MMMMM, dirt cake!

This is for my daughter's Kindergarten class party today. Her request. Chocolate rocks, gummy worms, and "dirt".

Oh my, really?

I've been that busy? A week? Oh well, not many of you read anyway.

This past weekend was a blast! I had so much fun catching up with old college friends. I tend to think of myself as "forgettable" so I was pleasantly surprised when so many people remembered me and other details about me. Plus it's always great to be told over & over that "you look exactly the same as you did in college!" Well, minus the spiral perm. I have to say that most of my old friends DID look the same. It was a bit freaky actually. Standing in a bar (ok, several) with a plastic cup of cheap beer and with the exception of different clothes fashions, showing off kid pictures, wedding rings and the lack of Aqua Net'ed hair we could have been transported back in time 18 years. So many people looked exactly the same it was weird.

FIL and his wife are at their usual crap. I'm so done. Thank God FG is moving his office this week. Now when I go to the office to work I won't have to worry about running into him. The inability to admit either of them are ever wrong just chaps my ass.

The menu this week is:

• Sunday - Grilled chicken, potato pancakes, tossed salad, molasses sugar cookies
• Monday - Marlboro Man Sandwiches (look it up on PW Cooks, I'm too lazy to link it), noodles, roasted asparagus
• Tuesday - Soup (hoping to make my own butternut squash soup but we'll see if I get to it) & sandwiches
• Wednesday - work for me
• Thursday - ? The kids and I on our own. ?? Maybe breakfast for dinner? Whatever it is, not much because they both have Halloween parties at school that afternoon & won't be very hungry.
• Friday - Halloween Party at a friend's house
• Saturday - Jack 'o Lantern pizza (home made), Mummy toes (tortilla wrapped little smokies), Witch's Brew (popcorn, pretzels, Chex, M&M's), Ghost Blood (milk). I think friends may be Trick or Treating with us but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm making the above for the kids.

Life is just busy right now but that's ok! I wish I had something more interesting to blog about but at the moment, I barely have time to think, let alone write it out!

Menu Plan Monday

I FINALLY went grocery shopping. Wow. We were gettin' LOOOOOWWWW.

I ended up going in to work yesterday. A girl called me and asked if I could work for her because she was sick. So I went in for 5 & 1/2 hours. Since I'm taking next Saturday (my regularly scheduled day) off I figured I could use it! It worked out that 1) SMA wasn't coming to dinner 2) I planned an easy dinner. Here's the week!

• Sunday - French Dip Sandwiches (the deli had roast beef on sale!), pasta salad, veggies
• Monday - Smoked sausage, mashed potatoes, roasted broccoli
• Tuesday - Spaghetti, bread, salad*
• Wednesday - I'm working. There's plenty here now to feed the kids.
• Thursday - I had planned on PW's Marlboro Man Sandwiches but FG just told me he didn't want that before going to work. Soooo, I'm not sure. Maybe leftover spaghetti!
• Friday - College sorority reunion!!!
• Saturday - More reunion & homecoming game!

*I somehow got elected to make a big family dinner tomorrow night. FG's aunt is coming to town. She bounces between everyone when she comes to visit. She's staying with us tomorrow night. What kills me is she just says when she's coming, doesn't work it out with anyone. I guess there are too many of us to coordinate but still both her sister and us have big plans for next weekend. So anyway, I somehow got voted to make dinner for everyone. Spaghetti it is! Easy to feed a crowd with that. So today I have to clean to get ready for her to stay here. The guest bed is in the playroom so of course I'll have to de-gunk the playroom. And the bathroom that she'll use is our downstairs one. Uh, that's basically the cat's bathroom too so I have to super-scrub that! We use it but not the shower/tub except when we have guests. So yeah, bleach - here I come!

