serendipity

What a doll! So adorable. Keep posting pics for us Wormie! And gosh, your grass is GREEN and not covered with snow!

I love it CoM! Great first blog post!

Today started as another ordinary Minnesota day. We have been slowly warming up to springtime. Our Northland weather systems have a distinct reluctance to sacrifice the familiarity of snow and ice and refuse to transition into spring willingly. Two steps forward and three steps back, spring comes peeking around the corner eventually but winter usually has to be dragged kicking and screaming out the door first. This day was one of the good ones. Temps were holding steady around 30 degrees which classifies as a "scorcher" in this neck of the woods at this time of the year. Smiling to myself and dreaming of the soon-to-arrive-near-tropical temps of summer, I got on with my day. Then the phone rang. It was my sister. She was breathless with excitement and said "Guess where work is sending me next week??? Just guess!! You will NEVER guess!" Off the top of my head, I flippantly said "Please do NOT tell me they are sending you to Hawaii or something." She said "Hawaii or something!" Wow. And then came the stunner: "You should come with me!" Huh? "I am serious, sis! You would only need to pay for your plane ticket and your food. The hotel and car rental are already taken care of!" Holy smokes! I stammered out some pretty legitimate excuses but she had some pretty impressive answers for each. Bemused, I said I would look into the details of it and hung up. Could this even be possible? Surely not. Researching plane fares online, I was stunned to find one for $652.00, round trip. Oh my. In the blink of an eye, I had suddenly moved from the realm of the improbable to the completely feasible. But what would dear husband say? I called him at work, waking him from his rest period in the process. He listened groggily, asked if we could afford it (well, not really, lol), said sure and then lectured me on the ramifications of getting myself blown apart in a plane crash and the (in his opinion) measly amount of life insurance we have on me at this present time before hanging up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Like I can control THAT anyway. Unsure of myself, I log onto the shoutbox here at Mrs S and take an impromptu female opinion poll. Should I go? Amazingly to me, my dear friends said yes, encouraging me to step out and be courageous. Oh wow. In my lifetime I have traveled to China to get my daughter, and to South Carolina for my sister's wedding. The only way I survived the trip to China was to follow my husband's directive to stay close to him and not wander off. A world traveler I am not. But I would like to be one.... Then the flurry of phone calls really began. I started tracking down older kids and grandparents, scouting babysitters for a week long outing. All the while, I am dreamily thinking about tropical breezes, island beaches, splashing in the ocean (wow!) and pondering whether or not I would blind people senseless in my bathing suit with my Minnesota-winter-cadaver-white skin. That is, assuming I could even ~find~ my swimsuit. Or bikini. Or fit in either one. I am starting to get pretty excited though. Then I connect with my sister again. We try to hammer down a schedule and realize we have to pare a few days off the seven we were hoping for, due to conflicts and schedules back here in the frozen tundra. Wait a minute. The cheapest flights we can now find are right around $1100. Major bummer. Way too steep for this girl's pocketbook. We search and look, hunt and dig. That's about as good as it gets. Poof! goes the dream. My sister is disappointed. Another time, maybe. But you know what? I didn't mind. For the space of a few short hours, I got to realistically dream and imagine a great adventure. And I didn't have to leave home or spend a penny to do it. There were no delayed flights, bad weather, obnoxious travelers, lost luggage, expensive food, or bad guys to worry about. There was just a happy expectation that something good was coming my way. And it did.

Welcome Karelle! I am so excited you get to see what a wonderful place this is! We are so blessed to have it, and appreciate everthing Darlene does to make it possible for us to be here! Plus I think it is hilarious that now Darlene ~really~ has to behave! (Just kidding Darlene, please don't kick me off, lol...)

I recycled my shop-vac bag, ala Amy Dacyczyn and the Tightwad Gazette. Cut off the end, dumped out the contents, folded it back up to close it, stapled it heavily and sealed it with some packing tape. Worked like a charm! Those buggers have gone wayyyy up in price and since I vaccuum the house every single day we just go through them too fast, big as they are. It took me about 6 minutes to do it and even with factoring in the staples and tape, saved around $5. That would work out to a $50 hourly wage, tax free. I'm so glad I finally just did it!

I was wondering the same thing.

WormGuy I hope they can find a treatment that will allow you some relief. Please keep us posted. (((WormGuy)))

I am in the midst of cleaning my basement. I already have a huge pile for Goodwill, all ready to go. It is a great feeling but exhausting too. But how nice it will be to have all that finished! Dear son graduates this spring so the house needs to be spiffy for that, plus once spring arrives I will be outside all day long working in the gardens. No time for cleaning and organizing then! The house pretty much just gets a once over all through the summer months, but if I am ready for that with a clean house and canned meals, meal plans, etc. then it all goes together just fine. So after a short break here I will head back down there and tackle some more. Whew!

What a wonderful day for you dear Stephanie. What a great hubby and kids!!! Definitely a memory for sure. (((Stephanie)))

Thanks for sharing this, Rezgirl...wish more people knew...

