Simple Pleasures

You might not know this, but my kids and I are alchemists. We can turn ordinary quarters into treasure, excitement, anticipation. Behold:

Summer Snippet

This is my sweet baby, Isabel, reading her bible. This summer the kids participated in a kids' program put on by our church and Isabel, especially, was taken by His word! How can you not love that?!

Giving Up Vs. Offering Up

Two days ago I was in the kitchen prepping some raw chicken for dinner.  It was the kind that already comes cut up into strips, which is awesome for homemade chicken strips...if each and every piece of chicken didn't have this big, annoying vein that needed to be dug out!  So, there I was grumbling about having to de-vein the stupid chicken before I could cook it and, almost as soon as the thought popped into my head, I immediately felt ashamed.  I mean, how ungrateful must I be if my worst problem in life is that I have cut the yucky stuff off the food before I cook it?  How many people are there in the world who change places with me in a heartbeat? How many people in the world are hungry or homeless or defenseless, cold, ill, afraid, alone?  Would I change places with them over some freaking raw chicken?  Would I change places with them at all?  

...(in my smallest voice)...no...

And right then and there, with my hands covered in raw chicken muck, I said a prayer of thanks for all that I take for granted every day, starting with that vein-y chicken.

And then life went on, more or less uneventfully, and I kind of forgot about the chicken.  Until this morning, when I tried to watch netflix on my computer and the video wouldn't stream because of some problem with silverlight.  Apparently, programs like flash and silverlight have some kind of beef against chrome and they like to take it out on websites that play videos.  I know this; I've run into this problem several times since becoming a chrome user and usually I can fix it.  But whatever my technologies' problems are with each other, it seems to be beyond my limited technical capabilities.  

So, there I was, again, grumbling about having to poke around in folders and program settings and install/uninstall/update/check/uncheck/etc. when I felt that familiar flush of shame wash over me.  

I mean, really, Victoria??  

I've got food, clothing, shelter, running water, electricity, and, obviously, luxuries, such as electronic devices.  But instead of appreciating them, I'm irritated because my luxuries aren't luxurious enough.  

Wow, that really made me feel like a jerk.

And, again, right then and there, with a computer on lap and a screen full of open program settings boxes, I said a prayer of thanks and praise.  But first I added a prayer for forgiveness for my ungratefulness.  And I thought, with the Lenten season upon us, I hear people saying they're giving up this for Lent or they're giving up that for Lent and I had an idea.  And this is not to knock anyone else's faith, but in the past, I've given up an indulgence for Lent that didn't really mean anything to me and I was doing it just because it was the thing to do.  I GUESS I can live without chocolate for forty days.  I'll give up caffeine, but that's IT!  You know, and that's cool if it's a sacrifice that's meaningful to you and brings you closer to God, but that's never really been the case for me; not with that attitude, anyway.  I'm not going to give up some random thing just for the sake of being able to say I gave something up, and I haven't practiced the custom of meaningless participation for Lent in several years.  I haven't ever really had much of an understanding of how the church's customs relate to my own personal faith.  

But I totally got something today.  This year, instead of giving up, I'm going to offer up.  And by that I mean that, instead of resentfully giving up one out a million of life's little luxuries, I'm going to offer up thanks and praise for those million luxuries; as many as I can, as often as I can think of it, for every problem and frustration and woe that represents all that I have instead of all that I lack.  I'm going to offer up as much appreciation as I can fathom.  Because I get that. That means something to me. 

And this year, I hope each and every one of you does something that's meaningful to you!

Science Project Preview

I know, I keep tossing appetizers at you without ever getting around to the main course, but bear with me! I AM going to get a full spread of photos and detailed descriptions of Nicholas' science project adventures later tonight or tomorrow, but right now the kids just got home from school and they're hungry and I want to hang out with them a bit before I stick my nose in the computer and never come back up for air.  So here are a few pics of his experiment, Balloon Hovercrafts:

 Building the first model.

 Testing phase.

 Pretty much the whole reason why he picked this particular project; the balloons!

 Building the second model.

 Both models, accolades to whoever can guess which one performed better!

 It works!

 ...for five seconds!

