havocandmayhem.com

At the end of last April we acquired 48 months of car payments. We bought a 2006 Grand Caravan with 24,000 miles on it and I wrote this post about it. I thought I would update that post with my thoughts after a year of ownership We had looked at 2008 version in an electric blue first & I liked it more. But I didn’t like it $4000 more. It had the same mileage & I like the radio better. I mostly liked that it was electric blue. Because there are exactly zero electric blue mini vans in the Wal Mart parking lot at any given time. But silver? You can’t swing a cat without hitting a silver mini van in the Wal Mart parking lot. However it does have electric doors, so I can stand in the general vicinity of several silver mini vans, push the remote & then go to whichever one’s door opens. ***update*** This losing-the-car-in-the-parking-lot thing is pretty much a monthly occurrence. I regularly find myself standing next to a silver minivan, pressing the remote unlock...

I found this photo from April 1986 while doing some scanning last week & my sons both asked me what I was doing in the photo & I thought I’d share the story with the world. In my little boys’ minds I am watering down my juice, just like I always water down theirs. And I must be on a picnic since I am sitting on the ground. Not quite. This photo was taken at about 8am on a Friday morning in front of the Sigma Chi fraternity house at West Virginia University. (please keep in mind for the rest of the story that WVU was Playboy’s #1 Party School in the nation for 1985-87. The drinking age at that time was 19.) . My sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi had had a ‘Wake Up’ for the Sigma Chis that morning. We arrived at the frat house about 6:30am bearing donuts and McD’s breakfast muffins, fruit, orange juice, tomato juice and vodka to make screwdrivers and bloody Mary’s. Once everything was set up, we ran screaming through the house, banging on doors and waking everyone in the hous...

from my D40. Taken Friday at 2pm. An out of focus shot of me in the mini van. The result of my playing with my quick response remote and various auto focus settings. Had I remembered that I was nearing my 10,000 photo, when the camera counter turns over and starts again, I would have tried to take a more meaningful shot. Or at least a more in focus shot that didn’t give me a double chin. Something that showed how my skills have progressed This was the first shot I took with the camera So apparently I have regressed in my photo skills. The coffee canister is at least in focus. I got the D40 on Nov 4, 2008 , passing the UPS truck headed toward my house while I was heading out to vote in the presidential election and I stuck to my civic duty and did not do a U turn and chase down the UPS truck as I wanted to do. Because I’m all politically minded like that & I had a vote I was determined to throw away on people with an I after their names. (I am under no illusi...

Some from my 365 Project this week The boys playing with Daddy’s motorcycle helmet Ashes sleeping in the blankets Homemade bread Some new Lego figures (photo by Mayhem) I'm 3/4 of the way done with my cross stitch project My monthly self-portrait. For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

This is my old toaster oven (this photo is from Sep 08 because I failed to take a ‘before’ photo before I unpacked the new toaster oven.  bad blogger!) It’s an under mount Black & Decker model & is under one of the kitchen cabinets. We got it in Aug 02, when we remodeled the kitchen. We liked it because it left the counter space open and there isn’t that much counter space in the kitchen to begin with. It was also nice for making fish sticks, small pizzas and garlic bread without having to turn the oven itself on. Shortly after this photo was taken the baking element stopped working but the toast one was fine. We began a search for a replacement oven. However. Unde rmount toaster ovens are hard to come by. They are a fire hazard it seems. They still make them but the model that replaced the one we have was $90! I paid $40 for mine. Sometimes a cheaper version was spotted by others at Target but by the time I was able to get there, usually a couple days later,...

So easy an unorganized ditz could do it. And I’ll prove it to you. Step one - get a quart sized mason jar Step one A – get a step ladder Step two - which probably should have been step one, find your recipe Step three - heat a quart of milk in the microwave to 180-185 degrees F in 2 minute increments, stirring each time. This takes about 6-7 minutes in my microwave. Get distracted by step 4 & fail to photograph step 3 Step four– search for thermometer to check the temp of the yogurt after first 2 minutes Find only cases and the long missing apple corer Step 4a – stick yogurt back in the microwave for another 2 minutes while you tear through every drawer in the kitchen until you come up with one of the thermometers. Step 4b – once yogurt reaches 180 degrees leave it to cool on the counter to 110-115 degrees. This takes about 45 minutes. Do not put the hot glass jar in the fridge! Trust me. Step five – gather your other ingredients (probably this...

