Friday, March 12, 2010

Playing Hookie

I woke up this morning not feeling well but got dressed and drove to work anyway. I parked in the lot across the street and set my alarm for 20 minutes later since I was 30minutes early. I thought I'd feel better after a small nap. Nope. I didn't even make it ten minutes so I grabbed my cell phone and called in. Everyone was asleep so I had to tap in Lena's window to get in. CC was just getting up with Luigi and did a double take when she saw me back home. It was so sweet... She hugged and kissed me, stepped back and looked at me then hugged and kissed me again. I laid on lena's bed and watched some dvr'd shows and fell asleep. A little later Papa Bear woke up and the look on his face when he saw me home was priceless!
After a while I took Lena out and let her practice her skateboarding. Charlie wanted to go out with us...



He really wanted out ....


But we didn't let him out. He got cat-napped once before and I will NEVER let that happen again.



The weather was beautiful....sunny and a bit windy. Just enough to put in a light jacket. Weather like this makes me want to garden!
Lena us doing really well skateboarding.

I love how into it she us.



Later CC and I had to run to the mall for Papa Bear. I actually saw bluebonnets growing! I was so excited... I really wanted to snap a pic but it wad too hard. However, I did get a pic of the beautiful and fragrant mountain laurel trees beginning to blossom!



They smelled soooo good! I would love to bottle it up and wear that as my summer scent.

Papa Bear promised to make sushi with some recipes from my new sushi recipe book. My Papa Bear did not disappoint!

These are rolls with cucumber, cream cheese and avacado. The others have sashimi tuna, avacado and cream cheese. They were fabulous!


These are just a mixture of different types including one roll with crawfish. It was really really good!


After the tuna this had to be our favorite...
Caviar Boats!


We had a wonderful dinner. Lena fell asleep and didn't want to wake up. CC's back in her room and Papa Bear is in his man cave and I am watching HGTV, lounging on the couch and enjoying a little candlelight!



This has been a wonderful day to play hookie from work. I just love being home with my girls and Emil. And today really showed me how much they miss me being home too.

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Giveaway Winner

First off let me tell you, Alice in Wonderland was...wonderful! We loved it! I hope to see it again. It was great from beginning to end and it had such a cute twist. I loved it. However, Anne Hathaway was in it and she is just so recognizable it kinda distracted me from the movie. Johnnie Depp was so awesome and you get used to him in these weird roles, he fit perfectly as the Mad Hatter. And the Queen of Hearts, her name escapes me now, was so .... different ..... in her role she was great! But it was wonderful and if you haven't seen it you should. I took my mom. She said this was the first 3-D movie she had seen since she was a child. I loved that she squeezed my hand in the beginning when each 3-D effect came out.
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I also called SAC and got information about their Medical Transcription course. It starts June 7th and I will be enrolling then. I am so excited and can't wait. I want more than anything to be home but I am not one who can just be home and not help out financially. (I've done this before and for me it did NOT work! I had to constantly ask for money and I HATE asking!) I just like to work. Weird I know.... but this way I get the best of both worlds.. I can be home all day with my girlies and still feel some sort of independence by bringing in my own paycheck. So I am really really excited to start.
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On to my giveaway.... used the random number generator and Sherrie @ A Conversation at Goodwill won.... #11! Sherrie, please email (romero.april@gmail.com) me your information and I will have the package out to you. Congratulations! I hope you enjoy it!
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Only two more days left in this week. I don't know about you but I am soooooo looking forward to the weekend. Even if I do nothing more than stay in my pj's and watch all these old movies I've dvr'd from Turner Classic Movies. We have had such beautiful weather these last few days I wish I could plant tulips (my favorite) but they always end up dying on me! I'm thinking tomato plants and cilantro. These will be great science projects for the girls. What plans do you have for this weekend? And if any of you garden or know anything about rose bushes can you tell me how you treat them during the winter? I've kept my potted one in all winter and just continued to keep watering it. I hope this is ok.


Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Rednesday and a Giveaway

I took such cute pictures at the Russian store for todays post but when I upgraded my iPhone they didn't transfer. So this evening when I went to the grocery store I thought I would take a few pics of fresh red fruits and veggies. Today the weather was so perfect it really got me in the mood for Spring!


















Today is the last day to enter my giveaway. I just added some new items. So visit here
and leave a comment to be entered!

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Saturday, March 6, 2010

Saturday morning...and Giveaway Update

Everyone is asleep.. the birds are chirping away and I love it. I enjoy waking up while the house is silent and just listening to the birdies. And we have alot of them. Sometimes I can identify which birds it is if I am really on the ball. I just had my first cup of coffee and have been looking over some blogs and just relaxing. It's been fun to read the "typical days" of other homeschooling moms. If you want to read mine it's here...however, almost all of the other homeschool moms stay home and I have two jobs, the bank and Papa Bears. Juggling all these hats I wear does it difficult!

Last night Lisa and Stas invited us over for shish-kebob but Papa Bear was so tired he wanted to stay home. Imagine that! Then around 10 he tells us to get ready we are going for about 30 minutes because Stas wants to come back and play poker with him in his "man cave." We go and he sits down, starts eating....and drinking Vodka! Are you kidding me? I knew 30 minutes was out the window so I got the keys, got Lena and left. Around 1:30 he comes in...pretty tipsy and tells me he needs the keys to move my car because someone wants to park in the driveway. Why? I have no idea. They CC runs to my room laughing that Arkadiy is dancing in the driveway and Stas is singing Snoop Dog. Good LORD! I close my bedroom door and go back to sleep! Then I wake up around 6 a.m. and Papa Bear is no where to be found. Not on the couch, not in either girls room. Nope... in his man cave....playing poker online. Seriously? I ask him why he has not been to sleep and he said because they guys just left and left him in the middle of a tournament. He said he didn't know how to get out of it. I told him I do.."X" out. He said he didn't know how. I offered to show him. A few minutes later he was in bed.
Sooooo.... I needed to throw out the pizza boxes from last night and vaguely remembered seeing the trash can back in the garage after I put it out last night. Yes, it was there... so was HUGE bottle of vodka AND he broke the garage door last night! Man.. does he have some explaining to do when he wakes up!

On to other things. I'm taking Mom and the girls to see Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. Mom is in love, love, love with Johnny Depp. I'm also thinking about shopping around for some more fun items for my giveaway. It ends March 10th and all you have to do is leave a comment. You don't have to follow or re-post on your blog. So check back to see what items have been added!


Friday, March 5, 2010

Show Us Your Life - Typical Day

Today at KellysKorner she is asking us to describe our typical day. This should be fun. I think we all imagine what everyone else's day is like, now we can get a glimpse to what is real.

I work part time at a bank, homeschool my two girls, ages 9 and 13 and help my husband with his jewelry store. Monday thru Friday I wake up between 4:30 (M&T)and 5:30 a.m. (W-F). My lunch at work is from 11 - 11:45 and this is really my only time for girl talk with my friends. I cherish these few minutes because I don't get very much of it. Once I'm home it's all kids, chores, homeschool, hubby and jewelry!

I usually finish around 2:45 p.m. and then go either go home or to my husband's store, depending on where the girls are. I help the girls with any homework that they have questions with. This can take a couple of hours some days. If it's an early day I like to take the girls one-on-one to Barnes and Noble or Starbucks or even to the park for a change of scenery and concentrate on the work we're doing that day.

Right after I go straight to dishes, picking them up around the house, garage, backyard, where ever they have been while I've been working. Most days all three of them are at home and it is such a mess when I get home from work. It's not unusual for me to put my purse down and still in work clothes walk straight to the sink and start washing dishes. Suprisingly with all three of them at home it NEVER seems to dawn on them that they can take the initiative to pick up cups and plates from the morning and wash them and give Mommy, who's been up since 4:30 a little break. No, no... it's dishes or I have them handing me their cups and plates over the couch as I walk past them for refills or to put it in the sink. At this time I usually take out what ever I am going to cook for the evening.

