My Musings and Stuff!

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Can you say excited? I know I am and so glad that the wait for it is only until June. And then it kind of sucks because the wait for Breaking Dawn starts right after that. But until then I will be settle with New Moon out on DVD next weekend. And even though I already had New Moon reserved at Best Buy my kid reminded me of the date the other night.

But here is the trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse!

Fast Tube by Casper

~sharon

Kind of an odd thing to say but I really think so.  I am like a TV zombie with dvds and even sometimes video games.  Here lately I just would rather sit in front of the TV than work on my blog, work on my other incomes, or just work, which all I do at home. Lately I have been sucked into watching the TV show Charmed, and not just some episodes on TV the whole series, I got the box set on dvd and just cannot quit watching. There are 8 season and over the last week I have watched 3 at least.  That is nearly 72 hours of TV watching. And that is just that show not even counting catching up with Weeds on dvd (now that show is freaking funny).  And yesterday I spent a few hours playing Rockband, though I don’t count that as much because it was a family thing.

I am not sure what to do, I need to get my enthusiasm for doing stuff again back up.  I am not sure if it is past personal issues coming back up again. Because I don’t know if it is depression again or not, I never could really tell myself but those around me could always tell. It is something I will have to talk to my doctor about, but maybe I can work it out on my own and get it all under control. Just gotta get my will power back to stay away from the TV and stay in front of the computer to work.  For now I am going to experiment with daily goals and lists and see if that will help until I can manage with the doctor.

~sharon

Anything to help schools and education for our children is important, they need all they can get in the ever evolving world that we live in. And Box Tops for Education is just trying to do that for our kids and have already raised over $300 million for schools. And now what is awesome with through March 18, Kroger is giving a chance to earn even more bonus box tops.

What you have to do is register at www.RewardYourSchool.com and select the personalized offers that you would like to receive.  And for just signing up you will get 5 bonus box tops.

Here are the details of the offer:

• Get 3,4, or 5 Bonus Box Tops when you buy the corresponding amount of participating General Mills Cereals
  • Participating cereals include Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, , Cookie Crisp Sprinkles, Trix, Reese’s Puffs, Cookie Crisp, Golden Grahams, Kix, Fruity Cheerios, Dora the Explorer, Honey Kix, and all varieties of Cascadian Farm
• Get 3, 4, or 5 Bonus Box Tops when you buy the corresponding amount of participating Yoplait Kid products
  • Participating products include Yoplait Kids Yogurt Drink, Yoplait Go-GURT, Yoplait Kids Lowfat Yogurt, and Yoplait Trix Lowfat Yogurt
• Get 3, 4, or 5 Bonus Box Tops when you buy the corresponding amount of participating Pillsbury products
  • Participating products include 8 ct. packages of all varieties of Pillsbury Grands! Biscuits, Pillsbury Grands! Cinnamon Rolls, Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls, Pillsbury Flaky Twists, and Pillsbury Sweet Rolls

Pretty awesome right? I think it is because those are things we use almost daily and we can help benefit our kids schools just for buying those.

Also you can win a $25 Kroger gift card! This will be running from the time this post goes up until Friday March 12, 2010 at 8 pm. cst.

And the entry methods are:

1. Leave a comment telling me what items you buy that benefit our schools through Box Tops for Education! This can also be done once a day for multiple entries.
2. Sign up at www.RewardYourSchool.com and leave me a comment and tell me one of your personalized offers! (can be done only once)
3. Tweet about this cost with a link back and leave a comment with a link to your tweet! (can be done twice a day for multiple entries)

Very easy and awesome to do! And the winner will be drawn through random.org and I will write a post announcing the winner and email them to let them know Friday evening after the contest ends! Also this contest is open to U.S. residents only.

The Kroger Family of Stores gift card for my participation, information, and giveaway were all provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.

~sharon

~sharon

I work at home so 95% of the time I am readily available if I am needed for something for my boys. So ever once in a while when I get the call that either one of them is sick or Hal has yet gotten in trouble again it is usually easily handled either by going and getting said child or talking to the principal and Hal. And I name him out because in the 4 years my oldest has been to school I can count how many times on one hand hand I have gotten a phone call from the school concerning his behavior. Hal on the other hand I love my sweet boy and am working really super hard on his issues at school.

Anyway this morning just as I was logging out of work, they have just awesome timing. I get the dreaded phone call of “This is the nurse from (insert school name here), my first thought was oh ok, insert letting out breath sound. Just a sick kid, and then I think back that neither of them seemed sick this morning. Then she finishes the sentence, not sick had an accident and need to take Hal to the doctor for stitches on his face. And I am immediately thinking “oh shit”, I may have even said that aloud to the nurse, I really don’t remember.