Here you are my dear lady! It is a cheater recipe with easy ingredients. Like most quick breads, it freezes really well too and has been a standby for my catering events for years. Lemon Poppyseed Bread 1 lemon cake mix 1-3 oz. pkg. instant lemon pudding mix (NOT cook-n-serve) 4 eggs 1/2 cup oil 1 cup water 1-2 Tbsp poppyseeds Mix. Bake @ 350 degrees for around 45 minutes or until done. (Grease and flour pans)

Awww...I'm SO JEALOUS!!! Until it is time to start seeds here I am just going to have to live vicariously through you!

Oh wow, we had a beautiful day today. It got up to 39 DEGREES!!!!! Everyone was running around in t-shirts. It was as balmy as a tropical day in paradise. After the rough and tough winter we have been enduring, it is a gift. We haven't see these temps since early November (thank you, God). Being so nice out, I was looking at the balcony we have outside that overlooks the lake. Drip, drip, drip. Hmm...this got me thinking. We have been unable to access the balcony for a few months now since we couldn't even open the door anymore due to the massive amounts of snow we have had this season. The door has been blocked with ice. I had a pretty good idea though that I could maybe get out there and gave it a try. Sure enough, it worked so I grabbed my shovel and went at it. I had tried it last week but dh thought I was going to break our glass door trying to open it so I gave up. But imagine my surprise when as I was shoveling away, I uncovered: *my missing crockpot that I have been looking for since the week after Thanksgiving *a batch of ground cherry freezer jam *a bag of meatballs that dh tried and didn't like and stashed out there and *a cookie sheet with FIVE BIG LOAVES of Lemon Poppyseed Bread in ziploc bags on it that I had made for Christmas gifts and forgot all about Good grief. Sere

Ok, so my computer ate yesterday's post. I am keeping this short and posting it fast just to be safe. I did go pick up my order yesterday at Sam's Club and it was a walk in the park. I breezed in, paid, breezed out, and loaded my vehicle. I am so in love with this feature. Wow. It just saved me several hours of my life. Watching the jobs reports come in this morning. Eek. Pretty scary. Seems like the acceleration is really picking up. Today is a good day at Chickadee Lane Lodge. Dh is finally back to work after three months. I can feel the stress melting off my shoulders. It has been a bit of a strain, but not nearly what it would have been had I not been a prepper. His job is just too volatile for me to *ever* sit back and relax, so prepping is my insurance policy. And a good one it is too. The nice thing now though is the ability to move onward and upwards. When there is no paycheck coming in it is a little limiting. So I am on a mission to regain the ground I lost during these last three months. I am really hoping things don't tank completely before I do, but what will be, will be. I can't control it anyway, but I will do what I can for as long as I can. And really, we are sitting in such a better place than we were several years ago. Off to post this before I lose it again...

Ok, this sounds soooo good! I can't wait to try it!

Way to go, dogmom! We will cheer you on! Moving stinks....

Great pics, Judy! How fun to do those reenactments!

Great pics, Judy! How fun to do those reenactments!

I am so happy for you and the peace of mind that your newest family member will bring...

It ate my post. Grr.... Will try again but this time I am copying and pasting from my notepad, lol...

I am feeling a bit more comfortable with the new site. There is so much to see and explore that a girl could get lost in here and never come up for air! Unfortunately life does go on in the outside world as well, so I am going to have to find a happy balance. I love the blog feature; I am so tickled to have a place where I can let it all just hang out. I love it that it is only viewable by the membership. This works for me! My Blogger blog is a lot more formal and a LOT of work, even though I don't post on it much and have pretty much resorted to photos for most of it. I got tired of getting hassled by family and friends for more stories and more posts on there...I love and adore writing but there was a lot of pressure. Here I can just ramble on without any format and reeelllllaaaxxxxx......lol. I don't expect anyone else to read it because it would probably be considered the equal of cruel and unusual punishment by any compassionate ruling authority, but it will make a wonderful online journal for myself. I kind of like my privacy so this is perfect. lol. Today was pretty much another average Minnesota winter day, except that we were rather warm. I had to go pick up my kiddos from church and on the way there I cracked up because sure enough, just like I had told WormGuy earlier in the day, it was SHORTS weather. There on the street, walking valiantly with a friend but shivering violently, was a brainless college-age kid, striding along in his basketball shorts. I took a quick look at my car thermometer. Yep. 14 degrees above zero. Anyway...I did get some prepping done today. I ordered through Click-n-Pull at Sam's Club, now all I have to do is go pick it up tomorrow morning. I am pretty eager to see if this works. I have wanted to do it for a while but there is a bit of a learning curve (for me anyway) at their site online. It has taken me a few trys to figure out how to navigate it without losing my shopping lists, etc. I think I finally know my way around it though, and I did send off an order to be picked up tomorrow. We shall see. Stay tuned for updates. OK, dh is home, will be back later.