Social Networking Question

So yesterday I was faced with a couple questions that really I really am not sure about. Mostly centered around Facebook though it could be extended to Google+ and others. 

 

The first one is my 12 year old daughter. She turns 13 next month. She has it set in her head that she must be 18 for a Facebook account the truth is at 13 she reaches their requirement. I could very well just tell her 'no' but I feel that she's pretty responsible it is everyone one else I'm worried about. Heck I'd even have to make sure she was blocked from my ranting posts because I would made sure that I could follow her and have her password to check on things. We are pretty liberal about technology around here but it still doesn't mean I'm not cautious. Thoughts or opinions?  

The other question is I see a lot of bloggers have a Facebook or other social networking account or 'group' for their blog. While part of me wants to think it is a little silly the other part of me wonders if it is something I should do also. Opinions?

It's a lot to think about and I've been churning it over in my head since yesterday. 

Manic Monday

"ma·nia  noun \ˈmā-nē-ə, -nyə\
1: excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior"

So it's actually Tuesday right now but I'm writing for Monday while I wait for my jeans to get done drying for work. It was a pretty crazy Monday and I said it last year that I need a Monday series because my Mondays always seem a tad bit crazy but no more crazy than most people. 

Monday I went to work because I had that large format plotter (remember my post from before?) that was getting fixed and I was informed that how I was to deal with visitors that I was not going to put through safety (because he wasn't going into the plant) is that I just needed to escort him and basically be with the guy 100% of the time which means not a lot of work got done. A little afternoon I watch the guy leave. I'm not sure if I was suppose to physically escort him out or not it was all rather weird and went to have lunch with my husband at Cheddar's. I know, I know we really shouldn't have gone out to eat because our eat out budget is about blown already for the month because my husband seems to enjoy going out 2+ times a week. It's rather getting on my nerves. I enjoyed lunch though then went back to work to turn in some paperwork, update some files and fight with an update for my AutoCAD but I did eventually get it to install.

From work it was to home because I forgot my grocery list. I thought about mowing (side note I had string trimmed the front lawn and around the back shed before work that morning) and it looked like rain but I told myself I could hold off until after I got groceries and my youngest daughter from after school.

While getting groceries my oldest gets home (she's a month shy of 13 so her staying home 15-20 min I don't count as a big deal) she calls me up on her cell phone sobbing. When I finally get her to calm down I find out she ripped out the bottom of her backpack. A backpack mind you that I thought wouldn't last a month but she insisted on using it and I didn't buy it so I didn't argue but kept back her high dollar one from last year. So now I have been tasked with trying to figure out how to fix this backpack that will be fun. The only way I could get her to calm down though was me promising I would try.

By time I get out of the grocery store it's pouring down rain. Well there goes mowing the lawn. I go get Katherine and take her home and unload groceries. 

Katherine so far has had a very good year at school and I found out that they brought back her behavior points sheet though I haven't seen it yet. I'm curious if there is anything I need to sign but she told me she got all but 1 of her points and that is excellent so we are having a great start to the school year for her. 

Last night was taco night. Brielle was doing homework which took her over 3 hours last night as she was laden down with geometry and language arts. I think the 8th grade is trying to kill her or she thinks it at least and during this time I took Katherine under my wing since she didn't have homework. Katherine helped measure all the ingredients for making taco seasoning and I helped her with her technique to get the measuring spoons level. She did an awesome job and then I taught her how to use my scale so she could split up the hamburger I bought so we could freeze what we didn't need this week. She thought the scale was great! After all the meat was packaged she started weighing random things. I also had her help me with the stirring and the mixing of the seasonings when it was time. 

Dinner went over well then I worked on laundry and dishes and played a few puzzle games on my computer and watched a show with the husband. It felt much more crazy than it really was. I just don't like going grocery shopping on days I have to work. On that note though I was mean and had my husband go out last night because I didn't have dried onion flakes! Well I did about 1/8 tsp not the 1 TBS I needed! It has me thinking I should take some onion and throw it through the food processor and then try it in the dehydrator. Or should I dehydrate big pieces of onion and then throw them through a food processor? Hmmm I'll have to see what the online community suggests. 

Other than that just trying to get next weekends birthday party in order. That has already begun to be a headache. 

------

Since I'm blogging now I suppose I'll cover this past weekend. 

