. We sometimes go to Corner Bakery after church on Sunday mornings. A couple of weeks ago, we broke out of our routine and got crazy and went to IHOP! We still enjoy going to the little Mexican place by our house, Cazadores. We went last Saturday night, and Tim got something new, the paradilla (spelled??) platter. Basically a huge platter, like a fajita skillet but not sizzling, filled with all kinds of meat. Chicken, beef, shrimp, chorizo, short ribs, pork, lots of stuff. It was really good. He brought home two take out containers of meat and fixings, and got several more meals out of it! We’ve been doing a Friday night date night at home a couple of weekends in June. One Friday night we went to Pizza Hut and got pizza, and came home to watch tv. Another night we ordered Five Guys over the Internet and ran in to pick it up. Nothing like greasy fast food on a Friday night!

* I read about 18 books in June! That might be a new record for me! I am still using GoodReads to track what I read. I’m doing really good this year and hope to read close to 100 books. My all time high is 104, which works out to 2 books per week, at 52 weeks a year. It would be nice if I broke that record, but I probably won’t make it. Of the books I read in June, my favorites were probably the 3 books in the French Twist series by Sandra Byrd (Chrisitan chick-lit) and my least favorite, I nearly abandoned, and wished I had. I got a digital download from the library of Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella and I disliked it quite a bit 🙁

* Also in June, Tim played a lot of golf! On the first day of the month, a Saturday, he went with some golfing buddies over to a course in Louisiana called Black Bear. He had a really good time, but I had a long day. I think he was gone about 11 or 12 hours. He also played with his buddies on two Saturday mornings at 7:22. Nothing like getting up early on our one day to sleep in!

* Tim also helped our neighbor Ms Maridine with her computer, and also with the locks on her house. We saw her quite a bit and she took us out to lunch at the Strawberry Cafe to say thank you to Tim for all his hard work. We went over and helped Elizabeth one night at her new house. We took Fred with us on Father’s Day to Linda’s house, so we could visit with Tim’s dad on Father’s Day. We had a nice visit that day, and Fred enjoyed the trip. Also, I took Fred to see the new pulmonologist Dr. Westbrook twice, on two Mondays in June. He has one more appointment (I hope!) on July 15th. We also went on June 30th to a get-together at Tim’s Aunt Annie Myrl’s house. Mitchell’s sister in law Mary and her daughter Cheryl were here from New Mexico. I don’t think I had ever met them, so we went to visit and catch up with Tim’s dad’s side of the family. We had a really nice time 🙂

Let’s see… there’s probably more that happened in June, but that was the highlights. And of course, the anniversary of my mom’s passing, it was eleven years this June. And Fred closed out on his house around the end of the month. House paperwork and errands kept us busy for a while, but thankfully we did everything remote and didn’t have to make a trip to Hattiesburg.

We have the annual Fourth of July get-together at Tim’s Aunt Becky’s house tomorrow. We’ll go down, and take Fred, he enjoys going with us every year on the Fourth. I made brownies to take, as usual. Maybe one day I’ll get brave and take something new!

I’ll try to update more often, wanna keep up with all what we are doing and what’s going on. Even though I do stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I think the old blog is still the best venue for keeping track of the little and big stuff. Here’s hoping I can do better in the future 🙂 I’m sporadic, at best, these days, LOL!