Five Question Friday

This is my first time to participate in

Five Question Friday.

It is a weekly meme, with different questions each week!

1. Do you know what your REAL hair color is?

Yes, and unfortunately, since it has been way too long since I have had my highlights, everyone that sees me knows what my real hair color is too!  :)

2. Do you plan ahead for summer, or fly by the seat of your pants?

We usually plan some sort of family vacation,
and the older kids spend a week at a
Christian summer camp,
but other than that, we just kind of let things happen.

3. What is your favorite meal to cook?

I don't know that I have a specific single favorite meal,
but this potato cheese soup recipe
(linked to my recipe blog),
is one that is fast, easy, and delicious.
Everyone always likes it.  

4. Do you get offended by not receiving thank yous?

Thank you notes?
Not at all!
A verbal "thank you" when I give someone something is more than enough for me!

Save yourself some ink and a stamp when you come to my name on your thank you list!

Sorry Miss Manners...I've got bigger fish to fry than waiting by the mailbox for a thank you note!  :)

5. How did you meet your best friend?

I met my BFF, Teresa, in college at OBU in Arkadelphia! We were both in the same sorority (EEE). 

Right after Corey and I got married, I schemed with our other sweet friend Nancy, and we forcefully, I mean, thoughtfully set Teresa up on a blind date with Ky, Corey's best friend from high school. 

The rest is history!

5 kids, and almost 20 years later...
we still love to tell the story...and we are all still best buds!  :)

Here is a picture of me with Nancy (far left) and Teresa (far right) when we met for breakfast at Mimi's Cafe last year.

And here is a picture of Corey, me, Ky and Teresa with our youngest kiddos, Carson (the mystery man under the party hat), and Rachel as we celebrated New Years Eve a little over a year ago!

Love ya Teresa! 

Random Thoughts

As we head into the weekend, here are some random things that I have floating around in my head this morning. 

1) Last night Corey, the boys and I, went to see a preview performance of Caylie's show.

  

She is doing another preview performance as I speak type, and the official opening night is tonight.  There are two shows tomorrow, one on Sunday, and I can't even remember what next week's schedule is.

It keeps us running, but she really loves it, and she did a great job last night.

I love to hear her sing, and watch her dance, and see her expressions as she "does her thing" on stage!

She is so expressive, and enthusiastic!

Next Saturday afternoon, Corey is going to go to the matinee performance with his parents, then on Saturday night, my mom and I will go to the closing night performance.

I am looking forward to getting to see the show again, and being there for the final performance is always exciting.

2) For the previous two years, I have attended the Arkansas Homeschool Convention in Searcy.  I have enjoyed going, but had decided not to go this year.  

A couple of months ago, I heard about the
MidSouth Homeschool Convention

in Memphis, a convention I had never even known about previously.

(How that happened, I'm still not sure!)

The MidSouth convention is much bigger, and brings in great speakers, so I was really interested, but since Caylie's show was opening this weekend, and so much craziness comes along with that, I had decided that I would have to pass on attending this year.

Yesterday drove me crazy as I kept hearing of other moms that were heading to the convention!  I pulled up the schedule of sessions, and as I read through it, I wanted even more to be there!

I went to Corey and asked what he would think of me leaving at 6am this morning, and driving to Memphis, spending the night, and coming home tomorrow evening after the convention ends.

Although he knew that it would be a juggling act, he said that he could manage it, and that

I could go if I wanted to!

He's great about that kind of stuff.
We tend to be pretty spontaneous about things like this, but even so, as the night went on, and I realized that I wouldn't get home from Caylie's show last night until after 10, and that there were sooo many loose ends that I felt I would leave hanging if I took off this morning,

I decided that I would just not go.

  It would have been hectic, and tiring, but also very educational and inspiring, so I keep bouncing back and forth about whether or not I made the right decision.

3)  In other news, I posted here about how we missed the opportunity to sign Caylie up for the

1/2 marathon in Little Rock that she had been training for.

