The theme for today is 3 Things You Did Not Know About Me.

I was on the debate team in high school. I liked arguing. (okay, you probably knew that second part… LOL)

I’m fascinated by butterflies and hummingbirds. I could sit and watch either or both for hours on end and do nothing else. I don’t know why.

I have nightmares. Frequently. I didn’t have nightmares as a child, but I do now. It’s only been in the past few years and I don’t know what causes it. Sometimes my nightmares get violent. One night I actually flung my husband out of bed while I was still asleep.

Now let’s hop! Hop! *insert bunny hop music here*

Check out this lineup of marketers that will be providing presentations and hands on training!

* Mark Hendricks
* Jeff Herring
* Kathleen Gage
* Lynn Terry
* David Preston
* Chris Lockwood
* Alan R. Bechtold
* Cathy Perkins
* Aileen Bennett
* Rob Anderson
* Joe Marsh
* Cindi Dawson
* Willie Crawford
* David Perdew…

I can’t wait! If you’ll be in Atlanta for NAMS or just in the area August 14 - 16 I’d love to meet you and hang out if we get the chance!

I’ll probably blog about this more later, I just had to let you know I was going! I hope to meet a few of you and share some ideas. (this post was cross-posted from my business blog….)

Brian went back to work today! Yay! and booo… cause now it’s extra quiet and I’m all by myself. Sure I’m all by myself during the school year too, but they get home at 3:30 and 4:00 …. no one is coming home at 3:30 today! That makes it extra quiet.

They took Brian’s compression cast off and didn’t put a new one like they had planned. I do have to order him some compression socks tonight. Holy schmoley they are like 40 - 70 dollars a pair! Yikes! Talk about throwing a wrench in my already ruined budget. I have an Amazon gift certificate that I can use to get at least one pair now, and then we’ll worry about getting more as we go along.

That’s it for me, nothing too exciting happening around here lately. Just trying to find my focus and get some much needed work done online.

This is a big first for us. We’ve never been without the kids for more than a few hours. Heck, it’s hard as hell to get a babysitter to even go out to a movie on my birthday or for dinner on our anniversary. Sure there are nights when 1 or 2 of the boys are spending the night at a friends house. They’ve all been away for a night or two on thier own…

The only time all four of them have been gone for the night was when they went to the boys lock-in at the youth center near our house. That was not a good experience for me … Lucas came home with a black eye and a broken tooth. But, that’s a whole different story.

My mom is coming to pick the boys up on Tuesday…. we’re in the middle of cleaning the house trying to make it look presentable. Summer vacation, kids in and out, crazy storms, and sick hubby all add up to one heckuva mess in this place!

I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself while they’re away. It’s going to be weird and quiet. Very, very quiet. No little boys poking me awake in the morning. No one asking where their shoes are. No one asking for video games. Very, very quiet.

Meals will be small. I don’t think either of us remember how to cook for only two people! It’s like being catapulted into the empty nest phase 10 years early! Eek! Someone throw me a life raft!

When night falls, children and adults will invariably want to enjoy a fireworks show. Please follow these guidelines for a safe and happy Fourth of July.

• Only use fireworks and sparklers outdoors.
• Children of all ages should be supervised with all types of fireworks! including sparklers! I don’t want to tell you how many hands are seriously burned every year.
• Keep several buckets of water available for extinguishing sparklers.
• Obey local firework laws. Some states ban fireworks outright, or during a drought.
• Light only 1 firework at a time.
• Let fireworks soak in water for at least 15-20 minutes before disposal.
• Always wear eye protection.
• Alcohol and fireworks don’t mix. Designate a fireworks lighter!

That’s all folks Please stay safe and have fun this 4th of July! I’ll be adding pictures of our 4th of July fun as soon as I have a few minutes to get them all uploaded.

The problem here is that they have 250 lunches per day available and hardly any kids at all coming in to eat. For various reasons I’m sure a lot of kids out there need transportation to the school etc. If the program doesn’t hand out at least half of the food per day the program gets canceled and then no one gets any food.

What’s the rant? The rant is that a lot of this food is going to waste. Last year they were sending home palettes full of bag lunches with anyone that came to eat telling them to hand them out in the neighborhood, on their street, feed your neighbors, check on the elderly, and make sure all the little kids on your street have had a full meal. They’re not doing that this year, they’re not even letting the kids that showed up take home an extra bag lunch to eat for dinner later or save in the fridge for the next day.

When we left today at 12:30 there was barely even a dent in the bag lunches and only about 30 minutes left for people to show up and claim one. The bigger rant…. they weren’t any plans of taking the leftovers to the foodbank or anywhere else. Leftovers would be disposed of! Seriously!?!?! Where’s the sense in that? I just wish there was a bit more common sense in the world sometimes.

A program with good intentions and a good idea is just causing a lot of wasted food when it could be helping hundreds of people. I don’t understand how this keeps happened. Either lower the number of lunches you make to better reflect the turnout or make plans to distribute the leftovers so they aren’t wasted.

Well, this was a big canister of the presweetened, ready to go, just add water stuff. Ooops my mistake apparently. Ethan is so used to mixing up the unsweetened kind that he was still adding the scoop of sugar when he was making the stuff!

I didn’t notice at first because I don’t particularly like this flavor, so I hadn’t taken a drink of it! I had to take an allergy pill last night and realized my glass was empty, Ethan handed me his to take a sip and I’m lucky I’m not in a sugar coma right now! Holy schmoley!

Definitely won’t be buying that ever again -lol- we’ll stick to the unsweetened packets from now on. What’s really funny is we don’t usually use the full cup of sugar that a packet recommends, we use about half a cup and everyone seems happy with that. They had to be sugar buzzed all this time with Ethan’s superpowered Kool-Aid! Yikes!

Ingredients:
1 box white cake mix (and the egg water and oil to make it)
2 packets of vanilla pudding
1 pound of strawberries, fresh or frozen
1 pound of blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 ½ cup of heavy cream, whipped.

• Make cake and pudding by directions on the box.
• Thaw fruit if frozen. If fruit isn’t frozen, slice into bite sized pieces and add a tsp of sugar to make juices flow.
• Cut white cake into large chunks.
• Using a large clear dish, place a layer of cake chunks onto the bottom of the container.
• Top with a layer of strawberries
• Top with a layer of pudding
• Top with a layer of cake chunks
• Top with a layer of blueberries
• Top with a layer of pudding
• Continue layering until you reach the top of your container then top with whipped cream.

This dish is virtually foolproof and it presents well no matter how you serve it up! You don’t need a fancy trifle dish to make a trifle. We like to make individual mini trifles by using fun goblets we bought at the Dollar Tree! It doesn’t have to be expensive to look good.

Sorry I didn’t put together fun printable recipe cards this year, we’re pretty busy getting ready for our 4th of July trip so I haven’t had as much free time as I’d like!

This is the last recipe in the 4th of July series for this year. I’ll come up with more fun 4th of July things for you next year. In the meantime have fun planning your holiday celebration and stay tuned here to see pics of what we did with the kiddos over the 4th.