My latest creative venture...

It took me two full hours to scrub these babies and now they're soaking in bleach.

I'm hoping to go from this....
to something like this...
Some really awesome, creative person in Colonial Williamsburg is responsible for this one, but I'm hoping to stretch my own creativity in the next week or so and dress up The Dude's office door. I think it'll be pretty awesome. Can't wait to show off the finished product.

Fried Dough Night

Each week, The Dude has a night here and a night there when he has an evening meeting or hangs out with some golf buddies. This gives me the 'night off' from worrying about cooking a meal. (I'm still one of those wives who likes to make sure we get some kind of meal on the table for our men, when they're around.) But when it's just the kiddos and myself, we make it easy on ourselves. Sometimes this means mac n' cheese and carrots, corndog and apples, chicken nuggets and bananas... or popcorn, this is always a viable option.

But this doesn't mean I take a break from the kitchen completely. This just means I get some extra time to play around in there. I spend 75% of my time at home in that room. I love it in there. I hang out in there often, sometimes it's just me and the grapes.

Lately, I've been agonizing over all the things I should have learned from Grandma Fleta before she passed from this world to the next. I say lately, but what I really mean is probably most days since 1999.

My most recent quest was to figure out how she made those awesome little fried doughnuts she used to make me when I was a kid. Comfort food at it's most simple yumminess.

As you can see, this time I just started with my own biscuit dough, which I learned from my Mother-in-law. Then I made holes in the middle, well duh, and deep fried those babies in peanut oil. I use the Fry-Daddy but I'm guessing my Grandma used a deep iron skillet.
Taking photos over top of the Fry-Daddy can be hazardous to your face and camera.

Following the oil-bath, they were generously dredged in powdered sugar. My favorite part is the doughnut holes themselves. There's just something about those little power-houses of fried dough in one tiny bite! Yummy!
The girls seem happy with them, but did they resemble my Grandma's doughnuts? Well who knows really, it's been a while but I'm thinking I got close enough to suit me. Making touchstones with your far gone memories is one thing I'm sure we can't do perfectly. But when it's food, as long as it tastes delicious and your memories are simply an inspiration, I'm thinking you can't really go wrong.

A perfect model

For years, I've been looking at my little hometown, with all its potential, and wondering why all its lovely potential been squandered all this time. And I KNOW I'm not the only one. You can't be a young, adventurous person either living in or visiting this place and not think to yourself, 'I wish there were more cool things to do here.' Some things that local organizations have accomplished include the Buffalo Road Park (completely funded by Ruritan labor and interested donors) which includes a wonderful playground for children, a short circular walking track, a gazebo and a couple picnic table. It's beautifully maintained and I personally praise the efforts of the Ruritan group on this one. More recently, the Clarksville Enrichment Complex was built with funding raised through the Mecklenburg County Community Services Corp. Countless hours of fund raising and grant writing allowed this facility to house The Lake Country Distance Education Center, The YMCA complete with new state-of-the-art exercise equipment, workforce training via the local community college, and Lake Country Kids which offers before and after school care. If you live here and you haven't visited, you're missing out! It's quite an accomplishment!

Now, that being said, I know there is more that can be done to incorporate the beauty that is all around us. I understand, of course, that Occoneechee State Park has some lovely trails inside its perimeter. I still want more. Allow me to get to the meat here. This past weekend, we ventured up to Luray, VA to explore the caverns. I had searched the internet for other things to enjoy in the area and found the Hawksbill Greenway and so bikes were thrown on the back of the Rover. It's an easy 2-mile, paved path which leads into the town of Luray and beyond. It's not strenuous and therefore perfect for the entire family. We enjoyed the views and the ducks and the exercise. I even took a few photos on the ride.

Once you have ridden the loop part of the Greenway, you take the trial right into town and eventually to this little amphitheater area complete with rows of benches donated by folks who love this project. (whew, that was a run-on sentence if I ever did write one)
Much of the trail follows Hawksbill Creek which affords lots of opportunities to see the ducks. They like to talk to you as you ride by. I also spotted several fishermen along the way.
My kids and hubby watching the ducks from the bridge.
This is a view of the Greenway running along the meandering creek.

Oh how I love this man. I don't care where we might be, having his arms around me makes anything better. I'm not sure he realizes.
We makes pretty babies too!