Side note, this morning I saw a Hispanic woman digging through my recycling. They (didn't see the driver) were driving a nice Tahoe. I just kept thinking, the $ they are getting for my cans (not many) is not even paying for their gas to drive around hunting these things. I was pissed. Mainly because I pay for those recycling bins! I have to pay Waste Management for my trash pickup. I get it that times are tough but I don't have much sympathy when they are driving around in a vehicle like that. So I did a little "digging" of my own. I believe our city voted that practice illegal last year. I remembered that one of our news stations did a story on it before it was presented for a vote with the city council. I dug and dug and came to the conclusion that our county & city records online just suck. So I emailed a friend of mine, college sorority sister and one year my junior in broadcast journalism school. She stuck with the news and has been an evening anchor for a long time now. I emailed her the copy of the story her station did and told her what was up. I don't know that they ever did a follow up story. All I know is somewhere under my mom-guise is that journalist. I remember having to find story ideas both in school and out (yeah, hated working in the newsroom!). Hopefully that will help the newsroom staff out and I'll also get my answer if I can tell these people to buzz off or not. What irked me is she messed it all up - crap left on the sidewalk etc. FG stacks it up so it doesn't blow around because every recycling day is crazy-ass windy. So I had to go out there and pick up the stuff I already had dealt with once before - the rinsing, the crushing, the separating... stupid trash digger!

They really do exist!

Nice playdates, that is.
I did a good thing yesterday and was fully prepared for hell. Playdates are usually not a pleasant thing around here. The last little geeky kid that came over with DS was mean to DD, rude to the rest of us and then informed me that his mother wasn't picking him up until 7 pm. This was a school night! So I got to get the kid to do his homework AND feed him dinner while he insisted that he is the guest so he can do whatever he wants. Um, no. He hasn't been back.

But DD made a little friend in her class this year. Actually, she met her the week before they started school when she did her Kindergarten evaluation. I told the teacher that she didn't know any of the kids in her class. Then, waiting outside the classroom was another little girl who the teacher told me would be in the class too. The girls met... and hugged. DD is a hugger. Some kids are not. The mom immediately (told me her life story, literally) told me that she owns a yoga studio and they are very "huggy" and she's had to work with her daughter to not just hug everyone she sees. The Mom was so happy that MY daughter is the one who initiated the hug and made HER daughter feel comfortable. The girls have been inseparable ever since.

Learning their life story (I am NOT kidding) in 10 minute increments I found out that this little girt also has a 3rd grade brother, just like my DD. Also that they are in transition of moving this weekend/week and The Mom had a final due on Monday (she's going back to school). The girls have been begging for a playdate. I told The Mom that I would try to figure out a day that worked. Last week was just nuts with everything and I apologized for mentioning it and not following through. Then I suggested Monday. She told me that would be awesome because of the moving/packing and her final. She was very sweet about it and said that if it didn't work, that was totally fine but if it did, I would be helping her tremendously. Because of their transitional move, she has to shuttle kids to & from school THREE times a day. Literally every few hours she is driving back & forth to the school. Ey yi yi.

So I made everyone happy yesterday by picking the kids up and bringing them back here for a playdate. As I mentioned in my MPM post, it was way too quiet. When I did check on them, I found the girls happily playing "house" and "store" in DD's room and the boys happily building stuff out of Hot Wheels tracks, Legos and Magnetix. Both boys love to build random stuff. The boys were who I was worried about since they had never met. They are in different classes and the other boy is quiet and shy. They got along GREAT. The girls got alone great in a setting other than school. It was literally wonderful. They were all polite (even my kids). They graciously accepted the Snickerdoodles and Kool-aid I offered. They played nicely. There were no fights, no rudeness, no tears. Well, DD got her lip banged while playing on the swing set but it was accidental and hey, that happens. Her friend was concerned about her and near tears herself watching her DD cry.

The Mom picked them up and was so thankful. She's a total kook (life story telling within 5 minutes of meeting someone=kook) but very nice and not the complete whack-job kook type.

So yes, I found out good playdates do exist! I will happily invite these children back and will do it soon.

Now to decide what to bake since the cookies were wiped out yesterday.

Menu Plan Monday 10/12

Things seem to be settling down a tad. Maybe because we had a slow Sunday and a slow Monday. Though, it's Monday afternoon and I have two extra kids here. I volunteered - picked up all 4 from school. They are thrilled. They are all playing so nicely too! Thus, I'm thrilled! After I type this out, I'm going to have to go check on everyone because it's entirely too calm.