As a result, we found another 1/2 marathon near

Galveston, TX,

and decided to make that our family's Spring Break trip...

adding in some beach time, a fun water park, and a day trip to Houston.

Caylie has continued her training, but for the last couple of days,
she has had some pain at the bottom of her calf...in the area of her ankle.

She says that when she puts weight on the ball of her foot, that it hurts.

This is obviously not a good thing.

I don't want her to hurt herself more by continuing to run if she shouldn't,
but I also don't want her to have to miss the opportunity to meet a goal that she has been working toward!

  We are hoping that taking a few days off from running, will give her a chance to improve.

We will see.

Hope you have a great weekend!

A New Laundry System

I was just doing a little blog surfing, and came across a
new laundry system 

that I think I am going to try.

Laura, at orgjunkie.com,, wrote this post about how she has changed the way she does laundry.

Instead of doing what most of us do, and sorting all of the laundry by color, washing, and then separating each family member's clothing before returning it to their rooms, she has done something that 

I had never even thought of.

Each family member has a laundry hamper in their room, and each person has a day of the week for their laundry to be done.

Rather than separating laundry by color, 

each person's entire load gets washed together.

She adds 1/2 a cup of vinegar to the wash to keep the colors from running.  

(Red things are washed separately the first time.)

She says that none of her clothes have been damaged from not sorting by color.

I assume she is using cold water only.

I'm thinking that I will have a day each week (M-F) for each member of our family.

The older kids will do their own load on their day.

I would do a load of towels, and a load of sheets each week, for a total of 7 loads of laundry a week.

What I like about this system, is that it would save time by
eliminating the color sorting, and the family member sorting.

Socks might actually stay together, and be returned to the person that they belong to...as a set!  :)

The only part that I am hesitant about, is whites.  I like to wash my whites with bleach.
Maybe I could just do some whites that need to be bleached once a month or so. Hmmm.

There were lots of comments below Laura's post.
I skimmed over them, and they offer even more good tips.

Anything that might make laundry a little bit faster and easier, is worth a shot!

Do you have any tips for making laundry happen more smoothly at your house?

Writing the Waves,
Christi

Off To A Bumpy Start...

Yesterday, it was my day to drive Christian and some friends to Science CoOp.  

Everything went well.
I got them settled, and started the drive home.

As I passed over what looked like dirt in the road, I  suddenly felt a big bump!  

I slowed down, and quickly realized that something was wrong.

Thankfully I was just a few feet from a gas station, so I pulled in and called Corey.

To make a VERY long story short, we had to have the car towed to a dealership.  After FIVE hours, I finally drove away...only to return again today. Money that could have easily paid for some pretty window treatments, or a great entry table, or a beautiful new rug, 

was spent on a shiny new...

wheel and tire.

Ugh.

I just really dislike spending big money on such totally boring things, don't you?

When I got  home, for the first time all day, I started thinking about what I would make for dinner.  

I moped over to the refrigerator to take a look around, and before I knew it, I was pulling out everything, tossing this and that into the trash, and wiping down each of the shelves and drawers.  

 Almost an hour later, I had a very clean refrigerator!  

and a nice sense of accomplishment...

That is often the way projects end up getting tackled at my house..unexpectedly.  

One thing just leads to another.  

Today that unplanned little project was just what I needed!

Sometimes it is little things like this that make me feel better!

Writing the Waves,

Christi

Great Meal Planning Resource!

A couple of months ago, I discovered a great site to streamline our dinner planning process!  It is called e-mealz.com, and I have been loving it!

What hooked me into giving it a try was that since Caylie now has to eat gluten free, and I had no clue where to begin, e-mealz had a gluten free meal plan!  (They have plans for several diets...Weight Watchers, Diabetic, etc.)

