Free or almost free happenings this weekend

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Deals and Freebies

Check out some deals and freebies in my examiner.com article.

Summer reading programs

Check out my post on examiner.com about summer reading programs for kids.

Just another use for goldfish crackers

On Sunday, 2 weeks ago, we were anxiously watching the UK MS State basketball game. Ok I was watching anxiously, Jeff was some what watching, and Daniel was in his room playing. Anyway. Towards the end of the game, Daniel wandered into the living room and began to watch the game with us. He noticed that Demarcus Cousins had “snot” in his nose. I explained to him that no it was not snot, it was a plug to keep his nose from bleeding all over the place. He accepted that and helped me cheer for UK until the game was over.

Fast forward 2 nights. Jeff went in Daniel’s room to tell him it was time to turn the movie off and go brush his teeth. All I heard was, “Go show your mother.” Don’t you just love to hear those words? Daniel comes around the corner into the living room and he has 2 orange goldfish crackers in his nose. One in each side. He wanted, “to make sure that his nose did not bleed like Cousins.” (Cousins plug was orange.) I would like to be able to report that I immediately told him that it is dangerous to put things up his nose, but alas, I cannot. I had to get control of my laughing first. And no, he did not eat them when I told him to get them out. Although, he probably would have if I had not specifically said to throw them away.

If you are ever in need of some DIY first aid, try goldfish to stop nose bleeds. It has been 4 year old tested and approved.

The red circle on the picture is the nose plug in question.

Some family photos

So it has been a while since I have written anything. Seems like life has just been busy and honestly, I have had a bit of writers block. I am trying to get back in the swing of things though. I thought for my first post I would share some pics I came across recently on my Uncle’s facebook page. First though a few recent ones of us.

This is our new 4 legged addition. Kysses the Kitten. I found her when she was about 5.5 weeks old. She has quite quickly become very spoiled.

This is a site I never thought to see. Jeff in a UK shirt! We have all gotten into the UK basketball this year. Daniel and I more so than Jeff, but we are working on him!

This is Aunt Pat and Uncle Kenny as the Clampetts. They had come down to AL right after I was born.

This is my Gramma, Big Bird, Mom (in the back), and Aunt Pat. I believe this is at Busch Gardens right after Mom found out she was having me.

This is my Gramma and my Grandfather, when they were younger.

This is Uncle Kenny, Mom, and Uncle Bill. Doesn't he look thrilled to have his pic taken? I believe this was in the early 90s.

This is Gramma as one of the Clampetts. This was taken right after I was born in 1983.

Hopefully I will be back to posting regularly in the next few weeks. I have to say I have missed it!

Electric Roaster Giveaway

Check out Liz's examiner post to win an electric roaster. I know I want one now!

Cheeseburger Soup

I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com yesterday and had to try it. It was yummy! Even Daniel scarfed his down with a minimum of playing. (MIRACLE!) Here is my version of the recipe:

1 1/2 cups water
2 cups peeled and cubed potatoes
1 small onion chopped
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cubes beef bouillion
1 pound ground beef
2 1/2 cups milk divided
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 pound processed American cheese, cubed
chili powder and cumin to taste
Prepared bacon

In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine the water, potatoes, onion, garlic and bouillon cubes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer until potatoes are tender.

In the mean time, brown and drain the ground beef.

Stir cooked beef and 2 cups milk into the soup and heat through. Combine the remaining 1/2 cup of milk with the flour and stir until smooth. Stir into soup. Bring to a low boil and cook until thickened, about 3 minutes. Reduce heat to low and stir in cheese until melted. Add chili
powder and cumin to taste.

Crumble bacon over the top of the soup and serve.

This is definitely going to become a regular in our house this winter. It was quick and easy and REALLY good.

A look at what we have been doing

Wow! We have been busy. Here are some pictures of what we have been doing.

Making halloween cookies at our neighbors halloween party.

Bundling up to go to Keeneland Race Course in the cold while our family from AL was in town.

Me and my sister in law on the tram to the race course.

My sister and brother in law at the track.

Daniel the bathrobe jockey

Daddy and Daniel on the tram to the track

Me at the entrance to the track. I might not have looked fashionable but I was warm!

The perfect end to a great weekend: lunch and a random meeting with a chicken.

He has become quite the helper in the kitchen. He is cutting up cheese for my homemade mac and cheese

He wanted the squares of cheese to be just so.

Helping the transporters at work with me when he was sick.

Helping me make banana bread last weekend. And yes I am wearing pink floyd pj pants!