Ok, this was totally a set-up pic to depict how he gathered his data!

So, those are pretty much most of the pictures I took of the whole process, but I promise to get back to you with pictures of the final presentation, his score and more details of his project (hint: he did well)!

Thanks for stopping by, love you guys!

Not Quite Yet

Ok, so I'm not ready for my Grand Unveiling just yet - for those of you who follow my hilarity and insanity on facebook, I chopped off a huge length of my hair recently and have a new 'do to reveal!  BUT (there's always that darn butt, butting in and ruining my plans!), I should've taken a picture as soon as the salon lady whipped that hair-cutting-tarp-thingie off of me because she made my hair pretty in a way that I can't do myself, as I own neither blow dryer nor round brush.  I know, I know, but I've never been much of a hair girl...or a girlie girl...so I'm ill prepared for beauty emergencies such as this one.  Now I need to figure out...some other way to make my hair picture worthy for my Grand Unveiling, and I better hurry because more and more and more people have seen my hair and it's really ticking me off that I haven't been able to hide in a bat-cave until I'm ready to show myself off.  Haaaannnng on..........I'll try to get a decent sneak-peak shot for you.......

This is my "I'm not so sure about this" face - the picture in general, not the hair.  I'm super diggin' the new hair!  And yes, my pursed lower-lip really is that full.  I like to think of it as a God-given half-off coupon if I ever wanted to collagen my lips.  (...NOT! Hahahaha!!!)

In other news, Nicholas has a science project due.  It's the first year that it's mandatory for any of the kids, and it's only mandatory for Nicholas (and all of the fourth and fifth grades), being the oldest.  Even though I thought we got off easy with a simple project, it's turned a lot harder than I had originally anticipated.   Apparently, doing the project the RIGHT way (eyeroll), instead of just the "this looks good to me" way, requires a lot more effort and research and technical blah-blah-blah than I was even aware existed for elementary school science projects.  The last time we did this, we just had to slap pictures and captions on a piece of poster board.  Elementary school is a lot harder the second time around!  It's a mental workout, teaching Nicholas enough about the scientific process for him to do the experiment and presentation on his own.  The cool part is, he totally gets it.  The balls part is, he totally gets the enormity of the quality and quantity of work expected of him.  

I'm right there with you, dude; this is overwhelming to me, too!

I'll get y'all some science project pictures soon, if this whole affair doesn't kill me.  At least we're almost done.  We got the question down, and the research and the hypothesis and the experiment; we've collected the data and cited our references.  Now we just need to type, print out pictures and arrange everything on that stupid tri-fold board. 

Seriously, whose idea was this whole science fair thing, anyway? 

Victoria.I.Am.

I've decided that that's my new name for today; Victoria.I.Am.  Tomorrow I may be...some other name.  Or no particular name at all, but today...Victoria.I.Am!  Because today I am Awesome, and I'll tell you why.

 I....can make CHILI!!

And not just any chili -

 Wait, hold that.  I don't like the spelling of the word "chili".  I hereby change it to "chilley" because the i-l-i hurts my eyes and aggravates my sense of symmetry.  Ok, so, carrying on..

- not just any chilley, but Turkey Chilley....FROM SCRATCH!

And not just any turkey chilley from scratch.....

...(wait for it).....

...but Turkey Chilley From Scratch From My Own Original Off-The-Top-Of-My-Head Recipe!

HA!  

I am now officially awesome, thank you very much!  As of this very minute, I have a pot of turkey chilley simmering on my stove.  I have tasted it and it is delicious and chilley-ish, so I know I did a good job.  Because the true measure of any recipe you make up off the top of your head is whether or not it actually tastes like the intended food and my chilley definitely does! 

Granted, I can't speak for what it'll taste like after a morning of slow simmering, but the initial results were amazing!

Want to know my recipe?  I can't tell you because I already kind of forgot it, but I can give you the general idea if you want to make chilley and trust a total amateur rather than googling it and finding an overwhelming amount of information on the subject of making chilley the "right" way.  Whatever!  (Btw, how hilarious is it that blogger's spell check doesn't recognize the word "googling"?  It's like a Coca Cola exec not being able to identify Coke in a blind taste test!  Anyway...)

