Not only is she super goofy....

She's super smart too!!  Really.

Madi got her first six weeks report card last week and I’m so proud to say that she made all A’s! You can’t do better than all A’s, so Jack and I are very happy/proud parents!

Madi pretty much always makes good grades, but this year (7th grade) started off at a frantic pace and for awhile Jack and I were worried, wondering is she would be able to keep up with all the school work plus all the swim practices and all extra curriculum activities with swim and choir. But she has really surprised us with fitting it all in and still getting all A’s! Awesome Job, Madi! You make us so proud!!

So, because Madison made such good grades and because we felt like she deserved a little fun, Jack and I let her go to the High School Homecoming football game and the Junior High Homecoming dance this past Friday night WITHOUT us! You guys already know how huge this is for Jack and me! We’re the type of parents who chaperone everything and get involved with the activities. But, we understand that we have to give Madi a little bit of space, it’s not healthy to not let her experience things (at this age anyway) without her parents breathing down her neck. So that’s why, when she asked if she and her best friend, Carly, could go to the game together without adult supervision, we said yes. She earned it and so did Carly, who I’m pretty sure has never made anything less than an A – ever!

Jack and I took the girls out to eat just before the game started and tried our best to prep them for the night ahead. We must’ve told them a thousand times to be safe, stick together, hide your money, don’t talk to strangers, call if there’s any fighting going on at the game, call if you need a sweater, call if you need anything, don’t leave the lighted areas, don’t walk outside of the football field until we text or call you to tell you we are standing there waiting, and the list goes on! We agreed to not chaperone, we didn’t agree not to give our safety speech or worry!!

Anyway, after dinner we drove the girls over to the High School and I walked them up to the ticket booth. We had started worrying long before we dropped them off, but now the questioning our decision began. Was it the right decision or were we bad parents for just dropping two twelve year olds off at a football game?? I mean really, what were we thinking??? And, because we obviously needed to feel even more negligent, Madi’s cell phone battery died just before half time! Nice! The one thing we hadn’t thought of – the cell phone battery! Thankfully, just as we were about to walk over to the stadium (it’s just right across the street from our neighborhood), Madi called to tell us that her battery was dying and that she and Carly were ready to come home to get ready for the dance. So, we went on over and met them outside the stadium.

As we walked home, Jack and I asked the girls tons of questions, but they really didn’t seem to mind. They were both very chatty and more than happy to talk about the fun they had at the game. They were so chatty that they came right out and talked about how Madi (our Madi, our baby!) was “touching Dalton’s hair” because “it was soooo soft”!!
*Madi, you’ll love reading this story someday I’m sure, but for now, you’re just going to be embarrassed that I shared that little fact!

I’ll skip writing about how Jack and I feel about the whole feeling-of-Dalton’s-hair-thing. I really don’t have the energy right now, but I will say that neither Jack nor I blew a gasket.

After a quick few minutes at home, Jack and I drove Madi and Carly over to the dance. The dance was held in a beautiful old church in downtown Belton. After talking with a super nice lady at the door, Jack and I felt much better about the kids’ safety. We were so glad it was held at a church and so relieved that the adults really seemed to care about what the kids would be doing while there.

The girls were safely home, chatting, laughing and eating homemade chocolate chip cookies by 11:30pm. It was the absolute best ending to a really hard night for Jack and me!! I’m pretty sure it was the best ending for Madi and Carly too!
I didn’t take pictures! Sorry!

Veggies, blooms, cute bugs and one lazy dog...

Our Mexican Mint Marigolds have started to bloom.  We noticed them starting to bud over the weekend and by Monday, we had tons of small golden-yellow flowers. 

~Yellow is my favorite color and one that we didn't have in the yard until these fall beauties bloomed. 

Our Fall vegetable garden seems to be doing pretty good so far and I'm getting really excited and hopeful that it will be better than our summer garden was.   

This pepper is a mystery to Jack and I.  When we bought our pepper plants, we thought be were getting serrano and jalapeno peppers, but somehow we ended up with two of these mystery pepper plants and two jalapeno plants. Well, whatever kind they are, they're doing really well. There's half a dozen or so that seem ready to be picked. 

We continue to have more Okra then we can eat.  We've prepared them every way imaginable and though we enjoy Okra very much, there's only so many Okra fritters a person can eat!  Next year, remind us not to plant eight okra plants!  I think just two will do.

~ A late watermelon. Only our second of the season and probably our last.

