The Next Wonderful Weekend Recap Taking Place on a Tuesday

I'm really doing poorly at this. I have an excuse. The internet in Dyer, TN is humiliatingly pathetic. Today I took the plunge and drove to the library to use the internet. We have an interesting routine in the house these days -  the internet working until about 10:00 AM (at which point I am starting my day and normally have already done the basic internet check-up and have started chores) and from then on out not working until about 7:00 or 8:00 PM. Makes it difficult to get much blogging done...because the motivation that comes from waiting for laundry to be done or taking a lunch break from chores/shopping/exercising fizzles by the time the internet comes back on. The root of the problem will hopefully be found in the next few weeks. Until then, it's the library for me, or late night blogs.

What have I been up to? Just chillaxin'. Wait no that's false. The last time I posted was Tuesday of last week, so guess what was wonderful about the rest of the week?

1. Wednesday: I subbed.
2. Thursday: I subbed.
3. Friday: I subbed.

Oh heck yes I did. 4th grade, Computer Lab, and Kindergarten in that order. Computer Lab was unbelievably easy, like mind-numbingly so. 4th grade was mega fun because the kids are young enough to have fun with and impress with stupid things (they really loved my wealth of knowledge about the Motherland, and also the accent that comes with it) but old enough to trust that they won't be misinformed about school procedures. I felt I could actually believe them when the entire class told me "This is what we do on this page," or someone volunteered to show me how to turn on some random hunk of technology that I didn't understand. By the way, Smart Boards or whatever you want to call them? We did have them in high school, and college (proving I'm not just an old-fashioned outdated technophobe), and I still don't like them. My nice handwriting doesn't look as nice on a smartboard, and there are numerous other reasons why I think the technology should be more finely tuned before being supplied to every teacher in an elementary school. Sigh. Perhaps if I work there longer they will begin to seem like a necessity to me.

Anyway! My subbing career is going swimmingly, and I plan to take a second job to round out the end of the school year/see me through the summer. It is further affirming my decision to teach upper grade levels, as the hardest ones for me to get through the days have been my 2nd grade and kindergarten classes. Big kids are easier to get through to, and I like being presented with problems that need real problem-solving skills to resolve. "He stole my crayon," vs. "I need help with long division" is not a difficult choice for me.

Let's see, what did I do over the weekend of note. We played outside a lotttt. On Saturday we used a water hose, shovels, and fingers to play in the mud, which was lots of fun for all four of us. And, because plain old mudpies aren't sophisticated enough for my fiance, he also got the kids a gift of a windowsill garden where we're growing radishes, carrots, and onions. We'll see how the growth goes! My first downfall is I don't know what dry soil looks like and am certain I'm going to overwater the plants. It's great that I have to take responsibility for it because I'm home most! I don't want to kill Thomas and Lara's science project! Haha say a little prayer for meeeee.

Photosynthesis for Five Year Olds

The less sophisticated dirt playing...it got more sophisticated than this though! We had a dam and two ponds connected by a river by the end of the day. Matthew likes aquaducts.

Playing with the Cool New Stuff Box! Chalk and books galore!

Just a pretty picture of Lara with no particular purpose.

We also wrote on the windows with window markers, played with sidewalk chalk, and watched Veggietales (the kids are obsessed. Matthew and I now know all the words to all the silly songs. There are worse things.) and went to Dyersburg to do some shopping and pick up tools so Matt could work on his car.

On Sunday after church, Matt and I did the same thing as the day before, sans kids. Well sorta. I washed the car, instead of playing in the mud. Little progress was made because I got tired and dinner needed to be started. Matt took me out on a date on his back porch. We had the most delicious food in the whole wide world, probably because we were so hungry and we had both contributed to the cooking which made us feel both productive and grateful to the other person. Andddd we went to Dyersburg again (we just so love it there) to dump trash in the dumpster and buy things needed for next Sunday.

So my weekend was pretty tame. I don't even have crazy stories to give ya! I hope this will keep you entertained for the next 24 hours while I accumulate some wonderfulness to send your way. Namely the fact that it is Spring Break, meaning I actually have time and energy to write a blog and think about topics for posting. Don't worry friends, I won't go anywhere. I have plenty of pent-up extroversion not being put to use by having no friends in Tennessee and Matt working until bumblefudge at night. Speaking of which, I think I'll probably get to see him in about 45 minutes! So I'd better go. Have a wonderful and blessed Good Friday, Easter, all that, on the off chance that you read my post today and don't return for another week!

See Y'all!
TFMM

Whatever is Wonderful about the Weekend which I will now Recap on a Tuesday.

Sorry guys, I have no excuse. Haha. Things have been wonderful, obvi, because when are they not in the life of a future McCaslin? Wonderful, but sickly and boring. I don't have a lot of updates! I'll go through, day by day, just to make sure I don't miss any hilarity. So when was the last post? About subbing on Monday, yes. So beginning with Tuesday....

3/20 - The Jace Man came over to my house to play because his babysitter was sick. Talk about some fun times. He is just one of the best behaved toddlers I've ever met. I can't believe he's two! If these are Jace's attempt at the Terrible Two's...I might kidnap him around age 5. He was just so sweet. He napped twice, ate all his lunch and breakfast, played by himself when I needed him to, and got bored of watching TV after about half an hour. He's a wonder child. We kicked around a soccer ball and read every book in the house, not to mention swung on the swing and played with Blue, the cat. There was a wasp in the house all day and we both chose to ignore it. I was really worried that it would come out from its hiding spot while Jace was napping and wake him up, and/or scare him and/or me to death. By the way, did you know I almost never kill bugs? There's a fun piece of Mary Lou trivia. On the surface, I'm really not afraid of bugs...I can handle them if I have to. You've seen my Critters posts and heard the story of the enormo cricket in my bed. I don't, however, enjoy getting close to bugs if I can help it. I kill them from a distance if I can, and if I can't, well, I'll probably just ignore them and hope they go away. Depending on the potential harm they pose me. Anything with stingers? I'm probably just going to let them run the house and hope they find an open window or the hole they came in. Last week there was a wasp inside, and I just left the house for two hours hoping it would die or leave in that space of time. I'm not a fan of angering the critters that could potentially hurt me. Wasps are the boss of me and I'm not afraid to say it! Eventually the one in the house committed suicide in a flourescent kitchen light, thank heavens!

We did some of this...

A lot of this...

And even an occasional smile! He likes me! He really really likes me!

3/21 - Jace Man again, and equally as fun on Day Two. Same activities, except this time we also drew pictures and threw a baseball in the backyard. I was amazed he could manage to nap twice in such a noisy house. There were roofers fixing some wind damage to the roof all day, but he slept right through all the banging and hammering. He could, but the house sure couldn't! At one point the roofers hammered so hard that a light fixture came clattering to the floor in my bathroom. Luckily it was a light fixture that doesn't work, so there wasn't much of a loss there. Still! Crazy hammering fools! Also, my boyfriend took me out to dinner in Dyersburg and we got two free cookies and had lots of fun together. It's been so boring this week and last not seeing him! Matt just started a 2nd job (hopefully short-lived, because 60-70 hours a week is crazy talk) and it meant I didn't see him until 10:00 every night, except Wednesday! Thus it became date night.

3/22 + 23 - Thursday and Friday were both uneventful. Friday was yet another sick day for Miss Lara, who spent the whole weekend on medication to keep her fever and coughing at bay. Here's what's tough, putting the kids to bed all by myself three nights in a row. It was really sad. Thomas and Lara weren't sad about me putting them to bed, but it's just not something I feel is my job...for this reason, I made them stay up late enough to say goodnight to Daddy on Friday and Saturday, when sleep mattered less. It was pretty doggone late, but I just felt lonely tucking them in all by myself. I hope it doesn't become a regular occurence!

Digging the St. Patty's day gift from Gram and Granddad Secules!

Oh also, we made one heck of a tent in the den.

The McCaslin family is serious about tenting. Lara models the comfortable seating arrangements inside the front door.

There was even a secret compartment behind a wall of couch cushions where the kids could hide...from I don't know what!

3/24 - Was a fun day out for the kids, although I think the lack of sleep made them pretty darn testy. Also, Lara still wasn't 100% healthy, making the whole day a bit strenuous on her little body. We went to a wonderful place in Yorkville called Todd Family Fun Farm for an Easter Egg Hunt, and let me tell you...it was a great place. It was too cold for an outdoor Easter Egg Hunt, and it kept looking like rain, but we still had fun and got free food and candy! The only serious problem with it was that there were prize drawings for collecting a certain number of eggs...and Thomas was the very last of the prize-winners to choose a prize. Would have been totally fine, except there were only two very girly stuffed animals available to choose from. It ended in tears, justifiably. I wouldn't have been able to cope if I waited that long thinking I'd get a cool prize as well. After that we played on the playground, which took everyone's minds off the lame prize giveaway and was crazy fun. We went from Todd Farm to Nanny's house for play time for los bambinos and Look at Baby Pictures of Matthew for the adults of the crowd. Isn't that everyone's favorite hobby? Yes, I think so. Especially when your fiance was so cute as a tot.

Taking pictures of Thomas is a study in disappearing feet.

The best part was our next stop, McDonald's to see Daddy on his lunch break. It was lots of fun and made up for the fact that I didn't get to spend any time with him the whole whole day long. He had to leave pretty much as soon as we got there to go back to work, but at least we got to see him! And the kids got non-stupid Happy Meal toys, which is always a bonus!

3/24 - We ended up skipping church to attend a birthday party for Matthew's stepbrother at his dad's house. We gave him a homemade gift certificate for a free oil change, which everyone thought was very clever. Matt's idea, my handiwork and coloring expertise. We make a good team ^_^ So I think we're going to get married.

3/25 Yesterday I went on a three mile walk and got bitten by a dog. Also Matthew went to the doctor for his leg and they put him back on another nerve medication to see if this helps any better than the last million things the doctors have tried to take away his pain. Man oh man. Those were really the only notable things that happened yesterday. Also, my FMIL had a successful surgery and made it home. Also, my dad turned [old] and got a cool cake from my sister! And homemade cards from his stepgrandchildren (mouthhhh full, we're going to have to just go with plain old grandchildren) and hopefully a card from his daughter will be arriving today?

Last but not least of the tent pictures, a foot going inside to explore!

Goodness. Now I've updated everybody on the last million years in which I haven't had internet access at the right time so couldn't post anything. 

Weekend Recap

A good weekend was had all around, I believe, though really we didn't do much. On Friday, Miss Lara was home with the dread Pink Eye, so we hung out all day together! Fun except for the paranoia that comes with being near a person with pink eye...it just makes you want to touch your eyes all the more. Like when someone near you yawns. Except grosser and more germy. Regardless, Lara helped me with chores and caused me to reminisce the whole day on how fun it used to be to help my mom or dad with chores before they got tedious and annoying. Most likely for the benefit of my parents and nobody else, I will list some of the great fun we had (I wish we had pictures! Sorry folks, I'm new at this...plus it's not my camera that I use so I limit myself):

1. We made muffins together. Reminded me of learning to stir pancake batter at around the same age as Lara, and of course she got to help spoon the batter into muffin cups, which was really hard to watch and very messy. I was pretty glad that she tired of this quickly and went to go hang out with her toys until I was finished.

2. We went grocery shopping together. Still skinny enough to fit in the baby seat at the top of a shopping cart, she designated herself as that grocery-into-the-cart-putter...or thrower, as it steadily declined. Lara is excellent at picking out all the stuff we don't need. I now understand all of the moms who would come through my checkout line at TJ's looking frazzled and vowing never to go grocery shopping with their kids again. Hahaha. We did get a few things per her suggestions that weren't such a bad idea, like chocolate cookie mix and green frosting from the clearance rack, which are going to make excellent St. Patty's day treats.

3. We did laundry together. This brought back vivid memories of doing laundry with my Dad in our much larger Maryland laundry room. The washer and dryer were about 10 feet apart, making a great game out of successfully transferring wet clothes into the dryer without dropping every pair of socks. I also helped by separating the dirty clothes by color. It brought me back when Lara burst into squeals and giggles over touching a dirty sock...as if the whole hamper of clothes wasn't already...dirty laundry. Silly kid. :-)

So that was Friday. Lara and Mary bonding time. And bond we did. On Saturday, Matthew and I had a bit of a day date to Jackson because Nanny wanted to play with her grandbabies all day. We walked around that Mecca of wondrous things, Target, looking at baby clothes and kitchen supplies and stationary (how awesome is it that I'm marrying somebody who loves window shopping for all the same things as me?! So. Completely. Awesome.) and also went to that other Mecca of Guy Things, Harbor Freight Tools, picking up some pretty Gweat deals on car stuff for the Datsun. That may have been all we did, but BOY did we ever kill an afternoon. We accidentally skipped a meal and arrived back at Matt's house right before Nanny came to drop off the kids.

Then came Sunday! The clocks changed, we were all tired, I had lost my voice...it was just a sluggish kind of morning. But to church we did go! Then Sarah came to pick up the kids, and Matthew got this crazy idea in his head that he wanted to clean the house. Well, surely that wasn't what to do on the day of rest (according to me the anti-tidier), so instead we watched Top Gear for awhile. Sitting on the couch for an hour had the obvious desired demotivating effect...so after that was over, we decided to go on a bike ride! And it was super, duper fun. I told Matt I needed some biker chick gear if he wanted to make a routine out of these Sunday evening rides now that the weather is warmer.

I'm banking on this. :D

Or this!

Definitely some of these...

Though my helmet is red and black, so the pink might clash just a bit. Hurumph.

And that was our eventful weekend! Wonderful times had by all, as mentioned before. And now, I have some serious, serious laundry and general weekend catchup to play around the house. It's been real!

See Y'all!

TFMM

Southerners really DO deep fry everything.

Matthew and I went out on a date last night to celebrate our favorite holiday, Tuesday. He took me to see the Vow, which I have to admit, I was really super excited about. I felt justified in going to an undeniable "chick flick" with him, since we watch an episode or two of Top Gear every single night on Netflix. :-D I'm not complaining at all, but I had definitely racked up enough Man TV Points to bump up the femininity notch a bit. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, we were going to see The Vow, starring Rachel McAdams (so much love) and Channing Tatum (so much of that other 4-letter 'L' word):

The movie was, needless to say, very lovey dovey. I would venture to say that Matt and I both liked it pretty good...to use a local turn of phrase. The point of this post, however, was what preceded our movie. The movie was not until 7:00 PM, and Matthew gets off work at 5:00, so we went to Shogun Japanese Steakhouse to eat sushi. And oh did we ever.

For our first course, Matt wanted squid salad...but the chef was out of squid (bummer), so we went with baby octopus salad. Okay, weird. I did not remember to take pictures of all these bizarre delicacies, but I promise it really did look like tentacles. It also really didn't taste bad or even weird. It didn't taste like much of anything. Teriyaki sauce, I lied. It all had been doused in teriyaki sauce. End salad course.

There were approximately 838593573920295687 things on the menu to choose from, so Matt picked one roll and I picked another roll. Matt's was called a Bagel Roll and mine was called a Happy Roll. Trust me to go for that one, right? I don't surprise anybody. (Fun trivia fact on that note: I have always disliked Eeyore. Why is it okay for a character to be morose all the time? That is sending kids a terrible message. "Oh, Eeyore's just never happy about anything, and everyone still likes him. You can have a bad day everyday too! And your cute little face will still wind up on sweatshirts and backpacks all over the world!" Ridiculous.)   There they were, bagel roll and happy roll. I was ready. I've had sushi before, and I know there's really not a whole lot that can be put in it to make it taste bad. Plus, the few things that I would think might make it taste bad - read: baby octopus - I had just tried, so really there wasn't much to worry about.

I found this picture online, but it is pretty close to what ours looked like.

Our sushi arrives fresh out of the deep fryer. Wait, what? Yes, it was covered in what I guess was tempura and deep fried. Perhaps this really is normal, and Japanese people all over the country/world get out their Fry Daddy to make their meal a little warmer than raw fish and seaweed. At this particular moment, however, I just thought it was hilarious. Never in my life have I seen deep fried sushi, but it seemed like a completely Southern cliche playing itself out in front of my eyes. I hope I'm not offending anyone. But really, if you can order something deep fried that is by all definitions in the common world served raw, nevertheless COLD...well, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. Or the north, because who knows what whacky things go down in Kansas.

Found on www.fibers.com

My disclaimer for the evening though? The Happy Roll and Bagel Roll were both absolutely delicious. I mean, really. The Southern Japanese Americans are really onto something. After the heart attack on a plate was gone, Matt and I decided to order to more rolls, a mackerel and a Tokyo roll. They were both okay but just normal sushi. Less thrilling. I would recommend anyone that can find a deep fried sushi roll on their menu at the local sushi restaurant to try it. It's just as healthy as it sounds, and you won't regret the extra calories.

And these last photos are just for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy very small people dressed up as the above mentioned delicacies.