Yesterday we had a birthday party to go to at a nearby park. It was a beautiful day so we stayed as long as possible. I am proud of myself because I not only slept in a bit and had a lazy morning, I also managed to mix up a batch of cookie dough AND pie crusts before my shower and heading to the party. Once we got home, I hit the kitchen right away and made our yummy dinner. All from scratch :)

• Sunday - Baked ziti w/ sausage, tossed green salad w/ honey poppy vinegarette dressing, fresh bread, snickerdoodle cookies, peach pie
• Monday - beef fajitas, rice, green salad
• Tuesday - Dinner at the elementary school (Fundraiser)
• Wednesday - I'm at work
• Thursday - PW's Penne a la Betsy or as we call it - Shrimp penne in tomato cream sauce
• Friday - if I can get to the store for cheese, homemade pizza, if I can't probably pulled pork sandwiches since I froze the remaining pulled pork after I made it a few weeks ago.
• Saturday - FG and I have an awards dinner to attend. *Must Find Sitter!!*

Nothing too exciting or elaborate. But the few nights I cook, we're eating what we've got. The "penne" may actually be macaroni since I used all the penne for the ziti (now THAT sounds silly!). No chicken this week either. I'm giving the fam a chicken break since we're all SICK of it. Though DD always calls pork chicken so she thinks we eat chicken even more than we actually do! She gobbled up the ziti last night too. Oh it was hilarious because she just plowed through it. Usually it's more of a fight. I think the fact it wasn't chicken (of any form, even the pork kind) made it all that more appealing!

I've got my fingers crossed that FG comes home with good news today. A new prospect that will help out the budget. We keep joking that if all the stars align perfectly, we may start to actually feel better about things. Oh I hope so. It will mean more business work for me but oh well. That's fine!

Again with the chaos

I feel like a broken record. I keep saying I'm waiting for things to slow down, get back to a normal routine. How long will I wait and feel like it's almost there but maybe just one more week and things will settle down? I have always hated the "wish your life away" feeling. The "I can't wait until......." and then poof! it's over. I have those moments and I think, wow, before I know it, we'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner or it will be Christmas morning. So I TRY my hardest to enjoy the moment, get one more thing done that needs tending to, stop and b-r-e-a-t-h-e.
A few things that have been adding to the "normal" chaos around here:

• What I will now refer to as OUR business having a major change. FG now being the show host. Rebuilding our set. Shooting on location. Location shoots which involve LOTS of equiptment. Me being behind the camera and getting back to my broadcasting school roots after 15 years being OUT of school. Me having to learn all the new changes in equipment in those 15 years.
• FG now being home for dinner on Thursday nights.
• FG hopefully finishing the new set today and will be able to shoot on set, with a full crew next week. Yay! No more long location shoots every week! Once in awhile yes, but not every week.
• I've been dropping off DD at school and racing off to go to work for 3 hours and then racing home to be sure I'm here by the time the bus gets here.
• A funny side effect of these location shoots is I have been driving FG's car. He's needed the "big" car for the equipment. His car is a stick shift Mini Cooper. It's fun but geez it's not often that we switch for long periods of time. That's a small thing that's been throwing me off!
• Wednesdays I have been doing this then kissing their sweet little heads and rushing out the door to work at the toystore. I'm exhausted by the end of Wednesdays! Then I get to get up and at it (home, kids, business stuff) again at 6:30 the next morning! Yipee!
• MIL agreeing to come over on Thursday eveings so I can go play "producer" while FG hosts the show from said new set. (He keeps reminding me he can't be on the set and in the control room supervising at the same time. That leaves me. Again.)
• DS's teacher asked me to be the "Classroom Mom". I get to be the liason between the PTA and the teacher. I get to organize events/parties. I get to collect donations & get volunteers. I'm hoping to find a co-chair for this gig though. I cannot attend every PTA meeting. I cannot orgainize every single party or event. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone is willing to help me!
• I'm now scheduled in DD's classroom every other week (my doing - volunteered for that one).
• I'm now scheduled in DS's classroom every other week (again, my doing but that was prior to being asked to be "room mom").
• I tried to make an appointment for the kid's Flu Mist and was told that 1) I have to pay for it unless the deductible is met ($3,000 each kid - HA!) 2) The Dr. won't schedule appts for it until AFTER the clinic they are having on the 30th. 3) Joy. I get to schlepp both kids to the Dr's office for the clinic and pray that the line isn't huge and the wait isn't forever. 4) The H1N1 mist is 100% covered by insurance without meeting a deductible. But I"m not 100% sure I WANT that one yet. Also, it won't be available here until mid-Nov. At least by then lots of the rest of the country will have had a chance to report side effects :)
• DS needs a tooth pulled and I don't know where the money is coming from for that.
• My family is SICK of eating chicken but as I told FG this morning. Under $1 per pound is better than $4 per pound of decent beef so suck it up unless you find that money tree.

