Confession

Ok, since I love to laugh at people and their funny stories, I might as well share the wealth. Here is a good one. While I am absolutely, definitely not Betty Crocker or Paula Dean, or anything even remotely close, my cooking is.....well alright, my cooking is probably a little below average. I can cook a mean lasagna and everything else is just average-ish. Fortunately Lance and I are not too picky and so dinners are easy, quick to make, and good.

Well, the other night we were ready to make dinner and neither of us felt like anything in particular, but we didn't want the same old dinners that we usually make. So I decided that we would have pasta, no sauce, Parmesan cheese, and artichoke hearts! Yum. So I cook the pasta and chop up the artichoke hearts. I drain the pasta and go to get the olive oil. Problem, we don't have olive oil. Now this is rare for our household. We always have olive oil. So I tell Lance the problem and he suggests a little butter. Genius, why didn't I think of that. I go to the fridge and we have no butter. Now, this is not rare. We never use butter. Maybe we use it if I make grilled cheese for lunches, but that is not very regular. Other than that, we never use butter. So I decide that I will just make do with what we have. I had some vegetable oil so I just used a smidge of that and then put in some artichoke marinade, thinking it would be like a salad dressing or something.

After all that we sit down for dinner. Fortunately I prepped Lance in saying, " I really don't know if this is going to be good at all". Well thankfully I did, because Lance took one bite and said, "Jame, I'm sorry, this is disgusting." So I took a bite just to confirm and sure enough it was gross.
I was not up for making another meal and neither was Lance.

So we ended up going down the street to Buffalo Wild Wings. Now, for all of you Californians reading this.....Chicago has had BWW for a very long time and that is one of our favorite places to eat out here. I know they opened one up in Dublin, so I hope you all enjoy it!

Anyhow, we are thankful that BWW saved us the other night. It sure was nothing to be proud of.....but go ahead and laugh - I cooked something that was not edible and according to Lance, "disgusting"!

We Built A Fort

Playing with my fun Daddy!

We were bored the other day and wanted to do something fun and out of the ordinary, so we built a fort. The architecture was very simplistic - four dinning room chairs and a big old blanket! Grant thought it was the coolest thing ever. When he decided to come and play with some toys his face was priceless. It was something new and different and he liked it. Some days go by and I feel like we are always just playing and sitting in the front room. It gets old after some time. So, we spiced it up and did something different! Glad we did because it sure was fun!

Playing in my fort!

A Worst Nightmare

Just over two years ago my sister Jana was in a terrible, horrible, very scary car accident. There is no need for details. All that matters is that she is here with us today. We are VERY lucky for that. Since then I have been very paranoid of Lance's travels. Lance drives a lot for work, leaving early in the mornings and driving home late at night. I am always nervous of him getting in an accident and that scares me very much. No matter if he is driving across 3 states or driving just 3 miles down the road to the grocery store, when he is leaving I always say "I Love You. Drive Safe". I know just how dangerous driving can be. Two weeks ago, my worst nightmare came true.
Grant and I were in the car driving to the pool to meet a friend. Lance calls me and says "Do not freak out, I was just in a bad car accident but I am fine." My heart sank and a million things raced through my head. Sure he was telling me he was fine, but what does that mean? He only has 3 broken bones, fine? Or he only sees a little bit of blood, fine? There could be a million kinds of fine. I could hear a woman in the background say, "Oh my gosh, are you alright?" At some point I asked what happened and he told me that someone hit him from behind on the freeway. The conversation was very brief. Lance told me he needed to make sure someone was calling the police and he promised to call me right back.
Side note----- Lance was on his way home from an appointment and I remember him telling me it was about two hours away. I just didn't know how far he was on his drive.
If you know me well, you will know that I am very anxious about getting all the details about any situation. Even when Lance is on the phone with someone else, I am always putting in my opinion if it involves me, or interrupting in some way. I know that is a terrible habit and I even get mad at myself for it. That is all to say that I was desperately wanting more details of his health and wellness and of the accident, but also knowing that he probably needs to take care of some things like insurance, police, and all of that stuff.
Eventually I get more of the story and start making my way to where Lance is located. He was about an hour away. I was so thankful to give him a hug when I saw him. Then I saw the car. Wow. That is when I was overwhelmingly thankful to hold his hand and stand next to him.
So what happened? Lance was driving with the flow of traffic which was about 45 MPH because it was a construction zone. He was on the freeway in the left lane. A Ford F150 comes flying through, going between 70 and 85 MPH and hits one car, then hits Lance, and the hits a Semi. Lance gets hit from behind, does circles all the way across the freeway to the right lane, then all the way back to the left lane and smashes into the cement wall head on. Yes, we are thankful he is alright!
Of course there are more details, but none of them really matter. The very scary thing is that sometimes it doesn't matter how good, safe, or reliable you are as a driver. There are people out there who can cause very serious and scary accidents. The bottom line for us is that we are so very thankful that Lance only walked away with some burns and back and neck stiffness/pain. It turns out the pain is gone and the stiffness has faded. The burns from the air bags have since disappeared.
There is only one real reason that I even decided to write a post about this. I really just want everyone to remember how dangerous it can be on the road. Please be safe. Don't speed. Whatever it is that you are in a hurry for, it can wait. It is much better to be safe and late, then injured, or have caused an injury, and early.

