Friday Food Fact

In a totally nonsensical twist to the rest of my efforts to eat healthier, I have given in to my kids' interest (spurred by YouTube videos, of course) in taste-testing all the Oreo flavors.  So far, they've done: Birthday Cake (Golden), Pumpkin Spice, Caramel Apple, Peanut Butter, Berry....

...and now these, which are soooooo good:

You're welcome.   ;-)

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Thursday Throwback....to Last Friday!

The game didn't end up going the way we hoped (unfortunately, an all-too-common occurrence this season) but the kiddies had a good time!   Dancing before the game-- with some sort of bizarre lurker in the background:

SO EXCITED to open the program and find a familiar little face in the photo collage!

A selfie (selves-ie?) from later:

Scarecrow

The preschool set up a (very low) hay "maze" a few weeks ago and has left it up all this time.  After each school day, a group of kiddos runs out there and basically rolls around in all of the mess, so gleeful to be playing in the hay. 

Less gleeful are the parents who have to pick out all the hay from the hair:

Of Leaves and Pumpkins...

...and a posting delay...sorry about that, early bird readers.  Got sucked into an online sale...SHOCKER...and then had to get a kid dressed and a lunch made...

The kiddos enjoyed their annual fun times with leaves:

(a titch out-of-focus!)


And the boy (as filmed by a 4-year-old):



Twins?

Finished products!

Sunday Snuggles

Autumnal activities abounded this past weekend, but photographic evidence of that remains on the BG's phone since he was the social director.  I'll get those pics off there tonight but, in the meantime, here's the kind of sedentary activity I choose every time:

New Delivery Service

All the rain you Texans are getting is a super bummer (I can't believe Baylor canceled the Homecoming parade!!) but we are still dry for now.   We played outside a bit after B got home from school yesterday and C wanted to both chalk on the driveway and toodle around on her (too small) tricycle.  At one point, I asked her to hand me some chalk and she meticulously stacked it on the back of her trike to bring to me.  She's a funny girl.

(And yes, still in her PJs at 4pm.  I told you we were going to do that!)

A close-up:

I then asked Mr. B if I could take a snap of him.  No joke, before posing, he said: "Send this to the ladies!"

HAPPY FRIDAY!

These Days

I pulled over on the way home from preschool pickup yesterday to snap this pic, totally through the car window in a very unfancy way.   But the blue sky and the sun hitting the changing trees makes me happy.   We're having a few days of 70+ degree temps--which is weird since we've already been super cold with the heat turned on--but these sure are pretty days.

Today should be sunny and bright, as well, but I also expect it to be a quiet day of rest.  Last night was Family Reading Night at B's school, an annual event of celebrating reading with everybody wearing pajamas and teachers reading stories.   I don't know that I've mentioned it in these electronic pages but I had agreed last year to co-chair the PTA Read-A-Thon fundraiser with my friend Shira (HI SHIRA!) and one of the changes we brought to it this year was to have the two-week Read-A-Thon period take place early enough in the school year that Family Reading Night could also become a culminating event where everybody brings in their pledge money/donations and we have all sorts of tiered prize raffles at the end of the night.

I can't tell you how many hours Shira and I have spent over the last couple of months preparing for, and then executing, both the Read-A-Thon itself as well as our money-collection and prize-giving portion of last night's festivities.  People seemed really upbeat about our efforts this year and I feel really good about how everything unfolded.   It's a little bit of a bummer that, based on our quick calculations of the money received last night, we did not meet our (admittedly, very optimistic) goal of $10,000 but the year is still young.  AND I am not in charge of anything else fundraising-related!  (Of course, I did later agree to be VP so I guess I'm stuck with worrying about it anyway....!)

Shira did an amazing job of rounding up prize donations and we also spent a little money on some Amazon gift cards to be the top awards.  Between the 4 "Themed Reading Day" prize raffles we did during the course of the Read-A-Thon itself, and the event last night, we awarded something like 100 different prizes to kids for participating.  I spent some serious time on the mic last night announcing names and it was fun to see the kids so excited!

Thanks to the very generous contributions of 3 loyal readers (Grammie, Big Daddy, and JC), the B-man, while not the top fundraiser, was entered into the highest tier of prizes.   He had a 1-in-3 shot of winning a $50 Amazon gift card (he reeeeaaalllly wants to buy a new WiiU video game) but didn't win that.  For each tier (like kids who raised $175+, for example), we'd dump the non-winning name slips in the bucket for the next lowest tier (here, $125-$174.99) so they'd still have a chance to win all the way down.   B did get his name called....and his fist pump of exuberance plus squeal was a sight to see/hear--and, of ALL the prizes, guess what it was?   AN ART PRIZE.   ha ha ha ha ha!!   (Package to a paint-your-own pottery place.)

All in all, we did good work and I might just stay in my pajamas all day.   Hope it's a great one where you are!

Just a Normal Night

Meelie has built a "house" on the living room floor (and is in "sleeping" position)...and her brother is reading Peanuts in the background.

We're nothing if not exciting.

