Quote of the Week

"Let me try one first ... Oh yes!  Definitely!!"

West

A little someting to Play!

 (Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realize the simple pleasures around us.)

• I am loving this one and can't seem to stop singing along with it
• This one tends to not only get sung, but sung at the top of our lungs
• I was originally turned onto this group from this blog and I will have to say I am glad I checked them out!  This is one of those albums that must be listened to at HIGH volume. 
• The video for this song is enough to make me laugh every time I see it, and don't forget to check out the song too.
• And one more to send you off with a BANG!!

First Picnic of the Year

Guess what we did the other day!!!  We had our first picnic in the park.  The weather wasn't perfect but it was perfect enough to take the new bike and head across town to the City Park and take our lunch and lounge in the sun and read my book and watch the kids play.  I think we could have stayed all afternoon if we had not had things to do at home!

Who else loves picnic?!

New Shorts

You know when you have an idea for something great in your head and you go to put it to paper or fabric or whatever your element might be and it comes out all wrong?!  Ya, that describes these shorts to at "T"

I will say this about them though, they sure turned out well for being one big giant screw-up!

Letters

One of the things about being in separate places from the people you love for a long period of times is the communication barrier.  When you are used to having someone around on a regular basis, whether it be every night after work or every third week for a week at a time, you are still used to that and knowing that they will be there when you expect them to be. 

Once that person leaves and is not home when he or she is expected you have to find fun and inventive ways of keeping up the communication with them.  Now-a-days we have great resources such as the telephone which is no longer just a phone to pick up and hear the other person's voice.  Now we can use them for talking, texting, and even this great new thing called FaceTime!  We also have great things like email and Skype and any other number of ways of communication.

However, when you have small children those things only go so far.  The phone is great sometimes, if they are willing to talk or can even talk yet, texting and emailing is out of the question unless your child is old enough to read, all these inventive over the internet things are great but also only if the child is willing and sometimes the internet fails us on that one as well.  And of course all of these forms of communication only work if the child is not busy doing something else or just can't seem to stop acting silly when they see themselves talking on the computer (they can be easily distracted you know).

So in this house we have decided all those things are great, if West and Ruby are in the mood, but what we really enjoy here is putting our craft skills to work and then taking it down to the post office and letting our communication travel via the US Post Office!  How much fun for these two to put something together with paper and glue and paint and things, and put it in the envelope, and put the stamp on in just the right place, and then taking a trip down to the post office and putting it in that oh so mysterious slot in the wall. 
We only hope The Rooster likes getting mail as much as we like sending it!

Quote of the Week

"I like corn bread!  It is good for my tummy."

Ruby

Spring Cleaning

It is that time of year again when I get the hankering to get the yard cleaned up and ready for all the playing that is to be done out there as the days slowly start to get warmer and actually stay warm.  As I looked out over the yard I saw a few branches and a few leaves in the bushes and things of that nature.  I thought this would not be too hard.  Man alive, apparently they were all hiding until I went out to get the rake because before I knew it we had a line of leaves and small twigs clear across the back yard that needed to be cleaned up and my arms were beginning to ache.  Luckily I had West, the man who has to work, I think he worked as hard as I did loading up leaves and things into their little wheel-barrow and wheeling it over to where we were making the pile outside of the fence for removal (The Rooster has his truck down in Texas with him so I either have to borrow one or leave the pile here when we leave, that is to be determined at a later date). 
Ruby had started out helping but I think she gave up about 5 minutes into it to go swing.  She randomly came over to see if she could put her raking skills to work but never lasted very long.

Who else has gotten out there to start their Spring Cleaning?! 

Bald Eagle Live Camera

This is so fascinating, this is not something I found on my own but it was well worth checking out.  This is a live video feed of a Bald Eagle nest in the Norfolk Botanical Garden and I just though I would share!  Please enjoy it as much as we have, we have actually saved it to our tool bar so the kids can come in the check in on what the babies are doing when they get the hankering!

This is for Daddy!