Basically, if you're a no-fuss cook like me, and you have no experience cooking chilley and have no desire to sift through millions of opinions and recipes on the matter, do this:

Brown some ground turkey and toss with whatever fresh veggies sound chilley-ish to you; I used onion and garlic because those were all I had on hand, but I would totally have added some bell pepper and maybe even spicy peppers, if I had had them.  And mushrooms.  I will probably try this again with mushrooms.  And maybe celery.  I don't care if celery doesn't sound chilley-ish to anybody else; I like it!  

Dump in a can of diced tomatoes, the best flavor you can find.  I found fire-roasted with garlic at HEB yesterday, which is what started this whole thing by giving me the idea for the chilley in the first place.  You know, one of those impulse buys that actually isn't a load of poo.  

Then, if you're a bean person, add a can of beans (I used red).  Also add an eight ounce can of tomato sauce and season the heck out it!  I more or less used every spice in my cabinet that looked and/or smelled like it belonged in chilley - a couple of bay leaves, seasoned salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, chilley powder.  

That's not hard at all, is it?!  And if, for any reason, you're thinking, "Well, that does sound kind of hard..." I'll say this - ground turkey, onion and garlic, diced tomatoes, beans, tomato sauce and spices.  Mix 'em up however you like!  THAT'S not hard!  Is it!  That's how I cook - by lists, rather than by recipes.  If I can't memorize the ingredients and if I can't work out how to put the dish together just by looking at the ingredients, then that dish is entirely too complicated and I probably won't cook it.  

Right now, I'm letting my chilley simmer, and I'm giving it a taste every so often to keep the flavor on track.  I have no idea how long I'm going to simmer it, or how much or how often I'm going to have to adjust the flavor - I've already added more spices once.  But my chilley's pretty darn good as of right now, so it'll only get better as it cooks!

Well, that's pretty much all I wanted to tell you.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Thanks for stopping by, love you! 

Happy Halloween, Happy NaNoWriMo and Happy Birthday to Frankie

This week is a busy one, starting today, Halloween.  It's always an ordeal getting all the kids costumed, Tricked and Treated, fed some semblance of dinner (which they won't eat in anticipation of the candy), and then settled down enough afterward to get to bed at some point.  But it's the happy, fun kind of chaos, at least!

And tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo, which I anticipate to be completely stressful and exhilarating at the same time!  I "won" last year with a novel about a young mom who lost her young child - yes, depressing, I know; I made myself cry many times writing that one!  But while I started off last year's challenge with a detailed outline of my novel, chapter by chapter, I'm hardly as prepared this year.  I barely have a rough idea of a story line, which is basically about a husband and wife who venture into polygamy with chaotic and heartbreaking results.  Sound twisted?  It's supposed to.  It's a kind of "what would happen if a person did X?" scenario.  Have you ever gotten a hypothetical situation stuck in your head and hashed out the what-ifs in your mind a hundred times over?  What if this person won the lottery? What if a person got lost in the wilderness and had to learn to survive?  Well, what if a couple decided to add another spouse to their family and discovered that it's not as Happily Ever After as they had imagined?  What?  It could happen!  I'm certainly not about to run right out and try it, just for the sake of the firsthand experience necessary to write a good story (nor for any other reason, for that matter), but I find the idea of exploring the what-ifs pretty irresistible.  I suppose I could explore the possibilities of alien encounters or historical events or generic live-laugh-love kind of themes, but that's just not my style.  I much prefer to make people cry than laugh, a la Anne of Green Gables, although without her knack for writing ridiculous, unintentionally comical tales (I hope)!

So that journey begins tomorrow (or tonight at midnight) - wish me good luck or broken legs or something!

And last, but not least, it's Frankie's birthday on Thursday!  He'll be nine and (Hallelujah!) for once we're not getting strung through my in-laws' ludicrous Frankie's Birthday Parade/Charade.  This year it's supposed to be pretty low-key, which is good because I don't know if my nerves could take another grating.

Ok, well!  I'll try to get some pictures going later in the week, but for now, I've got to sign off and try to figure out something for dinner before all Halloween breaks loose!