Two snow days!

So what is better than a snow day? Another snow day!

We started our second snow day off with some homemade cinnamon rolls with chocolate chips and almonds! I love baking things that have to rise. I don't know if it is the process, or watching it change, or the yummy smell of the yeast dough, or if it is just a nostalgic connection to a simpler time of life. Whatever it is, I enjoy it. I decided that since we were all going to be home for breakfast (Alan took the day off, the first time in FOREVER!) that we needed a special, warm, snow day breakfast!

Welcome to our own personal winter wonderland!

I love the snow, even this icy snow that's not really snow. Because it is sooooo beautiful! When everything is white, and calm and quiet, it makes me smile. It makes this crazy, too-fast world slow down just a bit, and it is wonderful. I love that the sunlight reflects off of it and makes everything so bright and shiny. I love that it glitters as the sunlight hits it, and makes it seem like we have been transformed to a magic world full of fairy dust! I love the ice glazing over things, making it look surreal.

I have this thing for trees, I love trees. Especially empty tree branches in the winter, it just seems like they belong in some magical forest or something. And when the branches are covered in a glaze of ice, it is just beautiful. I took like a dozen pics of this tree from all angles, but I like the sunlight right behind it, making it ablaze!


Starla shoots some hoops!

What a pretty girl.

Pet me momma! Pet me!!

Tex followed Starla all around, annoying her greatly. :)

I love Starla's faces, especially her eyebrows, they crack me up. Here she is, getting mad at Tex for getting onto her slide.

Roman joined us, but Bourbon said it was too cold and he stayed inside!

It was a fun day. And what do you know, school is out yet again tomorrow! Wow! 3 snow days! I managed to get out and about today. IO had to go grocery shopping, and I missed my weigh in at WW on monday due to the ice, so I had to go weigh in today. One more pound lost, for a total of 6 pounds in 3 weeks, which is guess isn't bad. But of course, like more people, I want instant results!! But I will live.

I have a test on friday that I keep trying to study for, but it's hard when the kids are all home. My student teaching application for next semester has to be turned in by friday too, and I still have to go get my transcript printed up. I hate to wait until the last day in case something comes up that it will take longer than expected, so the 3 kids and I may go to UCO tomorrow to get that taken care of. I'm not sure how much fun that will be, but we will see.

I might take them to the omniplex tomorrow too. We have spent 2 days at the house, now we need to get out!

Starla Entertaining

Snow day!

I love snow days! It seems like even though you may have a ton of stuff to do, everything gets put aside on snow days and they are just free days! Woo hoo! Yesterday was no fun with all of the ice though. They called classes off at 1pm, so I didn't have to stay for my last 2 classes, but the campus was sooo icy and slick. It was like a sport, people were lined up at the windows in buildings just watching people bite it. People were falling all over the place, it was awful. You couldn't even pick up your feet when you walked for fear of slipping, you just had to shuffle your feet along. I had to go down an incline, and I just slipped my way down it, I was sure I was going to fall, I did almost several times, but managed to catch my balance. I watched these 2 girls though, hang onto eachother for dear life, laughing and screaming as they held onto eachother at the top of their bodies and each of their feet were going out in 4 different directions as they tried to work together to steady themselves. It was quite humorous, I couldn't help it. :)

We went out this morning right after breakfast, to play in the snow. Starla wanted to make a snowman, but I couldn't get her to understand that it was dry, powdery snow and wasn't going to stick together!

Roman makes a snow angel!

Bourbon had gotten impatient waiting for me to bundle myself and Starla up, and he went out before everyone else. So he got cold and tired of it before we even got out there, so I don't have any pictures of him!

Starla checks out the snow on her hands!

Roman discovers that sticks "stick" to his glove when icy!

Rudolph the red-nosed Starla.

Hope everyone enjoys their snow day! I have big plans of art projects, reading books, writing stories, hot chocolate and maybe baking some apple dumplings! Of course, I have homework to get done and a test to study for too......

The Chill-harmonic

Sunday was the 2nd Family Discovery series at the Philharmonic. It's called The Chill-harmonic and their mascot is a penguin. The first one was "Bring in the Clowns". This one was "Hold the Cannons! The story and glory of Tchaikovsky and the 1812 Overture". It was alot of fun. The boys, especially Roman, get so into it and get so excited watching the symphony players. They have one more show "Space Rocks" where they will be playing music from Star Wars and Encounters of the Third kind, and other space movies. It is in March. It is relatively inexpensive, I think it was $8 for kids and $12 for adults, but I can't remember because I bought the season tickets back in November! But if you have the opportunity, you should go!

The boys pose in front of the Civic Center

For the first hour, they have games, exhibits, art projects, and the Instrument playground for the kids to play with.

Roman can't wait to learn how to play the violin!

Starla tries out some instruments!

Putting all that hot air to good use!!

Bourbon looks like he was born to play the blues!

Waiting for the show to start!

Phil the Penquin came out to dance during the Nutcracker ballet peice and the Waltz!

The harp is so cool!

Starla fell asleep!

It was lots of fun!

Betty Crocker

So I don't really know why I love baking so much, but it just is a source of comfort and joy to me. I LOVE baking. I love the measuring, and mixing and kneading of dough. I love the accomplishment of the finished product. I love watching the people I love enjoy what I made. I have this whole food=love thing in my brain, which is probably why I am overweight. :) But I feel like I am putting love into the food I make, and I feel like I am showing my family and friends who much I care by making them something. So today I decided I just really wanted to bake today. I wanted to bake everything!! I only got about half done what I wanted to, but that just means I have another baking day coming soon.

