I am supposed to say we are all sick, and I am the sickest. Because I am supposed to post every day. Sorry, I forgot.

Can I has a cookie?

Postman Fail

I am sick, and therefore I get annoyed easily. Here is today's reason. The mail truck when speeding down our block at 2:30pm and skipped our mailboxes. We had outgoing mail, and I really doubt out of the 4 boxes there, no one was going to get mail. Sometimes the guy sits in front of our boxes for a while too doing whatever in his truck. He will probably say that the box was blocked, but I took pictures, it wasn't. I have seen him deliver when the boxes were partly blocked, but from other comments I have heard him say, he hates his job so maybe he is just having a bad day, and doesn't want to be at work. In this economy, you would think he would be grateful for a steady income. I mean come on, stamp prices have even increased again so he can keep his good paying job.

I can't decide if I want to make an official complaint, but I needed to vent so here it is.

Holiday? (long post, sorry)

Every time I go to our blog homepage, I am reminded that our header is old. I also immediately think "I don't want to deal with that right now." And, its true. I could update pictures, get anew look or whatever, but sometime when I am less busy.

This weekend Daniel came down with some cough, headache, lose your voice fun. He even got a blessing Monday to help him be better for work. I think Alice has some of the same stuff, and with the way I have been sleeping I probably have a bit of something as well. Lucky us!

Saturday we spent about 2 horus at Nebraska Furniture Mart sitting on couches. It sounds relaxing, until you also realize we never sit on one for longer than 2-3 minutes until we found one that was a comprimise.

You see, Daniel likes comfort so much that even the {hideous} lazy-boy style couches that have recline function, and are way way too big for our living room anyway look good to him. I think he is also somewhat resentful that I immediately said no way to the first couch and we were stuck covering literally the entire rest of the furniture department.

Here is our opinion in the way of couches. If you want a stylish couch, you must be willing to sacrifice some comfort. The cooler it looks, the harder it will be, and the less back support because the back is only 18 inches tall, etc. The so called 'comfy' couches are incredibly soft, but provide no back support at all. Oh, and futons. You have to get a REALLY expensive futon for those to be comfortable.

We went with a $450 sleeper sofa. (I think it was $450, one can't be sure.) It gets delivered on Friday, and the arms are less tailored than I would prefer, but its soft while still being somewhat supportive on the back and stuff.

Its 91" long. I realized as we were 'checking out' and setting up delivery. Part of why we nixed the last couch was the sheer bulk. But, this couch doesn't have slanty arms or a slanty back, and aside from the built in pillows in the arm cushions, its rather tailored. Upside? ITs the same color as our slip cover we already have. That means, we can throw that on top, and keep it safe. Then again, I ordered the 5 year stain warranty stuff, so we might just let Alice go nuts. Eat fruit loops on the couch? OK. Dump spaghetti and tomato sauce on there? Go for it.

It gets delivered on Friday.

We also had copious amounts of family visitation this weekend. Rachel came up for the weekend, then my parents showed up Monday morning and slept for a million hours. Not consecutively, but still. They took more naps than Alice. Thats accomplishing something. My mother said they must be getting old. Maybe.

Last night Alice was having the WORST time teething. She is getting her first molars on top (don't know the name). And, I numbed up her gums thinking she could nurse and go to sleep easier. Well, she was REALLY mad that I numbed up her mouth. She was drooling, and upset. We literally watched Sesame Street clips on youtube until midnight (2+ hours). I kept falling asleep and she would harass me until I would repeat the clip. I was glad there were a few 8 minute clips on there. The 30 second ones were killing me.

She finally passed out head at the bottom of the bed, staring at the fan. Thank goodness. She is still in bed. I had to help Daniel find the keys to the car. I think I shall join her.

