Snafu..

Yep, "situation normal all ****** up" pretty much sums it up.

Monday is my day to work on all my volunteer stuff and here is the list of all the stuff I was supposed to be doing.

Page 1 of my list of things to do

Now, do you notice all of the red on the right of my ipad?  That indicates that none of that list got done yesterday.  Why, you may ask?

My week

Well Son 1 realized that his jacket was missing.

I realized that I hadn't seen his jacket since the camp out.

Which led me to spend 2 hours driving to the location of the camp out and looking around for a missing jacket.

My month

Did I find the jacket? No.

Which makes it even worse.

I better get started on my list :)

Update:  Due to overwhelming demand here is a link to the App I use - Informant Pro. 

It is a bit pricey at $15.99 but as my husband pointed out, I would spend that much on a calender every year and this is unlimited.

There is also Pocket Informant Online that allows me to sync up the app across both my iphone and ipad.  I paid $15.99 for a one year subscription.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this app and would recommend it to all Moms. 

I'll do a blog post on all the ways I make it work for me :)

Camping..

Cub Scout style.

So our Pack went camping this weekend.

San Juan Meadows Group Area

Since I'm in charge of the calender I get to pick where we go camping, one of the perks of the job :)

All 52 of us stayed at Casper's Regional Park in group site A, which in my humble opinion is the best site of the lot.

Van loaded up and ready for action

We arrived at 8am on Saturday to set up camp and get ready for a full day of activities.  We quickly set up our tent, then Nadim unloaded everything else while I got the programming going for the boys.

Inside our tent

Cub Scouts are all about earning patches, belt loops and pins.  The boys enjoy this to a certain extent, but what was really special was free time.  No electronics allowed.

The kids climbed trees, built forts, argued over who had the best stick and got absolutely filthy.

Saturday activities

We had a great campfire where kids ate their fill of smores and birthday cake.  Lights out at 8:30 because everyone is going to be up at the crack of dawn anyway.

Sunday morning, 6am

 For me, the crack of dawn came at 5am and in the form of bird song.

Stealthy candy eating in the tent

After breakfast it was time to break down camp and when I was cleaning out the tent I found some incriminating evidence by Son 1's pillow.  I guess he saved a Hershey bar for a midnight snack.  Good thing we weren't at Yosemite or Yellowstone, we might have had an unwelcome guest in the form of a bear.

Son 2's dirty feet - yes he wore shoes and socks the whole weekend

We got home nice and early.  Plenty of time for me to scrub the kids and start on laundry.

Next up, Flag Football :)

Have a great Sunday!

Brown bagging it..

One of my very, very least favorite things to do is make my kids lunches for school.

I pretty much hate it.

Nothing Almost nothing, makes me happier than when it is pizza day at school.

The only thing that makes lunch preparation slightly better is the Laptop Lunch system that I use.  I purchased the lunch boxes about 7 years ago and I'm still using the same plastic trays, but I've replaced the silverware once and the soft sided lunch boxes almost every year.

Lunch prep mess

The thing I like about the system is that I don't have to put each food item in a baggy.

Baggies I hate even more than making lunches.  What a waste.

Son 2's lunch - Nutella and honey sandwich

The second thing I like is when the kid open up their lunch, they can see everything they have to eat and it is ready to go.

No opening containers or hearing the dreaded-

 "I didn't know I had ________ in my lunch!  I didn't see it!"

Son 1's lunch - plain cheese sandwich

The bad thing about the lunch system is that I have to run it through the dishwasher everyday.

If I forget or get lazy I have nothing to put the kids' lunches in the next day.

It is not pretty when that happens.

Daughter's lunch - peanut butter and jelly sandwich

I've tried to get Nadim to take his lunch to work in something like this, but he point blank refused, he prefers Tupperware containers and a target shopping bag :)

Happy Friday!

Teacher rant

Ok, so I'm mad.  Really, really mad.

So mad I want to drop F bombs and all other sorts of inappropriate language, but I won't.

Thursday is "conduit" day at school.  A conduit is basically a big envelope filled with the students work for the week.

