Let us pray, all tens of thousands of us (I copied this from somewhere else, but for my blog purposes I should probably say all SIX of us, since that seems like a fair guestimate of my number of readers:) ), together...
"O my God, we are heartfully sorry for having offended thee, and we detest
all our sins because of Thy just punishment, but most of all because we have
offended Thee our God, Who is all good and deserving of all our love. We
firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more, and to avoid the
near occasion of sin. Amen."
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Fish recipe
I'm putting this here so I can find it when I'm looking for it. Doesn't this sound good?
PAN-FRIED WHITEFISH RECIPE FOR LENT
The following works with any skinless whitefish. You will need three spices:
Old Bay seasoning, onion powder, and grated parmesan cheese. Heat a frying
pan to just below the highest setting, using an equal combination of butter
and olive oil. Lay the fillets onto the pan, and immediately sprinkle them
evenly with a moderate amount of onion powder, Old Bay, and finally, grated
parmesan. "Seal" the spice combination onto the fillet with a spray cooking
oil. Add chopped onions and sliced red peppers (or fry separately). You can
substitute green peppers or even jalopenos according to your preference. Pay
attention, as fillets fry much more quickly than burgers. Flip the fillets,
then lay on thin slices of mozzarella, Monteray jack, or provolone cheese on
the now-cooked side. When the cheese melts, remove fillets and dump the
onion and peppers onto the fish, and enjoy.
PAN-FRIED WHITEFISH RECIPE FOR LENT
The following works with any skinless whitefish. You will need three spices:
Old Bay seasoning, onion powder, and grated parmesan cheese. Heat a frying
pan to just below the highest setting, using an equal combination of butter
and olive oil. Lay the fillets onto the pan, and immediately sprinkle them
evenly with a moderate amount of onion powder, Old Bay, and finally, grated
parmesan. "Seal" the spice combination onto the fillet with a spray cooking
oil. Add chopped onions and sliced red peppers (or fry separately). You can
substitute green peppers or even jalopenos according to your preference. Pay
attention, as fillets fry much more quickly than burgers. Flip the fillets,
then lay on thin slices of mozzarella, Monteray jack, or provolone cheese on
the now-cooked side. When the cheese melts, remove fillets and dump the
onion and peppers onto the fish, and enjoy.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Ash Wednesday
The Lenten Prayer
O Lord and Ruler of Life, take from me the spirit of idleness, despair, cupidity, and empty talking. Yea, O Lord grant that I may see my own sins and not judge my brother. For thou art blessed forever and ever. Amen.
Clearly my blogging comes and goes, and lately it's gone. I found this prayer today and I pretty much think it says it all much better than I can. If you want to read more about it go here where I found it.
O Lord and Ruler of Life, take from me the spirit of idleness, despair, cupidity, and empty talking. Yea, O Lord grant that I may see my own sins and not judge my brother. For thou art blessed forever and ever. Amen.
Clearly my blogging comes and goes, and lately it's gone. I found this prayer today and I pretty much think it says it all much better than I can. If you want to read more about it go here where I found it.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Cruise day 1
Normally these days time goes by at lightning speed, except that is, on nights like this when the seconds seem like hours when I'm waiting for the call from the two big kids that the show is over and I can go get them at the theatre and go to sleep. With the remaining 10 minutes before my text tone should ring, I'll share with you day 1 cruise pics. These aren't the best because they were only taken with my phone...
Monday, February 6, 2012
Daybook...back on land
(Cruise pictures will come eventually, in the meantime, you can see the first three days on facebook!)
Around the house...
Madi is right next to me doing some schoolwork, Jake is outside playing with the neighbors, and Jonathan managed to convince me to let him go to the theatre at 4:30, where he will most likely remain until close to midnight. There could be worse hobbies, right?
We are almost caught up with the disaster that is laundry after a cruise (a cruise where every one of us seemed to find the need to change clothes almost as much as we ate).
In the school room...
Madi and the "science girls" finished a whole module today, they are cruising! Madi's history is moving right along as well, and we are coming up on WW1 already!! Jonathan is "caught up" in his virtual school classes, but needs to spend some serious time on math and biology. It is so much easier to get stuff done when you are accountable to someone other than mom! Jake did his "on his own work today", but the aforementioned mom was too busy to make time for history and science, there's always tomorrow!
