Wednesday Hodgepodge--February!

Questions!

1. Do you wear your heart on your sleeve, or keep your emotions tucked in tight? I'm more the keep my emotions close to me.  If I trust you then you will see more of them, but I don't tend to broadcast them.

2. How did you meet your closest friend? One of my closest friends is the sister of one of Nick's best friends.  I met her when she moved here and Nick's friend introduced her to me.  It took some time but we ended up going out for drinks regularly and found out we enjoy a lot of the same things--thrift store shopping, country music, reading, and fantasy shows on TV.  We have a great time when we get together.

3. Pink lemonade, grilled salmon, cotton candy, pink grapefruit, a strawberry milkshake, or raspberry sorbet...of the pink foods listed, which one is your favorite? Least favorite? Which one have you most recently consumed? My favorite would have to be a strawberry milkshake. Least favorite pink grapefruit. Most recently consumed would be grilled salmon.

4. When were you last 'tickled pink' over something? Explain. At Christmas. Nick was so
pleased with the guitar I got him, and so surprised. I was thrilled to be able to get him something he's wanted for ages.

5. Are you a fan of television talk shows? Daytime, nighttime, or both? What's your favorite? Not really a fan, but Nick really enjoys Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.  He has yet to miss an episode.  He records them and watches them at his leisure. I have enjoyed watching the occasional episode with him.

6. When was the last time you wanted to ask a question, but felt too foolish to do so?  Hmmm, I can't really think of a recent time. 

7. My favorite __________________right now is _________________.  My favorite pastime right now is reading.  Of course it always has been, but I'm really liking it now that it's the time of year to curl up and snuggle in due to weather.

8. Insert your own random thought here. My poor Turbo has bronchitis.  He has tons of meds and is coughing something awful.  Poor kid.  I wish I could make him all better.

Random Things

Yeah, so the sicks are not done with our house yet.  Turbo is down with the nasty cough.  I tell you it's been some fun around our place.  Now on to the random:

• I am so ready for more snow to fall.  See, we get far more snow in February and March than we get in December and January.  At least in town.  I like having it snow. And yes, I do get tired of it when it's still snowing in April.  And May.  And sometimes June.
• This:

• Insomnia has come to visit again.  I think the moon has something to do with it.  At least taht's what I'm gonna blame it on.
• I'm getting some urges to get creative in the kitchen.  Not sure what to make yet, but I think I want to try some new recipes and have some fun.
• I need to add this:

•  I think this next weekend will be pretty quiet.  We don't have much planned.  This is not a bad thing.

So what is your random looking like?  Have a great Tuesday and random it up with Stacy.

Of Busy Weekends and MMMM

We had a very fun, but very busy weekend.  Birthdays, Evenings out, Superbowl, yep.  Busy!
It all started with Bruiser's Birthday party Saturday afternoon.
As I had said, we went with an art theme.  We let the kids finger paint on poster board and them paint wooden dinosaurs and then they got to play with modeling clay. 

A little bit of hulk action with the green finger paint.

After getting all the paint mostly cleaned up, we moved on to cupcakes adn ice cream.  Bruiser then got to open his presents.  The party went so well that most of the kids didn't want to go home when the party was over.  We will call it a success.
Later that night, Nick and I got a date night.  We met up with friends and shot a bit of pool and had a really good time out of the house being adults.
Sunday I finished up laundry (the folding and putting away part mostly), then we got ready and headed over to our friends for the Superbowl.  We didn't really care who won, but we were hoping for a good game.  It wasn't a spectacular game really.  And the commercials were...less then interesting.  The half time show was pretty good though.

Now for MMMM:  Duets this week:
Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet with It's Five O'clock Somewhere:

Shania Twain and Billy Currington with Party for Two:

Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles with Who Says You Can't Go Home:

Enjoy!