Oh, and I decided on dates for the homemaking Food storage class. The first one will be June 8th at 10am at the church. That's right, a Monday morning. I figure, people can't forget if its the day after church. Also, it will be at the church, so people can just bring all the kids and let them run around the gym. We are going to sanitize containers for water storage. Yay bleach water! (The church also has deeper sinks than most homes, so we might be able to do more at a time.) Plus you know, I never sanitized our 2 liter water bottles before filling them with water. That probably means they are, or will be, growing green stuff under the cap. No worries, I will just water the garden with the green stuff and sanitize them on the 8th.

Hi I am your resident Food Storage Expert (i guess)

Oh man, the pictures in our blog header are like a year old. Like Alice was just learning how to smile. Sometime I will fix that. Maybe in June, after LINK. My life is busy.

So, tonight was relief society enrichment. I taught the lesson. I admit, I got really scared nervous like wavery voice and shaky hands and the whole nine yards.

Why?
Well obviously so I could do well! Daniel thinks part of doing well in a talk or lesson is lots of preparation, some ability, and a good dose of nerves. Plus a little inspiration.

I am gonna guess I had a bit. The presidency member in charge of enrichment was beaming a HUGE grin most to all of my lesson. That was encouraging. Like, yay I am not failing! (Even though no one had questions, and there were about 2 comments.)

So I succeeded!
Whether or not that is actually true, remains to be seen. But, hey people sounded excited. We fed them strange foods like brownies made with brownie mix and a pureed can of black beans as well as 'rice salad' stuff that can almost entirely be made from shelf stable food, and even homemade tortillas. There were some excited people when we had them roll a tortilla and cooked them on the griddle. The comment that I loved the most was "tortillas are getting so expensive." By far, the best comment of the night.

Oh, and the recipe that we used, is so different from the recipe I usually use. Like I had issues with the dough not rolling out. Maybe its because it didn't have any whole wheat flour so it was stretchier or something.

I know you all care, but I have a nice little zit from stressing myself out over this. Darn stress hormones messing with my skin.

So yeah. I get to plan an Enrichment food storage class to meet once a month. I think I am going to go with the second Monday morning of the month. Just because it will be hard to forget about it. That is, if we can get into the building Monday mornings. Plus, it may motivate people to plan FHE activities or lessons around food storage. Cause maybe, like me, they are dorks. Since they want to start it soon, and do them over the summer and I can do whatever I want, then change things as I get feedback.

Pain for Beauty

I admit, no pictures of the backyard. Partly because the grass is so dead looking, that its depressing. I am seeding the yard on top of the turf today. That is, if I can hobble my way back there.

You see, Saturday I found a hot pair of heels at a yard sale. They were a little big, but not that much. I should have worn hose. Or those little feet socks things for dress shoes.

I am a gimp. Like I have been popping ibuprofen since we got home from church yesterday because of the pain. I have a giant bandaid on my heel right now. I don't really know how to treat these sort of things. You see it never was a fluid filled blister, I just rubbed skin off. I know, TMI, I know. I tried taking a bath last night thinking the soaking would help. Holy Moley! It hurt.

So I am reserving myself to never ending gimpy-ness. Now, I just gotta get up the nerve to clean our living room carpet again. It involves Friday's flood, lets just say we got almost 3 inches of rain in less than an hour, and there was flooding all over town.) We are lucky we weren't these people, then again, we wouldn't have driven into lots of standing water in a road anyway. Especially once there was a car stuck there. You gotta admire people that get stuck when others are already there. Its pretty funny.

Anyway, I will probably go clean the carpets now, since it doesn't require shoes. The yard...well we might put that off until lunchtime or until I take some pain killers today. Since its been all night without them, and lying in bed was killing me this morning. That part of why I didn't sleep in any more than I did.

Time for being outside!

I signed in to write this and realized we haven't written a post in Old Films Reviewed, even though we have watched a couple. 'Doh. Maybe some other time.

So this morning I awoke to a knock at the door. You see, Alice and I got some sort of sneezy sniffly coughy bug over the weekend, and while its not terrible, we have been sleeping extra. So I threw on the first thing i saw and ran downstairs for the door.