Not only did I have a weekly meal plan laid out for me, but also the grocery list that is needed!  I can choose whether I want the list to be made for Wal-Mart shopping (taking into account the specials of that week!!!), or if I will be shopping at another grocery store.

For $1.25 a week, I just print out the menu, and the grocery list, and I'm good to go!  

We have been using a system of putting stars by each meal that we make from the printed out menus.  Meals that we definitely want to make again get 4 stars, and the ones that our family may not have loved quite as much, get fewer stars.  

Check it out!  It just might make your life a little bit easier!  

Writing the Waves,

Christi

Linking up at...

  

A Fun Little Find...

Today, I happened across two different blog sites that are designed with the intention of connecting Arkansas bloggers. Both seem to be pretty new.

If you are interested in checking them out, here are the links to Arkansas Women Bloggers and to Arkansas Bloggers. Just thought you might be interested!

Writing the Waves,
Christi

An Almost Empty Nest...

This weekend, Caylie and Christian are both away on a church retreat.

They are with the 6th through 8th graders from our new church. Caylie went to serve as kind of a high school mentor for the middle school girls. They were both very excited about the trip. They are at the same retreat center that Caylie attended last weekend with the high school kids from our previous church. I'm praying that they both have a wonderful weekend!

This evening, after we dropped Caylie and Christian off, Corey, Carson and I went to Chip's BBQ, one of our favorite, very casual restaurants. Although I have been trying to eat a little bit healthier lately, I had to have a piece of Chip's delicious chocolate pie tonight. Chip's is one of the very few restaurants where I always want to order dessert. Thankfully, we don't go too terribly often!

We got home a few hours ago, and have been watching the Olympics all evening. This is really my first night to spend much time watching the Olympics. It has been nice to just have an evening to relax, and not allow myself to worry about getting anything done. Right now, we are watching curling. I've gotta say...Corey and I both think that it is a very weird sport! We don't quite get it. :)

Anyway, tomorrow is supposed to be a beautiful day. After Corey goes to a short meeting in the morning, we might get out and do some work in our garage. It is screaming for some organization!

If the weather will cooperate, we would like to plan a yard sale within the next few weeks. It is amazing how quickly things accumulate! I think that my last yard sale was not much more than 6 months ago, but already, I feel like I'm drowning in extra "stuff". I can't wait to get rid of some things!

Writing the Waves,
Christi

How Cool Is That?!

We just finished watching American Idol, and are pretty excited!

We actually know someone that is "going to Hollywood"!

Charity is the talented, sweet, 16 year old, that was among the contestants featured tonight. She was shown working at her family's hair salon here in town.

Charity is a friend of Caylie's. They have attended church, and done theatre together. She and her family attend our previous church, where she sings occasionally, and she has also sung recently at our new church.

She's a sweet girl...one that we would love to see make it all the way!

Like Kris Allen (also from Arkansas!), she would be such a welcome change from many that seem to end up in the spotlight these days!

Keep your eye on her!

We're pulling for you Charity!

Writing the Waves,
Christi

Yum!

I haven't been taking much time to blog lately, so I'm going to have lots of catching up to do when I get back into the swing of things, but I figured that I could at least take time to cut and paste this wonderful recipe that I tried out last night. I found it on another blog, and just thought that it sounded good...it was! :)

Don't know what to make for dinner?

Gotcha covered!

Swiss Chicken

4 large skinless boneless chicken breasts
6 oz. Mozzarella or Swiss cheese slices (I did Mozzarella...but will also try it with Swiss!)
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
1/4 cup white cooking wine
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup herb-flavored crushed up Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix
1/2 stick butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place uncooked chicken in shallow buttered casserole dish. Layer cheese on top. Mix soup, wine, salt, pepper; pour over cheese. Sprinkle stuffing mix on top and drizzle with melted butter. Bake for 1 hour.

It's a keeper!

Writing the Waves,

Christi

Attitude of Gratitude

Gratitude...