To remember...
That as hard as it was to come back to reality after a perfect vacation, I really do have a wonderful life!
On the table...
Well it's not the four course meals that we'd gotten accustomed to, but yummy nonetheless... E-Mealz "upside down pizza" tonight, tacos on Tuesday, chicken, pumpkin pancakes, and a shrimp pasta thing later in the week.
Jake had a beautiful fruit cup every night on the cruise, I've already purchased some cute little ice cream/ fruit cups so we can continue that tradition at home (yes, we'll continue with the ice cream too!) {we've already weened ourselves off of the 10:45pm pizzas though!}
In the plans...
Trying to desperately to figure out how to get the same child in two places at once. We are only REALLY involved in two things, church and theatre, yet no matter what we do all of the important things seem to happen at the same time. This is before we figure out how having two kids play soccer is going to fit into the spring schedule
On the road....
It's all local...theatre, church, theatre, theatre, church, theatre... rinse, repeat...
Word of the week....
Reality...it's still feeling slightly over-rated.
Prayer for the week....
Praying for my mother's friend Joanne, who is in the hospital.
Around the house...
Madi is right next to me doing some schoolwork, Jake is outside playing with the neighbors, and Jonathan managed to convince me to let him go to the theatre at 4:30, where he will most likely remain until close to midnight. There could be worse hobbies, right?
We are almost caught up with the disaster that is laundry after a cruise (a cruise where every one of us seemed to find the need to change clothes almost as much as we ate).
In the school room...
Madi and the "science girls" finished a whole module today, they are cruising! Madi's history is moving right along as well, and we are coming up on WW1 already!! Jonathan is "caught up" in his virtual school classes, but needs to spend some serious time on math and biology. It is so much easier to get stuff done when you are accountable to someone other than mom! Jake did his "on his own work today", but the aforementioned mom was too busy to make time for history and science, there's always tomorrow!
To remember...
That as hard as it was to come back to reality after a perfect vacation, I really do have a wonderful life!
On the table...
Well it's not the four course meals that we'd gotten accustomed to, but yummy nonetheless... E-Mealz "upside down pizza" tonight, tacos on Tuesday, chicken, pumpkin pancakes, and a shrimp pasta thing later in the week.
Jake had a beautiful fruit cup every night on the cruise, I've already purchased some cute little ice cream/ fruit cups so we can continue that tradition at home (yes, we'll continue with the ice cream too!) {we've already weened ourselves off of the 10:45pm pizzas though!}
In the plans...
Trying to desperately to figure out how to get the same child in two places at once. We are only REALLY involved in two things, church and theatre, yet no matter what we do all of the important things seem to happen at the same time. This is before we figure out how having two kids play soccer is going to fit into the spring schedule
On the road....
It's all local...theatre, church, theatre, theatre, church, theatre... rinse, repeat...
Word of the week....
Reality...it's still feeling slightly over-rated.
Prayer for the week....
Praying for my mother's friend Joanne, who is in the hospital.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Trophies, Theatre, and my kids
This morning I read this article I found it from one of my favorite places online here. I have a lot of thoughts about this. I feel very out of practice actually writing anything on my blog, so I'm not sure if any of my thoughts will translate into anything blog-worthy. Let's just see where I go with it. I'm one of the few people that gets annoyed with those emails and facebook posts that talk about if you grew up in the 70s and 80s then you didn't wear seat belts and drank from the water hose and didn't wear bike helmets and played outside and drank koolaid and turned out ok blah blah blah. Those emails often talk about when "not everyone made the team". I'm pretty sure everyone who ever tried to play little league baseball "made the team". Some kids just didn't get as much playing time as others, guess what, that still happens. Now the useless trophies that everyone gets? Those need to go, clearly they don't mean anything. I took dancing lessons from the time I was about 5 until the end of seventh grade. I moved once, switching studios, and then switched studios again when the teacher retired. I never got a trophy because my time at other places didn't count and you needed something like 5 years in one place to get a trophy. This was never a huge deal for me, but it's enough of a point of contention that I remember it. These days kids can play a sport for 6 weeks and come home with a trophy. Those things either end up in the garbage, Goodwill, or the attic. Something that is so easily achieved isn't worth very much. This isn't really supposed to be about trophies as much as it's supposed to be about praise. Today's trophies are empty praise. The article talks about "smart" kids often being unwilling to take risks in fear of losing their "smart" distinction. I've told Jake he's smart before (I mean come on, he is!), I'm going to try to use different descriptions in the future, I can see what they are saying. He's not necessarily very motivated, and he's rarely cooperative, but he is extrememly unique and creative.
