avocado mousse, birthday surprises and a dream that gave itself away

since my last post, i've tried a few new recipes from this amazing paleo cookbook- i am especially fond of the avocado/chocolate mousse, and the blueberry cobbler stuff! for real though...non-dairy mousse?! what?! amazing, i tell ya! my food processor has gotten more use in the past few weeks than it has in a LONG time!

seriously...too good to be good for me!

a birthday has occurred, so we're taking that in stride. i'm so glad that they work the way they do; the gradual release is a good thing. so glad that we don't just gain a year's-worth of growth over night. can you imagine waking up the morning of your birthday and having all of the aging signs show up at once in one day? that would be a dead give-away. people would look at you and say, "yep, must be her birthday!"

my co-workers treat me well...thanks jeri, andrea, dr. hughes, sean and carmen--bundt you really shouldn't have!

they know me well! my heart belongs to nothing bundt cakes!

always fun to walk into a bday greeting! thanks!

 it's always fun to get all of the messages on fb and whatsapp-feeling the love from afar, and i got the bday card from mom and dad-somehow they always pick out the perfect cards that make me feel super terrific! this year mom sent me an awesome calendar of rain forests-love it! (they also called, so they are in luck, they get props in the blog!) sending out props to gigi for remembering as well, because she is kind of a birthday master mistress..she is queen of all things birthday..in fact, she celebrates hers twice-crazy girl!

HONDURAS! appropriately placed on my bday month!

as i was at school, on my birthday, i got a phone call. my apt. people said they needed to get in because there was a leak in the apt below mine, so they needed to check the utility room. they had to call in because i have the boys, and they needed to know if the boys were locked up so that they could get in...

they got in.

 i was a little flustered that they left it this way, and i was going to take this picture to the office to have a chat, fortunately i stopped back at my place beforehand, or i might've made a fool of myself! they did come back to patch it up. thankfully.

also this month, i was able to go to a great workshop: identifying learning differences 1-6 yrs. it was truly enlightening! i really wish our entire staff could go to this workshop. for those of you with young children, think about teaching your kiddos to write in cursive, and read in print. why, you might ask? well, cursive is more fluid, they don't have to worry about all of the individual steps for printing letters, and spacing isn't an issue. not only that, they won't struggle with the b/d, p/q. so take that tip and do what you will with it!(it's free).

the other free tip for today is that, if you have lower back problems, placing a large pillow under your knees while you sleep will really help ease some of the pain.(two for one!) 

last week i was also able to video chat with my lil sis, sheryl in HONDURAS, and discuss possible plans for a little vacation time in the summer (? maybe?!?) and the biggest surprise was a fun phone call from a dear old friend, with whom i used to play basketball and softball in high school. it was really special and meant a lot-so good to catch up and hear the familiar voice of a friend from the past! catching up is like..the best thing ever! (better even than avocado mousse-just sayin...)

and to close it all out for tonight, i had a dream a few nights ago, and in the dream, i knew it was a dream. two of my colleagues-teacher friends, were in it. penny had decided to invest in a business venture: a library book store. i am not certain how you make any money from this type of a venture, as the two are in direct opposition, everyone would borrow and not purchase, right? but since she is a reading/language arts teacher, my 'dream mind' let it go. then carol decided that she was interested in investing with penny, and they were going to do this together. but at some point carol convinced penny that a roller skating rink would be a better business investment. i'm pretty sure at this point my 'dream mind' confirmed it was a dream because there was no way these two would ever open a skating rink! there's no fooling me! not even in a dream! 

and that reminded me of so many different roller skating memories! couples skate! limbo! conga chain! falling flat on face! woooo! when i lived in brodhead, there was not a rink there, so we would sometimes take a bus, with a group of people to a nearby town that had one (always with my brother and his friend tom walker...and sometimes the mcguinty's) good times! 

i'll save the roller blading memories for another day-they are pretty exciting, too! (the invincible college years)

'evening!

julie

move over snuggie, here comes forever lazy!

today i was very disappointed with the cowboys. boo. frustrating. but earlier there was a commercial that made me laugh. it was for the full body fleece pajama-type thingy...it's the improved snuggie (i couldn't think of 'snuggie' for a minute there and kept wanting to put snookie, but i KNEW that wasn't it). anyhoo, they had pics of these people in their forever lazy outfits and they looked a little silly. 

at home party...

tailgating...

using the restroom at a game...i'm sorry, if you wear one of these into a public restroom, i'm afraid you're asking to get beat up.

 i wouldn't wear one of these in public unless it was a joke or pajama-day at school...but i might lounge around in them at home. hmm..i'll have to think about that one.


yesterday, while i was looking through my cd covers for the best of handel, i found this one with 1 of the 2 cds in it. the other is in the player by my bed-i fall asleep to the sound of ocean waves, it's true. 