Dodger The Cat

We have two cats. Our boy kitty is named Dodger. He is crazy. Every morning he sits at the front door and just meows until I let him go play outside. I leave the front door cracked open and the cats go in and out as they please. They come in when the dogs are out playing and then go back out to be adventurous. The really great thing about them is they will come inside when I call them, just like dogs. Dodger, especially is really funny with this. He almost gets excited when I call him in and he sprints inside so fast, as if it were a game. Anyhow, the other day he did not come when I called him. Now, this has happened before. Sometimes he is lounging under a tree and just doesn't want to come in. So I go down to the field and get closer to him and then the game starts; He sprints home! So I walked down to the field and didn't see him. I know he is very adventurous so I just went back in the house and figured he would come home shortly. Like I said, this has happened before where he takes his sweet time coming home.Well, our girl kitty, Missy, starting acting nervous, like she knew he was missing or something. So I went back out a little bit later and still couldn't find him. So Lance went out there to check, and this went on all day. I thought either he went too far and couldn't find his way back home, or possibly maybe something jumped out of the field and ate him. I don't know what, maybe a snake or a fox - do they even have foxes in IL? Anyhow, I go out there yet again at about 5:00. I was in the middle of making dinner so I asked Lance take over while I went outside. I took the cat treats with me, because I know that whenever the cats hear me shake the cat treats they make a be-line for me. I am out there walking the edge of the field and looking around and all of a sudden I hear a faint meow that is clearly Dodger. He is in the field approximately 30 feet or so deep. OHMYGOD! I sprint home as fast as I could and tell Lance I need his help. We turn off the stove, grab Grant, and Lance puts on his steel toe work boots. We go down to the field and try to get hm out. This field was a corn field last year and now is a soy bean field that has corn patches in some places. The soy beans are about 2-3 feet tall and there is no way that you can see anything in there! The plants are very close together and the cat cannot see basically anything either. So Lance tries to find him but the cat keeps going another direction. So I am a little on edge and I take over. I put on Lance's big old boots and have at it. I am stomping down all of these soy beans in a panic to try and find that cat. (Part of me felt bad for destroying some soy beans, but then I realized that my cat will surely die if I don't get him out....what can you do.) There are millions of bugs all over the places. Bugs I have never even seen before. There are also thousands of frogs jumping all over the place. It really felt like I was on the show "Dirty Jobs". Well finally I find him and I pick him up. I put him down on the grass for just a minute and he falls over. The poor cat is so dehydrated and tired that he can't even stand up. He also is a filthy mess. He was so muddy and yucky - so I had to give him a bath. So we take him in and fill the sink with water and give him a bath with my tick and flea killing shampoo (Thank God I bought that for no reason last year because it came in handy!) So here is a picture of Dodger, all nice and clean and wet, trying to lick himself dry!

-----There is a side note. We forgot to close our garage that night. So our neighbor texts Lance at about 10:30 to let us know it is still open. So Lance runs out to close the garage and when he comes back in he tells me that there are tons of frogs in our garage. So the next morning I go to take a look and sure enough there were about 15 frogs in our garage - and some of them were big and were also dead. EWWW. They were disgusting. So I had to chase them all out of the garage with a broom and then get the dead ones out as well. ------

Thank goodness that fiasco is over! Damn cat!