Daughter's conduit had a surprise waiting for me.  A Habitat book, a trimester long project, that was given a score of 1.

Yep, 1 out of 4.

Here is the description of what a score of 1 means:  "1 point is incomplete or incorrect.  I did not follow directions.  I did not show that I learned about different habitats."

Now, I'm the first to admit that the quality of her work is sadly lacking and very sloppy.

What infuriates me is that..

The teacher never bothered to let me know that Daughter was not doing well on the project during the 2 months they worked on it in class.  Not one peep.  Not once, during the 13.5 hours I volunteered in her classroom, did one word cross her lips.

Not only that, as it turns out Daughter didn't do well in general during the second trimester.  Do you know what the teacher had to say when I asked her about it???  Apparently, the teacher decided to sit Daughter at a table with some kids who needed a role model.  Guess what happened?  Daughter's quality of work sunk to the other kid's level.

Now why the teacher would allow this to go on for the entire second trimester I have no idea.

I'm also really mad at myself.

I should have been more on top of things.  Daughter didn't like her new table and I should have listened harder. 

I thought the woes of the second trimester were over, Daughter has been in a new seat for 3 weeks now and seems to be doing better.

Until today.

Grrrrrr.


 

HQ quilt redux

I finished up my Job's Daughters Honored Queens quilt a few months back, you can find the blog entry here

My sister, Vicki, was also Honored Queen a couple of years after me.  For the last year or so I've been embroidering quilt squares for her while I waited around during Daughter's ballet class.

Once the embroidery was finished, I assembled the quilt top and then began the quilting process.  This quilt was easier to actually quilt because it was much smaller in size.

The following pictures document the steps needed to finish the quilt.

It was a major milestone for me to get the quilt finished and one more UFO off my list :)

Quilting in process

Markings done in crayola washable markers

Quilting the borders

Ready for the next step - trimming and binding

Nice clean edges ready for binding

Trimming threads

Making the binding

Stitching the binding onto the quilt

Finishing the binding

Finished quilt

Stay tuned for a blog entry with detailed photos of the embroidery and finished quilt.

Ham..

its whats for dinner!

Ok, so dinner wasn't just ham.  It also included biscuits.  And it would have included mashed potatoes, but I vetoed that and substituted baby carrots.

Yes, it was Son 2's week to choose dinner.

Son 2 is probably the biggest fan of my cooking and I love cooking for him.  If he asks me for something, it pretty much guarantees that I will make it.

This probably has something to do with the fact that he was diagnosed with Failure To Thrive at a year old.  You know, left over Mom guilt, but nothing makes me happier than watching him eat.

But I digress, we were talking about dinner, so back to ham.

Actually a Honey Baked Ham, is in my opinion, the most delicious ham around.  Plus, a ham involves no cooking on my part - score!

I also planned ahead, so Thursday's dinner will be the best ever Ham and Bean Soup made with my left overs, stay tuned for the details.

I found these great organic baby carrots at Whole Foods this morning and decided to roast them.  I love roasting veggies, they taste great and nothing could be easier.  I just peeled the carrots, drizzled on some olive oil, sprinkled with salt and roast in a 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes.  Yum!

Ready for the oven

The most anticipated part of the meal were the biscuits.  I used this BHG Buttermilk Biscuit recipe.

Biscuits are super easy to make and those ones that come in the can can't compare to home-made.

First you add all of the dry ingredients and whisk together, then cut in the shortening.  Now lot's of people use food processors for cutting in shortening or butter, but I don't think it turns out as good as when you do it the old fashioned way with a pastry cutter.

Cutting in the shortening

Shortening the size of peas, ready for buttermilk

After the shortening is cut in, make a well in the dry ingredients and add the buttermilk.  Stir this together and when the dough gets to hard to work with a spoon dump it out onto a prepared surface for kneading.

I know that kneading scares people, but it is super easy.  Check out this video if you feel you knead help, knead help, get it??  Ok, bad joke.  Anyhoo..

Buttermilk!

