Timing

Life has been different at our house lately.
My mother in law had some complications from surgery and went to rehab from the hospital. Not 'rehab' rehab but rehab where you go when you can't quite go home alone.
A big thank you to Medicare who limited that stay to 23 days and made my house the next stop on the recovery tour.
Now, you're probably thinking I'm not a very good daughter in law saying things like this BUT I really am... She just really doesn't want to be at our house.
She's a wee bit demanding and a lot passive aggressive. Here are a few of the things I've learned this week...
My dining room has terrible lighting.
I really should own a card table.
My girls both talk too fast.
She doesn't understand that our dvr is the kind we all share and the 80ish programs she deleted weren't just on the tv in her room,
She's never had teenage girls.
Our family is too busy.
They weren't this busy when Mike was young.
She has a completely different interpretation of any conversation than everyone else that hears it.
Especially if it was a conversation with one of her dr's..,

So a quick weekend trip to Dallas to help a friend with something was a much needed mini vacation with my family and old friends. As usual I made the most of my time and fit in as much visiting and Mexican food as possible!  Jennifer has a good discription of my trip on the way there...

And nothing says 'thanks for visiting Dallas' like a homeless man at the exit for the airport urinating in plain view... And as usual, I'm glad to get back to my peeps!

The First Cool Snap

We had our first cool snap this weekend. 
I live for this time of year! 
I kept waking up very early Sat. morning because I knew it was going to be really cool and I could hardly wait to get up and open all the windows!  As soon as the girls got up I made them open their windows, which here in Lubbock means cleaning all the dirt off the window seal too, so they weren't very excited and pretty much just gave them another reason to thing I'm weird.
They'll understand one day...

Saturday was a great day. 
One we don't seem to have often. 
Cool weather, everyone was at home all day, we all watched football together, I got all the fall decorations and cooked a big pot of soup for dinner.   My favorite kind of a family day!

                                     Here is Kellie having her very first Pumpkin Spice Latte...



Today at church we had a great lesson on prayerful consideration vs. sinful worry.  What a great reminder it was and food for discussion for the girls and I this afternoon...

This afternoon I even found my girls lying in bed together watching a movie! It was like a little miracle! I had to bite my lip to keep from telling them how sweet it was!

It's been a great weekend!  What about yours?

Lunches

One of my goals for this school year is to get us all to take our lunch more often.
Remember last week when I mentioned the salads in a jar...
Well, the were great! 
Thank you Pinterest and The Big Red Kitchen!
They stayed so fresh and were yummy so I made a new batch for this week!

I made southwest salads and oriental salads...

Southwest Salad

I layered:  Spicy Ranch in the bottom, chopped chicken, chopped tomatoes, black beans, corn, cheese and lettuce on top of all of that.  Then I remembered the chopped bacon and threw that in...
I have a little bag of spicy tortilla strips to add in when I eat it.
My friend Kim was the creative idea behind this one.

 

Oriental Salad

 

 

For the dressing:  1/3 cup Rice vinegar, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 cup oil, and one seasoning packet from Oriental flavor Ramen noodles.  Put all ingredients into a jar and shake well.  Makes enough for 3 pint jar salads.

 

Layer:  Dressing on bottom, chopped chicken, chopped cabbage, chopped green onions, and Mandarin oranges.

 

Toast slivered or sliced almonds along with the noodles (broken up) from the package of Ramen noodles.  Divide these into three baggies to top salad with.

 

 

I'm not sure which salad is my favorite!  But glad to have lunches already made and handy. 

 

We enjoyed our long weekend!  Now, remind me why don't we have Monday off every week?

 

 



School days

The last few days have been a crazy pace. 
Getting us all ready to go back to school seemed even busier this year...

We got the last of the many many middle school supplies.
The high schooler asked for 1 spiral.

I knew that was too good to be true.
The first day she said she needed to buy a couple of books this week.
I thought novels like we seem to have to buy several times a year...
Sure, we can buy those tonight.
Nope.  She meant college text books for her duel credit classes...
Huh?  We have to buy books for those classes?  3 books and another if she really wants to keep up.
And I have to pay how much tuition?
Now, I am very very grateful that she is taking them at this price instead of in real college but good heavens, I wasn't prepared to spend hundreds on books in high school. 
Those duel credit teachers better not ask for tissues or hand sanitizer that's all I have to say...