All of that is the past 2 weeks. Now there is a potential new change coming. Actually 2. We'll find out soon. One we'll get confirmation and details of early next week. The other we're not sure when we'll know. These changes will cause me to have even MORE changes and chaos. I'll keep you updated. Even if you don't read it or don't care. It helps me to write it all out and settle my head. I'm a mom, wife, friend, worker, volunteer, individual. I just do what I need to do to get us through!

Recipe Review

I made the Pork Chops in apple cream sauce last night.
Interesting!
The kids didn't care for the sauce. FG just kept saying, "hmm. It's good but just different."
I liked it!
The chops were tender and juicy. I didn't do the whole shake in the bag with the flour thing. I just seasoned them with s&p then sprinkled a little flour on each side and patted it in. I used the spiced cider from Trader Joe's (My absolute favorite! Love it warmed up!!) so I skipped the other spices on the chops too. I chopped up a peeled granny smith apple and added that it. Then when I took the chops out, I smooshed them with a potato masher. I ended up adding a bit more of the cider to thin the sauce and I didn't measure the cream when I added it. I used heavy cream because that's what I had. I don't think I used the full 1/2 cup the recipe called for though.
All in all, this was a good dish. I don't know that I would follow the recipe again. I'd just use it like I usually do - for a jumping off point to make up my own. I did make mashed potatoes like some reviewers suggested. They were good with the sauce but again, the kids didn't like it. They are gravy purists I guess.

Oh Lisa, to answer your ? - everything is good with FIL. He's fine. He's starting a new venture along the same lines. You can search FG's name or the business (show) name and see a youtube video of FIL's last show with the kiddos on there. Or it's on my facebook page too. It's all good. FG has been planning to completely take over for a long time now but he finally had to get his dad to give him a definite date. It was too wishy-washy for us, waiting around for the day when FIL decided he was really done. It made it difficult for FG to run the business on his own when his dad was still the face most recognized. Now it's onward and upward (I can hope!!! This business is so crappy right now. I'm sick of being broke!). And if you caught my FB status a couple of weeks ago.... for FIL's last show, his wife decided to have a little party at the studio. Only she forgot to mention it to his family! Uh huh. FG found out from a 3rd party. She is such a wench, she didn't think to invite US who have been there from show #1. So we showed up anyway and then she had the balls to THANK US for coming. I have several obscene names for her. She just keeps winning points with us.

Menu Plan Monday!

I did fairly well sticking to my menus the past couple of weeks. Yesterday I had to work with FG - outside - in the freezing cold! It was a late afternoon project so I had already warned him I wouldn't be cooking dinner. We picked up take out and I discovered I had a free entree coming to us! Yay for saving money!

This week is another busy week. We'll see if I manage to stick to my meal plan. I hope so!

• Monday - Pork Chops in apple cream sauce (trying a new recipe, I'll let you know!), potatoes, broccoli
• Tuesday - BBQ chicken thighs, cabbage slaw salad, buttered noodles.
• Wednesday - I work. FG & the kids are on their own.
• Thursday - Individual chicken "pot pie" w/ a biscuit top.
• Friday - homemade pizza
• Saturday - I work so I'm not sure what we'll end up doing.

Recent developments have changed Thursday nights for us. FG's dad is no longer working with him. We've been doing things a bit differently as we change up some things about the business. That means I am back to "work". I've always helped out the business for the past 15 years but now, I'm back to my roots of broadcasting and using what I learned in college. It's been, uh, an experience! The hardest part is using what I haven't used in sooooo many years. But that's ok. I'm getting better and better each time. We always planned on this so it's not like it's a huge shock, it's just a big adjustment for me right now. But that changes our weekly routine. FG reminded me last week that he would be home for dinner on Thursday. WHAT? It's been 15 years since I've had to make a dinner on Thursday for more than either just me or me and the kids!! So now I have to figure out what to make that we can either eat before he goes to the stuido or he can eat after he gets home.

There you have it! Oh, also over the weekend, I made the easiest and yummiest berry crisp. Actually DD made it. I got everything out and had her measure and mix. I cleaned the berries and poured the melted butter. Other than that, she did it all. It was excellent with vanilla ice cream. I'll share the recipe soon, though no pics because we couldn't wait to eat it!