Spin Cycle--January

This January has been all around a decent month.  It's had it's ups and downs but over all not too bad.  Let's see what has January brought us:

• Cabin fever has set in.  We have had cold weather but not much snow.  It has warmed up just enough to melt the snow we got for Christmas and create tons of slippery ice. With injuries and illnesses, we haven't gotten out skiing at all. Well Turbo has with school, but he's the only one.
• I have been able to get into a routine for making dinner.  My meal planning has been working and I have resisted the allure of saying figure it out yourself to the guys.
• We had a fun game night with friends.  Playing Cards Against Humanity with a bunch of people is time filled with laughter.
• Today is Bruiser's 6th Birthday.  His party is on Saturday.  He's pretty stoked to be turning six.
• This weekend is all about a kid Art party and the Superbowl get together we have with friends.
• We have done some pretty serious relaxing this month.  I've truly enjoyed it.

Now for some pictures from January:

We have had some truly spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

My Kiddos.

Cuddling puppies.

  How was your January? Spin it up and let us know!

Link up with the Spin Cycle!

Hodgepodge--Chilly!

Howdy on this fine hump day.  How about some questions?

1. When did someone last suggest you 'chill out'? Or, when did you last tell someone (or want to tell someone) to 'chill out'? Or, when did you last tell yourself to 'chill out'? I haven't been told to chill out, but I say it to my boys all the time.  Turbo gets rather intense about things and will sometimes snap at Bruiser for the smallest of things, so I often tell him to chill out or bring it down a few levels. Sometimes he actually does.

2. What most recently caused your heart to melt?  Watching Nick and bruiser play guitar together.  Nick is still learning, but the guitar that I got for Nick for Christmas holds a great deal of fascination for Bruiser.

3. "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." G.K. Chesterton

Your thoughts? When did you last experience either an adventure or an inconvenience? How did you see it at first, as an adventure or an inconvenience? Does it feel the same in hindsight?  We can most often turn our inconviences into adventures as long as we keep our wits about us. Nick and I will take a deep breath and then roll with the punches and 99% of the time we end up in a better place.

4. A Wendy's Frosty, root beer in a frosty mug, or a frosted chocolate cupcake...of these three, which one is your favorite 'frosty' treat? Wendy's Frosty most definitely.  I really like to have hot salty fries with it. 

5. Would you say your life so far this year has been more like a circus or a symphony? Explain why. We in general tend more toward the circus, but we have had our moments of symphony. humming the theme to the circus is sometimes the only way Nick and I can laugh at the crazy our lives bring us.  It really is a roller coaster ride.  Never not fun though.

6. Since it's a 'snow day' here, what's your favorite song containing the word 'white'? there are several, but the first that popped into my head was White Christmas.  Then Little White Church by Little Big town.

7. If you had to leave the city you currently live in, what would you find the hardest to leave behind? My house.  I love my house.  We have really made it our home and I would miss it tremendously. After that, it would be the friends and family we have here. We truly have built up a wonderful network of friends and family.

8. Insert your own random thought here.  My little boy turns 6 tomorrow.  Bruiser is my baby, but he's growing up so fast.  It was just six years ago that I was waiting for him to put in his appearance.  Now he's a kindergartener and looking so very grown up.

From this...

...to this.  Time truly does fly.

Random for Tuesday

Well, here we are at another Tuesday.  It's a good thing Tuesdays are random because a whole coherent post is probably not going to happen. So let's do this random style:

• Sleep.  Such a simple thing and yet so hard to do sometimes.  I really hate how familiar insomnia is around our house.

• Cabin fever is setting in.  This weekend is busy enough that we should be able to bust some of the fever, but I'm thinking we need a trip out of town soon to give us a change of pace.
• This sums up how I feel during the weekly grocery shopping:

•  I would love to have it snow.  We have ice right now.  Lots and lots of ice.  The university is busting up ice in the gutters.  4+ inches of ice in some places.  The sound of the back hoe scraping at the ice is as bad as fingernails on a chalk board.  And I just realized that my kids will never know what that sounds like. They have white boards now. No more chalk boards.
• So what is everyone doing for the Superbowl?  We will be enjoying sliders, chips and salsa and cheese dip and veggie munchies.  Appetizers and snack foods for the game.  With good friends of course!
• The art birthday party is coming along.  We plan to have one or two craft projects for the kids to do and then cupcake decorating.  Yes, mess in the making, but it should be fun.  I hate planning these things, but they usually come off pretty well. Wish us luck.

