Summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime!

What is this dessert exactly??

Look at this container:

 Silly me, I thought I was buying ice cream.  What in the heck is "dairy dessert"??

Do you know about Sweet Tomatoes?

Strange name for a restaurant, I know!  It's my favorite fresh buffet restaurant.  Dh and I had dinner there the other night with NO children.  The only options there are salad, soup, pasta, a few cut fruits, a variety of breads/muffins, frozen yogurt, and soft drinks/milk/lemonade, coffee/tea.

 This was my initial plate of food.  The strawberry lemonade was delicious!

Some berry mousse and tapioca pudding.  On the right was some Moroccan lentil and garbazo soup.

I wish I could say this was all I ate.

Why do I bother?

My mom and three children had homemade pizza for dinner.  I made two medium pizzas so everyone would have plenty.  Bill came home late.  This is what was left:

A special treat for the girls and their visiting friend

Now where is that "laughing" emoticon??  After the other mom and I put together a surprise overnighter for my daughters and her daughter, I shopped at the grocery store to pick up the perfect treat.  Yes, ramen noodles.

Don't ask me why, but whenever Caroline thinks of ramen noodles, she thinks of her friend.  Since I don't buy ramen often, she and her sisters were delighted with their evening snack.  LOL

Independence Day!

"I love America,
Yes I do,
I love America through and through!"

From Brite Music "Take Your Hat Off." song 2.

The United States declared its independence from England on July 4, 1776.  At that time there were 13 states in the north east part of today's United States.  Today there are 50 states and the 50 white stars on the flag commemorate that.  The 13 stripes remind us of the 13 original states.  Our first president was George Washington and both the state of Washington and Washington, D.C. are named after him.

I love being an American!  (And am delighted to have friends from other wonderful countries who stop by my blog).

Over 7,000,000 names indexed on July 2!

This is a trophy I earned on Monday.  I am a regular volunteer with the 1940 Census Project via http://www.familysearch.org.  The goal is to index (type into a database every name and basic info from all the nearly 2 million pages) the 1940 US census in 5 months or less.  This database will then be available for anyone to search for FREE at the above address.  My assistance with the project was relatively modest (5 pages of 40 names each), but I'm glad to help make these records available in perpetuity at no cost to the searcher.

After the 1940 census is indexed, I'll go back to indexing the variety of records that are available to be indexed.

Anyone in the world with a connection to the Internet can index.  Try it!

Family Home Evening

This afternoon Caroline asked to give the FHE lesson and started looking through old copies of the Friend magazine for lesson ideas.  She chose a story from the Jauary 2011 Friend called The Cookie Solution, in which two boys become friends because one extended a hand of friendship to the other over a batch of homemade cookies.

It reminded me about making my own friend out of a potential enemy about 17 years ago.  That was over three ripe pears, not a batch of cookies, but it was a friendship that extended to the end of my elderly friend's life.

My Job Chart (.com)

A couple of years ago I read about www.myjobchart.com on a blog I read, and decided to check it out.

It's a program for parents and children to use collaboratively to list chores that need to be done and to list the rewards for doing those chores.

We don't always use it, and in fact, we use it mostly in the summer when we need a little more structure.  We don't pay our girls an allowance, not because we're opposed to it, but we just never have.  Each task is assigned points (by me) and each point (I have decided) is worth 1 cent.

Through myjobchart the girls can log on and see the tasks that need to be done each day.  Not all of them get done, but every one of them pays at least a little.

Last, I have set up the rewards section so the girls can buy something from Amazon.com with their points (a sponsor), or cash their points in for dollars.

Which would you rather do?  Make your bed or comb your hair?

note:  I am not affiliated with www.myjobchart.com, nor is this a sponsored post.

Meal Plan Sunday

Monday:   Pineapple-ginger flank steak from the freezer, with rice (didn't get to it last week)

[This was REALLY good.  I served it with quinoa plus watermelon balls.]

Tuesday:  Slow Cooker Big and Spicy Chicken Hoagies

Wednesday: Stouffer's Italian Lasagne from the freezer

Thursday:  Peanut butter waffle toast (new recipe--looks DIVINE!!)

Friday:  Pizza