I thought I’d share some of my favorite pictures that my mom sent me from their trip in Maine. I am so jealous!!
This is my mom’s best friend, Pirjo.
This is my mom and Pirjo being crazy!
Here is my Dad in front of Pirjo’s son, Dan’s house. Wow.
My parents- aren’t they great?!
A little more BFF craziness!
Isn’t it great to have a BFF- one of those best friends where no matter how long it’s been, it’s so easy to pick right back up again? Yep, I got me one of those- Lesley. Tomorrow, I’ll be boarding a plane to visit her. So, at the same time my mom is with her BFF, I’ll be with mine.
You can see more from our knitting party at Amanda’s. Tomorrow, Bailey and I are off to Florida, to visit my best friend, Lesley. Not sure of her computer stats, so I’m not sure I’ll be blogging much this week. If she does have a puter available, I will definitely post pics. Bailey and I will be gone until next Tuesday. We got a fabulous deal at www.spiritair.com with our flight costing $19 each way. Wowsers!
On friday night, I attempted to teach the sisterchicks how to knit. It was difficult! I didn’t realize how hard it is to teach someone to knit, let alone 5 people at one time! I’m not used to doing it in slo-mo, so I was messing up. Finally, after teaching them how to cast on, they picked up the knitting in no time. If you want to see pics, go see Staci’s blog.
We were greeted with the sound of employees ringing cow bells. They then took multiple pictures of us and then let us pick anything off the menu! We got $24 worth of lunch- for free! Yay Chick-Fil-A!null
Bento boxes and Bollywood. What the heck? What are these two “b” words?
Bento boxes are a lunch box system used in Japan. Here in the US, they are primarily called laptop lunches. Look at this fabulous, and environmentally friendly lunchbox!
Here is a more traditional bento box, as used in Japan.
Our school lunches are so unhealthy, so I’m going to really, really try to make the kids lunches this year. Now all I have to do is convince Dave to let me spend $70 on two lunchboxes!!!
Now for Bollywood. What is this Bollywood, you say? Bollywood is the Hindi-language based film industry in India. I’ve always been intrigued by the dancing and the stories- it’s so beautiful. I LOVED watching the first Bollywood dance on So You Think You Can Dance tonight! I thought that Katee and Joshua did an amazing job! They were just so fabulous in such a hard genre. I can’t wait to see more from that choreographer. Check it out and let me know what you think. The dance starts at 1:19 on the video.
1. First you get some good buddies to go with you to the local berry farm. Make sure to show them how to pick the berries.
2. Blackberries are good too!
3. Slowly fill the buckets. Make sure to go picking right after it rains, so a huge drop of water will land right in the middle of the camera lens.
4. Make sure to follow one of the moms- they can see higher than us little people! Don’t you just love the droplet of water that is still lingering?
5. Keep your eyes open for alligators.
6. Make sure that when the mom wants a great picture of you and your best buddy, one of you doen’t look into the camera…
7. When she tries again for a perfect picture, switch it up a little. Now, the other person shouldn’t look into the camera!
8. When you get home, eat as many as you can before mom starts mixing!
9. Mix blueberries with sugar, cinnamon, tapioca, & lemon juice.
10. Let the berries sit for 15 minutes and then pour into a pie crust. You may have to stand on the counter top for this one. (Notice the foot)
11. Dot the top with butter and then place the next crust on top.
12. Make sure to put the pie on a baking sheet, because the juice will leak out and burn. It doesn’t matter if it’s the same baking sheet that your dad made his famously seasoned fries on. Then, instead of a lovely blueberry pie smell wafting from the oven, it will smell like steaks are cooking!
We went to my parents for fourth of July. When you walk to the end of their street, you can walk up a hill and have a perfect view of the RHS fireworks, without all the traffic and crowds!
Here we are getting ready to make smores with some ridiculously aromatic (think stinky) pinon wood.
Here is Tim and his friend, Maura.
My dad and Dave chillin.
My mom is enjoying one of about 20 marshmallows charcol briquettes that she ate that night.
Dave & Bailey enjoying a little lovin’.
Ah, so that’s where Bailey gets her famous sneer!
