Cheesecake is a good thing!

I should be walking right now, but I have a cheesecake in the oven and another small one waiting to go in. Tonight is the youth group's desert auction and I feel obligated as a youth group Sunday school teacher to donate along with my 2 child_units. I'm not sure what Em has in mind to make, I think it's going to be a chocolate cake with peanut butter (fudge like) frosting and chocolate curls to decorate the top. If I weren't on a stupid diet, I might bid on that one! Alex is probably going to make a Crescent Roll Cheesecake because it's not really that hard to do. Not that he couldn't, he HAS made Lemon Bars (from scratch) before. Woo Hooooo, I DID pass something on to my child_units....the ability to bake well!!!!!!! :) Tonight, the auction will be preceded by a baked potato dinner...another thing I shouldn't eat a lot of, but I'm not eating any starches all day so I can enjoy at least a small potato with all the trimmings.

It's been rather quiet around here today, since it's basketball Saturday. Alex and Em help out with the youth program, which Christen and D participate. They have a lot of fun, even Alex I'm sure, even though he probably wouldn't admit it. Everyone will be home a little after one and then the peace and quiet will be over.

Well, the peace ended soon than expected with a dish washing rebellion, therefore, I must go now.

Y'all enjoy the day,
Love Ya :)

Contemplations

I woke up this morning and showered without even being prodded. No, I do not like to get up on Sunday mornings, I know it's the good and right thing to do, but I can't help but feel that I'd much rather sleep in! As soon as I got out of the shower, Tom asked why I wasn't still in bed sleeping, to which I replied that I was getting ready for church....that's when he told me that they called while I was in the shower to let us know that church was canceled because of the lovely ice storm we were having!!! ARRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! OF ALL DAYS! The day that I ACTUALLY get up without complaint! *sigh* That was just a precursor to my afternoon. Everyone, but me of course, went to open gym to play basketball. I was having a lovely time just sitting in the peace and quiet watching the pre-race stuff on T.V., then everyone came home. OK, I knew they would be coming home, but did they have to come home with attitudes!?!? The second youngest child_unit has been very snippy lately and very argumentative, to the point where I've really wanted to just hang her up in a closet until after puberty hits! Most all of the child_units took their turns in making me feel like a complete failure as a parental_unit...but hey, par for the course I suppose. Needless to say, I cried, but I guess I'm over it now. Doesn't matter anyhow.

The rain has stopped for now, I'm not sure if they changed the forecast or not, but we're supposed to get an inch of snow tonight, on top of all the ice, then around 3 more inches during the day tomorrow. I kinda doubt that there will be school, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Em's supposed to have Basketball tournaments tomorrow too, I don't know if they'll still have them if school is closed. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I wish I were like some people and didn't form attachments to objects that were given to me as gifts or anything that I haven't used in years for that matter. I really want to be able to just throw things away, but can't. I need to get my bathroom cleaned out completely so that we can get it all fixed up....new shower, new floor, new cabinet, etc...so that we can finally get the house put up for sale. I just don't know what to do with everything that's in there.

I'm trying to figure out more fund raising ideas for the band. I think we're going to have a Monster Cookie sale at school sometime soon. I figure it costs somewhere around $24.00 to make a batch, which is approximately 12 dozen cookies. If my math is correct, or even close, that comes to somewhere around .17 cents for each cookie. We would sell each cookie for, say, $1 each, which would make our profit about $120....of course, if we made more than one batch, it would be more. I think it sounds like a good idea :) $120 is better than nothing, which is about what the school gives to the band now! I think a sucker sale would go over well too, but I don't think the school would do it for 2 reasons, one being that suckers 'aren't healthy' and second, they wouldn't want to have the mess of the wrappers and the sucker sticks...of course, there's only ONE person that would really have THAT problem!

I finished reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray", I'm not sure how I feel about the book. I guess I was expecting more. There were a lot of places in the book where there was just a lot of descriptions. I can't remember if I mentioned in my last post that there's a fun little mention of people from one of Jane Austen's books. I'm not going to tell you what the reference was, but I will tell you it's from Sense and Sensibility. A challenge I suppose, if you're up to it. I was rather amused when I read it! I've started to read Jane Eyre now, I can't wait to get through it because I already have the DVD. I'm not planning on watching the DVD until I read the book!

I think I'm going to end now because I want to see the end of the Daytona 500.