Brielle enjoyed playing Magic at the gaming shop and Peter said he'd help her out so she can get a better grasp of her deck. 

Katherine enjoyed pokemon but no one was really playing the card game this past Saturday so Peter said he'd get himself a deck for those days so he can play with her. They also do the video game at the shop and that is what a lot of kids are into so we are getting that for Katherine's birthday present. 

Sunday we went to see Despicable Me 2 in the theater and found it to be a very funny movie we were all laughing. We then went to the library.

 

(My camera on my phone decided to play nice!)

After that we came home and and the girls and I made zucchini bread and started on a dinner of spaghetti-o's! It was a silly dinner but I found 4 cans of it on discount the other day and it made things easy. 

Since then Katherine has been hooked into her book "Silver Dragon Codex" and every morning she gets up and starts reading and has an arguement with me (not a mean one just her trying to figure out the whys and hows) because she wants to take the book to school with her but seeing how last year she was getting in trouble for reading during class I don't want to tempt fate. 

Well that's it for the most part. I suppose I could be doing something else while my work clothes dry. 

Friday Night Success?

Well Peter took Brielle out for Friday Night Magic at the local game shop. We are going to try and make this a regular thing but it was nearly 11 by time they got home. I'm fine with it now that I have a time frame but Peter had left his phone at home which left me in the dark.

I found out without Peter home I become productive or crazy I'm not sure which. I washed two loads of laundry but of course I didn't fold them because folding is evil. I moved things around in the kitchen to scrub the floors after I had wiped down the counters and stove. I did two loads of dishes, cleaned the bathroom floor/sink/toilet, vacuumed the living room and then played video games the rest of the evening while Katherine got time on her computer for good behavior this week at school.

I mean to be doing some more cleaning right now but I slept for 10 hours for some reason and 3 hours into this day and I'm still not completely ready to face things.

Tonight we are doing a build your own pizza night! We don't do them very often because it can get expensive but it's always highly enjoyed.

We are also going to fulfill the girls' request of bringing back family movie night tonight.

In other news an awesome friend of mine gave me her TI-83 for Brielle since Brielle lost mine somehow. We've torn apart the house but to no avail. I was getting a big desperate and thankfully I have some very awesome friends that were able to help me out. I've been going through the budget and now with school in session and winter just around the corner meaning higher utility costs, birthdays and holidays I'm cringing as I'm looking at the next few months trying to find where I can squeeze every penny out to make it all work.

We will still be going to the movies tomorrow though as I've already got the money pulled out of the budget for it.

Finally I need to whine a little. This is what I've been dealing with in random spots on my body and it is getting worse before it gets better.

This is what happens when I have to deal with trumpet vine. I'm immune to poison ivy and poison oak but trumpet vine is absolutely horrible! This is what I get for when I was younger leading my friends through poison oak, admittedly I was ignorant of what the stuff looked like.
I'll be glad when this stuff clears up it's been driving me batty! And no amount of anti-itch cream helps and it feels weird when I have to put it on!

Killing Time - Weekend Plans

So if anyone is looking at this they will think, "Boy she sure is posting at an odd time did she not go to work?" Well I assure you I'm at work but I got tied down to my desk waiting on a service call to come in for me to get the appointment time for people to fix my large format copier.

Horrible picture I know but all I've got is my phone which is older than sin (but I still love it).
I put a chair by the copier to kind of give an indication of how large this thing is.

So we are kicking off the weekend here in a few hours! Hooray!
Plans are as follows:
Tonight Peter will take Brielle and play Magic the Gathering with her at Friday Night Magic from 6-9 pm.
Tomorrow from 12-2 Peter will take Katherine down to play Pokemon.
Saturday night will also be family movie night as we slacked off on that and the kids have been asking for it again. I will have to figure out a different snack than popcorn now that Brielle has her braces. I believe we are going to actually watch the Legend of Korra series a little bit at a time because we haven't seen any movies come out on DVD recently.
Sunday we plan to take the kids to see Despicable Me 2 at the theater.

Oh and either tonight or tomorrow I'll be making zucchini bread with one if not both girls to help me. It all depends on when I feel up to it.