West thought maybe his Daddy needed a picture so he could see for sure what he still looked like.  The Rooster has been gone now for a month and a half and he was concerned.  I tried telling him that his Daddy has lots of pictures of him on his phone so he can look at him anytime but he thought maybe he needed a brand new picture.
So this is for The Rooster, just to make sure you still know what West looks like!

Quote of the Week

"Cop cars are super fast...Some cars are super super fast!  So they have to get two cop cars and then they can zoom around them."

West

Simple Pleasures

(Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realize the simple pleasures around us.)


Fresh homemade yogurt still warm from processing.

Moving the World

This is West literally moving the world.  We were at a friends house today and one of their boys created this project of all the different planets, you know the kind right.  The little boy they play with all the time over there has this great Thomas train set, there has to be about 50 cars in the set plus track (although they don't get the track out very often as it is just more fun to run the train around the circle that is their house) and they play with it almost every time we go over I think.  They got this bright idea the other day to haul these great looking circles of fun around on the train that is already great fun!  This is what they ended up with, they are literally moving the world!
I thought what a great metaphor for what a child can actually do, Move the World!

Who's gonna win!?

So who can guess what West and I are doing here?!  The first to guess might just win a tasty surprise!  I need specifics though!  Good luck!

A Tribute

I have spoken before of the local coffee shop here that we love and go to basically everyday.  The owner of Old Town Coffee has a rat ride.  In fact, my children have been in that particular ride and have pretended to drive it and pointed out that there were not seat belts in it yet and every time they saw it driving around town they would point and wave and generally we talked about it for weeks after they sat in it.  They think it is pretty cool!
Then imagine my surprise when we are driving down the street towards Diana's house and I happen to get a peek into one of the garages we are driving by.  I happened to notice this house before as they have two jeeps that sit parked out front and this particular hen house is big into jeeps.
Guess what was in that garage?!  You got it!

It was this super cool Rat Ride!  So we thought we would get a picture of it to show off to Jess and Nikki (owner and manager).

Quote of the Week

"This song is a wiggle bottom, and this one is a wiggle bottom too!"

Ruby

Simple Pleasures

(Life can be hard sometimes.  Sometimes what we need is to slow down and realize the simple pleasures around us.)

 Sitting down with an old friend to chat about nothing in particular over a good cup of coffee.

In the Kitchen

One of the things I love about visiting Diana is that she knows how to cook good food, I always know I will eat well when I am there.  Plus there is one advantage, she is German and so she always introduces me to new and exciting, and very often very delicious, food.  For example, she introduced me to Rouladen (pronounced roolawdan) which is a delicious dish of thinly cut beef steaks smeared with stone ground mustard and sprinkled with salt and pepper and wrapped around a pickle that was first wrapped with bacon.  I know, it sounds odd right?  But trust me when I tell you it is absolutely delicious. 
So I knew going in that we would be fed good food and most likely introduced to something fun and new (I am always on the hunt to find new and exciting foods to make in my kitchen to try and stray away from the same 5 things we all tend to make our weekly meals).  This time though she not only showed us one new food but three!  That's right, we tried three different German meals.  She didn't cook them herself this time but rather she took us to a little German deli she has found near Ft Campbell that has some delicious food.

We will start with West's meal:
What you see before him is wiener-schnitzel.  According to Diana this is a small piece of pork that has been tenderized, breaded, and then fried.  There are different kinds of wiener-schnitzel such as the kind Diana had that had a mushroom gravy over the top which was also very delicious. 

Then we have Ruby's plate of goodness:
This is spaetzle, this was basically small dumplings (that looks a lot like little noodles) that was covered in a brown gravy.  Also very delicious.  The ketchup is not normally part of the dish but if there is something to dip in to then Ruby will inevitably find it and start dipping (what can I say, she is a dipper).

Then we come to the dish I ordered:
Now I will admit this was not a typical German dish but it was on the menu and it looked mighty tasty and basically everything else had been ordered by others at the table so I thought I would go for it. 
I had Hungarian goulash.  I actually make goulash in my kitchen quite often but this was a different type of goulash but this goulash was might tasty all the same!

And yes, I did try a bite of everyone's food at the table!