I promised!

I promised I'd post three times this week and I've only done it once!!  So I'll post one more time tonight and hope I can get to tomorrow.

We've been having a bit of a "thing" going on around here.  If you guys could pray for us, that would be wonderful.

Today I had to go to church to do my regular work for Sunday morning but also work on stuff for Sunday night.  Sunday night will be our annual dinner/budget vote and it's so much fun.  A potluck dinner for 650 people will always be interesting and with this creative crew at church makes it even moreso!  We'll have games, have a slideshow of a summary of the year's ministries, meet the new deacons, vote on the budget and eat lots of food!  :D  But since I do all the graphics, I had to put all that together today.  I was planning on going up on Wednesday but because of the thing going on at church, I just couldn't face anyone at that point.  So 8 hours put in today and I'm sure at least another 2 tomorrow should get us to the point of being done.

One thing that I'm looking forward to is the worship time!  Hubby will be leading his old worship team and it should be some great music and a great time to be back with our WHOLE church family to worship our Savior.  :)

OH!!  Then Sunday, we have a guest speaker/preacher coming to our church campus!  Tim Smith is a parent coach and he's got some great stuff on parenting.  He was a pastor but left that ministry to further the ministry to families in crisis and he's since written numerous books and has been on national TV.  Hubby will pick him up from the airport tomorrow night, go to dinner with him and then they'll be coming back here.  Tim will stay with us.  Then we'll be off to church in the morning so his stay will be short but hopefully we'll have a great visit since Tim is a good friend of our church's.   He actually did the very first "event" at the new church campus so it will be exciting to have him back again now with the 6 month old church!!

So that's what's going on around here.  Lots of "stuff".  Some good, some not so good.  But I have to say that God has placed some very dear people in our path and in our lives and I love them dearly.  :)  What a blessing it is to have godly friends!

I really need to get on the ball!! Sorry!

Once again, I'm slacking off.  I am determined to post 3 times this week and 2 times on the cooking blog even if it kills me!  Well, it won't kill me but you know what I mean!!

For now, I'll post my menu for the week.  We've got a little craziness this week and a bit more next week so the menu reflects that.  :)

Monday (taking care of horses by 4:30 and annual budget meeting at church at 7) - Roast beef, baked potatoes, gravy, green beans
Tuesday (worship leader's meeting at church at 7) - Penne a la vodka, salad
Wednesday (ballet at 4, church at 7) - "Good Salad" (a salad made with greens, chicken, blue cheese, mandarin oranges, glazed walnuts, craisins and a dressing of 1 part honey to two parts balsamic vinegar), bread
Thursday (taking care of horses and riding so home by 5:30) - Pineapple pork chops, rice, peas
Friday (work) - hubby and I go out for dinner and kids are "fend for yourself"
Saturday (picking up guest speaker at 7 from airport) - most likely going out to eat with the man who's guest preaching on Sunday
Sunday (will most likely take guest preacher out for lunch then we have our annual dinner at church) - dinner at church - I'm making pulled pork and a side dish but don't know what yet to make for the side

So there you go.  A bit busy but not terrible.  :)

Anyone want snow? We have a bit to spare!

Oh my stars, has January been a prolific month when it comes to snow.  We're about an hour outside of New York City on Long Island and I just heard on the news that we right now stand as the snowiest January in history for Central Park (and most other areas around here) and with just .9 inches more of snow, this will be the snowiest month in HISTORY (well, since they started keeping track of these things)!!  All this week we kept hearing about a "disruptive snow event" on Wednesday but it just seemed like this would be the kind of storm that they could only properly predict close to the event itself.  Well, Tuesday night, they said that we would have flurries in the morning and then we'd have the afternoon with nothing and by rush hour, it would start up again and give us significant snowfall - 4-8" was the predicted total.  They couldn't have been more wrong.

So it started snowing around 9 am yesterday.  The snow that was supposed to stop at noon finally stopped at 4.  The "little to no accumulation" ended up being 4".  Then we DID have a lull for a little while only to have freezing rain step in around 9 pm.  By 11 pm when I went to bed, it was white out conditions!!  By now, they were saying that we should see an additional 4-8" of snow.  GULP!!  So off to bed we went.  I took my computer so that I could check for school closings (both my girls commute to college) and when I woke up at 3 am, I decided to check the computer - nothing for my girls but lots of delayed openings.  I decided to get up to see what I could see and I just about had my chin hit the kitchen floor when I looked out the front window.  My car is a Dodge Grand Caravan but it was looking more like the Sprinter - it was covered in no less than 15" of snow.  I could see the once bare driveway now had snow up to the top of my wheels!!  ALL of the trees were drooping heavily from the weight of the snow.  I went back to bed for a few hours and then got up at 5:30 to see the damage.  19" of snow.  Fortunately my one daughter's college was cancelled but the other daughter's was just a delayed opening at 10:30.  UGH!!  We figured we'd send her on the train but the problem was the train system had shut down!  Finally at 7:30, they too decided to cancel school for the day.  Thank heavens because it was 12:30 before our driveway was finally fully snowblowed, shoveled and scraped.

