I Will Sit Me Down Awhile and Think Me on This Matter…

Okay, the title was just a little bit ‘o fun. ‘Twas just a wee bit ‘o the Queen’s English.

Anyway…I’m a bit of a coffee connoisseur. I am also really fond of ice cream. Combining the two, however, really makes me sigh with contentment. My dear husband went and got me some Haagen Dazs ice cream the other day…coffee flavored! I am sitting at my desk enjoying it right now. I have not yet looked at the nutrition info on the carton (it’s a pint). That side happens to be facing away from me. Knowing how bad this stuff is for my hips would only burst my little bubble of contentment. I really don’t plan on eating that much of it right now anyway. I just want a few more bites…hey, I had salad for dinner so now I’m just hitting the dairy group!

About my salad at dinner…it was from my garden! Some of my radishes were big enough to pick and I was SO excited. Miriam and I were outside this afternoon squealing with delight with each juicy, red radish I picked. It was really fun! We had a bit of rain over the weekend and I think that helped my radishes to grow leaps and bounds.

In other news, this past weekend our house got attacked by ants, probably because we had a lot of rain recently. They started coming in from a little area by the ceiling in my kitchen and have just been making their trek down my wall, onto my counter tops, and wherever else they please to go. I got this stuff called Terro which is really kind of neat in how it works. It has a little container of poison on top and when you turn the container to the right, there is a little pokey thing underneath that ruptures the underside of the container and it slowly leaks out the poison into a little reservoir. For whatever reason, it is an ant magnet! The worker ants bring the poison back to the ant hill so it will eventually kill the entire ant hill. The bad part about it is that it’s not instantaneous. I have to watch all these ants flock around this Terro stuff and resist the urge to squish them all. It’s been difficult knowing that the little creepy things are being allowed to run freely around my kitchen, but the stuff is actually working! I have definitely seen fewer ants since Saturday evening. I just hope they stay gone. In the meantime, I’m trying to be especially careful about keeping my counters clear of any crumbs or other things that might attract their attention. I must say though that I’d much rather have ants than roaches. I DON’T even want to think about that. We had also had quite a few gnats buzzing around our kitchen. The kids finally found out the source of them today…my dying plant. I have a black thumb when it comes to indoor plants I guess. My friend gave me this plant a few years ago because it is a mother-in-law’s tongue – you can’t kill the thing. Ahem, well, most people can’t kill it, but just leave it to me. I proved them all wrong! So now, the sad plant is hanging out on my back porch, waiting to be thrown into the trash. I found out on Saturday when I went to visit my mom that I come by it naturally so I guess I will just use that as my excuse. Now that the plant is outside, we have significantly fewer gnats buzzing around the kitchen.

I think I’ll wrap this one up for now. Everyone is asleep but me so I better take the hint. So until next time, “Before I prattle on incessantly, fair thee well.”

Of Housework and School

We just finished lunch and I have some dishes to do, but thought I’d blog first about nothing terribly specific. For lunch, I made some chicken and rice in the crockpot. It is a variation of a dish a friend of mine made for us once, but she did it in the oven. I had no desire to turn my oven on today, not that it’s particularly hot in the house but just a tad humid so I chose the crockpot. I really don’t know what I’d do without my crockpot. It has saved me so many times. My problem comes when I’m unorganized. When I don’t plan ahead and have something ready to go, the evenings get a bit stressful. I get off work at 6pm, sometimes 7 or later, so I need to be organized. It is more of a temptation for us to go out to dinner when I don’t have something ready to go that’s quick. Then, dinner is later, devotions are later, kids get to bed later…it makes for a stressed out mommy.

I make out our menus for the week and then go shopping once a week for all of our meals. I have been really trying to stick with my menu list because it helps me be more organized. For dinner, we’re having breakfast. The kids really like that and I think it’s kind of fun.

I better stop typing. The kids need to finish up their schoolwork. I’m glad it’s almost the end of the year. We will have some free time in the mornings and afternoons, not that kindergarten has really taken a long time during the day though. I’m glad it starts out so easy. The kids have done very well this year and are both reading very well. Math has been okay, but they got bored because it was too easy for them. I hope that first grade math gives them more of a challenge. We’re going to be starting learning a new language in first grade…Latin! I will be learning right along with them. It should be interesting.