more bling, Walmart and a busy week

So I’m supposed to be working on the grocery list so I can get in and out of Wallyworld early tomorrow and be done with it.

But I’m here.

Sometimes I just don’t want to think about what we’re going to eat. And on a week that celebrates the turkey it’s kind of hard for me to decide what I should make.

Cuz I cook with chicken and turkey every day.

But I don’t make cranberry salad and pumpkin pie every day. Looking forward to those.

There is just so much on my heart today. I just feel so full. But it’s a holiday week and I know you girls just aren’t going to be around as much. And I know it’s the stuff that can take it out of me..not grief stuff..God stuff. Perhaps I’ll write and wait to post. Perhaps I’ll just go for it. Or perhaps it won’t happen.

This week will be busy, even though we aren’t doing school. Well, we aren’t doing the academics. We’re doing PE. That gets us one more week closer to being done with it. On this schedule, we will be done with PE when we break for Christmas. We’re loving that.

I made a birthday present to send to someone I love. Look familiar?

I made mine and wore it out shopping yesterday and got so many compliments on it that I knew I needed to make one as a gift (so I ran out late yesterday, bought the stuff and made it so I can drop it in the mail tomorrow morning). I look at it and can’t believe I’m wearing something so cool.

And I made it.

Well, I guess I’d better get back to the grocery list. It’s not going to make itself. What are you up to this week?

homemade bling

This little elf has been busy.

The four on the left are Christmas presents and the two on the right are mine.

I love the one with the big cross and all the pearls.

I also love the purple one with the glass piece on the end.

Ya know..that might be the back..but it’s a really pretty purple flower.

It’s been fun doing something a little different.

But I need to get going on scapbook calendars so they’ll be ready for Christmas.

Have you started Christmas shopping/crafting yet?

mini posts

Look a little closer. 

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Why yes, as a matter of fact, I *am* a germaphobe in the kitchen.

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Somebody’s excited about something. (and just so ya know, hubs drew in the glasses and scar!)

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The end.

the blanket

I watched Marie Osmond the other day on Oprah as she talked about the sudden loss of her son to suicide. I wanted to see what she had to say. I am always interested in how people talk about loss. She talked about her son’s life and some of his struggles. And then she talked about when he died. And how he died. (he jumped from his apartment window)

One thing in particular she mentioned is that it will not “get better”. And she feels better since other people told her the same thing. That made me very sad. It makes life sound hopeless. I know she is Mormon, so she at least gives some sort of nod to some sort of god. But what a sad testament to her “religion”.

It just left me very sad for her and her family.

Because there is hope. The morning does come. I’m not here trying to say that I have everything figured out. Not in the least. But I know there is hope. And life to be had…even after a loss like that. (sudden or prolonged)

I remember the early days after Bub’s diagnosis and many other hard days. I say I remember them and yet I was in a fog and details are sketchy. I know the feeling and the thoughts and the sights and smells often more vividly than details..although I do remember many details I wish I could forget.

Yes, it was horrible…you could even call it a nightmare. But it was also like I was blanketed in something. That something was peace. I know that sounds crazy. And a part of me feels like a fake for saying that, because there were moments that peace was hard to find. Some moments left me struggling with every part of our reality. Those moments were hard, I won’t lie. I would be full of worry and anxiety. And looking around at everything going on filled me with fear.

But then God would draw me back to Himself and I would turn my focus to Him. Not the circumstances. When I focused only on Him and dwelt there, there was peace. And such a beautiful time of growth in Him.

It reminds me of a few sentences I read in Lysa TerKeurst’s book, Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl. It was like putting a huge ah-ha time of my life into words…

Then one day you take off the blanket of deep grief. You fold it neatly and tuck it away. You no longer hate it or resist it. For underneath it wondrous things have happened.

The why questions have been replaced with truths from God's Word. Verses that stung to read at first have now become the very lifeline you cling to. God's presence has fallen softly upon you and helped you see that good can come and will come to you and through you.

