Busy, busy, busy

Sorry I have not been around for a while. Life is just crazy. All of a sudden I am getting calls to set up play dates. If my son is not at someone else's house then I have other kids here. This week he went to a friends house yesterday and I had the girls. Priyasha and sweet Keara the baby I babysit. It was nice just having the babies. Today we went to story time and having three kids seems to be getting easier. Keara loved the songs and Priyasha and Pravan seem to be so independent and sat up front with the storyteller. Today I am cooking a delicious dinner in the crock pot. Short ribs with veggies and nutty rice. I love watching the food network when I get a chance. I saw this the other day and I am giving it a try. It smells so good.Try it out. Let me know what you think. It was quick and easy to throw together this morning. Smoke House Short Ribs Recipe courtesy Sandra Lee, 2008 2 tablespoons olive oil 8 short ribs Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 large onion, thickly sliced 1 (12-ounce) bag baby carrots 1 cup celery, thickly sliced, about 2 stalks 1 teaspoon minced garlic 2 teaspoons smoked paprika 2 teaspoons smoked ground black pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose seasoning salt 1 cup red wine 1 (10.5-ounce) can beef stock Heat olive oil in a large saute pan over high heat. Season short ribs with, salt and pepper. Sear the short ribs on all side until brown and caramelized. In the bottom of a 5-quart slow cooker place the onions, carrots, celery and garlic. Then add smoked paprika, smoked ground black pepper, and all-purpose seasoning salt. Pour in wine and beef stock. Place short ribs, meat side up, on top of vegetables. Cover and cook on LOW setting for 8 hours. Strain and defat the cooking liquid. Serve as sauce on the side. Recipe Summary Difficulty: Easy Prep Time: 3 minutes Cook Time: 8 hours Yield: 4 servings Tomorrow I have a play date schedule at a friends house. Thursday I have company and Friday night I am teaching a class at www.scrapbooksatelier.com It is a class on spring books. Check out the link to see some pictures. I have some new pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/sausa. Go ahead and check them out. I will try to make some slides for the blog. I have many many other things to get done and I honestly feel like the kids secretary. Hopefully next week won't be so overwhelming. Have a great day and stay cool ! Free Spirit !

I'm Back

Wow ! Life got in the way of my blogging. No seriously, I have been busy, busy being a mom, wife, teacher and everything else in between. Pravan graduated kindergarten and we are very proud of him. I have taken a million pictures and need to upload them for you all to see. I successfully taught my beach album. It is still at Treasured memories on display. http://www.tmtreno.com/ I promise to post tons of pictures for you to enjoy. I have a long list of Need to Do's. Every year I send out a letter talking about the kids accomplishments along with their picture and now I am late in getting out Priyasha's and she turned two in March. I am working on sending thank you cards and graduation announcements. Going to birthday parties and rescheduling play dates.Yes rescheduling so i can keep up with laundry that somehow seems to multiply every night. There are days when I feel I need a secretary. When I am on the phone and have someone on hold and then my cell phone rings and another person on hold. Four lines now going and the doorbell rings while my two year old screams that she has to go pee. SSHHHH!!! Way too crazy to deal with.I am crazy busy with planning several classes at two different stores. I am also now babysitting a cute six month old baby on Mondays and Tuesdays. You think life can get any crazier ? Well I would not have it any other way. My phone is not on overtime everyday but today boy was life crazy ? That's it for now. I will post some pictures soon. Free Spirit

If at first you don't suceed try,try , try again ...

