Kevin Mystery Picture

The girls and I made a batch of homemade ice cream today.  Dh never even knew.  Boy, was it good.

Let's see what Kevin's been up to, shall we?

The good part is that flag is hung correctly even though it may not look like it.  But they are all pledging allegiance to . . . a bottle of orange juice . . . ?  A squeeze container of honey?  A Mountain Dew?

Two stories

Today the Modest Mom posted a thoughtful essay:

She woke up early and was eager to get her errands done for the day. It was a hot summer day, and she pulled her hair back in a clip and headed off to the store. Grabbing her cart and list in hand she started putting the produce in her cart. As she glanced up she noticed two teenage girls looking at her and giggling. Oh well. Girls do that. The next aisle over an older man looking at the bread looked up in amazement at her, and then a look of dismay came on his face. He quickly looked away.

 

She couldn’t figure out what was wrong! Maybe she had mismatched socks on or something. No, she glanced down at her feet and remembered she had sandals on. Arriving at the end of the aisle she met the store manager. He looked upset and was headed her way! She frantically wondered if she had parked in a handicap spot or something. When he approached her, he was quite adamant as he declared,

 

“Excuse me Ma’am, we are going to need to ask you to leave.”

 

“What?” She exclaimed. “What on earth is wrong?”

 

He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable.

 

“Ma’am, we require people to be dressed in this store. All you have on is your bra and underwear.”

In dismay and horror she glanced down, and sure enough, he was right. All she had on was her white lacy bra, and her matching white Hanes Her Way brand underwear. She let out a shriek, grabbed her purse and ran to her car. She was so mortified! How could she have been in such a hurry that she forgot to put on her little sundress over her underclothes?

…………………………

In a grocery store a few miles up the road, a 19 year old college student was excited that she had a free day off college. Her friends had all planned to meet at the beach for a fun day of swimming and laying out. She loved to bring snacks to such gatherings, so she ran in the store first to pick up some cookies and bottled water to bring along.

This young lady was beautiful, and while she tried to ignore the admiring looks she got (mostly from young men), she knew in her heart that she was attracting attention – and she liked it. She went to pay for her food, and was pleased to see it was the manager of the store. He was a good friend of her dad’s, so they chatted pleasantly for a few minutes. She hopped in her car and before she drove away she glanced at her swimming suit.

“This is my favorite swimsuit!” she thought to herself. “The yellow and white polka dots on this bikini are so vintage and cute. The girls are just going to love it when they see it!”

Two different women, two different stories (fictional). But are they really so different?

source for bikini picture

Casual summer Pantry Challenge

Jessica at Life As Mom is having another Pantry Challenge to winnow down her pantry and freezers.  I wasn't calling it that, but I haven't posted a menu for several Sundays because I'm doing the same thing: eating down my food storage.

Here's the things though, she's feeding eight people, including some teenage boys and is spending "only" $100/week on food, which is half her normal budget.  With our six here, but much smaller eaters, if I spent $50 a week during the challenge, that would be about the equivalent.  I can do that easily.  Now, I will say she feeds her family lots of organic food and I don't care much about organics, so that would account for part of the difference in what we spend.

That said, here is tonight's dinner from the pantry:

The soup turned out better than I expected and better than it looks here.  It's a can of mixed vegetables, a jar of my canned diced tomatoes, a sprinkle of dried onions and black pepper, a tablespoon of beef buillon, a couple cups of water, and some large spoonsful of leftover white beans and ham.  It was really delicious!

The ice cream was from this easy recipe:

Simple Vanilla Ice Cream

Summary: adapted from the booklet that came with the Cuisinart ICE-20

Ingredients

• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the milk and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Evaporated sugar cane juice takes a little longer to dissolve than regular granulated sugar. Some grains didn’t completely dissolve, but I was okay with that.
2. Stir in the cream and vanilla.
3. Freeze in the ice cream machine according to the directions provided by the manufacturer of your particular machine.
4. Once the ice cream has thickened, eat immediately as soft serve ice cream or transfer it to an airtight container and store in the freezer for an additional 2 hours or more.

Preparation time: 5 minute(s)
Cooking time: 30 minute(s)

Number of servings (yield): 8

Have you ever had one of these useful things?

When my mom moved here she was eligible for a handicapped placard for the car.  The two of us go a few places that have handicapped parking spaces and let me tell you, it's very convenient to have the placard!  I'm always glad when she doesn't have to walk far thanks to using it.

Great low-tech library activity

Several Saturdays a month our library had a good kids' activity.  Here is the prep for it:

 Put up some tables, including one lying flat on the floor with its legs still folded up.

Put out lots of bins FULL of Lego pieces. 

Let the kids create.

After the children make their pieces, they put them on that library cart behind Caroline and they go into a display case.  The next time we go to the library we'll be able to see the girls' creations.  And although we will be going back on Thursday anyway, you can bet the girls will not let me forget!

A few seasonal questions

What is top of mind for you at this time of year?

The heat!  It is really hot in my part of the country and my house is hard to cool.

What, if anything, do you have upcoming that you are starting to think about or plan for?

My children go back to school in less than a month, so I'm starting to think about new clothes (middle school!) and new schedules with these children in more than one school for the first time ever.

What, if anything, is on your to-do list this time of year that is different than your list from other times of year?

I have more library visits and kid-centered activities on the schedule at this time of year.  I also do my best to avoid using my oven, so we eat a little differently in the summer and I'm always looking for new oven-less dinners.

The two middle schoolers running errands with me in the heat.

A patriotic celebration!

This morning was our breakfast at the park.  We started off singing The Star Spangled Banner a'capella with lovely harmony.  Such good singers we were. :-)

There was a LOT of food and everyone enjoyed eating and chatting, and then there were gunny sack races, throwing games, and a water balloon fight.  It was a great start to a wonderful day on which to be proud of our country.

Getting ready for the Independence Day breakfast

Tomorrow morning is a church pot luck breakfast at the park.  There will be games and fun in addition to a breakfast.

I like to make cinnamon rolls and decided to make them for this event.  Problem:  the breakfast will be at 8 am and I work from 4:30 am until 8:00 am.  Refridgerator rolls to the rescue!

I made the pans of rolls and put them in the fridge without allowing them to rise in the pans.

 The next morning I took them out.  You can see they are slightly risen.

 I popped the pans into the oven while I worked and you can see the hot and delicious results with virtually no work on the morning of the event.

Random Kevin picture

In straightening up for the weekend wedding, I came across Kevin's disc (ahem . . . again).  So here is a completely random picture and afterward, my comments:

Oh my.  I have no idea what to say about this because I don't know what it mean.  "Questions for Two"??  Maybe Kevin and his companion held up this sign on the street to let people know they could stop and ask a Mormon missionary any question they wanted to know?

Mute Monday (because I can't make it be Wordless Wednesday!)