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There are days I still take out that blanket. Some days it is to grieve. Again. But other days…most days… when I take it out, it’s to remember all the things God taught me under it. And be thankful.

time for the news

In random news tonight…

I called Subway the next day and asked to speak to the manager. He didn’t act like he cared that much to hear about my issues. Why do I even bother???

And now for a personal interest story that’s sure to make you smile for all the wrong reasons….

Today I went to Kroger, the orthodontist’s office and out to lunch with friends. And then came home and realized there was a hole in my jeans at the top corner of one of the back pockets. And it flashed pink checked panties out the a little smaller than a dime hole. All day long. Clearly I need to spend a wee bit more time reintroducing myself to my clothing in between seasons before I go gallivantin’ all over town thinking everythang’s fine.'

You’re welcome.

And now for a nice fluff piece to end this newscast…

When we got back from Disney, I just pretty much threw a lot of the random stuff in the middle of the living room floor as I was weeding things out to find clothes to wash. That includes the leis we were given as we entered the Polynesian.

  

The cat seems fascinated with them and enjoys curling up behind them, putting her nose in them, laying near them…whatever strikes her fancy.

It’s so cute, we don’t want to take them away from her.

Well, I guess that wraps up tonight’s random newscast. Good night, y’all.

I’d rather walk

This is a rant. I think I’ll just say that up front and save ya the time of wondering. For two or three seconds.

Go grab yourself a snack and some sweet tea. I’ll wait. : )

Anyway…tonight hubs and I walked into Subway to get sandwiches for the three of us. The place wasn’t very busy. Hubs says it never is in the evenings. And he should know because he get recruited sometimes to run over there and grab a bite for us on hectic nights.

As soon as I got up to the counter to order my sandwich, I noticed it. The area where the meats were kept was really bad off. I had to stand there and decide if I was going to order food for myself or not. I have walked out at a different Subway before over hygiene issues before I even got to the sandwich part. (I had an employee blow up a glove in his mouth and then put it on. Ummm..PASS. I told the lady next to him and she got mad at me for walking with half ordered food. That place is no longer open. I’m not shocked.)

For some crazy reason I opted to go ahead. I always feel like a stick in the mud and I am well known among all my friends as the biggest germaphobe around. So! We ordered. The little lunch meat cubbies didn’t have any lids at all (but I could see frost build up inside them.. so I could tell it was cold, thankfully). And there were bits of tuna salad (a food highly questionable for food poisoning due to mayo) on the outsides of the bins at the tops and little chunks of chicken were strewn about. Those two places were generally disgusting. But the places where the regular meats were didn’t look bad. But overall, the whole area needed a wipe-down. And I already will never order a footlong because the knife they cut it with is always disgusto.

Anyway..I usually just get it with vinegar as a dressing, so I asked for that. He picked up the bottle and it had an olive on the mouth of the container. So he poured and it fell into my sammie! At that point, I made a comment to my hubby wondering if I was going to be able to eat ‘that’. The employee looked at me like he couldn’t figure out my problem. But it gets better.

When we got ready to pay, another employee took my hubby’s credit card with his gloved hand. Um…I thought they were supposed to take off the gloves to do the payment and then wash up and reglove for the next person. I watched as we left and he never took off his gloves. But we were the only people in there at the time and I turned to look back again after we left and they were both in the back. Meaning that neither of them saw fit to clean up the filthy areas I noticed plainly.

They should be glad I don’t have an iPhone or I would have taken a picture of that! And they’d better be glad I wasn’t a mystery shopper either, cuz I couldn’t say many nice things about them.

I looked up corporate for Subway and found the complaint form and it asks for your street address and your email as required fields. Um..I don’t really want to shout out my home address to disgruntled ratted out employees. Gimme a break. That’s why I never turned in the other place that used gloves as balloon practice. *eye roll* It almost feels like they don’t want to know about problems in their stores.