How many of you remember being told this as a kid ? When I was little I loved the poem "Don't Quit ". Today I attempted to explain something to my son. It has been a very sore journey since x-mas with the trampoline. We have put it together 4 times and it takes about 3 hours to do each time and every time it warped. We exchange the whole unit, we got replacement mats and springs twice and finally I had little to no hope that there was any hope left in getting it to work. My kids have been very patiently waiting and have not once nagged or whined to get it to work right. I believe that they knew we were trying. Today we decided to give it one last try. So I explained to Pravan that if it does not work we were going to take it to the dump. I also said that we tried and tried and tried again but there are some things you have to give up on if it never works. I also said that when you learn to ride your bike without training wheels you try and try and try again. He said " then you give up if you don't get it " I replied " no you keep trying " He said " But mommy you said you should eventually give up " I then changed what I was trying to say from " try , try, try again " to " practice makes perfect " He is so sweet he said " mommy you should keep practicing to fix the trampoline " . I laughed and I said " daddy and I will attempt it once more." I am so happy that it finally worked . We had a great time jumping on it.The cherry on top was when he said " Mommy I told you , you will succeed if you keep practicing" I rest my case ! Today has been a day full of success simply because I kept trying or as Pravan said "Keep practicing." I finally completed the slide show to my satisfaction. It is on a DVD disc ready for graduation on Monday. Tomorrow is going to be a wonderful day as I am going to the movies to watch " Sex in the City " I am very excited and looking forward to that. Take care and don't give up !

Why Can't we all get along

I got this in an e-mail and wanted to share it with you. It is so cute.

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth.The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, suddenly started to decline in health, although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only orphans' that could be found quickly, were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops? Take a look...you won't believe your eyes !!






Now, please tell me one more time.......... why can't the rest of the world get along?

Bubble magic

Hello, I took a break yesterday as it was a crazy day. Pravan's pre-school teacher visited for a while and I made her a slide show synced to music for her students graduation which was this morning. Mrs Howard has been a school teacher for about 26 years and I absolutely love her and respect her. She is a sweet sweet woman and we need more teachers like her. I hope she will not be retiring before Priyasha goes to kindergarten.I am working on a slide show for Pravan's graduation as well which is on Monday.My husband and I are so proud of him I love this program that I use. Although it cost a small fortune it was worthwhile. I make slide shows for people that need one for gifts, graduations etc. If you need my services please e-mail me at esplandry@sbcglobal.net This morning I had a wonderful time visiting with kristen and her new baby and Kaitlyn. The girls played together well for the most part.When the clock struck 11 it was time to get ready to pick Pravan up from school. It was sunny and beautiful out so we took the time to play in the front yard. The kids had a blast blowing bubbles. It is amazing what magic, joy and laughter bubbles can bring to a child. Last night I watched Super Nanny and felt bad for the mom. The nanny said she spent too much time cleaning and too little time having quality time with her kids. It is reality that we moms play too many roles doing too may things everyday. A huge part being cleaning. I decided today that I did not want to be a mom that cleaned too much. I am guily of that.Twenty years from now reading and making memories is what will matter the most.Take some time today and make a memory or start a tradition that the yours will remember when they are all grown up. You will be glad you did. I DVR'd (recorded )ET the other day. The second half anyway.When Pravan gets up from his nap I will let him watch it. Do you know he is only five and he has a hard time watching anything without having to fast forward through the advertisements. Well what happened to VCR ? We have moved on to DVR.Gone are the days of disappointments when we missed a show. Today you can download it from the Internet. I remember cassette tapes and now CD's but not for long as ipods will be more popular.I am not too old so if you remember other things that have been replaced please leave a comment. How cool is technology today. Just imagine what it will be capable of when or kids have kids and grand kids of their own. I am not sure if I will lie to tell the tale but today, right now I am happy with what we have achieved and I totally embrace technology. I am impatient and yell at the pc quiet ink I am a bit but I love it. My husband seems to think I am having an affair with the pc as I spend more time in front of the pc than I do with him.Well what's a girl to do ? A day without my pc is like a cloudy sky without any sunshine. I will post some pics of the kids in awhile. Tonight I am off to Atelier to do a stamping class. I am looking forward to it. www.scrapbookatelier.com Check it out. They offer many classes as well. I teach a few classes there and I love taking the stamp class as well as the zutter classes. I will post some pictures from the class tomorrow. Remember to do one quality activity with your kids today. They seem to grow up too fast. Just yesterday I was doing the laundry and noticed the tags on my kids clothes. One was size 5/6 and the other was 3/4 or 2/3. What happened to 6 months and 12 months. It seems like yesterday that they were both smaller. So no regrets ,just love hugs and lots of happy times. Free Spirit !

boo boo

Dress from great grandma

It's raining it's pouring

Today is a very wet day and it is supposed to be this way the whole week. I sit here and blog while my kids take a nap. Keara is with me today and she just loved story time this morning. Priyasha spilled her bowl of chicken noodle soup and I was scared that she scalded her legs. I had to take care of her while Keara sat in the high chair screaming for more food. For a minute I was stressed and really missed my five year old helper. I opened the kitchen tap and stuck her leg under cold running water and she is doing better. No burn marks thankfully. Pravan went to a friends house for a play date so it was just the girls. He came home a short while ago and is now doing homework.