Now that’s better!
Wondering where Jake is? He’s visiting his other grandparents in Florida for almost 3 weeks!
So, Dave and I took Bailey to Six Flags today with the great free teacher/student passes I got at school. Bailey loved the rides- her favorites were the Mind Bender and the Scream Machine. She didn’t like the Ninja- headache- or the The Georgia Cyclone- backache. We had a great time and even got caught under the waterfall on Thunder River! The bad part- 3 hours of traffic on the way home. Yep, you heard me right. What should have been 45 minutes took 3 hours to get home. :( Also, they lost our pictures, so we were unable to capture the photo of Bailey’s first trip to Six Flags.
The answer to our rising gas prices is not drilling off our Florida coast or in Anwar. The fact is that it would barely make a dent in our oil needs, it would only give more money to Big Oil organizations. As Obama says, “We can’t afford 4 more years of our addiction to oil from dictators.” Check out how Obama and McCain compare:
The Choice Is Clear
CHALLENGE
McCAIN
Immediate Financial Relief for Families This Summer
$300 per family in rebate checks from a second round of stimulus to help families offset the cost of $4.00 gas this summer.
Proposed a gas tax gimmick that would provide at most 30 cents a day for the typical workers while increasing oil company profits and depriving our under-funded national highway trust fund of $10 billion.
Making America’s Economy Vibrant and Competitive in the Long Haul
Apollo-scale investment of $150 billion investment over 10 years to jumpstart renewable energy technology development and deployment.
No comprehensive plan for clean energy investments. Has repeatedly opposed any new investments and incentives in for renewable energy.
He rejects 99.8% of the Obama ideas for investing in our energy future – the advanced battery prize represents 0.2% of the overall investment in the Obama plan.
The Next 10 Years of Oil
3 million barrels of oil savings.
Plan will reduce U.S. oil consumption by about 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2018.
Supports new development on existing leases, which could nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75 percent.
Plan to reduce oil consumption by 10 million barrels, or at least 35%, by 2030. That is enough to totally offset our imports from OPEC countries.
Says No to this goal, and has no plan to reduce our long-term dependence on oil.
Green Collar Jobs
Plan for renewables, fuel economy and energy efficiency will help create 5 million new green collar jobs.
No green jobs plan.
Ending Excessive Speculation in Oil Markets
Supports fully closing the Enron Loophole and eliminating offshore loopholes that encourage excessive speculation. Plan will ease the impact of rising prices.
No plan.
Sen. Phil Gramm – one of Senator McCain’s chief economic advisors – was responsible for sneaking the Enron Loophole into law.
Fuel Economy v Offshore Drilling
Supports doubling the fuel efficiency of autos within 18 years, saving American consumers from purchasing a half trillion gallons of gas.
Taking this one step will achieve more than three times the oil savings than could be produced under even the most optimist scenarios of drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Repeatedly opposed legislative efforts to increase CAFE standards. Now supports simply enforcing existing standards.
Energy Efficiency
Plan will reduce the energy intensity of our economy 50% by 2030, through improvements in building efficiency, smart grid, and giving utilities an incentive to invest in efficiency rather than new production.
No energy efficiency plan.
Windfall Profits Tax
Supports implementing a well-designed windfall profits tax on profits made over $80 per barrel to help families pay energy bills.
No windfall profits tax plan.
Supports $4 billion per year in new tax breaks for major U.S. oil companies, including $1.2 billion per year for Exxon-Mobil – the most profitable company in the history of the world.
So, most of the sisterchicks and I went to camp every summer. One summer, in 1994, Staci, Amanda, & I were goofing off with a polaroid camera…and here are the results! My favorite thing is the subtitles!
Notice the DC Talk poster in the background!
Notice the photos in the background- they are from the other camp that we always went to in the summer!
This one is Dave’s personal favorite!
This is my favorite! What in the world were we thinking when posing this one?? We are certainly “tangled in fear!”
I'm a wife, a mommy, a friend, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a sister, a teacher, a sisterchick, a reader, a tv addict, a wannabe photographer and I'm pretty green & crunchy.