Next up, usually around 5 or 5:30 I begin helping my husband with his work, preparing invoices, placing orders, whatever. I actually like this because it's very detail intensive so I get few moments of quite time because everyone knows this is VERY important for me to do if we want to get paid.

Dinner prep is next.... wash more dishes. I cannot stand to have dirty dishes in the sink. And I try to get at least one load of clothes in a day. I often make little chore lists for the girls...easy things like I have Lena wipe down the window sills with a Clorox wipe. I CANNOT stand to have dusty or dirty window sills. This REALLY annoys me! I usually put a load of clothes in the washer in the morning before I leave so I have CC put them in the dryer. It's usually just towels so that the clothes will not be wrinkled.

My husband and I usually have to visit his stores three days a week so sometimes I don't get home until 7:30 p.m. While he is in the stores I will grade the girls homework from the day before or if it's a really good day I will grade that day's homework. Sometimes I just walk around in Dillards or Macys while he's visiting his stores. But I've found that this is not to good for my wallet!

Rush home, make dinner, wash dishes, clean cabinets and get the girls to the table to do some review for the next days work and go over any problems they had gotten wrong that I graded while visiting the stores. Around 10 p.m. I go take a shower, lay my clothes out, make a short list of chores for the girls and if I am lucky I am in bed before 11 p.m.

I have my bible and study materials beside my bed and like to have at 15-20 minutes of uninterrupted reading/studying time before I go to sleep. I can't think of a better way to end my day.

It's not always fun and often times very stressful but I would not change one thing...well, I would like to sleep more than five hours a night once in a while. It would be nice to NOT wake up tired occassionally! Even on weekends I wake up early! It's just a habit I guess. I love that I homeschool my girls and I have control on what they learn. I love that they are both yards ahead of their traditional schooled peers. I love that I can help my husband with his business. It makes me feel good to be able to help out in all areas of my home.

Do I like looking at eveyone's beautiful jewelry? Oh yes!! It is so fun. One of the most extravagant things I've seen was about 12 years ago. There was a lady who sold her..... bracelet.... so she could purchase a Suburban for her boyfriend. Yes, a bracelet for a car. Imagine that! It was beautiful.. it was yellow gold and had I would say like one inch each square links held together by O-rings that were hammered gold and speckled with diamonds and each linked square had at least two spinning flowers with a different colored gemstone in the center. It was beautiful! No, actually the most amazing thing I saw was last Christmas... a tennis bracelet over 40 carats of diamonds set in platinum. Each stone was 2 carats and I think there were 22 stones. It was unbelieveable and cost more than my house! She did not like the way one diamond was sitting and wanted that repaired. I think the saddest thing that I've seen is a bullet that a soldier's family wanted engraved with his birth and death date. He was 19 yrs old. So you see really beautiful things and you see really sad things and you see really, really odd things! How about a platinum cat (about 2.5 inches long) with emerald eyes and a ruby nose that an 80-something man had custom made by my husband for his 30-something girlfriend. It was engraved on the back "VGP" we can only imagine what that could mean, as it was not the initials of either one of them!

It's been fun reading other bloggers' typical days.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and if you want, you can enter my first giveaway. I just reached my 100th post. The giveaway ends next Wednesday, March 10th. And I think I will be adding things to it through out the weekend! So check back....


Cookbooks & 100th post Giveaway

I can't believe I finally reached my 100th post! And to celebrate I am having first giveaway!

But first I wanted to show y'all some of my cookbooks. I love cookbooks! I have some that my mom gave me, a few from a nice Polish lady that does some of my husbands beadwork.




I even have some from my 7th grade Home Ec class!



This is the cabinet above my stove and you can see it's overflowing! These are two of my favorite...



