Name and sandwich

What Melissa Means

You are confident, self assured, and capable. You are not easily intimidated. You master any and all skills easily. You don't have to work hard for what you want. You make your life out to be exactly how you want it. And you'll knock down anyone who gets in your way! You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is. You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are the total package - suave, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality.

You Are a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

You are a traditional person with very simple tastes. In your opinion, the best things in life are free, easy, and fun. You totally go with the flow. And you enjoy every minute of it! Your best friend: The Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Ham Sandwich

May the Lord find us faithful.

• Jan. 17, 2008 - Bunny Trail!

We do not see any snowshoe (or varying) hares in our yard, nor do we see their tracks in our yard (that might have something to do with the chocolate lab that patrols our yard keeping out all small and sometimes larger animals(she ran a cow and a calf moose off the other day) )but they live and eat on the vacant lot that ajoins our property.

Here is a picture of a well used trail. I apologize if you cannot see it very well, it was a gray day yesterday. Plus, it is difficult to see snow pictures on grey days.

January2008013.jpg picture by kaysmarmey

Here are hare prints:

January2008010.jpg image by kaysmarmey January2008014.jpg image by kaysmarmey

Here is a sky picture, we have big sky here:

January2008005.jpg picture by kaysmarmey



We had a very welcome dumping of snow last night, after lunch the blessings are heading out to enjoy. Tomorrow I will share a little about our Alaska snow

Doctor

Updated:

I took blessing #2 to the DR. she does have pink eye and drops have started, groceries have been picked up and we will watch and see who, if anyone else, comes down with pink eye.

I truly try to take care of most health issues naturally to the best of my knowledge and use the knowledge of the owner of the local health food store as much as possible. But, we are heading out to the doctor in a few minutes as blessing #2 woke up with goopy, stuck together eyes. Yuck!!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Here we go round the mulberry bush! Not really.

Happy Monday,

Just filling you all in on a little thing I am trying with my family. I got two glass(peanut butter jars). On one I wrote: kind, loving words; first time obedience; love you neighbor; initiative,thus, pleasing God. On the second I wrote: unkind words; disobedience; selfish behavior; lazy, slothful, thus, pleasing self. Each time someone is pleasing God I will put change in that jar. Everytime some one is pleasing self, I put a plastic chip in the pleasing self jar. You see, the money is worth something is likened to laying up treasure in heaven; the plastic chip is worthless and is laying up earthly treasure. Now, my plan was to take the full jar of money and doing something as a family together, but one of my blessings suggested that we give it to the missions offering at church, even better and truly laying up treasure in heaven. We will see how it goes as the day and week progresses. I needed something concrete that my blessings could see their behavior in a real way. I will update and let you know how we all respond. (I am keeping myself accountable with this method as well.)

 

 

May the Lord find us faithful.

Revisiting the crock pot

I have posted about my love of my favorite kitchen servant, the crock pot before. Right now I have ground meat and onion cooking in the crock pot, when the meat is thoroughly cooked I will add the rest of the ingredients for

Southwest meat and potato stew

2 lbs. ground beef(moose in my case)

1 large onion chopped

1 cup water, divided

1 can (28oz) diced tomatoes

1 bag (16 oz) frozen corn

3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 cup salsa

1 tsp. each salt and cumin

1/2 tsp each garlic powder and pepper

2 Tbsp. flour

In dutch oven, brown beef and onion, drain(I do not have to drain moose, we grind ourselves and do not add any fat, moose is not a fatty meat like beef). Add 3/4 cup water and all else except flour and extra water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Combine flour and remaining water. Stir into stew. Cook until slightly thickened. ( I have often skipped the flour part and it is just as good with out)

I am adapting this recipe to my crock pot. My crock pot gets very hot on high, so after the kitchen was cleaned up from brunch I pulled out old faithful and tossed in the meat and chopped an onion and threw it in. My meat will not be dark brown but it will be cooked thoroughly. (One of my beefs with the crock pot is all the pre browning,etc. often required. When looking for a crock pot recipe I  look for that. ) Here I go with parenthetical thoughts. Once that is accomplished I will add the remaining ingredients and go about my day regaining some sort of control over this house before plunging into next week.

Speaking of crockpots, one of my favorite blogs to read is  Clark Chatter ,. she just started a Crock pot blog that I have been reading. Stop in and see what she is cooking up. I have not tried any of the recipes but they all look yummy and very practical.

When you plan your menu for this week (you do make a menu, don't you?) Plan at least one crock pot meal, you will not be disappointed. Let your kitchen servants do the work for you while you spend time with your blessings.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Friday

I started my day with a quick trip to town. I had to get some supplies to make science, Bible and Composer/Artist/Hymn/Folksong Notebooks, plus a few other necessities to get through the weekend. I headed home to an empty house as sweetheart and the blessings were out on snowmachines. When they returned, I made lunch and hot chocolate to warm them up. (We are heading into a cold snap here) I have been very lax in getting everything accomplished with all the sicknesses that have plagued our home since Dec. 26th, with a little lazy thrown in there. I started clearing off the desk, always messy. Then I moved to the rest of the dining room, which is now clean. I have cleared the clutter off of the kitchen counters while I cleaned up from dinner. I will finish the kitchen/entry tomorrow. Question? Does any one else out there take Super Mom vitamins? I have them but they seem to drag me down instead of aid in the energy department. I took them last week and had a horrible day. Any imput? Thank you in advance. Oh, yeah, some where in my day  I made two loaves of bread and three pizza crusts as well. We will definitely be having pizza leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I made this bread recipe using the hand method (I used the kitchen aide), from the taste we took it seems like it will be good bread. I am looking forward to getting to know how to make good bread using the freshly ground flour.