bringing the ocean vacation to work with me-i need the soothing break!

once when i lived in kansas city, i didn't have the ocean waves cd (i may have left it in iowa or something) but i thought i would get some other soothing nature sounds. i found a cd at a half price books of dessert winds. we had returned from a visit to white sands and dune jumping, where we'd had a blast, so i figured this would be just the thing! only when i put the cd in, i listened for a bit and then out of nowhere, it sounded like screeching and screaming (i must've missed the subtitle howling winds) needless to say it was anything but relaxing. it was more like something you'd hear in the background of a haunted house!  
 
i was thinking about something that someone said just the other day. most of the time we don't remember one special thing that our best teachers said to us, we remember the essence of the good teacher and the feeling that we had in their class. oh, we can remember the bad teachers and the mean things they said. i won't rat out any of the bad teachers, but i do remember 2 teachers specifically. ms. kundert and mrs. van horn from 3rd grade in brodhead, wi. they really made us feel like we were pretty special. 


i wrote a letter in hopes that ms. kundert was still working there at the school so many years later and to my surprise, i got a letter back and was fortunate to communicate with my former teacher, and i had a wonderful opportunity to go back to brodhead while i was working for the airlines and see ms. kundert, who had actually since gotten married and had become mrs. lokrantz. i just wanted to make sure that she knew she had made an impact on me so many years ago just by being nice. mrs. van horn had since moved, but mr. reimer, the music teacher(remember him? the one with the ghost and the guitar teacher) was still there and he remembered my dad was a pastor without any prompting. (that's a good teacher) it was something to see all of the changes that had happened since i was there!


 let people know how special they are when you have a chance, because you never know if you'll pass that way again!
julie

w. machine...must there be a smack down?

i thought i would begin with this because a friend at school asked about my chaco's today. (again, yes, i named my dog after my shoes-special credit to becky mayes for being so creative and letting me steal her idea!) i've mentioned my shoes before, so really quick, these are my staples:

ah, what a handsome bunch! from left to right: keens, chacos, vibrams

most of my kamp friends are familiar with all of these, but for those of you who are not,for 365 days out of the past year these are all i have worn. i just find them comfortable and practical for me.

moving from the shoes to my life! the washing machine is still being a sissy-it keeps stopping before the spin cycle (i'm guessing that it just realized that that's when it always starts to get dizzy, and now it's just on strike or something). i look like an idiot trying to figure out how to remedy it because i've been on top of it, around it and behind it. tonight if i cannot figure it out, i'll have to call maintenance and maybe take my laundry to the mat...not like wrestling either. and i don't want to have to do that because with my luck my students and their families would be there. ew. no. please. it's like reverse mean girls-seeing students outside the classroom is like seeing a dog stand on its hind legs.

i lived in brodhead, wisconsin from 1st grade through 4th grade. i loved living there and i have sooooo many great memories, someday i might share some of those if it be relevant. i went to brodhead elementary which was later renamed after the principal who was there the entire time i was there- albrecht elementary. i bring this up because as i teach 4th graders, i try to remember what it was like and it's nostalgic. i remember the cool kids, the artists, the sporty kids, the cheerleader types, the imaginative types...today as i looked around the room i was testing, i was putting kids in their categories. there was ty (the cool kid), chad (the class clown), jamie (the big goofy redhead-only ours isn't), monique (the cute and sweet), adam (the artist), pam (the loyal friend), lottie (the imaginitive), mandy (the adventurous), tricia (the friendly and well liked) chris(the well-rounded and liked by everyone)...crazy how  memories can be so vivid.

one day of taks done and gone. we can never get it back. thank GOD! today i had halls cough drops in my pocket, so i ate one-figured the menthol in the cough drops would wake me up a little. testing is for the birds..the blue footed booby birds... please say that with a british accent like a documentary...  wikipedia says:
"Blue-foots will make raucous or polysyllabic grunts or shouts and thin whistle noise." and that's about how i felt like i was communicating today.

on the way home from school today i was noticing that my bag is threadbare in places, and i just noticed where chaco found the zipper and the zipper lost.i swear that dog is possessed sometimes by the tasmanian devil! little unholy terror...but cute. (cuteness covers a multitude of sins...wait...no, that's love that does that..but i suppose cuteness doesn't hurt!)

the strap isn't the original either(the hooks on the end went bad, so i replaced it awhile back with nothing less than my rollerblade holder strap! the kind you attach a blade to each end then sling it over the shoulder for easier carrying-i was quite the roller-blader back in the day thanks to my college friends stacey and mike! which once again is another story!) so...i guess i should just go ahead and get a new one. ugh. i hate spending money on stuff like this because i want to spend it on fun stuff, not practical necessity. blech.

ok, time to get on the washing machine issue!

jules