So there you have it, my random for the week.  Have a great Tuesday and random it up with Stacy.

Yeah, Monday

I can work with that.  Only 4 days until Friday.  OR only five days until Bruiser's birthday party. A number (as yet to be determined) of 5-6 year olds.  We finally decided to do an art party.  Which means painting, playdough. and other creative (messy) pursuits. Nick and I may be blithering idiots by Saturday night, but hey, the kids should have fun.  I hope.
This last weekend was another pretty quiet one for us.  We didn't do much and it was nice.  We did make a mean batch of green chili. I got to read a lot.  The boys hung out in the attic and it was an all around lazy weekend. I like having those.

So on to MMMM.  Freebie week and well, here's what I got for you this week:
Miranda Lambert with Only Prettier:

Lady Antebellum with Downtown:

Have a good Monday!

Spin Cycle--Traveling

So Ginny is asking questions about traveling.  You can answer a couple or all of them.  I think I'm going to answer all of them as we really like traveling around these parts.

1. Would you rather take a road trip or fly? We do road trips all the time.  I think, depending on where you are going, road trips can be more fun and less stressing.  However, flying is more practical for some trips.
2. Where is your favorite place to travel? I love going to the beach, we live in the Rocky Mountain West and beaches are scarce around here. But taking off for the mountains that are just a short 30 minute drive away is one of our favorite road trips to take in the summer.
3. Do you have any sanity-saving tips for traveling with kids? Currently, there are several electronic devices that make travel in a vehicle with kids much more fun.  We have several of these devices, but the one thing that makes our road trips go by in a flash is that I read out loud in the car.  Essentially, I am the book on tape. Turbo loves having me read.
4. If you could take a vacation without the kids, where would you go? I'd take Nick and head to Hawaii.  Beaches, volcanoes, warm weather.  Sounds pretty great for a couple of geologists.
5. What is your favorite activity to do while traveling? Do you like to read, sleep, listen to music, or play games? I am a reader.  I will read anything, but I love taking trashy tabloids and magazines on a trip with me. Especially if I am flying.  I also love my Kindle Touch for travel.  Tons of books at my finger tips.  Bliss. Not that we don't play car games.  License Plate, Road Trip Bingo, a scoring game for wildlife that we came up with, Memory games, we've played them all a time or two.
6. Is there a place you would travel to just for the food?  I don't think so.  I like to go see the sights, but food hasn't been a priority.  Maybe Maine during lobster season...
7. One of my goals is to someday come home to a clean house, but it hasn’t happened yet! When you leave your house for vacation, is it messy or clean? We try to have it tidy.  I like to have the dishes done, things straightened up, laundry done.  Just so it's easier to come home and then make a mess with the things we bring home.
8. What is one thing you would never travel without? A book or my Kindle.  I am seriously lost without something to read. So I make sure I have things to read all the time.
9. My husband cannot sit still for very long on vacation; he has to be constantly on the move. How about you? Would you rather have a relaxing vacation or have activities planned from morning ‘til night? I can sit and read and relax and enjoy being in one spot, but Nick and the boys like having things to do, even if it's just playing in the water. Not that I'm opposed to amusement parks, water parks, museums, and other attractions.  I just like relaxing and doing nothing more than reading too.
10. If you could photograph (or see) any place in the world, where would you go? Alaska.  That would be the one cruise ship I could get my hubby to go on.  Although, I would love to take the train from Denver to California. A train ride though the Colorado Rockies and then the Sierra Nevadas sounds absolutely fantastic.

How to you travel?  Grab the questions, all or which ever subset you want and link up with the Spin Cycle!