Today’s post is random because I am tired. I’ve been fighting the unmedicated insomnia fight since Christmas and for awhile there I was winning. After 3 solid years of Lunesta induced sleep I was off the meds and actually sleeping some, most of the time, by mid-Feb. I filled my last Lunesta prescription on Nov 30 and I still have 2 of those pills left. I would have had 5 but it’s been a hard 10 days. Sometime in late Feb the balance tipped and insomnia has been winning over half time time. For awhile there it was various aches & pains keeping me awake & Tylenol PM helped but that soon stopped working. Meditating was never more than 50% successful, neither were the various herbal teas I have tried. Lately I seem to sleep best from 5am until 9am, with a 45 minute period of wakefulness around 6:45 when I get up to get the kids ready for school. So I’ve been getting about 3 non consecutive hours of sleep lately. I’m a bit cranky as a result. Then the boys started night ...

It has been beautiful out lately But really windy and that has been spreading pollen far and wide, making me wheeze and sneeze. The source of my respiratory distress The boys had a new & used book fair at their school & bought some new to them books And I made some yogurt (post coming next week) For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I am slowly working on scrapping a “Life Lessons” album. I have no idea how many pages it will be when done but when the mood, a quote or challenge prompts, hit me, I make some pages. I have 5 so far, though I can’t seem to find #2 on my hard drive   Sweet Shoppe Designs challenges this month prompted lessons 4 & 5 and will probably lead to at least 3 more if I can get to them. I’d like to do about 25 or so and get them made into a bound book. I’m bad with themes but I have enough quotes and things that it is certainly do-able & if it takes me a couple years to finish it, that’s ok too. My mojo seems to have disappeared this week though so I have no gotten any layouts done in a week or so.

This is the result of a recent trip to my local bulk foods market. Sunday I decided to make my favorite soft flat bread recipe and discovered I was nearly out of white & wheat flour and several other flours. Naturally I did not discover this until the liquid ingredients were all mixed together with the sugar, salt & yeast so I couldn’t just say ‘oh well’ and walk away. I had to come up with something.  The bread ended up being a mix of white bread flour, whole wheat flour, soy flour, oat flour, buckwheat pancake mix, oat bran and some Self Rising flour. (I needed 7 cups of flour because I foolishly was making a double batch) It was *interesting* texturally.  Not bad, but not at all what I want in my flat bread. Normally I stick with white, wheat and flax meal, sometimes bran. The market is just down from the boys’ TKD class so I dropped them off Wed and headed over there. They have these little carts because the aisles aren’t wide enough for bit carts. Mine ...

A few weeks back I mentioned that Mayhem was getting up at all hours of the night suddenly. He’d wake up at 2am and come in our room wanting to chat. Or he’d wake up at midnight and play his DS until Havoc came in our room and complained about the noise. Then he spent a week or so getting up at 5am. My children are already up at the crack of dawn as it is, getting up even EARLIER is not an endearing quality. We wondered at the time what was up with this behavior but focused on preventing it rather than analyzing it. This is our standard reaction to children going through sudden periods of wakefulness. It’s a 6 year old habit at this point. We more or less know what is going on in general so we ignore it in favor of encouraging sleep.  What is going on is the child is making a developmental leap in some area and it’s keeping their brain too busy to sleep. We first noticed it right before Havoc started crawling, though the connection wasn’t made until after he started crawling be...

It was a week off for the most part. The boys has Spring Break from Sat-Wed. DH had Sat-Tues off from work. The weather was wonderfully warm and sunny the whole time. Saturday there was yard work & grilling steaks with some friends. Sunday was Easter. We went to brunch at a local restaurant. It was ok. Brunch is difficult sometimes and the menu was not very large. We came for more yard work and the boys created water hazards to play in. Plus there was more cooking out on the grill. Tandori spiced chicken this time. Monday I went to the gym and the males laid around until I came home. Then everyone was outside from about 10a to 8p. DH did some work on the brakes of his old motocycle and went for a short ride. The water hazards continued and I read out on the shade porch. I want to buy a chaise lounge for the shade porch, but there is not enough room for it, so I have to sprawl across 2 chairs. Dinner was on the grill again – BBQ bacon wrapped shrimp Tuesday DH & Ha...

A few from my 365 Project this week Clone Trooper, it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it Creating puddles Dino swamp is back in the nice weather   So is cooking out Choose wisely For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!