time to unwind

TGIF. And, thank goodness there is nothing on the weekend agenda. Soccer is on the schedule but with today's downpour I am anticipating it to be rained out. Speaking of the downpour, I sure wanted to be home napping through the thunder and darkness today. And speaking of darkness, our electricity was out at school for about an hour and ten minutes. We were blessed with sunshine and that kept my room from being a total black out. I would hate to have had to maintain crowd control with just a flashlight. Because who knows if the batteries in it work. We took a few notes about the sun-earth-moon system, completed a worksheet about space exploration and then I had them help me with my homework - three sets of papers to grade. This lasted until the last 20 minutes and because I did not want to harm their eyes from the strain, we drew and sat "quietly" the rest of the time. Didn't that transformer that blew know we have a Science TAKS test in just nine school days?!

I left all that stress at the school and came home for a night to unwind. I started off with dinner. I knew that if I didn't get it started, it would be cereal and there isn't enough milk for that. I found some hamburger meat and thought we would do sloppy joes. But, as it was frying up in the pan I saw that there were only six pieces of bread. I had already boiled some noodles and added diced tomatoes flavored with garlic, oregano and another random herb. I realized that sloppy joes (with it's own tomato sauce) and this italian tomato sauce noodle dish would clash so I threw it all into the same pan and called it mama's surprise. (P.S. I had not added the sloppy joe seasoning to the ground beef yet.) So, it was kind of like spaghetti minus the spaghetti noodles and spaghetti sauce. That makes a whole lot of sense, huh? It was italian enough to eat with garlic toast. It was an italian goulash, yeah - that's it. I guarantee it is one recipe you won't find on cooks.com.

As I was eating, Ashlyn was setting up her photo session with the 13 baby dolls. She said they were getting family pictures made. It was funny to watch. Here are some of the hilights. I'm thinking digital camera for her 6th birthday.

She is such a little mama, just like I always was. And here is Buddy, not really wanting to be a part of all this action.

After dinner and the photo shoot I enjoyed a long conversation with my former teaching partner and long time friend. I made wild berry muffins. I took a bath and read Eclipse. I have changed out the laundry. The kitchen is clean. The babies are still on the fireplace. The kids are watching TV on the couch and finally, I am going to call it a night.