Yearly Archives: 2011

Wordy Wednesday: Moo to You, Too!

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I took a digital picture of a photograph we took on a trip years ago. Back then, we had a camera that used film. Remember those? Anyway, we were on a country road and pulled over to look at some cows. My husband started mooing (he sounds like a real cow), and so eventually all the cows out in the field came over to the fence and stared at us. It was the funniest thing! Our daughter, Christi, and I were laughing so hard that we had tears in our eyes.

*Note:  This is the real picture that we took, and it shows about half the cows.  I laid the photograph on a black piece of construction paper to take this digital picture with my camera.  These cows remind me of Chick-Fil-A cows.

Menu Plan Monday 9-19-11

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As I’m writing this on Sunday evening, I’m still thinking about the absolutely beautiful sunset sky we just saw.  There are storm clouds on several sides of us, and before the sun set, the colors were beautiful.  Plus there were some very interesting cloud formations.  Our creator is the master artist who can paint the sky with such beauty!
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Now to think about food.  Here’s our simple menu for this week:
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Monday: Rotisserie Chicken, corn, salad

Tuesday:  Chef Salad with fresh veggies and leftover Rotisserie Chicken

Wednesday:  Homemade chicken vegetable soup

Thursday:  Italian Chicken Pasta (Barilla Plus Pasta) and salad

Friday: Pizza, salad

Online Security in Today’s Technological World

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Have you ever had your website or even your email hacked into? We have, and it causes all sorts of problems. I wish people would live by the golden rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. But unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. There are those out in the world who seek to do havoc to the online community.

A large business in this day and age needs security protection in the form of a signature validation and also flash cookies to keep their business secure. They want to feel confident that their information is safe, and the latest security information is necessary in a technological world that is constantly changing. The integrity of networked systems is crucial when critical data is exposed to possible security threats via persistent malware, and Windows desktops need to be protected from malicious code.  Document security is very important to ensure the security of an organization’s network and systems.

As a blogger, I don’t have critical data but I do want my website to be protected.  The experience of having someone hack into our host server’s site was irritating to say the least.  I’m glad I don’t have the pressure of a large business, but I am thankful that there are security services available to ensure the protection of both big business and the small website developer.

Utah Real Estate

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Our son visited Utah year before last when he went with his college roommate to visit his family over Spring Break.  They drove the whole way, from the north Texas area, through Colorado and the southern part of Wyoming, and then on into Salt Lake City.  Our son would take pictures with his iPhone and then we would get to see them via Facebook.  That area of Utah is absolutely beautiful.  It would be a nice place to have a vacation home.

Utah is west of Colorado, and although we visited Colorado many times while I was growing up and on into my adult years, we didn’t travel into Utah except for one brief time when I was little.  So I didn’t realize what breath-taking scenery is in that area.  I can see why people look for real estate there.   There are a lot of hiking and bike trails, ski resorts, water recreation, golf courses, and much more.  All of this is offered in the beautiful mountain surroundings. I can see why the Winter Olympics were held in Park City, Utah, back in 2002.

 

Friendly Friday 9/16/11

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Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Please note – we’ve started having Friendly Friday begin at 8pm Central Thursday nights. This will give you early-to-bed people time to enter too!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

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Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select a blog at random and will feature a link and a write-up for that blog in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight one of those each week. Say hello to the lucky one for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):
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Nicole at Our Pregnancy Roadtrip and Beyond shares experiences that she and her husband enjoy with their eight month old daughter, Blake, who is the love of their life.  They lost a baby while Nicole was 23 weeks pregnant, but now their lives are full of joy and adventure with Blake.   Not only can you see darling pictures of Blake and read about her adventures, but you can also read reviews on baby/infant products plus enter giveaways for family-friendly products on Nicole’s site.  Check out her ETSY shop to see the adorable headbands she makes for babies.  These would be great anytime but especially for special photos.
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Now that you know about this wonderful blog, it’s time for you to join in! Add your family-friendly link below and we’ll see you back here every Friday! And don’t forget, you can get the InLinkz code to share Friendly Friday on your blog!
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All three hostesses appreciate followers through GFC and Twitter, and we’ll follow you back – be sure to leave a comment with your URL and/or Twitter username. Hope everyone has a great weekend! Don’t forget – Friendly Friday now begins at 8pm Central on Thursday nights!
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Menu Plan Monday 9-12-11

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Love the weekends!  Teaching school is very tiring.  Most teachers put in many more hours than some people realize.  It’s tiring physically, mentally, and sometimes emotionally.  If one teacher tells another teacher that they came home and were exhausted, the other teacher will understand exactly what they mean!  And there are other professions plus being a stay-at-home mom that understand exactly what is meant too!
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So how does the working mom, stay-at-home mom, or working girl eat healthy and spend minimum time in the kitchen?  Processed foods are not that great for us with all the additives (sometimes wonder if they came from Mars) and artificial stuff put in them.  One thing that helps is to go to the store on the weekend and stock up on fresh veggies and fruits.  With these you can have:.

