My Oldest Best Friend Died

June 26, 1996- April 18, 2012

Honey Bunny.  My beloved best friend, the dog that saw me through the tumultuous teenage years, numerous surgeries, marriage, 3 children, buying my first house and moving to my forever home, you have moved on to your forever home in heaven after 16 wonderful years. 
Honey Bunny, I love you and I will miss you but I will always cherish all of the good memories I have of you.  The way you would wait for me to get home, the torturous 6 months when I moved out and I couldn't take you with me and you were depressed, constantly pacing and waiting at my bedroom door for me, the way you curled up on the bed next to me and if I wasn't there, you would find the one piece of clothing that smelled like me and lay on that until I was available, the way you always followed me and wanted to be right next to me, protecting me even to the end, we grew up together. 
In many ways it is a cruel world that dictates that our natural lifespans are so drastically different and yet, I wouldn't change the last 16 years for the world.  I am so proud to have been your mommy and for you to be my fur baby.  You were always there for me and I am proud to say that I was always there for you.  I didn't give up on you, even at the end when you were incontinent and you couldn't stand to eat very well because of your arthritis.  I stood there and held you up while you ate your dinner, I put doggie diapers on you so you could stay inside where you belonged.  I cuddled and pet you every night; even after the whole household was asleep, I wouldn't go to bed without checking on you to make sure you were comfortable and had what you needed.
To my best friend, I am so happy to have had you in my life and I hope you were happy to have me.  I love you and I miss you already.

1997- you were just starting to become an adult

After a haircut

Indoor Campout

If you have never had  an indoor camp out, I highly recommend it!  I decided to have  an impromptu camping trip for my daughters and it was truly a huge success.  So here are the 5 easy steps to your own indoor camp out.

1. Create a tent.  If you don't have a tent or have one but don't want to bother getting it out and setting it up, you move all your kids furniture to the side in their room.  Take a large sheet and drape it over the backs of dining room chairs, using rubber bands to tie on.  Take a comforter or large blanket and spread it out underneath the tent with pillows.

2. Make sure your kids are properly packed for their camping trip, in our case the essentials were a stuffed animal, a book and a pair of  pajamas.  You notice that they already put their backpacks in their tent.
 
3. Gather all the required nutritional items which of course means hot dogs, hot dog buns, ketchup, mustard, relish, graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars.

4. Use your wonderful fireplace as your campfire.  If you don't have a fireplace, you could use a burner on your stove if you have a gas  stove, if you have no gas stove, you could use your microwave and just pretend. Roast your hot dogs, make s'mores and don't forget to sing a few camp songs.

5.  Last but not least, you should play a game or two, use a flashlight and if your kids are old  enough, tell spooky stories.  We played Go Fish in front of the fire, then changed into our pajamas and climbed into our tent to read a book by flashlight.

I guess there is technically another step.

6.  Marvel at your awesomeness as you watch your kids faces light up with joy when you set everything up.  Be amazed that they like it so much they continually talk about their camp out for the next week, ask to sleep in their tent every night and want to make every dinner in the fireplace.  Smile  at your husband as you both realize you have just made one of those amazing memories for them that they will cherish even as adults.

Updating Picture Frames

Wow!  I can't believe it has been 2 weeks since I made a post.  The really sad part is that I have made note of several things to make posts about, I just haven't gotten around to actually making the posts.  Oh well, I guess I will just jump in and start.
I recently came across 2 prints I saved from my childhood.  They are really beautiful but the frames were horribly dated. 

I forgot to take a picture of the other one before fixing

In December when I was  making Christmas presents, I bought some Rub n Buff but I didn't realize how bright it would be.  I ended up not using it for that project and I have been trying to find something to make with it since.

Well, how perfect!  My older two girls share a room and it is decorated in bright colors like pinks, oranges and bright blues.

Here are both prints.

Not only do the blue frames go perfectly with my daughters' room, it also really makes the prints pop.
A great solution to updating the look of a room without spending a lot of money.  You could also spray paint a frame but I wanted to use the Rub n Buff so some of the gold would shine through and the frames would  have more depth than if they were all one solid color.