I just get tired of this sort of thing. These kids work for almost nothing most of the time and there is little supervision on the weekends especially. And I don’t get a discount because they’re doing a shoddy job. It just makes me sad to see that work ethic, in many cases, is a thing of the past. When and where are they ever going to learn what is required of them if nobody will teach them or hold their feet to the fire to make sure they do as they’re told?

As for my beloved Subway around the corner? I think I’d rather walk from now on.

*as a side note, many years ago, we would drive 15 minutes away from our house and pass the grody Subway with the balloon guy, to get to a Subway with an amazing manager. That place was SPOTLESS…even during the lunch rush. He was sort of nerdy and kind of like the Cliff Claven of Subway rules and regulations and I learned a lot from eating in  his restaurant and listening to him talk about how things are supposed to be. And that’s one of the reasons seeing what I saw tonight made me so mad…it’s not like they don’t have rules. It’s just lazy managers and employees aren’t following them.

the food and the last day (WDW ‘10)

As I mentioned before, I am trying not to tell every single moment and just keep it to the highlights but…there’s just too much good stuff. : )

Anyway…

We really enjoyed some of our meals while at WDW. There is a place in Disney’s Hollywood Studios that’s called The Sci-Fi. It’s like an indoor drive in theater complete with cars as tables…the girl and I ate in the front seat and hubs ate in the back. We all faced forward to watch the movie reel on the screen. And we could look up at the ‘stars’ while we ate and watched. Very clever.

That’s a bad picture from our ‘car’ as we ate. The movie reel includes old sci-fi and cartoons and shorts. It’s very cute. We enjoyed our meal there. Although this place gets some bad reviews for food, we had a pleasant experience in that regard. I had a rather tasty burger, a very nostalgic cucumber salad and apple crisp for dessert. And it was deelish! The girl had a pasta salad and I’m thinking the hubs had a burger too. Aaaand they had vanilla coke, so my peeps were lovin’ it. A super fun experience for all.

In EPCOT, we ate at Teppan Edo, which is just an interesting cultural experience.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but our chef cut up onions and made a ‘Mickey’ and then a smaller ‘Minnie’. Very cute. We ate at a table with a family from Missouri and on the other side of the table was a French family. The French dad had a hard time understanding English with a Japanese accent, so I had to interpret for him. I worried my Texas accent wouldn’t be much better, but he seemed to understand what I was saying.

The girl and I split a funnel cake in EPCOT in the world showcase. Oh my gosh…I know that’s like state fair food compared to a lot of the other offerings there (Food and Wine festival was going on), but it was sooo good.

You can see her Mickey shirt in the pic too. : )

This was another common sight on our lunch trays. CHOCOLATE CAKE. Yum! The desserts at Disney are really good and even easy stuff like cake was very tasty.

We had some forgettable meals in the parks..one of which was chicken fingers squatting in front of a bench. You definitely win some and lose some.

Our last night there we ate at Kona at our resort and had the most amazing pineapple upside down cake. Oh. My. Gosh. But I didn’t take a picture of it because…

I was sick. I got sick Thursday night with what I later figured out/found out was a sinus infection. And I’m still getting over it.

So our last day/Friday we got up and headed to Downtown Disney to just hang out and shop.

This Woody is made out of LEGOS.

We did some shopping and ate lunch and returned to the room. We were all tired so we just laid around and rested.

After dinner at Kona, hubs and the girl played in the arcade and I sat on a bench by the water and just looked at the lights and took in the evening. 

When it got dark, we headed down to the dock to watch a little water parade/pageant thing they do. It’s not a big thing, but a fun way to end the night.

There were several floats and music and when all of them had gone by/been turned on, they all changed to flags and stars and played patriotic music.

After that, we went headed back for one more sleep so we could come home the next day. That was a long (and painful) day for this sick, stuffy girl.