First I made a blueberry pie. We always to to a blueberry farm in texas in the summer and pick blueberries and blackberries. I had frozen a bunch of them from our trip over the summer, in hopes that I could make some jelly with my grandma. Not that I couldn't make it on my own, but I wanted to spend time with my grandma doing something she loves to do, and learning from her what I can while she is around. But after months and months of it just not happening, either they can't do it, or I can't do it, I decided I was going to put those berries to good use today!

Yum!

Next I make a blackberry cobbler. I should have taken a pic of the big beautiful giant juicy blackberries before I covered them, but oh well.

Then I made a blueberry & tangerine crisp with almonds. It was so colorful and pretty I did take a pic of the fruit before I covered this one up!

Here it is when it was all done.

Next I made an apple & cherry pie. I LOVE my apple core machine from pampered chef that my wonderful Aunt got for me. It peels, cores and slices apples all in one machine, all you gotta do it turn the crank! It is awesome!!

And here is the pie all done!

Next I made some oatmeal & raisin cookies.

And then some peanutbutter & chocolate cookies.

I spent all morning and most of the early afternoon baking, making my house all warm and smelling yummy!

I need to have some time now that I can just go deliver baked goodies to all of my friends!! Or else call everyone to come over and help themselves when I get into my baking moods.

These are the days of our lives......

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

These are the days of our lives.... Current mood: tired

I'm so sleepy. How can it only be 9:30? I'm so old.

So yesterday, while I am trying to muddle my way through the like 15 page student teaching application, I realize that I am missing a science class. How in the heck did that happen?! I am so frustrated. I just sorta forgot about my basic classes, since I thought I got them all done with my associates from Rose, and I have heard the whole 4 by 12 ever since I came to UCO, you gotta have 12 hours in each of the 4 main subjects (English, Math, History and Science), but I never even looked or realized or thought about the fact that I onle have 8 science hours. My counselor brought to my attention when I first enrolled that my Earth science class that I took at rose was only 3 hours and they required 4, and I did the whole 1 hour physical science lab last semester to make up for it, but she didn't point out that I was missing a whole other class! But it's my own fault too, because I just didn't pay attention. Until I was sitting there with my transcripts, having to write in what semester & year I took each required class, and what grade I made in it, in order to be accepted to student teach next semester, and I realized I am missing a class. Sigh. It shouldn't put me back any. I will just have to take it over the summer and get my grade back before I can be fully placed into student teaching in the fall. But that means that I have to go everyday since it is a summer class, which means I will probably go to rose and transfer it over so that I can stay closer to home. But what the heck am I going to do with my kids?! Which I can't even plan for until they release the times for the summer classes, which probably won't happen until the end of the semester, because I have no idea when I will need childcare since I don't know what time my class will be! So frustrating. Really, really reallly really frustrating. It will be even more frustrating if by chance something freaky happens and it does put me back another semester and I can't get into student teaching next semester. I will be livid. I'm so close, I am soooo ready to be done.

Not that I don't enjoy getting to be home with Starla and not work while I go to school, because THAT I enjoy immensely. As much as I am ready to be a teacher, and as excited as I am to have my classroom, in a perfect world I would love to stay home with Starla until she started school before I went back to work. I never got to stay home when the boys were little, I always worked. This is the first kid I've not had to work, and I've gotten to spend so much more time with her, and I love it. I love having mommy friends and taking Starla to playdates and out and about. It's so nice.

Which is what we did today, we took full advantage of the beautiful spring-like weather today and went to the zoo from 9am until almost 1pm! We ran into all my mommy friends with their kids and had a wonderful morning/afternoon. Then when we went to go pick up Roman after school, we headed to the park and played again for about an hour until we had to go get Bourbon from volleyball practice. It was sooooo pretty out today!! I loved getting to spend most of it outdoors.

Saturday is the 9th anniversary of Alan & I being together. Crazy that it has been 9 years! We are going out on date night, the kids are staying the night at my moms house. I think we are going to grab some dinner somewhere and then head to the Loony Bin for some comedic action. Should be fun. I can't wait until valentines day though, we booked this awesome little cottage at this B&B in norman. It has a heart shaped jacuzzi tub and everything! I love bed & breakfasts. We have gone to 2, and we were going to start it where we went every 6 months, but it fell away after the first two, and we haven't been since like 2002! So I decided it was about time we went again. I want to hit up as many B&B's in oklahoma as possible eventually. They are so much fun. I want to go to the new one in edmond, Two Hearts Inn. It is attached to Inspiration's Tea House (which I LOVE!) but it is so darn expensive!!! We will have to wait until we can go on like a weeknight so we can get a cheaper rate. Valentine's day falls on a saturday this year! Plus they always hike up the rates on holidays. Oh well.

My cool chick

Starla is such a little rock star already, it cracks me up.

Shake it up baby now!

Bourbon's shiner

So this was just a few hours after getting kicked in the face on the trampoline. You can't really see much in this one because the flash washed it out, but he posed in this one and I thought it was funny.Here is another view at the same time. Not too awful bad........ yet.

This was the next morning when he woke up for school.


And the next day (it changed so many shades of red/blue/purple/yellow with each passing day!)


And the next day.

And the next day.

I didn't take one yesterday or today, but it is still there! Just slightly less red/purple and more yellow.

I'm so glad that I volunteer regularly at his school and that they all know me, or else I might have had DHS on my doorstep the next day!

Starla's big girl bed

Starla's first night in her big girl bed!

She's getting so big so fast!