We get to go pick up our kids (the older two) at camp today! I can’t wait to see them! I’m SURE that M has grown another 1/2 inch or so 
(he’s beginning his “I’m almost a teenage boy” growth spurt….he grew 1 inch in a month from the beginning of May to the beginning of June). Can’t wait to see them!!!!!! I miss those kids so much! I’ll take our camera, and if they will let me take pictures I will
But YAY!!!!! We will be a complete family again in just a couple of hours!!!!
The FSU Bulldogs won the College World Series! And oh boy there was some hollering and high fiving and cheering going on in our house last night! Guess who was the loudest…..Yes, me :) It is hilarious, because one minute I’m saying “that boy needs a haircut!—-His Mom should do something about that!” and the next I’m hollerin’ and carryin’ on because they won the College World Series! The “dog pile” at the end of the game was awesome, and my girls thought it was so fun watching them do that (remember, we only have the two “little girls” at home this week, the two older kiddos are at camp). Steve Detwiler was the player of the game, and he really really showed his stuff! He has a torn ligament in his thumb and is facing surgery in the next few days/weeks, yet he hit two home runs that brought in 4 RBIs (runs batted in) (yes, that means he was “responsible” for all 6 runs), AND if that wasn’t enough, he caught the ball that made the final out which won the game for us! This kid is amazing and he is all heart!
Ok, thank you all for indulging my sports fan side, now we return to our regularly scheduled blogging
Well, the older two kids are at camp this week, so I get to prepare some things that aren’t their favorites…..YAY!!!!!!
Last night’s dinner was
As stated in my last post, tonight’s dinner will be a ballpark dinner in honor of FSU “Diamond Dogs” game against the Georgia Bulldogs in the College World Series championship game…..tonight’s game is “for all the marbles”
Thursday night:
Friday night:
Saturday night……we will be picking the kids up from camp on Saturday, and I am taking dinner to my sister in love (she’s having surgery to remove a malignant melanoma on Friday)
Sunday–something simple:
What’s cooking in your kitchen this week?
Our family, as many of my readers know, are HUGE hockey fans….in our house, hockey = love and life because that is how D and I met when we were just kids (he was 11 and I was 10)….without hockey we wouldn’t have met, become best friends, fallen in love, gotten married and had our 4 beautiful blessings. Ok, so we are HUGE hockey fans, all 6 of us! We do watch an occasional professional football game on television and we try to get to a semi-pro baseball game every couple of years (before we moved we went to several each season), but our sports LOVE is hockey. EXCEPT when it comes to Fresno State sports! It’s hilarious because neither D nor I ever went to Fresno State, but we lived in the Fresno/Clovis area for several years, and D’s grandparents, parents and 1 of his sisters graduated from there……so we closely follow most of their major sports (we don’t follow basketball…..just have never gotten into that game!). Well, we haven’t watched or listened to a Fresno State baseball game in probably 4 years……except for this year! Have you heard? Fresno State Baseball aka “Diamond Dogs” are the cinderalla story of the College World Series in Omaha, NE. They have gone from “underdogs” to “wonder Dogs!”. They came into the College World Series (CWS) as the lowest seeded team to ever make it to the CWS, and weren’t expected to make it past the first round……well, we made it all the way to the finals…..and beat Georgia Bulldogs 19-10 last night! WOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tonight they will play in the final game of the CWS, and that calls for a party, right?
SO, we called my father in love last night after the FSU Bulldog victory and invited him to watch the game tonight and have traditional (or not so traditional…..it will be healthied up) ballgame fare. So, in true Lori4squaremom fashion, here’s the menu for tonight’s “party”……
What reason do you have for a party today or this week?
Here’s what was in today’s basket…..
YUMMMYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here are pictures from today’s baking…..
Today I baked:
2 dozen Peach Cheesecake Cupcakes (they are actually cheesecake, baked in tinfoil cupcake liners)
5 dozen cinnamon rolls
8 hamburger buns
4 loaves whole wheat bread
Actually there are two parts to this wooo hooo!
The first one is, on Saturday I went to the farmer’s market with a set amount of money in my pocket. I didn’t really need any veggies, but I live in a house full of fruit bats, so I put a certain amount of money into my pocket, and went to visit my favorite farmers. I came home with:
Well, that afternoon a friend of ours that owns a hair salon called and asked if we wanted any fruit. I said “Oh ya! We’ll take fruit….whatever you want to get rid of”. So she shows up at my house a few minutes later with a box full of a variety of peaches, pluots, nectarines and white nectarines! WOOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Now I finally have enough fruit in the house to be able to make some yummy fruity desserts, and it’s not all being eaten by my fruit bats! :) Thank you God for fulfilling that desire for me!
