Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season and gets to spend lots of time with family and loved ones.

We've been as crazy busy as the rest of you but I wanted to take some time to share what we've been doing lately. 

We've been making stuff....

Chocolate covered candy canes

 Laundry soap

Homemade vanilla extract - will be ready in about six months and I'll have plenty of it! If you want to try it, just let me know! :)

We've been going places....

The downtown lights we saw on our way to Todd's Christmas party for work - sorry, no pics of the cool ice sculptures there this year :(

Sorry, terrible pic of Occupy Columbia we saw on our way to the ballet (But, go Occupy a Job, please!)

Twas the Night Before Christmas ballet at the Koger Center - the boys even liked it! :)

One of our favorite things - a full moon hike through Phinizy swamp in Augusta, GA

We've been getting read for Christmas...

I ordered a present from Ebay - I had no idea it was coming all the way from China but it's got Chinese writing and stamps on it - pretty cool!!

My Secret Santa ornament from one of my co-workers at JustAnswer - I think one of the guys drew my name ;-) and the boys thought I should have mentioned the Gamecocks instead of the Wolverines. 

Finishing up school work for the season - you'd think he'd be happier about it!

Todd thought we should stop there with the tree...

The view from my office these days :)

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope to see you sometime soon!

Hi! Remember me?

I'm the girl that got 'restructured' and then had to hunt down a new job. While I was unemployed from a paying job, I had a full time job looking for work and was sort of surprised to find out, not all jobs are found by word of mouth. I also took advantage of the extra time (HA! Not sure there really was any!) to spend more time with the boys and trying to learn some new cost saving techniques.

Patch has been showing some interest in learning how to cook. He has been promoted from grasshopper to apprentice chef and wants to be my sous chef something fierce! I do appreciate the extra help in the kitchen. He can make eggs on his own and keeps trying to find new things to add to the eggs to make them yummy. He has also helped me make a bunch of dinners, laundry detergent and some chocolate covered candy canes today! Franklin does not seem to care to cook too much but he did help with the candy canes today. He doesn't like mint so we made some choc covered pretzel sticks for him. Franklin does seem to almost like school this year. I think it's dawning on him that he needs to know stuff but he really likes doing 8th grade math as a 7th grader.

Patch making soap

I'm trying to buy whole chickens and cut them up myself to save some money. I've done 4 so far and have 2 more in the fridge to work on - making them boneless and skinless, making stock. Saving the chicken wings to make hot wings is going to take a while - 4 chickens worth of wings will feed one of these guys - maybe... (I can hardly wait to see how they'll eat as teenagers!) And, of course, I'm trying to do some couponing. I think I only saved 20% last trip to the store but, I'm trying! I think the most I've saved is 35% but I'm not a crazy extreme couponer either ;-)

My new job is awesome! It's not community oriented like my last job but it's still very interesting and the people are GREAT! I'm working for JustAnswer.com where people get answers to their questions from verified experts. The answer everything from legal and medical, auto and appliance repairs to tarot and dream interpretation. They'll also help you with your homework - don't let the kids get any ideas though - you have to be 18 years old to be on the site ;-) They did open up an AskSanta site though - Patch asked if he'd get what he wanted for Christmas - Santa was non-committal on that answer ;-)  If your kids want to ask Santa a question, or just read what others have already asked, check this out :) http://www.justanswersanta.com  

Hope everyone is enjoying their holidays this year!!

Where to post, what to say??

So much drama on FaceBook today! Everybody seems to hate the changes and I have to say, I think there's a lot of redundancy between the new lists, what FB thinks is important to me and the running status/comment updates in the right hand column. It feels sort of like iVillage today - everybody complaining, threatening to never come back, blah, blah, blah...

I discovered Google + last night and I'm not sure what to think about that. Does this take you to me? https://plus.google.com/u/0/?gpcaz=e737f855#110652639194611001985/posts There don't seem to be a lot of people there yet so not too much activity going on. I'm also not sure what's better about it than FB.