 May the Lord find us faithful.

So many thoughts

There are so many thoughts running through my head, so many posts running through as well. There they sit as I cannot get them to come out.

 I do have to send you over to the Alaska blog to see what you can learn and what fun you can have in January. I am looking forward to Jan. 18, A.A. Milne's birthday and Winnie the Pooh day. Oh, what fun I plan on that day. We will have some honey but I will pass on the condensed milk.

January 13th a banner day. Masterpiece Theatre is going to begin showing 6 Jane Austen books turned to movies for the next 6 weeks. I am really looking forward to this one. Now, if we can get home from church that early. I hope so.

I know there isn't much here today but with all that stuff running around in my head it is difficult to think about my blogging.

May the Lord find us faithful.

• Jan. 12, 2008 - Well, it did not take much to get me here!

I toyed about an Alaska Nature blog for a little while now. I mentioned it to Jenn tonight and she voted yes, so here I am! Doesn't take much to get me to do something. Over the next weeks and months I will make this little corner of the blog world my own via a personalized template and the nature in my back yard, Alaska. I will be back next week to give our nature report and give some weather statistics.

Dogaversary?

Today I made this to celebrate the second anniversary of adopting our chocolate lab, Emmy.

Since she should not have chocolate, she got this: a special treat, moist and meaty

Here is picture from two years ago, boy how my blessings have grown in two years. And boy, how we have gotten attached to this silly dog.

I am here, I had a head cold the end of last week and was spending time doing only what was necessary and resting the rest of the time. I feel much better now but am now playing catch up.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Come along with me!

This is a full post. First of all, if any of you have any ideas for neat things to add to a hope chest that is to be given to a 16 1/2 year old, please share. We are making her a recipe book full of family recipes and having special people in her life write her notes/letters to be complied and placed inside. (I know the normal items that go inside a hope chest, I am asking for any other "special" things we can place inside) And no, I do not have a 16 year old that I have been hiding but Pa-Pa does and her daughter is getting an hope chest this summer and we want to have a few special things to start it out with. Thank you in advance.

For those popping over from Tiany's either scroll to the bottom or join the tour of my little town.

Now, the tour of our little town continues:

First, on this day the temperature was -6 degrees, not too bad, seriously.

Jump into the van with me and we will grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and take a tour.

 

These drive up coffee places are quite popular here, they are everywhere. With names like Mocha moose, strange brew, Mocha Dan's, sunrise, the list goes on and on.

After the post office, I headed over to the library to grab a picture there. It was not opened yet, but I got my picture. We are supposed to get a new, larger library in the not so near future, just in the planning phase now. We need it, there is not enough room for the books! I do my best to take as many as possible to help them out

!

Next, I snapped a photo of one of the candy cane light pole we sport on Santa Claus Lane in North Pole, yes, Santa Claus Lane. 

We won't stop by the play ground today, but here is one on Santa Claus Lane, my blessings always called this one the fire truck playground as it has a fire truck!

 Santa Claus House is on St. Nicholas Drive!  I hope this map link works. North Pole city limits are quite small and do not live in the city limits but we have the North Pole mailing address.

This is the North Pole website

Hey, over at the RV park next to Santa Claus House there is an Ice Festival going on, let's look at a couple of the carvings, there is more info on this at the North Pole website listed just above.

 

This would have been a great place for a Christmas Card picture this year, too bad I do not get out much! I wonder how many people from our area sent this as a Christmas card picture?

Yum, Pagoda was one of the ice park sponsers, I love Pagoda. I never like Asian food until I ate here after we were married. I know this is a dark picture but I am adding for those  readers who have moved away from here and enjoyed Pagoda while living here.

 

This big guy sits next to his house.

I learn something new every day! Our Wendy's is the number one fast food stop according to the travel channel. Wow, I am majorly taking this place for granted!

So, what will it be for lunch? Wendy's or Pagoda? Please say Pagoda!!

Thanks for going with me and have a safe trip home.

Next Tiany has a lot going on this week. She asked us to share a few of our favorite things. That is tough for me. But I will try. Stop by and wish her a very happy Blogoversary!

I really like my Bare Escentuals makeup

I also like that Victoria is being published again. I read this magazine in college and stopped when I married and moved to the Last Frontier. I have since realized that I can live here and still be myself.

I also love paper, stationary, notebooks, pencils, pens, etc. I love paper and plan on dabbling in calligraphy this year. I have always wanted to do so, now is the time.

Tiany also has a giveaway for a Raising Godly Tomatoes Book that looks great. I am going to check this one out.

One last thing, I also blog for hsb's homeschool nations for the Alaska blog. This week I linked to a few Alaska web cams. Pop over and check out other parts of my great state. Thanks. 

May the Lord find us faithful.