Hero

I think everyone should have a hero, someone they look up to and admire, someone they can turn to for guidance, someone they actually KNOW, not someone famous.  In regards to that, I have to tell you, I think I have discovered who my monster's hero is, at least for the moment. 
Today, our television quit working and the first thing my 2 year old said was, "Maybe Papa can fix it!"  (Papa is my dad, her grandfather)  A few weeks ago she pulled a drawer out too far and it fell off the tracks, her response?  "Uh oh, Papa needs to come fix it!" 
The best one though is that her birthday is in a few months and when I asked her what kind of party she wanted for her birthday, she immediately responded with "A princess party!!!" and then followed that up almost immediately with "and Papa has to dress like a prince!!"
You don't think she likes her Papa do you? 
Of course, if I had to name just one person as my hero, it would be my father as well.  He is the kindest, most generous, most selfless person I know.  He is always giving to others, hence becoming a police officer.  He lives to protect and serve, and not just in a professional sense but truly in a personal sense as well.  He uses his time off to help me and my brother remodel our houses, or help mow an elderly person's lawn or construct a handicap ramp for someone's home.  He takes vacation time every year to go with a group called Church Builders of Texas to build a church.  If you call him and need help, he will be there at the drop of a hat and not just with his family, but with anyone he knows.  Please don't take this to mean he is flawless.  He is human of course and he makes many mistakes, just like all of us do, but I don't think I have ever seen my dad do anything malicious or cold hearted, he always strives to be a good, Godly man.  So to my dad, should you ever discover my blog, thank you for being my hero, the person I look up to and admire, the person I strive to become more like every day. 
I love you Dad!

Meatballs

I invited my mother over for dinner tonight since my father was out of town.  When I have guests over for dinner, I like to try something different to impress them and since it is my mother, the one who taught me a lot of the recipes I know, I can't fall back on an old standby.  So I created something new and it was a big hit with everyone. 

Here is my recipe for meatballs, and  I will apologize in advance since I don't measure out ingredients when I am cooking.


Ground beef
1 packet Lipton onion soup mix
Worcestershire sauce

milk
beef bouillon granules
corn starch
salt and pepper to taste

I mixed my ground beef with a packet of onion soup mix and  some worcestershire sauce and made meatballs with it.  I sprayed my saute pan with some cooking spray and browned my meatballs on all sides.  I also started some brown rice cooking.  When my meatballs had been browned  on all sides, I covered the pan, occasionally stirring them, and let them cook until finished.  I took my meatballs out of the pan and set them aside, then I drained all but about 2 TB of drippings from the pan.  I used the beef bouillon granules dissolved into water (because I didn't have any beef broth on hand) and, leaving the heat on in the pan, used the makeshift beef broth to deglaze the pan.  I then added some milk, some more worcestershire sauce and some corn starch to thicken up while stirring constantly ro make the gravy.  I used salt and pepper to taste.  These meatballs were served over a bed of brown rice with the gravy and steamed peas on the side.  Yummy!  The only bad part was there are almost no leftovers! 

5 Reasons I Am A Horrible Parent

I realized as I was putting up all the presents my children got for Christmas that, by many peoples standards, I would be considered a horrible parent.  Here are the main reasons I came up with.

1. I don't allow unsupervised access to art supplies or board games.
           I have a shelf high up in the play room where all the coloring books, crayons, pencils, paints and board games sit.  Why you might ask?  Well, because small parts of board games get lost, swallowed or destroyed.  Coloring books get ripped up, crayons get ground into the carpet or colored all over my walls and the play room gets even more destroyed than normal.  Mostly because I value my sanity.  My children are allowed to play with all of these things, but the rule is the playroom has to be clean before I will get it down and I supervise them.  Cruel I know.

2. No cable television.
           That is right!  We have no cable or satellite television so my poor children never get to see the Disney channel or Nickelodeon or whatever other children's channels there are.  There are a few reasons for this.  One is that it is a colossal waste of money.  Why anyone pays for extra channels is beyond me.  Secondly, I don't want or need to sit around and watch television that often.  I also don't want my children sitting around soaking up constant junk on television.  We do have the local channels and they do get to watch some  PBS shows which they enjoy.  Besides, they get to see cable shows when they are at the grandparents house as a special treat. 