Or, do I keep posting on iVillage? Just blog here, find a new forum to post on? I imagine I will post on a new forum if I can find a new job soon!

Maybe it would just be better to not be on the computer so often...

When one door closes another door opens...

There is more to this quote...

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell


The door has closed on my time at iVillage.com but I'm looking for that open door. I've had the feeling for a while now that with the economy so bad, and unemployment so high, the world is in for another change. Like the industrial age and now the computer age, the world is in for a new age. I just want to have an inkling of what it is and get in on the ground floor!

A new career?

I think Patch is ready to go professional! He did such a great job with his first play. There was no way that at 9 years old I would have even tried out but he was so excited for the entire 2+ months to go to rehearsals and then perform in front of strangers for 5 shows. He played the role of the farmer in the play The Music Man Jr. where he had a small solo part in the song Iowa Stubborn.

It didn't even bother him that he had a wife in the show - at least I think girls are still fairly yucky in his book. ;-) His wife, Tess was awesome in her role too. She played the part perfectly when she'd grab him by the hand and drag him where ever he needed to be. He seemed to take direction rather well, even from dear old mom. I told him once to make sure he got excited during different parts of the play and I never saw him miss that afterwards. When we went to see the show on Sat. afternoon, I could barely hear him so I'm guessing that for the first 3 shows, they couldn't hear him either. I told him that I was going to peek in and watch him during the last show and that I better hear him all the way in the back of the theater. He did AWESOME! I even teared up a bit - I know, I'm such a sappy mom. Deal with it. ;-)

We were lucky to have family and friends able to make it to see his show too. He kept asking 'Who's coming?' so I know he appreciated everyone coming.

We had some great friends in the play also but I think I'm mostly impressed with Riley who did NOT want to try out and did NOT want to be in the play. I think he had the most fun out of all of them! He was great! His brother and sister were great in the play too and so were Jesse & Chloe! I hope they can all get parts in Annie Jr. if they want them and I'll let friends and family know if they should come by for another play in a few months!

And, next time, I'm hoping for better seats! I got a lot of shots with the back of these two guys in them. :( But, Patch has got to be the cutest thing up on that stage! Okay, I'm just a little prejudiced! ;-)  )

Next goal, getting the school year started!

Columbia Children's Theater

Last year, we got to go enjoy the play Nutty Nutcracker put on by the Columbia Children's Theater and Patch LOVED it! Franklin enjoyed it too but Patch still talks about it. I guess we really should go to more plays. Patch was also very excited that his friends Jesse & Chloe were in the play Peter Pan a while ago (and boy have I been in hot water for not getting him to that audition!!) So, I made sure to get him to the audition for Music Man Jr. last weekend. We got the casting list today and I have a slightly happy boy on my hands...

It looks like we'll be at rehearsals for a while! The play will be the first weekend in August. I hope you all will be there!!

Speech Class

Today is Patch's last speech class for the school year. :( He has really loved going to see Ms. Tangie every week and I know he'll miss her over the summer.

Patch has improved already and I love how patient he is with us and anyone who has a hard time understanding him. If you repeat what he says or just say 'what?' he'll slow down and work on saying the right words. Only occasionally will he say 'nevermind.' He rocks!!


Well, today was suppose to be Patch's last speech class. :( He missed last Thursday because he got hit with a nasty cold and then Monday was Memorial Day. He was so excited to show up for his last class but apparently there were no classes this afternoon. I'm not thrilled that we weren't told. Patch worked on a thank you note and we got his teacher a gift card but now I don't know what to do with it. There didn't seem to be a mail slot or anywhere we could have put it.

So far, I am not overly impressed with the public school system. I've felt like a 2nd class citizen while we've been there - and doing things like not telling us there's no class today certainly didn't help. I sent a note to the teacher apologizing if I should have hung around for class anyhow. To her credit, she did email me back to apologize for not letting me know.

But, look how excited he was about going today!

my cutie patootie :)