The book on the left is one oft newer ones. It's full of recipes donated by the ladies if this Deerfield Club. There are some great ones! especially the marinades and salads! The book on the right was purchases from eBay and us signed by Elvis' uncle.



Elvis' personal cook helped create these recipes.

You would not believe the fat some of them contain. But we've used it many times and CC makes Lena Elvis' favorite banana and peanut butter sandwich and Lena loves it!
And if you've read my blog, you know how much I love to make sushi. Last night I bought this cookbook.




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Totally off the subject, last Saturday CC texted
E and told me her Dr. Pepper ran away. Where do u think we just found it?



Under the kitchen sink of course!
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Now for the giveaway.... I wanted to giveaway things that represent things I like and enjoy doing....
My mom says I have too many pictures of food on my blog. Well I love to cook and obviously I love to eat. Seriously I think I could spend the whole day in the kitchen.... So my first item is...... An "I Love Lucy" apron.



Under the writing is a cute photo of Lucy. Usually my phone corrects the picture but this time it didn't! So she's sideways!




Another thing I love, love, love is red velvet cupcakes. So the next item us a Rich Red Velvet Cupcake Mix!




I have so many pictures on my computer and my phone...it's like digital photos have taken over. I actually forgot how fun it is to print out pictures and put them in an album. Just recently I made a calender for my desk and I had to print our photos to put in it.


It was so fun selecting the photos and exciting picking them up! So my next item(s) is a set of photo albums.


Each book holds 200 4x6 photos.



So all you have to do is leave a comment and you will be entered. I'm not going to ask you to post it on your blog... It's up to you to do that if you want. You certainly don't have to! Lol!



I will pick the winner next Wednesday.
Thank you for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

*** I just might be adding more items over the weekend so check back! ***

***NEW ITEMS ADDED***





And this Italian soap ... In such a cute box










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Monday, March 1, 2010

Relaxing weekend

I had wanted to go to Home and Garden show this weekend but it didn't happen. And that's ok. We had a slow, relaxing weekend at home and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Friday night I met Lisa at Marioli's for those delicious al pastor tacos and a glass of wine. We stayed til it closed and had a fabulous time.





We really enjoyed our $5 a glass wine. It was smooth and delicious... So imagine my suprise yesterday when I went to wal-mart and saw this...






That's right... We paid more per glass than the bottle even costs! Oh well.. I guess you're paying for the ambiance.

Saturday was the day I was planning to go the Home and Garden show but CC had other plans and Mom was out with her friend. It looked like my day wad going to be spent on CC's terms, which of course meant... Sonic happy hour drinks and model homing! Then grocery shopping and cooking finished off our Saturday.

Sunday my coworker Alicia had a party for her daughter Bella at Sharkeys Cuts for Kids. They are moving to North Carolina Friday. Her husband is coming home from Afghanistan and being stationed there. Lena had her party there a couple if years ago and it was fabulous!



They do the girls hair and nails and make up



She loved it!!



And they get tonplay dress up and sing karaoke on stage!



A few of our coworkers came with their daughters!

Me with Ursula


And me with Alicia.



We are taking her to Pizza Hut tomorrow for our "last lunch." I am sure going to miss her. She is such a sweet and kind girl!

When we were leaving the party lena and I noticed there was a farmers market across the parking lot so we HAD to stop by.



There was such a selection of fresh veggies and herbs and neat crafts!



They even had mychocolate mint plants for $3!!




I thought it was best to leave it there because I always end up killing them!
Walking out we saw this pink van with cupcakes painted all over it from the Saweet Cupcake Company. Lena and I both wanted the dark red velvet cupcakes but of course they were sold out! So she ended up getting the chocolate peanut butter cupcake.
We had a nice relaxing weekend not really doing much at all. I can't wait for American Idol tomorrow. I hope everyone does better this week because last week was kinda scary! Lol!
Anyway...Happy Monday everyone!
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