It was our neighbor Steve. Steve's landscaping friend works with the Hy-Vee gardening people and they had some sod that was drying out and needed picked up today and installed today or tomorrow. I asked how much it was, and he said free, so lets do it, right? We don't say no to free. Even it involves some hard work.

So I told Daniel "no staying late at work, we were getting 30 rolls of sod." (I wasn't really sure how much that was, but considering we lost half of our grass seed in the heavy rains a couple of weeks ago, I figured we would get a good chunk of the yard covered.)

Daniel had a bad day at work, and we went out to get copious amounts of fried greasy fish, I mean Long John Silvers. It was slow moving, it literally took us 20 minutes from ordering the food to getting it, and when we got back none of the neighbors were around.

Then we got the message to call Steve, and we got a 5 minute warning to unload sod from the truck. So Alice finished off the greasy potatoes and we went and unloaded tons of sod. It was probably about 40 rolls, and it seemed like more than we would need when we were unloading it. Then we went and started levelling some of the lumpier parts of the yard, then inside and Alice took a bit of a nap (she hadn't got an afternoon nap, my bad).

Anyway, long story short, we rolled sod out until just before 9:30 which was pretty dang dark. I think I did a good job patching and staggering the sod, and if we keep watering like crazy, and finish the small area that still sod, we should have an awesome yard.

I gotta say, it was hard work, and I was glad it was only in the 70s. I am fine with manual labor, but my all natural deodorant is not.

So yeah, we stink, and are postponing going to bed and showering because we are a bit hyped up. Well, I am postponing because I don't want to bathe Alice. She made sure to get showered with dirt a few times and whats another 20 minutes.

So yeah. Come sunlight, I shall have to take pictures and post them. That means I have to charge some batteries. (By the way, the 11 year old next door thinks I am a hippie because I use rechargable batteries.) So I am off to be a dirty stinky hippie. Until I bathe, that is.

Mother's Day Weekend

Well, this weekend was fun. We visited my sister and took her out to a yucky dinner. We were impressed how bad the food was. Then I saw her fridge. The girl had two oranges in her fridge. Two oranges people. Thats it. She had a bag of chicken pieces in her freezer, and food storage style food in her cupboard. She said she didn't need food. Daniel and I decided that next time, instead of wasting $25+ on bad food we will go buy that much worth of groceries. I guess she will be getting breakfast and lunch provided at her summer job, so she will be able to eat more balanced meals. She also lives alone, but I have never seen her fridge so bare. The worst part is that she will refuse to take money from us, a 'loan' is even hard to give her.

I got sick this weekend. Its called a sneezy sniffly coughy, can't sleep Good Times! I got some medicine and a pack of cough drops and it seems to be helping. Of course, I can't sleep. (I fell asleep earlier and then woke up.) It was a better choice to get up and go downstairs than wake the baby.

This morning on the way to the car for church, Alice decided to try and run into the street. She didn't get very close though. She broke out into a run by the car and right before Daniel grabber her to put in the car, she face planted. Right on her forehead. Giant scrape/bruise thing. It turned pink, then sort of purple, and I could see little bits of bleeding. Anyone that has wipes out on a bike knows what it looks like, and how much it hurts. Alice got to sport one huge bandaid all day. Everyone asked what happened. The bandaid didn't hide the swelling, but at least it hid the gross looking part.

I haven't done much for enrichment. I made the flyers and they went into the Relief Society folders, as well as on the bulletain board, but the lesson and (possible) handouts? Yeah, I got nothing. Plus, whatever I encourage people to do, I should be doing myself. After some reading I like the idea of keeping the 3 month supply of food in big storage bins marked with dates for rotating. But, I don't have that. When I told Daniel about the enrichment (in 10 days) he asked if we needed to get the rest of our food storage together. Technically, yes. But, lets face it, I don't have the time or energy to get that done right now. I may get an official 3 month's supply though. Or at least enough of a 3 month supply to drag to the church for part of my lesson. Its been so long since I have done any teaching in Releif Society, so the whole thing mght flop. That means I need lots of visual aids. Lots and lots of them.