I went to jail on Wednesday for the MDA lock up. It was fun! I was disapointed that the hot pink Caddillac Escalade stretch limo was not the one to pick me up though :(

Mummy pizzas I made for Daniel's lunch at daycare today. I thought the kids would get a kick out of them.

Peanut butter spider crackers I fixed them as well.

So as you can see we have been quite busy in the past few weeks!

The joy of toads

The joy of finding a baby toad in the yard is like no other.

Help the kids with Muscular Dystrophy go to camp!

The Muscular Dystrophy Association is sending me to jail for good on October 28th. Can you help me by posting some money towards my bail? We are working on sending kids to camp as well as raising money for wheelchairs and flu shots for them. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated! Help keep me out of jail!

I know times are tight but any amount you can spare would help out.

You can go to my personal MDA website at

https://www.joinmda.org/hamburglockup2009/nstack

and make a donation through there.

Things never slow down

Just when I think things might settle down.....NOPE. One of my employees wife had her baby last Thursday so I kept their 20 month old until they got out of the hospital on Sunday. We had a blast with him. Daniel enjoyed having somone to follow him around and play with him. I could not get out of his sight though. We went to an ethnic festival for lunch and I made the mistake of going to the bathroom without him. I could hear his screams all the way in the bathroom.

The Hamburg area is doing a fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. They got my contact info through the BBB I believe. Either that or someone put my name in to be "arrested." I will be going to jail on Oct 28th at 2pm for an hour. The goal is for each person to raise $2000 in order to send 2 kids to camp as well as provide them with wheelchairs and flu shots. There is a website that you can donate through that I will post as soon as I recieve it. Maybe ya'll could help me out with my bail? Pretty please? They are going to send a limo to "arrest" me and then take me to Carinos restaurant where I will be fed their version of bread and water. After my hour is up the limo will take me back to the office. I wonder if it will have a stocked mini bar? LOL

Egg Drop Soup Recipe

So I found a recipe while lurking around the web yesterday for egg drop soup. I love this soup so I decided to try it out. I thought it turned out pretty yummy. I doubled the recipe so there was enough for my ravenous husband.

2 cans chicken broth or 4 cups of homemade or made with bouillion
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
2 tbs chopped chives
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch

If you are using bouillion boil the water and throw in the cubes. If not place the broth in a pot over medium high heat. Reserve 3/4 cups of broth to be used later. Bring broth to a rolling boil. While broth is heating scramble 2 eggs plus the 1 egg yolk. Once broth is boiling add the chives and ginger and mix well. Slowly let egg drip from fork into boiling broth. Egg should cook instantly. Continue in small amounts until all the egg is used. Serve hot.

If you can find wonton noodles you can fry up some of them to serve with it. I could not find any yesterday but it was yummy without them.

I'm baaaaack

Miss me? Yeah didn't think so lol.

It has been a rough couple of months for me. Depression has been kicking my ass with a vengance. I finally went to the doctor a little over a month ago and they put me on celexa. Once I got over the side effects it has helped quite a bit. I still was not sleeping though so when I went back last week they also put me on tropazine which is another depression med but it is also used to treat insomnia. I have been taking it for a few days and I feel almost like my old self again. I am sleeping better. I have more energy. I actually want to do things again. Ok maybe not the laundry that is piled up in my bedroom, but FUN things lol.

The tropazine is giving me some CRAAAAZY dreams though. Last night the batmobile was on my parents property in AL and was hunting down all these military guys. We were all running around hiding from the batmobile because no one knew who it was going to attack next. The weird thing is my subconcious is pulling people that I went to high school with that were several years older than me and using them in my dreams. The first night I took the medicine I dreamed that my mom and I were in FL except we were staying in this house on this teeny tiny strip of land. One side of the land was the ocean and on the other side was a salt water marsh. We had to leave the house because a hurricane was coming and it was pushing the waves up over the house and the land. We were trying to get to the mainland when a gust of wind pushed me into the marsh. Mom started screaming at me because there was an alligator in the water with me. I started frantically swimming and instead of getting on the land I dove UNDER it. It was like a strip of land just floating on the water. The alligator was just about to get me! Then my husband woke me up because evidently I was thrashing around and making weird noises lol. (You try and escape from an alligator and see what kind of noises YOU make!)

See am I screwed up in the head or what?! I think it is all the drama in my family in AL trying to work it's way out in my dreams. Oh well I always knew I was crazy!