Y'all keep your umbrellas handy!
Love Ya :)

The Nights of the Parental_Units

One nice thing about the school's sporting events is the recognition of the parental_units. This 'unformally' formal event is held either before a game or in between JV and Varsity events. We mothers get a lovely corsage, which is usually a yellow carnation with maroon ribbons, and it's usually a lot of fun trying to pin that thing on without stabbing ourselves, let alone getting it to stay upright! I enjoy Parent's Night so much more now than I did a few years ago. Even though I'm a 'step' parental_unit to one, doesn't mean that I didn't deserve the recognition...but, that doesn't matter anymore. Any-who...tonight is Parent's Night for the girl's basketball team and tonight for the boys. Since I have child_units in both, I'll be getting 2 corsages this year. :)

I made fudge last night, it turned out quite yummy if I do say so myself...if there wasn't a game tonight, I would make some peanut butter fudge. I don't really think it'll get made at all this week considering there's a basketball game EVERY night this week!! Tom told me today that he was going to take me to Twining for Valentine's Day this Thursday....yeah, to Em's game!!!!!! But, that's OK...don't tell anyone, but I'm actually starting to enjoy basketball...shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....at least when my kids are playing. ;)

Friday is another band event that I get to chaperon! The Sr. Jazz band is going to CMU for Jazz Festival, which means I'll get to see BEN!!!! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hope I get to say hi to Ross and Isaiah too! I'm sure they'll all look past me to see if I'm carrying any cookies...hehehe. Maybe I'll try to bake before Friday...not sure yet though. About the Jazz band now..they're not doing too well according to their director, Em is doing great, but some of the other sections just don't seem to care to even try which is very sad...it's not the AGS band of even just 3 years ago...sad :(

Hmmm, it seems that my time has ran out, since i have to go and pick Em and her friend up from Jazz practice. By the way, did I mention that it's VERY cold! Yes, it was -22 F. wind chill this morning....BRRRRRRRRRR. We're supposed to get another snow storm tomorrow with 3-6 inches they say.

Y'all keep your tongues away from flag poles today!
Love Ya :)

The End

It's finally the end of the week, what a long week it was! There ended up being no school on Tuesday and Wednesday because of ice and 'well' below zero wind chill temps. It started to snow last night and we were all really surprised that there was school today, the weather was actually worse this morning than it was on Wednesday! I guess it turned out OK, they didn't have to cancel the boy's basketball game this evening and we even won! Of course, no thanks to the coach for the win tonight, but that's another blog sometime or maybe never. I will leave that at that for I do not wish to end this blog in a really, REALLY bad mood!

Tomorrow, Emily and I venture to Roscommon for district Sr. Solo/Ensemble. She definitely doesn't want to ride the bus because they have to leave around 6 in the morning. She doesn't even play until 11:38, so, I guess I will do my duty and be her personal driver. We should be home around 3 or so, so I guess it's not too long of a day. Em has signed up for a solo with her alto sax, a solo with the baritone sax and a quartet with 3 other sax players, I actually got to hear them play yesterday and if they don't score a 1, I'll be completely in shock! She actually had to pick out a different song for one of her solos because the piano accompaniment didn't match up in the same key. She got lucky and the first piece of music she found worked out for her.....whew!

I'm annoyed at the moment, but it's about something that will not be changing any time in the near future, I know this from previous experience, which means I just have to bite my tongue and smile....well, OK, I'm not gonna smile about it, but I suppose for peace, I have to bite my tongue. *ouch*

My eldest child_unit called me this morning!!!!!!! Yes, I smiled, it actually made my day!

I don't think I'll have any problems sleeping tonight. I'm fairly tired because I kept waking up through the night checking on the weather and wondering if school was going to be closed. To add to my lack of sleep, I walked 3.4 miles followed by 10 minutes with my weighted hula hoop and then arm curls. I still have to do some push-ups before I go to bed, which will probably be pretty soon since I'll want to get up a little early so that I can get a little walking in before we leave for the solo/ensemble. Hmmm, maybe sleeping in sounds a little better and then I can walk when we get home...yeah, that sounds like a better plan :)

I'm currently reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, it's been kind of slow to get into it. I suppose I could get into it a little more if I would just sit down and invest some time into it instead of reading for 5-10 min. a couple times a day. I actually have a lot of classics to read, the ones I'm really looking forward to are "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte and "The Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare. I've heard that the movie "10 Things I Hate About You" with Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles is based on that Shakespeare novel/story/play, I'm not quite sure what it is.

It truly drives me nuts when someone just paces around!!! Almost as bad as when someone you're sitting next to can't keep their legs still and sit there bouncing them, thus, bouncing the WHOLE area around you...OYE!

I'm hungry. I think I'm going to go now and get something to munch on.

Y'all read a classic tonight,
Love Ya :)