The doorbell was on overtime today. First the UPS guy showed up with a delivery from Cuisinart. They sent me a replacement lid for my husband's expensive coffee maker that has been on a very long vacation. This afternoon the DHL man showed up with pieces for a very deformed trampoline in my backyard. My mother bought this for the kids and for Christmas.It is now almost June and for whatever reason it has never worked. I exchanged it twice to the store and still each time it did not work. I called the manufacturer and they said that they will send out a
pre-stretched mat as the one in the box contracted in the cold weather. After much convincing my sweet husband set it up again and it was going great until the very last spring was attached and it buckled again. We are both ready to throw it in the dump. I called the manufacturer again and they said it might be the top rails that are deformed. The DHL man showed up with two packages of metal top rails and a box with another mat. How much more can they stretch that mat. Now the bribing with back rubs and more will begin with my husband once again. This time if it does not work god help me , I will take it to the dump myself. Here is a pic of the deformed trampoline. I hope to work on it again soon and post a pic of how it should look. Will keep you posted.








Shortly after the DHL man another mom dropped Pravan off and suprised me with a bag full of books for Priyasha. Thanks Teri ! I appreciate it.

Well tonight I am working late so I won't be able to post any scrapbooking stuff. I promise I have some good things to come. Just give me a week and after my son graduates I will have more time for scrapbook related stuff. Have a wonderful day.

Free Spirit !

Happy Memorial Day

I hope you all had a fun and safe weekend. Mine was very eventful. We stayed home this weekend and had some quality family time. It was a cold, dreary and wet weekend. I am so exhausted and so is Todd. We took turns to sleep in and that was what we both needed. I actually fell asleep on the couch while watching the little mermaid today. I guess staying up until 2 am has finally caught up with me. On Saturday night I went to a friends house and did not leave there until 1:45 am . we had a wonderful time scrapbooking, chatting and hanging out with a few martini's. On Sunday night went to a new friends house to observe her babies bedtime routine. I will be watching her baby late tomorrow night and observing her routine will help calm her down and tuck her in for the night.We hung out after the baby went to bed and drank wine and ate pizza. It was great talking with Maryanne. She calls me her nanny but it seems strange for me to call her my boss so I will think of her as a friend. She has a beautiful little girl keara who is 6 months old and Priyasha loves when I watch her. She thinks she is a little mommy now. It is so sweet.Speaking of babies, my dear friend Kristen has a beautiful little baby boy and she is a proud mama. I had a chance to visit her and hold the munchkin. He is just so adorable. I can't believe how tiny he is and how fast my kids have grown up. Todd and Pravan were in the garden on Sunday and Pravan insisted he was old enough to help weed with this cool tool. He was a great little helper and got too confident, lost focus and whacked his forehead. He has a puncture wound now and gave us a little heart attack. This is not the first time he hurt himself like this. He was a brave little boy when I washed his boo boo with alcohol. He layed on the couch after that and rested. It was not too for more excitement. Todd found a queen bumble bee in the backyard and it was so cool looking. It was amazing to see one of those. It is not a everyday thing. Finally my husband cooked me this stir fry I had mentioned earlier. He created his own recipe and it was so delicious. He was very protective of his kitchen and did not want us in there. I sneaked a few pictures of him to remember that he is capable of cooking. Thanks honey ! You did a great job. Well that's it for today. I have pictures of most of these events and have posted them to the flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sausa

Still new

I am so excited that I have had some people visit my blog. I am still very new at this so hang in there. I am planning on sharing several ideas on scrapbooking and I hope it will be helpful to you all. At the moment I am working on a 8x8 album using my zutter. I hope to get that done soon. I will post some pics later. Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment and let me know how I am doing. Free Spirit !