New Look on the world

I don't like going to doctor appointments. Regular Doctors, Dentists, Eye Doctors, etc all I think of is "how much is this going to cost me". Well, a couple of weeks ago I was watching TV. It was a show that had some foreign speaking in it, where you have to read the english subtitles. I couldn't read them! I decided then and there I could put it off no longer, and made an appointment to go to the eye doctor. I picked up my glasses yesterday and all I can say is WOW. I didn't even realize how out of focus most things are for me. So as with the title of this post, I have a brand new outlook on the world, as I can now read signs from far away. I can read the subtitles on the TV, and I can just plain see better. I even get less drowsey when driving, which the doctor said may be due to the fact I was squinting a lot when I drove. I picked out some cute frames, and I'm hoping to go get a second pair (I do have kids after all) after pay-day tomorrow.

Yay for being able to see!

What a week

So last week, the music teacher for grades 3-5 was out of town, and I subbed for her. Monday was 4th grade, and it went pretty well. Tuesday was 5th grade, and it was so hard. These kids, WOW. Wednesday was my regular 1st grade day, Thursday was 3rd grade and Friday was 2nd grade. I was so beat by the end of the week, but now I've got 10.5 hours of sub time. On the weekend, Jason's company had a "retreat" in Lake Tahoe. We didn't get there til late on Friday night, and when we found out that they assigned 4 couples to a 3 bedroom suite, we asked Jason's cousin if we could stay with her at there condo. She was excited to have us there, and it was nice to sleep in a real bed, instead of a couch. Jason's cousin (Anna) is a manager at a Bakery up at High Camp in Squaw Valley. Anyways, the company paid for all equipment rentals, so Jason and I thought we'd try Snowboarding. Well, I definatly reccomend lessons, if you are going to try something as complicated as Snowboarding. We went to the "bunny" slope, and first it took me like 20 mins to figure out how to move, so I could get on the lift. Finally we got to the top of the hill, and what do you know, I can't get myself up! Took like an hour to go down the hill, and most of that was on my butt. It was even harder on Jason, who has a bad knee. He wasn't going to go, but some people tried to convince him that snowboarding wasn't high impact. Well, it was, and it's a good thing he only went down once, cause it really hurt his knee. Well, after our one trip down the hill, we hung up our snowboards and just had fun in the snow. Jason even tried Ice Skating, although the rink was outside, and it was really windy. I had fun trying to make snow angels, and I made an awesome snowman (pictures will come later). The company had a Kareoke night, and Jason was the star. The KJ even asked Jason to sing. We did a duet, and everyone really seemed to like it, so it was really fun. We left for home on Sunday evening, and it was snowing, so there was chain requirments. Jason did fine driving in the snow, and the chains were pretty easy to put on. We had to stop and buy an Ice Scraper, and then stop and use it a few times. We didn't get home until really late Sunday/Early Monday morning. It was totally worth it tho. The snow is so much fun. We're going to try and go back with the kids before all the snow melts.
anyways, as I type this Westley is having a breakdown, so I better go.

Cookies

While shopping the other day, all of a sudden I looked in my basket and saw that I had almost everything to make cookies, except the chocolate chips. I casually looked down that isle, and what do you know, they are on sale. It's a sign to make cookies! This reminded me of a Gram story, that I thought I'd share with you all.

One day after school, I was hanging out at Gram's house just goofing around (watching TV, playing piano, etc etc). Gram came over and said "would you like to make some cookies?" I said "that sounds fun."
she gave me her recipe, and I went to work. I measured out everything, and mixed it all together. The first batch went into the oven. while they were cooking, Gram came in and "tasted" the cookie dough.
"This is great, did you do something different?"
"no," I said, "I followed your recipe".
then the timer went off and I took the first batch out of the oven. they looked a little funny. After letting them cool for a minute or two, we scooped them up to put them on the rack. looking at the bottom you could see that cookies were almost completely hollow! How in the world did this happened. I promised Gram I followed the recipe. Well, it turned out that I had added powdered sugar, thinking it was flour. Gram and I laughed over it for a bit, then threw out the dough and started over, using FLOUR this time. To this day, I always taste my flour just to be sure.

So, although my cookies are good, the memory they invoke of Gram is even sweeter.
I Love and Miss you GRAM!

I made a blanket with arms

So we started watching this old war show called "Combat". It's on some weird cable chanell that we hardly ever watch, but we found this show interesting, so we started recording it. Well, it had a lot of comericals for the "Snuggie" here's a picture:
It's basically a blanket with sleeves, so that you can stay bundled up and warm, and still do stuff like hold a book, or grab something to drink. Well, we thought it was a pretty good idea, but we weren't about to call up and order one (at 19.95 with 9.95 s/h), so instead we went to Joannes

and bought fleece, and I made one. The first prototype I made didn't work as well as I'd like (the sleeves were way too small) so I came up with a different idea for a pattern, and it worked very nicely. I've actually gone ahead and made one for Jason and even Westley (with some Tigger fleece). Lindsey took the proto-type, which fits her fine.

So I just thought I'd post about it. hope everyone is well.

Folk Dancing

So the school put up some money, and the kids (3rd 4th and 5th) got to spend a week learning folk and square dancing. They had a preformance today. Lindsey was so excited. We even went out and got her new shoes and tights, so she could wear her nice dress, and I braided her hair. Here's a video I shot of her danceing