Crafting Time

In the most recent marvel of things working out just so, the BG had the idea to bring up a table from the basement playroom to put in Miss C's room....and it fit just about as perfectly into the space as it could.   Unlike her brother, Miss C loves to do crafts so she is just beyond thrilled to have a place in her room to cut, color, and stamp.   Her bestie came home with us from preschool yesterday for a couple of hours and I caught this pic of them working away:

I Knew This Would Happen

It's Monday and I'm completely ill-prepared.  Where did all that free time go from this weekend?   To being lazy, of course.  Sigh.

Already running late this morning, obviously.  But yay for first fires of the season!  (And....it's supposed to get back into the mid-70s in the middle of this week but that's fine, too, since we'll save on home heating costs!  Gotta look at the bright side!)

Our weekend:

Wait, It's Friday?

Because I totally thought yesterday was Friday all day long.

The BG left this morning at his normal 6:15 to go to school, but since they played last night and there's no school today, they are doing their "Saturday" schedule of watching game film, etc.  You'd think, "Oh, does that mean he has (real) Saturday off?"  But.....no, there's a JV game tomorrow morning and he might even have to coach the game since the head JV coach's wife was set to have a baby last night and I guess not everyone leaves his wife in the hospital to go to school to give a final do a job ...oh wait, I might be speaking from experience.  ;-)

And Miss C actually does have school today because the preschool doesn't strictly follow the public school calendar, so that's messing with my keeping-the-days-straight thing, too!

ANYWAY.   Guess what?  THE RAMS WON LAST NIGHT 30-27 by breaking up an almost-completed-in-the-end-zone pass on the last second.  Whew.  We needed that one big time!

(Side note-- it was sooooo cold by the end of the game last night.  It's supposed to be even chillier this weekend.  The high is 54 tomorrow through Monday.  Brrrrrr.)

Clearly, the coach's spirited family helped bring about the win!!!   Once I realized C and I were kinda inverse twinkies in our sweaters yesterday morning, I grabbed our new selfie stick and went about trying to capture a picture.  Aaaaaand....here's a great lesson on lighting:

"Oh, I'll open the front door and it'll be all sunny and bright!"

"Hmm....maybe we should leave the door open but TURN AROUND and face the outside rather than have it behind us."

That's it.  That's all that was different.   Ah, the science of lighting and photography!  (Next step: mastering the mechanics of the selfie stick so my claw-like grip isn't prominently featured in the shot!)

When we finally got out of the house, we hit up the nearby medical center to get our free flu shots.  This girl did great!

(Thanks to Daniel Tiger for helping us remember that, when you get a shot, you should "close your eyes and think of something happy!")

We then celebrated with lunch at Panera and a good hour spent stocking up at the Closing Sale (75% off EVERYTHING) at the Hallmark store down the way.  I now have a greeting card for all of life's hypothetical future occasions. Now I just have to remember that I have them...

 Happy Saturday Friday!!!!

A Change to the Routine

I guess it's kinda silly to act like THIS is the "change to the routine" when we've already had two different Friday night football games get moved to Saturday.   Alas, this is a scheduled departure from the norm, when the Rams play tonight (Thursday) instead of tomorrow night.  Tomorrow is a county school holiday--an annual day off to encourage teachers to go to the state teacher convention--so we often play the night before instead.  I'm all for anything that results in a slightly-less-busy-weekend for the BG so hooray!

What that means, however, is that I gotta step up my meal planning game a day early this week.  There's a group of 5 coaches that I've been feeding after games this season.  They are so thankful and kind-- and they love their meat.  Since I'm Emily, Lady of Variety (I just made that up), I like to rotate both the kind of meat and the cuisine.  I rely 90% of the time on the crockpot-- what would we do without those?

In recent weeks, we've had:

Buffalo Chicken (sammies on really good rolls)
Chicken Enchilada Chili (with corn muffins)
Cafe Rio-esque Sweet Pork (in tortillas with an array of fixins)
Zesty BBQ Chicken (sammies on slightly less fancy rolls)

(Hmm-- now that I've written those down, I see the meat rotation isn't overly impressive.  That's because I had a beef dish planned last week and then the pre-game meal provided by the parents got switched back to (meat) spaghetti and I also try to stagger the meat/cuisine from what they get fed earlier in the day because, again: Emily, Lady of Crazy.)

Said beef dish is getting prepared today and it's also a departure in that it's an oven recipe rather than a crockpot one.  Think I shall prepare it during the day and stick it in the fridge until I get home from the game and can throw it in the oven.  And obviously one last trip to the grocery store is in order since The Pioneer Woman decrees that it must be served with crusty bread.

I never ignore a decree for crusty bread.

Sour Cream Noodle Bake

You know what would make it taste even better?  A WIN!  LET'S GO RAMS!

Wordless Wednesday

Fall...ing Into a Big Pile O' Pictures

I hear from loyal reader Jennifer T that it was 99 degrees in Waco yesterday.

That is just wrong.

We are enjoying the crispness of fall up here and spent a coupla hours yesterday after school running around our favorite local nature/garden area.  The kiddies were amazingly game for photographs so I took full advantage of that.  We had a wonderful little outdoor escape!