Just some thoughts

I am really liking that they are doing two seasons of Hell's Kitchen this year. Gives me something decent to watch on Tuesay nights. This week I watched the new show More to Love that came on after HK. I am not sure what bothered me more. The name of the show or the stories some of the contestants shared. Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the average American woman was around 160-200lbs. So why is the show called more to love? Why isn't the other show called Less to Love? They said the average size of those contestants was a size 2. Somehow I do not see that as normal. Ok I will get off my soapbox now.

Jeff is sick. He has some kind of summer cold or crud. He is so whiney it is not even funny. I mean if I get sick I have to make my own homemade chicken noodle soup. No one brings me cold rags while I lie on the couch. My life still has to go on like I am not sick and feel like death warmed over. Oh well at least Daniel is not here to catch it from him.

This is our last child free weekend. We head to AL next Thursday when we get off work. Daniel is still not talking to us. They went to see Ice Age 3 yesterday and Mom said it was really good. Not sure what Daniel's opinion on it was lol.

My 4 year old is giving me the silent treatment

Daniel has been in AL a little over a week and I have talked to him twice. For about 5 minutes. TOTAL. He is "too busy" to talk lol. Mom had to MAKE him get on the phone with Jeff and I this weekend. He has gone to the park a LOT, been swimming, gone and spent the day with my mother in law and went to church with them. Played at the park with my brother in law and wore him out from what Mom said. Today he is going to the Anniston Natural History Museum to see the dino bones and all the other exotic animals and artifacts they have. I warned mom he likes to touch. Hopefully we will not have to um replace any expensive items that he breaks. Maybe he will not try and take the dinosaur bones home with him. Then again maybe he will. You never know with him.

We have been enjoying our free time. We have watched a LOT of movies. With no interuptions. In complete silence. WONDERFUL! We went to Olive Garden and enjoyed a nice peaceful adult only dinner. We had a blast Saturday at a wedding party. And get this. I slept until NOON on Sunday. Ok not all the way until noon, but off and on until then. It was glorious!

Jeff is excited because the hot peppers are starting to show up at the farmer's market again. I got enough to can 5 jars of pepper sauce this weekend and will keep on every other week or so until there are no more left. He was starting to get worried because he just opened the last jar from last year's stash and was afraid he would run out. OH THE HORROR!!! Heaven forbid he should run out of pepper sauce! Seeing as how he is the only person in the house that eats it, he better be glad I love him enough to make it for him.

What has been going on in ya'lls worlds? I need to catch up on my blog reading.

Why yes I am alive

I have not posted in forever and I have barely been able to get on article a week on examiner.com. I have had several good stories to tell but no time to do it in. Work has had me swamped for the past few weeks. Plus it seems like there is always something going on on the weekends. If we are not doing something then I am trying to catch up on laundry and cleaning. Or just being lazy because I am too tired to do anything. Maybe after this week at work things will finally calm back down. Not going to hold my breath on that one though.

Daniel left Saturday with Jeff's family for AL. Well actually he left our presence Friday night. When everyone got ready to go to the hotel, he grabbed his "pack pack" of toys he had had packed for 2 days and said "Ok I am ready!" We tried convincing him that he needed to spend the night with us at home but he was not having any of that! His response: "But you said when they got here I was LEAVING!" So he spent the night at the hotel. We met up Saturday morning for an early lunch and he barely had time to say 3 words to us. He was busy with his cousins! After a hug ("But NO kisses Mommy!) for me and Jeff he was on his way to see his Mimi, Grampie, and Melgie.

It was REALLY quiet after he left, but it was a nice relaxing weekend. We checked out a Lexington Horsemen's (Arena Football team) game Saturday night since the tickets were only $5. Had a blast. The best part of the whole weekend though was the fact that I slept until almost 10am Sunday morning! I have not been able to do that in months!

I am going to get back on the blogging train again and post more than once a month. I have lots of funny stories to share from my past months absence.

Where has the time gone?

Seems like only a few weeks ago I had plenty of free time on my hands, and now I have NONE. Our weekends have been jam packed with things to do with Daniel, and the weeks are filled with work. Jeff's company has been super busy so he has been going in early and getting home late. I have been trying to train a new field agent and it seems like there are just not enough hours to fit it all in. I desperately want to try and find time to get in some exercise even if it is just a walk around the block but by the time I get home and get supper cooked I am exhausted. I am making a concious effort though to eat healthier than I was. My self esteem as far as looks goes is about as low as it has ever been and I want to do something about it. When you have a minor incident that causes you to go into that much self doubt and misery it is time to do something. I don't expect miracles, or even want to be as skinny as I used to be, but I want to feel healthier and lose at least a little bit of the extra weight I am carrying.

