New goals

1. This years garden will be fabulous.
2. I will have chickens.
3. Learn to compost.
4. Read more watch TV less.
5. Run more.
6. Reduce house hold clutter by 50%
7. Take family to the snow.
8. Visit 3 state/national parks with the kids.
9. Keep strong with eating and feeding my family healthy.
10. Get Sonny to sleep in his own bed.

Blended Family of 5: Tonight blog is about my husband, my new word and pictures with the webcam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaujolais_nouveau

Tonight blog is about my husband, my new word and pictures with the webcam.

My sweet heart loves me. He always buys me my favorite cheep wine. Yes the infamous Two Buck Chuck. Well today we joked about Charles Shaw's Nouveau Red table wine. The fun-est part of the wine is the idea we know nothing about wine. LOL. Apparently via wikipedia Nouveau wine is a lot cooler that we thought. As Warren joked that it is possibly a mix of all the wine Trader Joe's couldn't sell. It is a wine made with grapes grown in Germany that is sold the third Thursday of November. Seeing that the 3rd Thursday just past I'm excited to see if it is as exciting as I think it should be. As should you all who enjoy a truly cheep drink.

First the bottle is a fun shape. Festive I suppose. The wine is a deep purple......border line pink. It's tart and light. I can truly say it meets my well formed pallet for a treat a super cheap wine should be.

Get your walking shoes on and get to the nearest Trader Joe's. Treat your self to my new seasonal, tasty and fun beverage. All my besties know my over active brain is thinking of a cheap wine tasting party. Come on ladies share with me your favorite and we can have a tasting party.

Thanks Warren. Again I love it! And you infinity peanuts.

At the risk of sounding crazy I want to talk about Fear.

The top fears in my home rationalized or not they are real.

I fear birds. Big ones, little ones, caged ones, trained ones and wild ones scare me white! With the exception of chickens . A few short bird stories to make you giggle... but have given me nightmares.

Once upon a time I had an upstairs apartment. The top of a beautiful tree was near the walk to my front door. A tiny little nest was in this tree with a tiny little humming bird couple and the nest of tiny little eggs. Every time I left or came home I felt much like how Gilligan must have felt being attacked by all the tiny little people in his travels. I was dive bombed by flying needles. I woke my neighbors with blood curdling screams.

Story two....... Sonny was a small baby able to sit but not crawl. I had just picked the kids up from school and was entering my house I walked straight into the kitchen to see out of the corner of my eye a finch sitting on my printer. I fell to the ground and started screaming save me. My hero Joey walked to the sliding back door and opened it. Out went the tiny bird. The kids where laughing so hard I'm sure my parents heard them in Fresno, dad's hearing aid off.

Last bird story..........A beautiful summer day Warren took me to the Tea Garden's in San Fransisco. We were having a nice chat when I felt something staring at me. I turned my head to be looking eye to eye with a Pigeon. I jumped and screamed. Warren now knew my biggest fear and still married me. Since then he's seen me drop and duck more than once in fear of BIRDS!!!

Joey's fear is of weirdos. I'm not sure if that's him, his experiences or me? We adopted Joey about 4 years ago from Foster Care. I was/am a paranoid mother who is fearful that somewhere in our county his biological mother lives and is capable of kidnapping him. So I put Joey and the girls in a self defence class that focused on strangers and bullies that was age appropriate. I had a private conversation with the instructor about Joey and how we needed to include people we know can be strangers as well. The kids and I looked up people in our neighborhood that were registered offenders and talked about how even nice people can be bad. Then I went as far as talking about aunts and uncles and family friends could be strangers. Mostly because Joey is my brother's biological son, Joey often refers to him as Uncle Jonathan. . Seams pretty healthy to me, until Halloween came. We went to a few houses in our neighborhood. At first he was into it. Running from door to door asking for candy with the girls and saying thank you. Then it became running to a door asking for candy and then thanking the person and yelling to them to WATCH OUT FOR WEIRDOS. Then it turned in to not wanting to go up to houses at all and locking all his muscles and me having to carry a very stiff and frightened Joey a half a mile home. This happens every year now unless he goes with Warren. Joey's fear of strangers is so strong it's impresses me. He sticks to me like glue and can not go into areas he knows are safe unless they are well lit.