Weekend Recap

I didn't really take many pictures this weekend.  The three ladies (with JC in town!) spent Friday on quite the retail adventure.  We wanted to take her to stores that aren't in the greater Corning environs so we started at IKEA and worked our way to World Market and Penzey's spices, with a very yummy lunch thrown in there, too.  We got home with only a little time to spare before going to pick up the B-man after his weekly after-school basketball fun program he's doing-- and then had only a little bit of time to spare then before needing to leave to head to the football game, the real reason for JC's fall visit.

And then it started raining.

We drove through quite the downpour to get to the away game location but the drops stopped falling pretty much as we arrived.

And then it kept lightning.

We sat in our car for an HOUR, waiting to see if the lightning would stop.  The "clock" gets reset for 30 minutes each time there's visible lightning.  And, oh man, was there visible lightning.  Over.  And Over.

We finally gave up at 7:30 (and the kiddies had been just about as annoying as you can imagine kids cooped up in a car for an hour would be!) and drove home, stopping to get some take-out at our favorite local sandwich shop.   Huge bummer that JC came all this way after all these years and didn't get to see the BG coach.....but there were also two bright sides:

1)  The BG came home much earlier on Friday evening than he would have otherwise so they got a little more visiting time in.

2)  The game got rescheduled to Saturday at 10am, which--to me--is the perfect game time.  It was a crisp, cool morning and, since it's light the whole time (as opposed to an eve game), I can let the kids be a little more active on the side of the stadium because I can see them!!

Unfortunately, JC had to head out of town Saturday morning so she didn't get to enjoy the fall football morning-- and really, it turned out not to be so enjoyable since we lost 28-18.  For those following along at home, the team is now 2-4 which is...not ideal.   With only 2 returning starters, however, it's also not a huge surprise.   Onward and upward to our final 4 games! 

At least the Coach still knows how to bring joy to his children amidst the football stress:

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend!   We finally are waking up to cold mornings so we put on the flannel sheets last night and found it VERY hard to get out of bed this morning!!

Friday Report: Present and Past

Loyal reader (and my 10th grade English teacher!) JC arrived yesterday afternoon from Corning, NY.  She has been wanting to come see a football game for years and it finally worked out for her to trek down here!   In such a generous burst of thoughtfulness, she arranged to bring us a pizza from the best pizza place in the world.  Don't be jealous, Corning folk!!

No, really-- don't be jealous.  When JC got here, she realized that her traveling companion (whom she dropped off with family more than an hour away) had inadvertently (OR WAS IT????) taken the pizza out of the back of the car when they met at the rendezvous point to drop her off.  SHE STOLE OUR PIZZA!!!   Zut alors!!   It was devastating.   We regrouped and came up with an eating plan B but, oh, the sadness.

In other news, 6 years ago it was also a Friday and this little guy was spirited for his dad who was in his first year with the orange and black Rams!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

(Selfie) Stick to It!

If all goes according to plan, a very loyal blog reader will be making her inaugural visit to these parts later this afternoon.   To honor her impending arrival, we played around with the "selfie stick" she recently gave us!

We are nothing if not serious and high-brow:

(And now I know what I'd look like with a vertical bar tattoo!)

The young sir was reading in the other room and missed the group shot....so he came in later and did his "fierce vulture" face (???):

It Runs in the Family

We sent Cousin Griffin a package the other day with a very special hand-me down.  He immediately modeled it photographically and then I could make a lineup!

A Fall Twist on a Fave

We've ended up with quite a few butternut squashes so I went ahead and roasted some of them to be ready to use the cooked squash in a TBD recipe.   Sunday night ended up being a perfect "Breakfast for Dinner" night and I searched around to find a pancake recipe that used butternut squash.

I told the kids they were "like pumpkin pancakes" because a) the word "squash" makes them nervous and b) they are afraid of "potato" so I couldn't even call it "sweet potato-esque."   Turns out they LOVED the pancakes.....might or might not be helped by the fact there is maple syrup (and butter) IN the batter.  mmmmmm.

Didn't take a pic but here's the recipe link!  Go forth and make some festively fall pancakes:  Butternut Squash Pancakes

Watch Out!

Or the scary Hoodie Man and his henchman (er, henchgirl?) might come after you!

Poppin' Good Time

Inspired by loyal reader Kathy (and a Cooking Light recipe that, er, popped up on FB the other day), I finally tried popping popcorn on the stove!  It was fun to have a glass lid so we could watch it explode.   You'll notice the boy.   Seriously, does popcorn even HAVE an odor??

In answer to Sheils's question from yesterday:  YES, the caramel apple donuts will still be enjoyed even though the hurricane is staying out to sea.   It's supposed to rain all day today (and it's been raining for days) so there's all kinds of craziness happening with football game scheduling in order to get all games on turf fields.  As it stands now, the BG's game will be tomorrow night which is very strange indeed.  Thank goodness Baylor plays in the afternoon!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Storm? What Storm?

We have Hurri-nuts for the weekend!!!