I think that in order to keep perspective on things that seem to frustrate, or discourage us in our everyday life, it is important to frequently remind ourselves just how very blessed we really are. I have so much to be thankful for, and these are just a few things that come to mind immediately.

I could never write about gratitude without acknowledging Christ, who is my source of hope, both in my daily life, and my eternal life. I truly don't know how people manage to keep scraping along through the ups and downs of life without a greater purpose.

I think that there are probably days when we all just want to throw up our hands and throw in the towel! If it were not for having a greater purpose, I think that it would sometimes be difficult to stay motivated...to persevere and strive to move beyond the ditch that we sometimes find ourselves in.

Of course, there are countless other things that I am grateful for...my wonderful husband and children, my extended family, health, my church, God's faithful provision. I could go on and on, but I will stop there.

Just a little reality check!

Thank you God for the many, many blessings you have poured into my life! I pray that I will never cease to praise you for your faithful provisions!

Writing the Waves,
Christi

25 Random Things About Me...

Well, EVERYONE has been doing this. I was tagged to do it a couple of weeks ago, and have put it off because I thought it would take me too long to think of 25 things that wouldn't put everyone to sleep....but, here goes...

25 Random Things About Me...

1) I am as blind as a bat. I started wearing glasses in 2nd grade, and can't see past my nose (literally!) without contacts or glasses now. I really want to have surgery someday to correct that.

2) While in college, my family lived in Heidelberg, Germany, so I spent every Christmas and summer in Europe. I loved it there, and really dream of spending some time there with my husband and kids some day.

3) I met my husband, Corey, in the first class of our freshman year in college. We got married 4 years later, when we were 22. I am 10 days older than Corey, and he LOVES that!

4) Until this year, I didn't like to drink carbonated drinks. Just milk, water and juice...sometimes coffee. This year, I decided that I would make myself learn to like Diet Coke because I realized that I could really use that mid-day energy perk! It works!

5) I am really bad...I mean, really, really bad, with directions! You have no idea.

6) I am a homebody. I could stay at home for days on end, and be perfectly happy. I am never bored at home. I also don't have to have people around me all of the time to be happy.

7) I love to travel. Our family loves to see and experience new places together.

8) We love to go to Branson, MO! It is only about 3 hours away, and we would go a couple of times a year if we could!

9) I am not a phone person.

10) From kindergarten through 12th grade, I went to 9 different schools.

11) I recently started a blog. I hope it will become something valuable for our family to look back on over time. It is fun to do, and a good creative outlet!

12) I am very strong willed.

13) My faith in God is my rock.

14) I used to really, really want a pool in our back yard. Have one. Now, I really, really DON'T want a pool in our back yard!

15) Every season brings special things that I love. Fall and Spring are beautiful and I love the temperatures. Summer if full of fun, but I hate the heat. Winter...not very pretty, but I love Christmas, and actually like cold weather, and there is always at least a little hope of snow!

16) We have 3 kids. Caylie (15), Christian (11), and Carson (2 1/2). I LOVE being a mom! My children bring me sooo much joy! My Blessings!

17) I used to be a big shopper. Now, not so much. But since my 15 year old daughter is now a big shopper, I like to go, just to be with her! She is great! :)

18) Purpose Driven Life is my favorite book ever! I could read it over and over again.

19) I am a list person...very much a list person!

20) I consider myself a frustrated perfectionist. I like to have everything "just so", and can't ever get it all that way at the same time! Frustrating!

21) I prefer to stay up late and sleep late, but that is hard with kids, so I usually end up staying up late, and waking up at the same time as usual. I have learned that coffee is my friend.

22) I HATED high school and LOVED college!

23) I don't really mind doing dishes....but laundry, not my favorite...too many steps to get it all done!

24) I like decorating, and tweaking things inside the house, but yard work...not at all. Martha would shake her head at me.

25) Cooking and baking interest me, I'm just not very good at them...but I want to be! Maybe someday! :)