So, without further adeau, I'll share some photos with you.  The "before" pics were taken yesterday afternoon after the 4" snow and then of course the "afters" were taken today.  Enjoy the winter wonderland!!

My back patio set before and after (the poles above support an awning in the summer)

My street and mailbox - not perfectly the same picture but you can see the difference in the mailbox.  The second picture shows the snow plow that was stuck overnight as well.

My minivan in the driveway.  When the snow first started at 9, the driveway was complete blacktop.  That's our goal in the winter - to keep it as clear and safe as possible.  So you can see in the first picture, it's about 4" on the ground.  

The children's little picnic table in our backyard

 Now it's just a lump!  LOL

Just a pretty view of the backyard.  Those branches out there that are down to the snow are usually about 8' off the ground.

My two little ones, Robby (10) and Joanna (8) on the driveway.  You can see it's almost to their waists!!

No way!! It's been MONTHS since I posted!!

Wow!!  I didn't realize just how long it's been!  I thought it was since just before Christmas!  Oops!!  Well, I'll update on what's going on.

Not much.  Tee-hee.  Actually, I've been sick since before Christmas with some sort of virus that's causes asthma and I've been coughing all this time.  I went to the doctor a couple of weeks after getting sick and was put on an inhaled steroid and some cough medicine but the cough medicine didn't work.  The next week they tried an antibiotic and that didn't work.  I was finally beginning to feel a little better and then it hit again - the exact same thing!!  So off to the doctor I went again and I was put back on the steroid inhaler  and a few days later I ended up at the pulmonologist.  He put me on oral steroids last week and MAN, does that hurt!!  But it seemed to help a bit and when I saw him yesterday, he said I still have some inflammation and so to stay on the inhaled steroid for 2 weeks but if I'm still coughing to come back.  Today is a particularly bad day and I used the rescue inhaler 2x and it didn't seem to help for more than about 30 minutes each time.  This REALLY stinks.

I have a few new posts I'll be posting in the next few days.  They've been rolling around in my head and I want to get them out of here.  If anyone is still here, watch for them!  :)  In the meantime, I started another blog of just recipes.  It's www.cookingonthesound.blogspot.com  I have just a few recipes on there but I want to have one place on the internet where I have all of my recipes so I figured why not do a new blog??!!  So there you go.  :)

Menu Planning Monday

K - just sat down to plan out the week's menu since I have my order in with the delivery service Peapod and I can edit it until 3pm today.  It will be delivered between 9:30 am and 1 pm tomorrow and I need to be sure that it actually has what I need!!  :)  So I sat down with Bob to plan it out.  Here we go:

Monday - Roasted Tomato Pasta, bread, salad
Tuesday - Helen's Mac and Cheese, salad, cake (Bob's 50th birthday!!)
Wednesday - Boilermaker Tailgate Chili, salad
Thursday - Sauerbraten, Red Cabbage, Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli
Friday - eat out
Saturday - Honey Mustard Chicken, roasted red and purple potatoes, green beans
Sunday - after church - taco soup
               dinner - a nice big dinner salad with chicken, mandarin oranges, blue cheese, craisins and stuff

Now to go add the things I need to my order!

"What's For Dinner??" menu plan

So I sat down to menu plan and I have a plan but my guess is that it's certainly not going to reflect reality beyond, say, Thursday.  But that's OK.  I'm willing to be flexible.  :)

Monday - Taco Soup
Tuesday - Ham, corn casserole, scallopped potatoes, peas
Wednesday - Pasta with a crockpot meat ragu, salad
Thursday - Baked chicken with acorn squash, broccoli
Friday - BBQ Ribs, cole slaw, sliced tomatoes
Saturday - Chicken Pot Pie, salad
Sunday - French dip sandwiches, salad

The reason I'm not sure about the weekend is that we have to see what's going on with "plans & the weather".  I planned the ribs for Friday because I'm out all day between work and homeschool group so that will be quick and easy (the ribs are from the grocery store, precooked and only take about 15 minutes on the grill).  I have the ingredients for the chicken pot pie in the freezer so I can make that quickly and easily.  The French dip sandwiches will find me buying rolls next weekend but the rest of the stuff I have on hand and if we have a change in plans, I can easily bump that to Monday.

I have to say, I love having the menu planned for the week!!

Had our first "Outdoor Service" of Island Christian Church

This week the hotel was already booked so we had to find another location to meet.  Bob went and found a local park that had miniature golf, a driving range, go carts, laser tag and batting cages along with a great covered picnic area.  So we had our services there today.  Two days ago, I was sitting here on my living room couch at 9 pm sweating like a pig and needing to go shower before bed and today for our services, we all should have had our winter coats!!  Brrrr!!  But it was wonderful none-the-less and we had a great group of people there.  Today was Bob's first time preaching for the new church and I think he did a great job.  :)  Here are some photos to share: