Blue Cheese Guacamole

Last night hubby created for dinner (I love it when he does creations). He made shrimp and buffalo chicken kabobs with blue cheese guacamole dip. It was extremely good. Today I decided to google "blue cheese guacamole" to see if anyone else had ever combined blue cheese and avocados and Nigella apparently tried it first. She calls hers Roquamole.

If you have never tried blue cheese guacamole (or roquamole), give it a try. Take your avocados, add some blue cheese dressing, and a little salsa. Viola, you're done. You can leave out the salsa if you don't want the spicy kick and it is still very good.

Home for the Holidays

My brother called and they are planning to come home for Thanksgiving (or around that time). Maybe they will come stay with us while they are here. I can't wait to see my handsome little nephew. I can't believe he is already 8 months old. Here is the latest picture I have of him. He likes playing with his mothers stethoscope.

Anniversary

Today is our 21st anniversary. We have been married for 21 years and together for 22 years. It is amazing how quickly the time flies. We had kind of a low key day and it was really nice. Yesterday we bought ourselves a grill, so this morning we spent time putting it together. After we finished that, we went to eat lunch at a local cafe and then came home.

Having a low key anniversary seems kind of fitting since we had a pretty low key wedding. We went to the JP and got married in front of our witnesses, then came home and went to the mall. After we got home from the mall, his sister dropped off her 4 kids for us to babysit for a week while she went on vacation. Yes we really spent out honey moon babysitting his sisters 4 kids.

I am looking forward to number 25; we hope to be able to visit Ireland for that anniversary.

Expensive Trip to Chili's

On July 3rd, neither of us felt like cooking and a Chili's burger sounded really good, so off to Chili's we went. Hubby ordered his normal medium burger and I had the little baby burgers. The service was a little slow and his burger arrived slightly undercooked in the very middle, but it wasn't too bad so he ate it anyway.

A couple of days later he started feeling like he had the flu. After about a week, he went to the doctor and found out that he had food poisoning and the doctor felt 100% certain it was from the undercooked burger he had at Chili's (there had apparently been some warnings about tainted beef in the area). He took his week of Cipro for the food poisoning and still wasn't feeling very good, so the doctor called in some additional medicine. This week he finally began to feel a little better, but still not back to 100%.

Yesterday I stopped to pick up the mail and noticed an envelope from our local police department. It was from the Automated Red Light Enforcement department, so I opened it immediately. It was a fine for $75. This had to be a mistake. I went home and we looked over the video at the link they provided. When hubby was turning in to the strip center where the Chili's was located, he had to make a right hand turn. Unfortunately, he did not come to a full stop at the red light before making the turn.

Adding in the cost of the meal, the cost of the doctor visits, the cost of the medications, and now the cost of the fine, this meal has easily cost us over $200 - for 2 burgers and 2 glasses of tea. Chili's is off limits for a long while!

The Superstars - Brandi & Julio

My favorite team went home tonight on The Superstars - Brandi Chastain and Julio Iglesias Jr. They made such a great team that I really thought they would be in the finals, but couldn't quite pull it out. Tonight they competed on the jet ski's, archery, and the climbing wall. Unfortunately, those weren't their best events. They were a great team to watch and I really wished they had made it to the finals.

Dream about Blogging

Last night I was having a dream that I was blogging. In my dream, I was typing away and started to get hot. I couldn't believe how hot it was and thought I should get up an turn on a fan. Then all of a sudden I wake up and I am really disoriented. I am not in my bed. Instead, I am sitting on the floor in our hallway using the top of a small fan as my "keyboard". I have no idea how long I had been sitting on the floor typing on the fan, but every part of my body ached as I got up. I went back to bed, and slept the remaining hour until my alarm went off.

Needless to say, I never finished the blog in my dream and today at work I was very tired.

Hunter Fan Company

About 3 weeks ago we purchased a Hunter humidifier for our bedroom. We spent the little extra and got the Hunter brand in hopes that we wouldn't be disappointed. Hubby and I both have terrible allergies and the humidifier makes it so much easier to sleep at night. Today the humidifier started making a really terrible noise. Remember as a kid when you would stick something in the spokes on the tire and it made that really cool sound. That's what it was sounding like - only it is not so cool when you are trying to sleep.

I pulled out my paperwork and called the company to see what could be done. I was fully expecting to have to send it in, wait for them to tell me that whatever was wrong wasn't covered under the warranty, and then we would have to pay to purchase another one. Thankfully, that was not the case at all. The young lady took my information, apologized that their product caused me an inconvenience and promised to ship me a brand new unit of the same model to my home within 7-14 days. WOW! That never happens! Not only that, I don't have to go to the hassle of sending them back the damaged unit. All they want back is the label from the machine and the cut power cord from the old unit. I haven't had such great customer service in a really long time.

Kudos to Hunter Fan Company!

Abbie Update

Abbie had her follow up appointment with the vet yesterday. She was able to get her cast and stitches removed, but she still has all of her restrictions. No running, jumping, playing, or walking off leash. Her little scar runs about half the length of her leg, but she doesn't care. She was just happy to be able to lick her leg again. She is using the leg as if nothing happened - I am amazed.

She goes back on August 10th and they will do another x-ray to see if the bone has healed properly. If it has, they will lift some of her restrictions at that time.

