Washable Crayon...A Whole NEW Meaning

So one of the kids, I don't know which, showed me what it REALLY means to be a washable crayon. It's not so that it will come off the walls, cabinets, doors, and floors easier...It's so that they can go through the washer with all the clothes! ...And no, they are not dryable, Mom...so why did you put it through the drier?

Changes, changes, changes

There must be something wrong with me, because all I want to do is CHANGE! And I definitely got change.

I spent 2 days scrubbing my family room carpet clean (see recent pics for this-the carpet is actually BROWN!). I mopped my kitchen floor.

Our stumps, aloe vera, and decorative grasses are gone out front (look for the empty corner to the side of the house and the BIG pile under the window on the left-there is more on the sidewalk that you can't see in the pic). RYAN HYDRO SEEDED OUR FRONT YARD!!!!! (Thank you!) 

Now, I just need to finally paint the fascia...did you notice that it was bare wood? It was replaced only 2 years ago when we had our roof redone... I'm brewing up another list of to-do's already!

We changed our table legs on the kids’ school table. They are now adjustable and set at kid height (see pics on 9/5). They love it!

I have curtains in my bedroom and my vertical blinds are now in the family room.

The van was broken and Ryan fixed it just in time to have the jeep break.

Ryan is back in school for his SENIOR YEAR!!!!! (Or should I call it his pre-freshman year?)

Finally!!!

Does anyone remember the tree stumps that were against the foundation of our house in my front garden bed??? The ones that I tried for months and months to dig out and finally gave up and planted stuff in front of them to hide them? Well, they are no longer there! They have finally decomposed enough (3 years later) for me to dig them out. Of course, I could not have done it without my strong, sexy husband... He has more muscles in his little finger than I have in my whole arm! Thanks Ryan! Hopefully in a few weeks, my front yard will look like people really live here!

Storm clouds

I have never seen any storm clouds like this before. Normally the storm clouds have a flat bottom or just a few puffs on the bottom. This was a crazy storm all around us, but all we got was rain and wind for a few minutes. What I thought was most strange about the cloud was that there was a hole in the center of it where you could see blue sky. That part is just out of reach of the photo on the top left side.

Canned chicken

Ryan and I have felt very strongly about getting our year supply built up recently. We have been stocking up on cold cereal on sale for the past month (as low as $1 a box!) and this week Sprouts is having a sale on their chicken breast tenderloins for $1.77/lb. Yeah I know it's more expensive than other places, but I take a lot of comfort knowing that my meat doesn't have any added solutions or dyes. We bought several (8) family size packages of them and I decided I would try my luck at canning them up instead of freezing them. I will have 4 batches of them, so a total of 20 jars when I am finished. Here is a pic of the first batch. 

Lucky for me, every jar sealed with the first batch!! This sure beats having to pay a couple of bucks for those cans of chicken with 1/2 the meat and twice the cr**!

I love learning how to can my own foods. Before all I knew how to can was beans, but then E became allergic to them and I had to stop. I was always afraid of meats, b/c I didn't know if I would do it right or if I would end up with some nasty meat. Now that I have done it, it's really not so bad.

So, Ryan and I bought these gift certificates from restaurant.com for less than the face value. We figured we needed to get out more and we might as well save money while we are doing it. Anyway tonight we went to Texas roadhouse; we had heard it was good, so we thought we would try it. We left the kids at home with Grandpa and Grandma Taylor (thanks guys!) and Ryan and I went out to eat...alone. When we got there, we saw peanut shells ALL over the floor! PILES OF THEM!!! I wondered if it was part of the Texas theme???? When they called our number and brought us to the table we realized where all the peanuts shells were coming from. There were barrels of peanuts throughout the room and each table had a huge bucket of them. There were peanut shells all over my chair and I had the waitress wipe it down for me and remove the bucket from our table. The whole time we were eating I kept crunching peanut shells under my feet.


Normally we will wash our hands and face before leaving the restaurant, but this time we decided it wouldn't do us any good. So, we decided to walk the 1/2 mile to Wal-Mart and buy a painting dropcloth so we could actually sit in our van on the way home without getting peanuts everywhere. When we got home we even left our shoes outside the house and bagged up our clothes to put into the wash.
Ryan said it felt like walking through the city and getting contaminated by the disease in the movie "12 Monkeys", if anyone has ever seen it. Now, the picture does not even do it justice. That was under the table just across from us. There were just PILES AND PILES OF PEANUTS EVERYWHERE. So, if any of you have a peanut allergy, I DO NOT suggest eating here. I think they might have some cross-contamination issues....