3.  Extremely limited video game and computer time.
         We have a Wii that was given to us as a gift a few years ago, and I can count the number of hours my children have actually played on it on one hand.  The same holds true with the internet and computers in general.  They also aren't allowed to play with my smartphone.  It isn't that I have anything against all these technologically fun things, it is just that I believe that, especially while children are young, they should be using their imagination to come up with fun things to do, not being stunted by expecting some electronic device to provide amusement.  When they get older, I will have no problem with letting them play on these things but I want them to first learn to use their imagination.

4. No unlimited access to books.
          What?!?!?!   Someone who doesn't like their children spending all day interacting with technology doesn't let them play with books all the time?  I want my children to learn that books are special and we treat them with respect.  We don't tear them up or color on the pages.  We almost always read a book when they ask.  I say almost because if they are supposed to be cleaning up the play room or they are in time out, they don't get to read a book.  I don't, however, have the books out where they can get to them all the time.  We used to have the books out and one too many destroyed books made me believe it wasn't a good idea.  It is amazing how quickly a child can destroy something while you are changing a siblings diaper, going to the restroom, checking the mail or cooking dinner.

5. No juice.
          Well, not really no juice, but juice is treated like a soda in our house.  It is a special treat that you only get every once in a while.  Why?  Because juice is not as nutritional as fresh fruit, it fills them up on empty calories and it can cause cavities.  So my children drink water all day.  They get one glass of milk a day and every once in a while they get to have a small glass of juice which is normally half juice, half water.  I am trying to teach my children that if they are thirsty, they need to drink water.  I don't pretend to be an expert but I do think part of the obesity problem in our society has to do with the fact that people constantly must drink something with flavor (and therefore calories.)

So there you have it.  Do you agree or disagree?  Tell me, what do you do that makes you a horrible parent? 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! 
The coolest part about my girls getting older is that they are starting to get really excited about holidays and they look forward to them.  They couldn't wait for Thanksgiving and all the people to come over and then, like pretty much every kid, they were REALLY excited about Christmas.
Of course, you blink and then it is New Years.  We always let our kids be up for the ball drop, we have done it since our first was born.  Of course we don't let them stay up until the ball drops, they go to bed at their normal time and we wake them up about 11:30 and have tasty snacks and sparkling cider while we watch the ball drop and then they go back to bed.  This year it took about 2 hours for them to fall back asleep but at least they slept later on New  Years Day.
Since I live in the South, I grew up eating black eyed peas on New Years Day but my Mom never made a  special dish, she would just heat up a can of  black eyed peas and we would have it as a side dish.  I had never even heard of Hoppin John until I came across it a few months ago on another blog.  It sounded awesome so I decided I would make that on New Years.  As I started searching for the best recipe I noticed that Hoppin John seemed kind of  like Chili in that there are a few things it has to contain to be considered Hoppin John but beyond that, everyone kind of has their own recipe.
Instead of following someone elses recipe, I just made my own.  I only had canned black eyed peas in my pantry and I used brown rice instead  of white but it tasted really good!  Mr. Gem and myself both really liked it as did a friend of ours who was over visiting.  Without further adieu, here is my own recipe for Hoppin John.

Hoppin John

6 strips of bacon
2  or 3 bunches of  green onions
6 cloves garlic
2 cans black eyed peas, drained
4 cups cooked brown rice
salt and  pepper to taste

Use a deep sauté pan and first cook the bacon.  While the bacon is cooking, chop up the green onions and garlic.  Pull the bacon off and set on paper towels to allow it to drain.  Leave the drippings in the pan and toss in the onions and garlic.  Sauté for a few minutes or until soft then add your black eyed peas and rice.  Cook for several minutes using salt and pepper to adjust the flavor until it is warmed all the way through.  Crumble bacon and sprinkle on top and eat! 
Surprisingly satisfying and lucky too!  On a side note, isn't that serving dish it is in awesome?  I got that as a Christmas present and of course, I just had to use it.
I hope you remembered to eat your black eyed peas and lets all have a wonderful lucky year!