My second oldest feared germs. She would wake up in the middle of the night needed to wash her hands and crying out terrified about germs being on her. The park became no fun for a while until she forgot about the germs and hand sanitizer is necessary to keep close at hand. She is not so bad now that she is older but for a while I feared when she would worry what had germs on it in a panic.

Sonny is very close to total potty training success, except for the creatures that live in public restrooms. He is so convinced they exist he will cry uncontrollable until removed from the restroom not mattering if it is you or him going. We take short trips now in diapers, he hates them. Occasionally he will try to pee somewhere in public like on the side of the play structure. We definitely have our work cut out on stamping out this fear.

Marysa I fear, fears nothing. This can be good and bad. My fear is that she will try something dangerous like bolting out in to a parking lot as she did in kindergarten or taking off to ride a ride in an amusement park without notice as she did at both at Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. (Marine World) or take a walk to a local park and not asking me. My favorite how she doesn't fear fire,often getting way to close for my comfort. I swear that this child will be the cause of ulcers in her mother one day.

Declan's fears have yet to come. I think he's just to young or maybe a Marysa junior. Time will tell.

Then there is my love. He fears flying. He does well to build up courage to fly but I always get the very real good-byes and we have never flown together as our children need a parent if something happens. He's been listening to some kind of self hypnosis that he says helps so maybe Hawaii is in our future together?

So much work for so little satisfaction

This one is for the dieters and the ones who care only to torture themselves.

The Pomegranate. Fruit or enemy. I guess Warren and I at different locations had the same "fun" idea. We both picked up a few pomegranates at the store. We are fans of the juice, I made some great jam 5 plus years ago, they will be fun for the kids to eat.

Well the kids are at school. I'm in need of a snack. Hmmm I think I'll have a red ripe plump pomegranate. I pull out my super large Ginsu. (I know, but it's a great knife.) Cut the fruit in half. Tons of ruby colored seeds, my mouth is already for this tasty treat.

I get out the spoon and start scooping the seeds into a cup. With every scoop there is some nasty white colored skin thing I have to remove. Fifteen minutes later I am still doing the same thing until I give up. What's a little of the white stuff in with my treat. I bet it doesn't taste that bad? WRONG! It's bitter and hard. I was able to scoop maybe 1/3 a cup of seeds out that equals maybe 5 bites looking at every spoon full to get the tiny little specs of white skin off before eating. I'm glad I didn't go with plan B: the juicer. Or plan C let the kids do it?

It left a juicy stained mess on the cutting board. I have tiny dots of stains all over my shirt and next time POM is getting my 4 bucks. They earned it. Not my favorite do it your self fruit.

Jambands.com - Need We Say More? News Michael Franti Salutes The Giants

Jambands.com - Need We Say More? News Michael Franti Salutes The Giants

Haven't had one in over a year

Marysa and Tanner had a sleepover with a team mate from soccer. We decided to get Papa Murphy's Take 'n Bake. The bottoms of the pizzas never cooked. The bottom coil in our oven died. So I called the repair man. He told us the oven was so old the part wasn't made any longer. Since we rent and no one likes a land lord to come for a visit we didn't fix it.

Then my dad called. He said he got me a turkey. I told him we didn't have a working oven. He said he got me a turkey. Oh GREAT! Frozen turkey that will never get used coming to my house. Then my dad brought it over with a giant roaster. WOW! That's gonna take up space. Warren whispers "Can we sell it?" Nope. Dad now wants to come over for a turkey dinner.

My Mom came over and we had to figure out how to cook a turkey in a roaster. Well #1 the turkey wont brown unless you make some weird browning liquid. So we decided to make the turkey green. I injected it with Trader Joe's Goddess salad dressing. It was the best flavored turkey ever. It was green. Awesome sliced, in sandwiches, cut in salad and I HATE turkey.

The roaster deserved a second chance. I have been cooking everything in it. From the store bought frozen foods to meats and casseroles. Breads and cakes not so good. One kitchen experiment after the next. Tonight's was toasting pumpkin seeds. Took way longer but are just as good. I'm going to say 1 1/2 hours in the roaster.

Over all if you need an oven and doesn't look like it's going to happen soon get a roaster. It will be the most useful eyesore you ever get.