So now you've seen parts of it and you can see why I wish I could have this to ride on more often. It's a lovely ride and it's easy enough for most anyone to do. I live in a lovely neighborhood but to venture out on the road outside of my subdivision is a bit treacherous for the children. The town of Clarksville, being right on the shores of Buggs Island Lake, is perfect for this sort of multi-use trail. The Department of Transportation recently built a new bridge across the lake and the biggest shame of it is that they didn't put a bike or pedestrian lane on it. In fact, you aren't allowed to walk across that bridge in order to take in and photograph the best views in town. Some evenings ago I happened to be driving into town and spotted 3 beautiful sailboats a little distance from the bridge and I wished I could stop and photograph them. It would have been a lovely shot from that vantage point. Someone just wasn't really thinking about how great that would have been for this community. A multi-use trail could have incorporated that bridge and somehow led into the actual town along the edge of the lake... maybe. It would require some cooperation from the Corps of Engineers, obviously, and lots and lots of donations... but when I think of it, both of those requirements seem awfully difficult to secure given ridiculous government red-tape and the floundering economy. But a girl can dream, can't she? A girl can dream. After all, Luray doesn't appear to be the kind of place that is rolling in money either, but somehow, they made this beautiful thing happen that people seem to be getting plenty of use out of. Hawksbill Greenway is a perfect model for a community centered multi-use trail, if a community chose to investigate such potential. If.

Cold afternoon project

Last year was our LCSPCA adoptee, Lillybelle's, first Christmas with us. Of course when it came time to hang the family stockings on then mantle, Lilly didn't have hers. I hadn't even thought of it. Little-bug made her one out of notebook paper and pinned it up there. Fast forward to this Halloween when Ese was a flesh-eating zombie. We had to rip up a pair of her jeans to make this fantasy very authentic. Once the Halloween festivities were done, I cut the jeans into shorts for Ese. But what to do with the leftover scraps of denim? Naturally, because it was a cold day and I'm less apt to get outside, I decided to try my hand at making a small stocking for the dog. I don't have a sewing machine so I had to sew it by hand but it really didn't take very much time at all to sew. I was even willing to take a little extra time to decorate it a bit. Little-bug helped me with that part. I am surrounded by creative people, and crafty ladies. At some point, I will post some photos of the blue-jean quilts made by my girlfriend Shirley. They amaze me in their level of artsy-fartsyness and absolute warmth. But at any rate, I offer you this, my first attempt at hand-sewing denim. It's only big enough for a couple of Milk Bones but I think she'll like it!

What? My rat race is my own fault?

He said it this morning, "I'm just tired." I say it all the time, "I'm just tired." We look at the clutter around our home, mostly the breadcrumbs left by our offspring, and we think, "We are literally drowning." It's depressing, sometimes, how I just throw up my hands, proclaim, "I'm getting in the car," walk out and wait...and wait...and wait, only to be late for work again.

But I have to be honest with myself here. There are some critical steps I could take to lessen the load of the rat race. I don't have to be in a rat race.

For instance, I had an opportunity to take it easy last night or catch up on some things that needed to be done. I could have gone with the cancellation of my girls' night and been okay with having an empty evening... but that just wouldn't have been very much fun. So I scheduled something in its place...well I just re-added girls' night sans one girl and adding a boy named J. so my kids wouldn't be too bored. And I loved every minute of it.

And there are other things as well, believe it or not. They are things of which most of us are guilty- Facebook, Blogger, Pinterest, T.V., the couch.

My bedside table, loaded with books and devotionals remain in my periphery. The Yale lecture series on autism on my iPad are waiting patiently for me. My husband, The Dude, that man who loves me, also is in the mix for attention. Oh and those little people who are walking around the house, leaving breadcrumbs...let's not forget them. And then I'm also thinking of taking on a second job to help pay the bills and buy my Dansko shoes... It seems as though there are a million things tugging at my attention span.

But ahhhh...

...The Dude and I spent this Friday evening at home, just us and our little breadcrumb-dropping progeny. There were steaks and deepfried tater chips and wine...and Rudy (the movie, not the dog) and lots of laughter. We really needed this time. Amazingly, there were no random 'Alert-now' calls from my school or telemarketers. Together we rang up an old Colorado pal with whom we hadn't spoken in ages. What an evening and for a little while...no feeling of being in a rat race. I have the feeling the whole weekend is going to be relaxing this way and I'm so thankful for this couple of days of chill. This weekend, I pledge to do NO people-pleasing. I shall, after completing this entry of course, spend less time farting around on the computer and more time in the real world. I may even work out...at some point. My rat race will cease until Monday. I'm giddy at the thought of it!

No thugs in our house....

Good tune! In an age of ready made artists...wait, maybe we've always had those...I'd prefer to harken back to when a group of guys got up on stage and worked hard for the money. Justin Bieber, sorry, hon, you never be that sexy.