Wednesday Hodgepodge

Questions?  We've got Questions:

1. American Idol is back for a 14th season. Are you watching? Have you ever watched? If you were to audition for the show (or were made to audition), what song would you sing? No, we aren't watching this year. I'm sure Turbo and Bruiser would get into it, but we just aren't that into competition shows. Nick and I did watch the year Carrie Underwood won, but that was the last year we did. If we want a competition show now we watch Face Off on the SyFy network--it's a makeup artist show and there's very little of the back biting and nastiness that invades other shows.




I do know I would never sing in front of people.  The most I do is sing in the car to the radio.

2. Mark Twain is quoted as saying, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."
So when did you last have to 'eat a frog'? Or two? How'd that work out? I look at this one as getting the unpleasant tasks out of the way as quickly as possible.  Mostly I do try to do this, but when I find a good book or have something more fun to do it's hard to stay task oriented.

3. If you were going on safari, what is the number one animal you'd want to see? An elephant. Or a giraffe.  Both are pretty cool animals.

4. January 21st is National Granola Bar Day. I know. Do you like granola bars? Chewy or crunchy? Your favorite flavor? How about regular granola? Let's exhaust this topic in honor of the holiday okay? Granola bars are a standard around our house--but only the chewy kind.  On occasion, I like the crunchy ones but recently, they seem so sweet that I'm just not that into them. I do like granola cereal with my yogurt. And I have been known to make my own granola.

5. If only__________________________________________.  There were more hours in the day.  Time keeps slipping away from me...

6. You can add one item to your bedroom. What will it be? Keep it family friendly please. another closet.  Clothing storage is at a premium in or bedroom currently.

7. What is one thing you've enjoyed about winter thus far? If it's not winter in your corner of the globe, what season is it, and what is something you've enjoyed about whatever season it happens to be? I have enjoyed the snow we got at Christmas.  Too bad it's mostly ice right now.  Hoping for more snow soon. Cold is easier to take when it's white outside.

8. Insert your own random thought here.  Turbo is doing a space unit at school and gets to keep a moon journal.  This could be interesting.  I'm not sure what his journal should include, but I know from personal experience, the full moon gives me insomnia. Turbo's journal will probably not have that included...

Random Tuesday---Procrasination

Yep.  Procrastination is the name of the game for this last weekend.  I did nothing in a timely manner. Except get Turbo to his bus for his meet at an ungodly hour.  4:30am to be exact. Ugh.  Saturday was a total bust productive wise for me.

• Yeah, so Turbo went to his first ski meet.  In a town 4 hours away.  They left at 5:00am Saturday morning. I got to make two trips to the Junior High cause Turbo forgot his phine at home.  At least I tried to be a nice mom and send him a good luck text and in the process discovered his phone sitting on the table.  
• And after that, I was cold, tired and just trying to get back to sleep.  It really blew my motivation out of the water. I did nothing I should have that day, like start laundry, do dishes, cook...

• Actually all we really accomplished was going to a game night at a friends house.  Cards Against Humanity was played to great laughter.
• Sunday was better.  I got a majority of the laundry washed and dried (folding came later). I did dishes, and then we rounded up the troops to go watch the Packers and Seahawks play.  Nail biting game if there ever was one. We also watched the Patriots stomp all over the Colts. The Superbowl could be an interesting game.  I'm not really rooting for any side in particular.  We were more Packers fans. I am hoping for a good game though.  And good commercials...
• Monday we had a holiday.  One of the few our university takes. I finished the laundry--the dreaded folding and putting away part.  I do have towels and sheets to wash, but that I can manage tonight.  I also grocery shopped.  Yep, overall a relatively unproductive weekend.
• We just might have a handle on the activity for Bruiser's birthday.  Bowling. He's not wildly enthusiastic, but we think it will be fun (and funny) to have 5 and 6 year olds bowl.

So there you have it, my random for the week.  Have a great Tuesday and random it up with Stacy.