Another woooo hooooo……..as many of you that have known me in real life or through the internet for any length of time know we are a one car family. D and I have been married for 18 1/2 years, and for most of that time we have been a one car family……and we’ve always been fine with that (and we still are!). But with gas prices over $4.50 a gallon and climbing 5-12 cents a day where we live (in the past week most stations went up 35- 38 cents in one week) driving our mini-van to work is getting VERY expensive for my hubby. So in the past week we started praying about using the money that we have in our savings account to buy a little commuter car for Don to take back and forth to work. On Friday (or maybe it was Thurs?) we both felt a peace about moving forward on this venture. So we started looking at the classifieds, craigslist.com and watching on the streets and in parking lots for cars that are for sale and that we know to be good gas mileage cars. While we haven’t found the perfect car yet, we aren’t “freaking out” about it. We KNOW that God has the perfect car out there for D for commuting to work with. This is the first time that we’ve been able to look for a car and haven’t had to have it right now because our car is dead or dying. It’s so nice to be able to do this in a relaxed manner…..it takes SOOOO much pressure off! Wooo hooo! God is good!
that make me happy
Things like ……
a defrosted, clean and organized freezer “full” of meat that I got for a song!
and……
a tree full of ripening plums……SWEET!
These are some of the things that are making me smile this morning :) The other “things” that are making me smile aren’t quite dressed for their day yet (well, one of them is gone, she’s off babysitting).
It’s summer…..school’s out! And normally where I live, that means unbearable heat (well, unbearable to me, I don’t tolerate heat well at all!)……God had REALLY blessed our area lately with some beautiful weather! The weekend after Mother’s Day we were in the 100s and I was worried that they were here to stay…..then later that very same week our daytime high temps were in the 70s. Since then we’ve been in the 70s and low 80s….THAT I can handle! To me, and my body, those are perfect summer time temps :) I do know that these wonderful temps won’t last, but it is SO nice to not have to run the a/c for this first week of June :) I can’t wait to see the savings on our electric bill compared to last year :) Wooo hooo!
The other woo hooo about the cooler temps? And no more school? I’ve been able to spend time during the day outside working on trimming trees and bushes and getting the backyard ready for some summertime entertaining! D and I have been working this past couple of weeks to get our backyard beautiful again so that we will enjoy being out there and invite friends over this summer. A couple of weeks ago we bought a table and chairs for our patio area. We have added some solar walkway lighting for ambiance around our patio area (would LOVE to gradually add some solar tiki torch lights for the recessed patio area). We bought some really cute summertime dishes to use outside so that I’m not uptight about my regular dishes going outside for outdoor dining, and are working on establishing our “outdoor kitchen”. Once it is all completed, I will post pictures for you all. But in the meantime, I’m VERY MUCH enjoying working outside again while it’s cool enough to still be outside! We’ve also been eating dinner outside most nights, which is SOOOOOO nice! And the kids are playing croquet a lot…fun!!!
Wooo hoooo for cooler weather!
Earlier this week I was looking at the grocery ads for Albertsons….well we don’t have an Albertson’s in the city that I live in anymore (it used to be right around the corner from my house, but was bought out by a regional chain grocery store about a year and half ago), but the next city that is just 10 minutes south of us does have an Albertson’s, AND I needed to go and pick up my raw organic milk from the co-op leader there, so I decided that I was going to combine the trips. After 2 failed attempts to go to pick up my milk, and after looking at the ads (and seeing that they were having a BIG 8 hour sale on Thurs) I made arrangement to go on Thurs. Well, boy oh boy am I glad I did! I got over 50 pounds of meat, plus a variety of other things for $92 dollars (with a savings of $109….which isn’t really REAL, as I would have never spent the retail price for those meats, but it sounds good when they tell you that and you see it on the receipt…..but D and I were talking about it and I DID probably save $50, which is still a great savings!!!!). Some of the deals that I got….. 85% lean ground beef for $1.59/# (this was at the butcher’s counter and was FRESHLY ground just minutes before I bought it, so I bought 10 pounds), boneless/skinless chicken breasts for $1.99 per pound (again, I bought 10 pounds), pork country ribs (these aren’t spare ribs, but the country style ribs…we still enjoy these even though they aren’t spare ribs…. $.99 per pound….bought 4 packages (approx. 3# each)), and tri-tips that were $2.49 per pound….bought 3 that were each approx. 5#…..got one more type of meat, I just don’t remember exactly what it was. In addition to the meats, I got enough Diet Coke to last us the rest of the summer unless we serve it for guests for a BBQ or something, and 2 bags of tortilla chips that were buy 1 get 1 free and they were a good price to start with, so why not get a second bag for free, right? (I was buying these because according to my D, the chip/salsa balance in our house was uneven….meaning, we had salsa but no chips). Seems like I bought something else, I just don’t remember what it was….oh! now I remember, a bag of plastic freezer bags to repackage some of those bulk packages of meat for the freezer.
Oh, and speaking of those bulk packages of meat, R came in to help me with opening bags, etc so that I wouldn’t spread meat juices (from my hands) all over the ktichen and cross-contaminate my entire kitchen! It was so cool having her help me because it reminded me of when I was a teenager and my mom would go and buy big bulks of meat like this when it was on sale, and I’d help HER repackage them into useable amounts for our family and get them ready for the freezer……what a neat thing to be able to pass this knowledge of how to do things like this onto my oldest daughter! A savings in meat, great! A fun memory shared, priceless!!!!!
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