  • Assortment of your favorite fresh veggies sauteed in olive oil with salt & pepper (and any spices that you like too)
  • Salad with green leaf lettuce and all sorts of raw veggies, avocado (ripe avocado is absolutely delicious in salads), nuts, Oat Bran Sesame Sticks (healthy alternative to croutons and sooo good!)
  • Fresh fruit salad with assortment of your favorite fruits

.Here’s an example of something I fixed up last week, quick & easy:
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So…here’s our menu for this week:
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Monday:  Sauteed okra with fresh mushrooms & onions (cooked in olive oil with corn meal, salt & pepper), chicken (note the fresh veggies still have top priority)

Tuesday:  Italian Chicken Pasta (Barilla Plus Pasta) and salad

Wednesday: Chef Salad with fresh veggies and turkey

Thursday:  Some type of fish, sauteed okra with fresh mushrooms & onions

Friday: Pizza, salad

Remembering Back Ten Years Ago Today, 9-11: Song “I Will Rise”

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Most people will never forget what they were doing ten years ago today. Some of us watched in disbelief! It was surreal, like watching a horrible scene in a movie…only it wasn’t a movie! One thing that seemed so strange that day was that we did not see one plane in the sky, nor for many days to come.
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We took our son out of school (5th grade then) and drove a couple of hours to where our daughter was in college. My husband was planning to drive there anyway that day to take something to our daughter, so we all went. We didn’t talk much. I think we prayed silently most of the way there. When we got to our daughter’s apartment, we all hugged and were so thankful to all be alive and together. But there was a sadness, too, because we knew many, many families were hurting terribly.
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The scenes we saw on TV kept replaying through my mind like some nightmare, only I couldn’t wake up and say that it was only a dream.  I, like many others, feared another attack.  We all knew that our world had changed.  Although I grew up during a time when we had air raid drills in school and feared being bombed, since then our country had developed a false sense of safety and ease that we had grown accustomed to.  9-11 was a wake-up call!
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So how are our lives different now from ten years ago? Mine has changed! I don’t worry like I did back then. Today, I have a friend who married and moved to the states 20 years ago, and a couple of years ago she converted from her Muslim faith to Christianity. Ten years ago, I would have been too scared to be around her. But God has helped me with my fears (and in many more ways than this)!
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I don’t know exactly why, but this song, “I Will Rise,” came to mind to share in this post. Back then, my prayers joined the thousands of prayers for God to ease the pain in the way that only He can! This song maybe sums up those prayers. It talks about peace, victory, overcoming, and no more sorrow or pain for those who are in Christ. Some day, we will all have a wake-up call when our life is over. Hopefully, everyone will have this peace and victory!
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(By the way, Chris Tomlin sang this song at the 2009 Dove Awards.)

October Will Be Here Before We Know It!

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Seems like the weeks are passing by so fast! October is three weeks away, and soon we will be seeing outdoor halloween decorations in abundance.  Some years, there are more decorations than other years, and I think weather has a lot to do with it. If the weather is nicer, more people tend to put out more decorations.
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We used to decorate when our kids were at home, but now we don’t really put out anything at all where we live. We do go help with a Fall Festival where we go to church which is held on Halloween eve.  We take decorations such as a fiber-optic pumpkin and other friendly pumpkins to help decorate there.  I tend to like the friendlier Halloween decorations, not the scary ones, and the majority of our decorations are fall related.  Those are fun!

RV Traveling

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Just for fun this summer, we visited an RV sales lot and looked through some of the RV homes for sale. I was amazed at some of them! They were just like a miniature home, some of them with a full modern kitchen and stainless steel appliances. One even had a washer/dryer combo, and when I say combo that is exactly what I mean. It was one unit where you simply pushed a button for wash and then dry.  That one unit did it all. Very impressive!

Now, if someone were traveling and had a breakdown, I guess they would have to get rv towing, but while they were waiting to be towed they could relax on their sofa and watch TV, cook a full meal in their full-size kitchen, take a shower in their full-size shower, wash their laundry, sleep in their queen-size bed, etc. They could do just about everything that they could do in a regular house…except maybe host a family reunion. And I guess that wouldn’t be hard if most people brought their lawn chairs and sat outside.

Friendly Friday 9/9/11

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Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Please note – we’ve started having Friendly Friday begin at 8pm Central Thursday nights. This will give you early-to-bed people time to enter too!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

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Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select a blog at random and will feature a link and a write-up for that blog in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight one of those each week. Say hello to the lucky one for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):
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Create With Joy is an inspirational blog that celebrates creativity! You’ll find art and crafts, mouth-watering recipes, books and resources and so much more! The author behind this great blog says she hopes you’ll be inspired to live each day to the fullest, and infuse creativity in all you do. If you want to get ideas for books to read, crafts to make and food to create, this is the blog for you. There is such a variety to the topics covered that there’s something for almost everyone!
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Now that you know about this wonderful blog, it’s time for you to join in! Add your family-friendly link below and we’ll see you back here every Friday! And don’t forget, you can get the InLinkz code to share Friendly Friday on your blog!
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All three hostesses appreciate followers through GFC and Twitter, and we’ll follow you back – be sure to leave a comment with your URL and/or Twitter username. Hope everyone has a great weekend! Don’t forget – Friendly Friday now begins at 8pm Central on Thursday nights!
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Menu Plan Monday 9-5-11

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Love these three day weekends!  And I also love my special needs students who I teach, and I feel so blessed to be their teacher.  But…it is a very tiring job and I’m very thankful to have three days to rest up!  It’s going to be a long stretch between now and the Thanksgiving holidays!  I think I voice the opinion of most teachers.  🙂  With that said, here’s our menu for this week:
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Monday:   Eat at Qdoba – use Labor Day coupon for “Buy one entree, get one free”  Yay!!  We really like Qdoba’s food. (Wish our kids could all be here to eat with us!  They really like Qdoba, too, and their salad and chicken would fit in with Christi’s Freshology meals.)

Tuesday:  Sauteed yellow squash with fresh mushrooms & green beans (cooked in olive oil with salt & pepper and garlic powder), chicken (note the veggies have top priority)

Wednesday: Chef Salad with fresh veggies and turkey

Thursday: Salmon Patties, corn, green beans

Friday: Pizza, salad