Mix with a wooden spoon

Kneading the biscuit dough

Once you are all finished kneading, pat or roll the dough out into a rectangle.  Now, you can get all fancy and use a circular cookie cutter to cut out your biscuits, but I just cut mine into squares.  Usually because I'm in a hurry and cutting round biscuits wastes dough.

Ready for cutting

All cut and ready for the oven

Let's bake!  Fresh biscuits in 10 minutes

Yummy!

I serve my biscuits with jelly, lots of jelly.  But they also work well with honey or even Creamed Chicken over the top.

Enjoy!

Just another manic..

..Sunday

Well to be perfectly honest, Monday's are pretty manic too, actually so is every other day of the week.

Hmmm, I just re-checked my schedule and all my days are manic until the second week in July.  Pretty scary.

But let's focus on today, it's the journey right?? Not the destination.

Today was flag football and bowling.

I'm not one that loves the whole sports thing that most of the kids seem to do constantly.  Spending the whole day watching games, no thank you.  But, when my sons actually asked to play flag football I couldn't really say no.  Luckily Nadim volunteered to managed this activity for me as I'm operating at max capacity now.

The boys have just started their season and seem to be really enjoying it.

Son 1 and Son 2 cooling down

Son 1 play action

Flag football in all it's glory

Son 2 play action

After 2 1/2 hours of flag football, it was time for some Adventure Maiden Bowling.  Because really, nobody was tired out yet.

Usually AM is mothers and daughters only, but this time we had a family event.  I have to admit that bowling was pretty fun.

It should be stated that I'm a terrible bowler. I almost asked to have the bumpers up for myself but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it.  I did manage to get 1 strike, but my score was 49 at the end - oh well.

The kids scarfed down the nachos - you know the liquid cheese kind.  Dinner of champions right there.

Our table

Adventure Maiden group

The nicest part was that we were on timed bowling, so no matter where you were in the game or however long the game was taking, the lane shut down after 1 1/2 hours.

After 1 1/2 hours I was ready to go home.

You know, to get ready for my manic Monday.

Have a great week everybody :)

Found object..

..fun

Have I mentioned that I'm also Son 2's Den leader for our Cub Scout Pack?  I guess I tend to leave this off the long, long list of stuff I volunteer to do because the boys are so much fun.

My supplies, yep looks like a pile of junk

This month our Den meeting consisted of playing a bunch of simple games, to earn an arrow point for their uniforms.  The boys had a great time and it didn't cost me a thing.  You could use these games at birthday parties or during the summer.

Ring toss

Newspaper rings

The first game was a Ring Toss.  I didn't actually have any rings so I just twisted up some newspaper, taped the ends together and voila - rings!  You can see the wooden stakes I pounded into the ground in our side yard.  We had these stakes laying around our garage, but you could use sticks as well.  This was hands down the boys' favorite game of the night.

Washer throw

 The second game as a simple Washer Throw.  I pulled some old pie tins out of the kitchen then scrounged through Nadim's hardware staff in the garage and found 2 different size washers.  The larger washers were pretty heavy and when they hit the pie tin it sounded like breaking glass.

Marble Roll

For the Marble Roll game, I pulled some bottles out of our recycle bin and used Son 2's marble collection.  The object of this game is to shoot a marble between the glass bottles.

Bean Bag Toss

The fourth game was a simple Bean Bag Toss with targets drawn on the driveway in chalk.  I could have used a box and cut holes out of it as a target, but I didn't have a box on hand. The bean bags I made a few years back by sewing a simple bag out of craft felt and filling it with beans.

Puddle Waders

The Puddle Waders were the most fun for me to watch.  I collected a bunch of cans left over from cooking.  With a can opener I punched a whole on the side of the can and the boys put some yarn through it and tied it off.  The trick here is to hold the cans tight to your feet when you walk.  I had one Scout who was able to walk right away, the rest of the boys needed some practice.

Close up of Puddle Waders

The boys also played a game of tag and hide n' go seek down on the green belt.  I think we forget in today's age of video games and TV how much fun kids have just running around in a large outdoor area.

Here's to simple games and the great outdoors :)