Cornbread

Today I was making cornbread to go with our soup and it made me think about my great grandmother, Little Mama. I grew up in a multi-generational house so there was always people around and almost always someone in the kitchen cooking. I remember this one time when I was about 5, Little Mama was in the kitchen with my grandmother, Nanny. Little Mama was mixing something in a bowl with her electric mixer and I was certain it was one of the cakes she always made. My great grandfather,Papa had a huge sweet tooth. Whenever she made cake, I liked to lick the beaters. This time when I asked for the beaters, Little Mama told me no. I got really upset and decided I would go pester her from outside the kitchen window. The window was open and she was looking out the window, so I felt this was the best way to pester her in to giving me the beaters. As I was approaching my spot outside, I got distracted by a bee in the dogs water. I decided to be nice to the dog and take the bee out. Of course, I didn't stop there, I had to squish the bee with my bare feet. The bee promptly stung the crap out of me sending me back inside the house crying. When I got back inside, Nanny fixed up my bee sting and I immediately went back to pestering Little Mama about the beaters. Finally she was tired of telling me no, so she gave me a beater. As she handed it to me I will never forget her words. She said, "you aren't going to like this, but just remember that you asked for it". I proceeded to take a big lick off of the beater and realized she was right; that was the nastiest tasting cake ever. It was not sweet and was very gritty. That's when she told me she was making cornbread.

I wish I could say that I learned my lesson that day, but I didn't. I had many more such lessons to come. I was always the child who was very head strong and had to learn the hard way.

Lawn Aerator Sandals

Our lawn is really compacted so we decided to buy some lawn aerator sandals. We couldn't find any locally, so we purchased them online. They finally came in the mail yesterday. It seems like a pretty easy concept; put them on over your shoes and walk around the yard. The spikes in the bottom of the shoes help the aerate the yard.

I put them on over my crocs, stood up to begin walking around the lawn and fell flat on my face. The spikes stuck in the ground so deep that I couldn't get them out. My feet were firmly planted in the ground and I couldn't get enough leverage to get myself up or to pull the spikes out of the ground. The dog is outside with me and she wanders over and begins licking me. Although very sweet, it is no help to me at all. I was about to call for hubby to come get me unstuck when I decided to give it one more try; that time did the trick. I took the sandals off and went inside. After hubby stopped laughing at the story I had just told him, he helped me give it another try. This time I was more successful and was able to walk around the yard. I focused on the more compacted areas since it was really hot outside.

If you are looking for a good work out, this will definitely work your legs and butt. After finishing the yard, I could definitely feel the muscles I had worked. I really noticed how much they hurt after I had finished taking a shower and relaxed a bit.

Overall the lawn sandals were a good idea, but are going to take some work to get the hang of how to operate them.

Balancing the Checkbook

Ever have those tasks that you just seem to put off for no particular reason? I do and it is balancing the checkbook. It isn't hard and really isn't time consuming, but I just seem to put it off until it becomes one big task. I blame my procrastination on my Dad. He used to save his bank statements for several months and then bring me all of his statements and check registers so I could balance them. Now I find myself doing the same thing. Yesterday hubby helped me get caught up; I hate to admit it, but I was 6 months behind.

What task do you have that you procrastinate about? Come on, you know you have one.

Air Conditioner

Thank goodness for our home warranty. Last night about 9pm our air conditioner started blowing hot air. I called the service company and they sent someone out last night. They were able to do a temporary repair so it would cool the house and are coming back out on Thursday to check it out. Today the temp wasn't too bad - no triple digits. The temp is supposed to be back in the 100+ starting in Wednesday, so we definitely need our A/C.

Patience

I had a co-worker once tell me that I should never wish for patience because the only way to tell if you have patience is for you to be tested over and over. Well, my Abbie has decided today that my patience needs to be tested. Today, she kept escaping out of her kennel and going to her sisters kennel. Then, when we weren't watching, she decided to chew on her cast (it is a soft cast). She only has 8 more days in the cast; which I am sure seems like a lifetime to her.

We actually can't wait for the cast to come off either, but we don't know what comes next. We believe it may just be a bandage of some sort to cover the surgery site, but we are not sure. I know it is no fun for her to watch her sister run free and play ball. All she can do is sit or lay on a soft bed and do nothing. Even when she goes outside to potty, she is not allowed to roam around the yard. She goes out to do her business and then right back inside. No playing and no sunbathing.

So, I am afraid to ask for patience to make it the next 8 days; so ho about a little strength and tolerance?

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July! Today we spent most of the day at home, but ventured out briefly to our neighbors house to celebrate her birthday. We made guacamole and took some chips as our contribution to the pot luck. Most of the people at our neighbors were her friends and family (all German speaking) and there were also some of the other neighbors from the community. Hubby ran home a grab a bottle of wine when he noticed that Abbie had one again flipped her kennel and had also soiled her bed. We only stayed at the party for a couple of hours then we came home to clean up the mess the little one had created.

After getting everything cleaned up, the rest of the evening was relatively quiet - until the fireworks started. This was Riley's first 4th of July and she had never heard fireworks before. She did okay as long as she was out in the yard and could see what was causing the noise; when she would go inside, they would startle her and she would begin to bark. Hopefully they don't last too long past midnight. I really hope people of being very careful, it is so dry here that one spark could cause a really nasty fire. Even though fireworks are not allowed within the city limits, people are still using them anyway.