Here's our only first day of school picture for the year.  I had to take it after they got home!
Eighth grade and eleventh grade. 
I won't show the picture of me crying that my babies are grown up.
Katie drove herself to school.  I wanted to follow her...

Last year I had a terrible time getting Kellie up for school. 
Guess what?
It's no better this year.  I listened to her alarm go off for 15 minutes the first day and she never heard it....

Elvis didn't get up at all before we left...

My favorite thing I did for back to school was getting together Sunday afternoon with my sweet friend to make our lunches for the week.

We are eating some yummy salads this week!

The end of summer

The last week or so has been crazy, stressful and busy. 
Mike's mother had surgery in Dallas on the same day he had a business trip he couldn't get out of so we did some re-arranging and the girls and I headed to Dallas for a week.

The majority of it was spent at the hospital for me.  Kellie did a few things with Jennifer. 
She had a birthday while we were there so of course Jennifer took her out and made her feel special on her big day. 
And the next night we met more family for another birthday dinner.

She has always needed a birthday week rather than a birthday...

My mother in law is still in the hospital due to some complications.  We had to head back home since I had to go back to school.
We also had to take care of the one thing left on my summer list of things to do...
Katie put off getting her drivers license till the day before I went back to work.  I needed her driving!

As nervous as it is making me, I am excited for her!  And I love being able to send her to do things now!
I continue to ask how these girls got so grown up...

Girls night

Jennifer bought a plane ticket to come and visit and to help me with a wedding I was going to photograph.  I ended up not doing that wedding but since she still had the plane ticket I wanted to do something fun while she was here.
I had a gift certificate for a night in Lubbock's fanciest hotel.  And lucky for Jennifer I didn't go alone all those times I considered it.  Another sweet friend joined us and off we went.

We spent some time in the pool. 

Enjoyed the managers reception then went to dinner.

After dinner we went upstairs to the Rooftop bar...

We spent a lot of time visiting and enjoying the view.

That's our hotel

There was a class reunion from 1972 up there also.  It was great people watching!  We had one of the class of 72 come and ask who we were and shortly was our new friend.

That is Wayne there after delivering drinks to us. 

We met his wife and continued to make new friends all night!

We stayed to watch a huge orange moon rise and then retired to our hotel where the alarm clock in the neighboring room went off at midnight. For almost 30 minutes.  Then is was great sleep in a bed to myself full of pillows!
After a great breakfast this morning we came home to my people I missed! 

It was wonderful and relaxing.


I came home to my weekly basket of goodies!

cucumber anyone?

This and that and cake

I had friends over last night for a fish fry since we came home from vacation with millions of fish.

It was good but the star of the night was this

A simple coconut cake like you would find at every church pot luck.  But.  It was good!
You'll need to try this and then try not to eat it all...

It falls apart and prevents you from putting pretty pieces on the plate.  That's what makes it so good...

Coconut Cake

1 yellow cake mix
1 package coconut pudding mix
1 can Sweetened cond. milk
1 tub Cool Whip
1/2 cup coconut toasted

Bake cake according to directions in 9x13 pan.  When it is done remove from oven and poke holes with the the end of a wooden spoon all over cake.  Mix can of sweetened cond. milk, 2 cups of milk and pudding mix till blended.  Pour over cake.  Refrigerate till cool.  Frost with tub of Cool whip. Sprinkle toasted coconut over the top.

I made a second one today since the first was gone in one night. 

Jennifer came to visit today and earned a big piece of cake by teaching Katie to parallel park!

Earlier this week Kellie made a trip to the mall with friends.  She called me to come get her and to show me what she wanted to buy.  She picked out a very nice kitten the human society had there. 

I explained that wasn't an option since my sister and Jennifer are allergic.  She pleaded, she offered to sleep outside with it, she tried everything.

She choose instead to replace the dead hamster with a new friend. 

Meet "Kitty" the guinea pig.

Kellie is in love, Ellie is jealous and  we found out Jennifer is even allergic to guinea pigs ...

Go make the cake

Ellie endorses it...