Theatre is full of rewards and praise. Rewards in terms of "parts", I admit that I get very excited when my kids get good parts. I love watching them on stage and good parts usually mean more time on stage. I'm proud and happy for them when they get the part they want. You know what though, I'm often even more proud when they get smaller parts and accept them with dignity. We are extremely involved in theatre, the kids perform in at least 5 shows a year, they get a lot of opportunities to accept small parts graciously. In life this may serve them even better than the experiences they get as the lead. We've had opportunites for both. In our theatre crowd there are kids who pretty much always get a lead (they have very little opportunity to grow in "small part grace") there are also kids that are almost always disappointed with their part (often to the point of criticizing others). I didn't think this was going to turn out to be a bragging about my kids kind of post, it was really supposed to be about the negatives of praise, but it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to. Yes sometimes me kids get the lead, but even more importantly, sometimes they don't and I usually end up 'even more prouder' when that happens.
The last point I want to mention in all of this is that praise or lack thereof shouldn't have to be so contrived. I was an early childhood education major once upon a time, so I learned all of things you should and shouldn't say like "I love the colors you used" and not "what a pretty picture" and not "good girl", but "I like the way you are sharing". Have you ever spent much time with a kindergarten teacher? I'm pretty sure kids can pick up on the fakey-ness pretty early. Sometimes, it is just a pretty picture and sometimes your kid is just a good kid. Like everything else in parenting and in life, praise is a balancing act. I'm trying my best to stay on the tightrope. Just in the time that I've bragged about my kids' good sportsmanship in theatre I've also yelled at them for playing video games, not cleaning the kitchen, and doing science without even knowing where the book is. That's how we balance things around here. Now we're heading to church so Jake and Madi can practice singing (Jake is cantoring for the first time this week, Madi is helping him) and Jonathan can program the screens with next week's songs and prayers, from there we will meet Mike for dinner at Five Guys and some cruise shopping, like I said it's all about balance.
Theatre is full of rewards and praise. Rewards in terms of "parts", I admit that I get very excited when my kids get good parts. I love watching them on stage and good parts usually mean more time on stage. I'm proud and happy for them when they get the part they want. You know what though, I'm often even more proud when they get smaller parts and accept them with dignity. We are extremely involved in theatre, the kids perform in at least 5 shows a year, they get a lot of opportunities to accept small parts graciously. In life this may serve them even better than the experiences they get as the lead. We've had opportunites for both. In our theatre crowd there are kids who pretty much always get a lead (they have very little opportunity to grow in "small part grace") there are also kids that are almost always disappointed with their part (often to the point of criticizing others). I didn't think this was going to turn out to be a bragging about my kids kind of post, it was really supposed to be about the negatives of praise, but it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to. Yes sometimes me kids get the lead, but even more importantly, sometimes they don't and I usually end up 'even more prouder' when that happens.
The last point I want to mention in all of this is that praise or lack thereof shouldn't have to be so contrived. I was an early childhood education major once upon a time, so I learned all of things you should and shouldn't say like "I love the colors you used" and not "what a pretty picture" and not "good girl", but "I like the way you are sharing". Have you ever spent much time with a kindergarten teacher? I'm pretty sure kids can pick up on the fakey-ness pretty early. Sometimes, it is just a pretty picture and sometimes your kid is just a good kid. Like everything else in parenting and in life, praise is a balancing act. I'm trying my best to stay on the tightrope. Just in the time that I've bragged about my kids' good sportsmanship in theatre I've also yelled at them for playing video games, not cleaning the kitchen, and doing science without even knowing where the book is. That's how we balance things around here. Now we're heading to church so Jake and Madi can practice singing (Jake is cantoring for the first time this week, Madi is helping him) and Jonathan can program the screens with next week's songs and prayers, from there we will meet Mike for dinner at Five Guys and some cruise shopping, like I said it's all about balance.
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