This weekend was a little bit slower than the past few have been, which was nice. Jeff heard on the radio that the S&S tire in Brannon Crossing was having Officer Don fly in in his helicopter on Saturday and that you could register to win 1 of 10 rides. We has planned on taking Daniel to the movies over there so it worked out good for us. He LOVED watching the helicopter land and take off and got to sit in it and have his picture made. He did not win one of the rides which is good I guess because he said he did not want to ride in it. We headed over to the movies and Daniel was all excited about watching Ice Age 3. Yeah but it does not come out until this weekend. OOPS. So I was all set to watch Transformers which he also wanted to see until Jeff opened his FAT mouth and mentioned there was another CARTOON movie playing. Yep spent $30 on UP in 3D when I would have much rather rented it for a $1. So now we get to make 2 more trips to the movies because he has already been promised he could see Transformers and Ice Age. #@%))!#$)*#$ men!

Here is Daniel just out of the tub after a long day of being spoiled on Saturday. I think his face says it all!

Speaking of faces saying it all: If your husband goes to the doctor don't just assume he knows what a prostate exam is. His face said it all when I came back in the room. PRICELESS! That and the muttered curses under his breath. Now you know how we feel honey!

Camping as an alternative to a staycation

Check out my newest article http://tinyurl.com/mr56nj

Happenings in Lexington this weekend for free or cheap

I have a new article posted. Check it out!

I finally wore my child out!

I never thought I would see the day that my child was actually worn out, but it has happened! Liz came by Friday night and was going out so my wonderful husband watched Daniel so I could go too. After I left they took a shower and he put Daniel on a movie to watch. At 11:30 Daniel woke Jeff up on the couch saying his movie was off. Jeff was only going to let him watch a little bit of it and then go to bed, but fell asleep on the couch. Needless to say he was in our room at 7am the next morning. So much for staying up late=sleeping later.

Saturday the Lexington Farmer's Market was having their Farm Tours. We ate breakfast at the market and grabbed our maps and tickets and headed out. We went to Abigails Apiary first. She told us some pretty interesting facts about the bees but Daniel was just not too into it. He did get to feed one of the boarder horses and thought that was really cool. From there we headed to Garey Farms in Paris, KY because they are one of our favorites at the market. They are always very nice and have good quality produce and meats. They had lunch set up their for a small price. Smoked bison, turkey or chicken and all kinds of sides to go with it. It was YUMMY! Then we headed to the back of the property to see the turkeys and chickens. It was a pretty good walk and Daniel of course RAN the whole way. He liked the chickens because he said they were laughing at each other and he liked the turkeys "Long nose that looks like a worm." Then he ran back up to the front of the farm. From their we went to Reed Valley Orchard and picked some red raspberries to take home with us. Of course he ran there too.

When we left all the farms we headed back to Jacobson Park in Lexington for Pig Day. They had all kinds of the inflatable things for the kids to play on. Daniel proceeded to run from the one on this side to the one the furthest away and then back to the other side and then back to the furthest away. Jeff and I drug ourselves around behind him. After about an hour of that we could not take any more and told him we needed to go but when we got home we would get in the pool and cool off. (Bright person I am I forgot the sunscreen so my face was burnt and Daniel now has a redneck tan on his neck.)

We played in the pool for a while and then headed inside for baths and relaxation. After he had a snack of a piece of pizza he wanted to watch HAppy Feet in his room. He made it maybe 30 minutes into the movie and was passed out asleep.

Sunday we went and ate for Fathers Day and ran a few errands and tehn spent the rest of the day in the pool. When we got out we had leftovers for supper and settled on the couch to read/watch the race. (Wonder who was reading? NOT my husband lol) Daniel had said he was cold so he grabbed my fuzzy Auburn blanket and his "squishy" pillow and snuggled into the couch. And would have been asleep 30 minutes later if we had not bribed him with some more berries and cream. SERIOUSLY my child was falling asleep on the couch! He NEVER does that. If it had been a little later we would have let him sleep but it was only 6 so he would have been up at 3 this morning. We kept him awake a little longer and then shot off a few fireworks that Jeff had gotten him and he was passed out 2 minutes after he hit the pillow.

I guess all the exercise and the heat wore him out but I never thought I would see the day that my child was actually wore out. Sad thing was so were his parents. Even more so than him!

Feeding the horse at Abigail's.

Picking raspberries at Reed Valley Orchard. Of course he had to try some even though they weren't washed yet!

He climbed up this like it was a breeze. My little monkey boy!

This was one of his favorite things. Plus he got a shiny silver skull ring that he refused to take off the rest of the weekend.

Daniel and Dad in his new Dad t shirt. It says Dad the man, the myth, the legend.