We're trying to be come a bit more active as a family. We'll see how it goes. In September the Project 4-H club is starting back up and I've already talked to Peter and we'll be letting both of the girls get involved with 4-H. They also have a Nature Club I think the kids would like but they looked at me funny and then they have a Horseless Rider club where you learn about how to care for a horse but don't actually get to ride one it's for kids who love horses but don't own one. I'm not very keen on the Horseless Rider one I don't think the girls quite fully comprehend why on that so for now we'll just start with one club.

*taps her foot*
I really hope the service technician calls soon because there are a great deal of other things here at work that I need to get done other than babysitting a telephone.

First Day of School & Menu

So just a little post (maybe you know how I can get). Since it is the first day of school and the first day of working our life back into the normal routine with no more crazy running around for at least a little bit I thought I would force myself to make a post and see if I can also get back into the routine.

Getting ready for school was crazy. We went school shopping for Brielle yesterday and then while packing up the backpacks we realized that the school supply list for Katherine had changed from last month! So Peter went back out to pick up the new supplies and also to print out some wedding invitations for a friend of ours since he had kind of been putting it off just because the idea of 'home' was so appealing.

Things got sorted and I even painted the girls finger nails this morning. They are both really excited to get back to school and friends. Mind you at current my house looks like a tornado hit it! There are a lot of things that are going to have to shift now that school has started and on top of it I haven't had much time at all with the kids so while walking through the store yesterday I felt every nerve was frayed. It's not that the girls were being bad I'm just not used to the non-stop questions. I think the children are trying to prepare me for a game show.

I hope the kiddos have an insanely awesome day! 

Other things I need to do is really come up with a clear meal plan instead of things being all over the place. For right now this is how it looks. 

Today: Chicken Helper & Steamed Veggies with cheese sauce (thinking I can just melt some velveeta in a pan that should work)

Thursday: Royal Round Steak (I wonder if I should try to remember to take pictures and give this a new posting by itself since it is just mixed in with one of my blogs)

Friday: Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

Saturday: Make your own pizza (which note to self I need to check around for pizza crust I hate making my own)

Sunday: Heck if I know yet. Maybe Chili Dogs? We'll have to see. 

As you can see I'm disorganized as all get out hopefully by next week I'll be ready to put things in their proper order. 

Well I guess it's 8 o'clock I better finish getting ready for work! 

Have a great day!

Catching up on Going Ons

So I said I was going to get better right? Oops! Sorry!! Work has made my brain MUSH now that I've had LOTO (Lockout Tagout) dropped on my lap. Plus things with the kids and getting ready for school... it's just been busy!

So let's do some recapping and maybe later this month I can get back to posting more regularly since our schedules will be settling into the school year functions.

Well first off I've done a lot of blackberry picking and with the final push of help from my friend and her kids I got enough blackberries to do some jelly.

So I got a big stock pot to start boiling them down. I actually burnt some to the bottom! It took awhile because you want to do this on low heat but you also need to get it to a simmer so you kind of heat it up then slow it down and well... yeah... but I made sure to be careful and not scrape the bottom so I didn't have a burnt taste! 

It really looks like I was murdering someone and it was SO thick that I talked to a friend of mine and we think we should use blackberry juice this halloween because we want to throw a bit halloween scary bash like you read and see on these classic shows. I remember a few of those when I was a kid but not many and over the years I haven't heard of anyone doing them any more so that's our plan!

Straining things through to try and get it as pulp and seed free as possible after using cheesecloth was a long process but I didn't feel like buying a jelly bag.

I made blackberry jam and then because I was low on blackberry juice by just a bit for a second batch I cut it with pure apple juice and it came out good. 

Do you ever buy things discounted for quick sale? It's really how we get buy over here. I vacuum sealed the broccoli and other veggies and some of the green beans and then put them in the freezer where they will last much longer! Though with a couple pounds of the green beans I trimmed them up and made dilly beans! If you like things pickled and you have a bunch of green beans and no pressure canner than pickle them! Normally green beans have such a low acidity that you have to pressure can them but when pickling you don't need to worry about that and a water bath works just dandy. 

This was my freebies for this week (left). I just got a bunch of freebies last week too (right). I had fallen behind on using my coupons but with Kroger having their Freebie Fridays it's put me back on a bit of a coupon trip. 

Sadly coupons can't help with everything so I dive into the discount bin.
Do you ever buy damaged goods? Some people frown upon it I know I used to. Now though it is nearly a way of life. I check to make sure dents in the cans aren't so sharp that there is a chance of them being punctured and that bags in boxes are still properly sealed.
This is my purchase today.