So I go into overdrive and tell her I will get him and take him into the ER. I call his grandma, and have her go grab him to meet me at the hospital. She lives 3 mins from the school and I live nearly 15.

And I can honestly say  I was freaking out. It has been years since we have had any kind of emergency involving the emergency room. And our first time for either kid having  stitches, we have been lucky there considering Hal is a ninja/acrobat with no fear to speak of.

And I have to say that everyone at the hospital was really nice and did so well with him. He was really brave about it and at the hospital didn’t shed a tear until they started numbing him for stitches because from what they say that stuff burns and then a needle in the wound on top of it. And at that point I started crying too while I was holding his hands.

This is a picture while we were waiting at the emergency room they had just put a fresh bandage on and I took it to send his dad so he could see where it was at while he was on his way to the hospital.

And here he is hours later with a smile on his face.

He had to have seven stitches, at first he was convinced of that because he just had his seventh birthday a couple of weeks ago.  So I just shook my head like a good mom and said yep that is it exactly. But he is doing great now and he gets to have them out on Wednesday and they say that if after it heals up if I take care of it with vitamin e (I have to double check that now) lotion.  That it should leave only a small line that you can barely see if that. Maybe that will be my after picture for next weeks Wordless Wednesday!

And I just realized I wrote nearly 600 words while leaving out what happened. He had been in gym class and he was standing up at the same time another boy was walking and they hit each other and then Hal had went into the door and got the gash in his cheek that was around 3 inches.

~sharon

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Speek. All opinions are 100% mine. Often times in the world of social media and web businesses having using a teleconference is useful to have a meeting or even to teach a class. I know in previous jobs and training sessions we used web based teleconferences to touch base and to hold classes and courses. I think they are very neat and fun to work with especially when your like myself and are a work from home mom. It made the overall training experience and made the learning easier for all of those involved because we were able to ask direct questions. So something like Speek would be perfect for business meetings, job training for working at home, and as a blogger maybe even a class to learn different techniques. For your teleconferencing needs I would suggest checking out Speek it is a free web-based teleconferencing system.  Right now users can register for private beta which is FREE. And best of all to register you do not even have to have an invitation code to try out the beta.  And Speek even dials out to cell phones, landlines, and voice-over-Internet applications like Skype and GoogleTalk. Since it is a FREE service maybe even families that live long distance could even hold family talks through Speek’s services.

~sharon

I am such a freak I had to put guilty twice just to make them sound all bad and stuff. When really they aren’t so bad but these are things that if I didn’t have the pleasure of having the world would totally end as I know it. It is sad really.

1. Pizza
2. iPod touch
3. texting on my cellphone
4. FanFiction
5. Chi flat iron
6. Rock Band
7. Everything Twilight
8. Fingernail Polish
9. Star Trek
10. AFI
11. facebook
12. band t-shirts
13. Buffy The Vampire Slayer

~sharon

I live in East Texas where it rarely ever snows, especially twice in a two week period. Sometimes we go years without there being any snowfall or sign of snow so it was kind of shocking that it snowed yet again this week. I mean the last time it snowed was a couple of years ago on Easter of all times of year. This place is usually known for almost being time for short sleeves and flip flops. I desperately miss my flip flops right now. But for now here are a couple of pictures from my boys playing in the snow last light.

And of course getting warm afterward with hot cocoa.

~sharon

~sharon

I came across this recipe literally on the front page of Yahoo. And since we are huge fans of Dr. Pepper I thought it looked yummy and would give it a try.  This recipe was a huge hit with my family and the kids loved it. And since I honestly am really only good at easy recipes this one was perfect for me to make.

The ingredients for this one are

4-6 pork chops

1 can Dr. Pepper

12 oz ketchup or chili sauce

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in the crock pot, and cook on low for 6 hours or until the pork chops are cooked through. Remove the chops and whisk in 1 tablespoon of cornstarch (or flour) to thicken the sauce into a gravy. Serve over rice.

One thing that I liked about it was that the meat was really super tender and fell right off the bone. Since the recipe did not specify bone-in or boneless, I had bone-in handy and just used it.

I also of course served it with rice but also had spinach, since it is my kids favorite and biscuits on the side.  Like I said it was huge hit and my kids stuffed themselves on it.

If you love Dr. Pepper and tender meat then this recipe is definitely a must try for your family. I originally found the recipe here One Pot Dr. Pepper Pork Chops recipe. That way you can see it was not something I made up or something, if only I had I would be awesome!

~sharon