How to cook rice:

1.  Go to Target

2.  Buy the rice-cooker that’s on sale this week.

3.  Put in rice

4.  Put in water

5.  Wait

6.  Eat

My rice NEVER turned out – it was always crunchy on the inside, no matter how carefully I followed directions.  We put a rice cooker on our list of things to buy, and finally one came on sale, so yesterday Peyton and I made a quick trip to Target.

The menu tonight: teriyaki chicken, broccoli & rice.  Tomorrow’s lunch: teriyaki chicken bowl.  Yum!

The long-awaited Oscar Miner Wiener song is up and ready – check it out here.  You’ll need to type in our code, PGKZXN.
Sorry I haven’t been updating; we’ve been super-busy around here…Jeannie & I are trying to put together our Holiday Open House for next week Saturday, I’m starting to teach an SAT prep course to a few kids (first class tomorrow), and grades are due Wednesday!

Back to work…

UPDATE:  Apparently the link isn’t working – type www.singthejingle.com into your browser, then type in the code.  Make sure pop-ups are enabled!

Already?  I got home from work today and Peyton and Daddy (Peyton tried to go to school – his symptoms are all gone, but he was just too tired so Daddy took him home early) were watching the Veggietales Star of Christmas.  Apparently they’d spent the afternoon watching both videos on the double-feature Veggietales Christmas DVD.  In my Mary Kay meetings lately we’ve been working on our plans for the holidays, and my friend Jeannie and I are starting to plan a holiday open house together.

And I’ve been craving Christmas cookies – those frosted, cookie-cutter sugar cookies that people only make at Christmas time.

So Peyton and I made Christmas cookies together this afternoon.

I hope 15 minutes at 375* cooks out the germs.

And if you need any help shopping for someone this Christmas, let me know!  My director challenged me to sell 25 items in the next 7 days, but I’m thinking I might go for the record of 64.  In our meeting on Monday night they talked about how to do executive gifts for businesses, so if I spend some time on the phone with some of the local businesses I might be able to make it happen!  Check out my Mary Kay website and especially the awesome Christmas gifts…PLEASE!  I won’t make either of my goals without your help!

Our entire house is still the original white-with-wood-trim from when it was built.  We’re definitely painting baby’s room, so I thought Peyton might also enjoy picking out some colors for his own room.

He picked out navy blue first, but we eventually convinced him to go with some slightly lighter colors.  Eventually we ended up with a medium blue on two walls and a light blue on the other two walls.  It turned out great!  He even helped me with rolling the paint on, although after we finished I noticed a few blue spots on his butt and on his knee   Good thing we put on old clothes first! 

(But he wasn’t the only one who sat in the paint)

The only other excitement this weekend is Peyton’s fever.  He desperately wanted to go to the LC football game on Friday night, so we went.  It wasn’t that cold, but I noticed after being there for about 10 or 15 minutes he pulled his hood on and his hands up into their sleeves.  Another 5 minutes after that he came to sit with me, saying he was too cold, even though his best friend Jorren was nearby.  I cuddled with him and rubbed his arms – he was cold but he didn’t want to go home.  He sat on my lap, his eyes barely open, for the entire 2nd quarter of the game.  Then he was ready to go home, but he could barely walk to the car – he was cold and shivering, even though it wasn’t that cold outside.  I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the car; when we got home his first interest was his bed.  He didn’t even want a book, and he didn’t want to put on his jammies.

His temperature was 102* so I gave him some tylenol and he went to sleep.  The next morning it was still a high 102.8* so we went in to the doctor.  He had a deep cough and a slightly runny nose, but mostly it seemed like congestion.  Everything looks okay but the fever, so he’s been taking tylenol every 4 to 6 hours.  The fever goes down within an hour of taking the meds, but it still creeps back up again when its getting close to the next dose.  Peyton’s behavior does the same – after taking the tylenol he’s happy and playful, but as time goes by he gravitates toward the couch and even asks for nap time.

He was coughing a lot at bedtime tonight – he REALLY wanted to sleep in his room, but I think the paint fumes were still too much for him, so he’s on the crib mattress at the foot of our bed for another night.  We’ll leave the window open tonight to let it air out, and hopefully he’ll be able to sleep in his very own super-cool blue bedroom for the first time tomorrow.

But for now, g’night!

Every four years LC does “Outside the Walls,” a day off from classes so students can go off campus and learn some life lessons in the “real” world.  Each teacher comes up with a full day workshop or two half-day workshops, then students sign up for their top choices. 

We informed students that they couldn’t arrive earlier than 5:00 am on registration day – they were so excited in previous years that many camped overnight to save a spot in line.  This year the lawn was packed before doors opened at 8 as students were so eager to sign up for surfing, kayaking, hiking, fly tying, yodeling, cake decorating, flower arranging, and a variety of other options. 

Yesterday was the big day.  I arranged for one of the Mary Kay directors in my area to help me teach two half-day workshops on skin care and makeup application.  We had so much fun! 

It was exciting to see some of the quieter girls who lack self-confidence amazingly transformed by a little bit of makeup.  A week before they slipped into my room, face hiding behind their hair, shoulders slumped in shyness, to pick out colors.  After our workshop, both groups of girls wanted to stop at Dairy Queen for lunch or ice cream.  At Dairy Queen all the girls were beaming as they ordered and ate together.  The girls who had seemed like they wanted to shrink or disappear now stood proud and smiling.

In addition to the [exhausting] fun and busyness that I went through with Outside the Walls, Peyton had a blast this morning on a class field trip to the pumpkin farm.  His favorite parts were “takin’ the bus” and “pickin’ out mah punkin.”  He also had a spider painted on his cheek   He and I had lunch together before I took him to Miss Jenn’s. 

After school, while I started prepping his room for a fresh coat of light blue (we talked him out of navy) paint, he talked to me about his punkin’.  He wants to eat it.  Apparently someone told him you cook it by dropping it on the floor.  Later I caught him trying to take a bite out of it, like it was an oversized, discolored apple.  I guess we’ll have to make pumpkin pie together in the near future.

Baby Lauren keeps growing – she’s a light sleeper, I think, or she has excellent hearing, for she always wakes up when we wake up in the morning.  As soon as Peyton says “Good morning, Mommy!” when he comes into our bed, she starts wiggling.  A few days ago I told Peyton she was awake.  He put his head on my belly and she kicked him on his cheek – he thought it was cute   He often talks about how he’s going to give her milk and play with her and change her diapers and cut her fingernails (he’s had a fascination with scissors lately – especially a pair of baby nail scissors) for her.  I hope he’s this excited about her after she comes!

So I’ve had this crazy idea about painting stripes in the baby’s room.  I don’t know why, but it sounds cute.  I searched and searched for pics of what the room would look like and I finally found this:

  Remember, this is our bedding:

The bedding looks extremely busy & purple in the pic, but I think it’s because there are so many pieces and the walls are so purple…

I really want to do a green base, just like the picture, to calm down the bright pinkish purple in the bedding.  In my head green and pink sounded really cute, but I couldn’t find a single sample in the paint store that would look good.  Purple, though, looked really cute, so I’m trying to decide if I want to do soft purple stripes over the green or if I want to do white.  The purple and green look really cute, but white might be safer?  What do you think?

Some people had a hard time understanding the ultrasound pics that I posted here.

Here are the pictures with explanations:

If I ever load my pics from my camera then I’ll post them here – it’s been a while since I’ve done a picture update!