For a grand total of $12.14

Earlier this week I went to the grocery store and found damaged boxes of cereal on sale. 

 6 boxes of cereal for $6.84

I made sure to check the bags inside to assure the cereal was still okay and truthfully what was wrong with this cereal is the boxes were damaged and nothing else.

Now there is a store in town that will sell damaged and out of date food but I avoid that place mainly because I don't want to check the date on everything that is one thing I am still picky on. But I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to illness especially food borne illness.

That is pretty much what is up there in the kitchen.
The girls came home last Wednesday from Oregon and it was nice to have them home though they were spoiled rotten and it was very apparent so there were a few tiffs as they had to relearn what their mother will put up with.
I took them out to Walmart and we bought fishing poles and then grabbed some dinner and went out to the park. It was expensive to buy fishing stuff but as I told them as long as it is well taken care of it will last them for years to come. We also brought the bread to feed the ducks.

 My husband of course did not do any fishing he isn't much of an outdoor person but he did come out with us and and sat down with a book.

 Other then that Saturday Peter took Katherine to a local gaming shop to play Pokemon which we hope will help her get involved with other kids. We are working hard trying to help her overcome having her heart on her sleeve which gets her in trouble at school. Brielle will start going to Friday Night Magic (also a card game group) with Peter too so both the kids have an activity that isn't them sitting in front of their computers. Peter and I are trying a LARP (live action role playing) that some of our friends play because Peter and I realize we are hermits and we really should learn to socialize also. We've been bad about that over the years either because we were working on our marriage or work had us completely spinning around.

Peter also ended up buying a new TV (I'm not exactly sure WHY we need a 60" TV but he paid for it out of side jobs he's been taking the last several months). Tonight we go out and get the TV Stand and start moving around a lot of furniture.

The kids are currently in South Carolina and we will get them back next week before school starts on Wednesday.
On Monday before I took the kids down to Nashville to catch their flight I took Brielle down to the Orthodontist where she had her braces put on.

We are on a 5 year journey with the orthodontist and already Brielle has several appointments set up for the next two months as we start down this path. 

While for now it may be painful and annoying I hope later in life she will appreciate it. My parents were never able to get braces for me so I especially know how much your smile can plague you over the years. 

She's being a trooper and I'm proud of her. 

Yesterday, Thursday, I did Brielle's school registration for 8th grade and then turned around and took care of Katherine's 4th grade registration. Things are getting set and they are moving fast! 

Well I think that about sums things up for the time being. With any luck life will start to calm down and maybe I can find more time to sit at the computer and write something more meaningful and helpful to everyone. 

4th of July Mini-Vacation

 Yup, I know I'm behind on posting again. Sorry! Seriously I'll get my act together once the kids get home but that's a different story. Think I'll split stuff into two blogs this one for 4th of July and the next about what's been going on otherwise.

On the 3rd of July Peter and I decided to go to Panther Creek to watch the fireworks display even though the girls weren't with us. It sounds odd but that park does it a day early. On the 4th the city had canceled it's fireworks due to threat of rain so I was doubly happy about having decided to go to Panther Creek. On the 4th we went to a friends place out on the river where he had a big firework show and a potluck. I brought my chocolate-peanut butter pudding pie and it went over well. And I got to learn how to play corn hole. It felt wonderful that night more like Fall than July.

We took it easy the next day and then Saturday we took a bit of a long drive out to the Renaissance Festival. The jousting was great though it was funny because most of the day it was raining off and on I guess they decided that a couple of the horses should go out on the field  so our knight (seen below) was on foot. They were all tremendously funny.

There were singers of Peter's People in the dining hall. Pirate songs. I'm surprised he didn't buy a CD.

 And then a couple of fools up on stage.

There was a maypole that people did. I kind of wish I got in on it but my anxiety was at an all time high as I was getting used to the new surroundings. It was a very sad looking maypole when they got 'done' with it.

We got back in town after a day at the Renaissance Festival and went out for a nice dinner. For the life of me I can't remember what we did Sunday but that's okay.

So that was our 4 day mini-vacation since the kiddos have been gone this summer Pete and I haven't taken nearly as much true down time as we probably should have.
Well I've got to get to work I'll try and force myself to sit down and write again about my adventures in blackberrys and the family situation.