~Our Basil is growing like crazy! I haven't trimmed them back in a few weeks and as a result they've started to bolt (flower).  This is not a good thing if you want fresh, non-bitter tasting basil, but really good if you want to attract beneficial insects like this little bee who is enjoying our lemon basil plant.  

~some of the wildflowers Jack planted are still blooming

and our butterfly bush is looking better then ever.

 While I was snapping pictures of the garden and flowers, a group of Wren visited our backyard.  They were so tiny and cute; playing and chattering about.  In the picture above they're setting on our Bouncing Back tree and below they're exploring our corn plants. 

~ I found lots of ladybug pupa on our winter squash leaves.

It's pretty crazy to me that the ladybug larva and pupa are so ugly, yet the ladybug itself is so cute and colorful.  I took a few pictures last summer of some ladybug larva and pupa on our cilantro plant.  I never posted them, and can't get to the pictures right now (still no desk computer) but, if you haven't seen a ladybug larva and are interested in what it looks like or in the different stages of a ladybug, click here.

 ~I also found one cute, but lazy dog.

~I don't see how this could possibly be comfortable!

So anyway, I'm really pleased that our fall garden and flower beds are doing so well right now. The Mexican Mint Marigolds should continue to bloom throughout the Fall and hopefully we'll enjoy lots of garden fresh veggies from our garden during this time as well.  

I'll try to post more about our fall garden than I did about our summer garden (which was never!) but hopefully, I can get Jack to do it since he's the expert.  We'll see! 


Happy Wednesday!

Split Personality...

Back before the Fall Semester and the horribleness that is math started, I was baking pretty regularly. Mainly, I was making cupcakes; experimenting with different ideas and flavor combinations. During that time, I came up with my Split Personality Cupcakes.

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of these cupcakes, along with the recipe, for a while. And since I was thinking about it and can actually get to the pictures (they are in an online album of mine) without having to wait for my computer to be fixed, I thought that today would be the perfect day to share!

First, I have to thank my long time friend, Brandi, for coming up with the name of these cupcakes! They’re half vanilla, half chocolate, deliciously sweet and spicy at the same time. So, I think the name totally fits!  It's perfect Brandi, thank you.

A recipe that I saw for half vanilla, half chocolate cupcakes is where it all started.  I wanted to make them because they looked pretty cool and I figured I could do just about any flavor combination with the half and half cake.  So, I played with ideas for the icing and toppings and decided on a sweet icing and a spicy topping.  I was very pleased with the result...

Here's the recipe:

For the cupcakes:
* I copied this directly from The Busty Baker, where I got this recipe. It's Martha Stwert creation, I believe. If you keep reading past the cupcake recipe, you will see a recipe for Strawberry Buttercream icing which, with a strawberry slice on top, completes her very yummy looking Neapolitan Cupcakes!*

Vanilla Cupcakes

Makes 12

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk

Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes 12
Follow instructions for Vanilla Cupcakes below, but reduce flour to 1 1/4 cups, and add 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder. Whisk into dry ingredients.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 2 standard 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

2. With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; add vanilla, and mix until combined. On low speed, beat in half the flour mixture, followed by milk; end with remaining flour mixture. Mix just until incorporated (do not overmix).

3. Fill muffin cups with 3 tablespoons of each batter, side by side. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 17 to 19 minutes. Cool cupcakes in pan, 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing:
*I just used a basic buttercream recipe. *I have the link on my other computer (the broken one) so, I can't remember the one I used.  But, they are all pretty much the same.  I found this one on one of my favorite foodie sites, Epicurious.

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the spicy topping:

I selected a spicy chocolate by Chuao Chocolatier called "Spicy Maya".  It's a dark chocolate infused with pasilla chile, cayenne pepper and cinniamon.  I simply graded the chocolate (after putting it in the freezer, to firm it up, for half an hour or so) over the first batch of cupcakes once they were frosted.  However, I found that the spice didn't pop like I had expected it to. So, for the second batch  I chopped the chocolate into big rough chunks and placed them on top.  As a result, the spice was definitely poppin'!

If you try these cupcakes, or make your own creation, let me know.  I'd love to hear about it!

I was hoping to have time this weekend to do some cupcake baking, but we have a pretty full weekend planned already and I'm not sure I can fit it in.  Tonight, Madison and her choir class will be singing the National Anthem at the Belton High School football game. So, we'll be spending our evening there.  Tomorrow morning Jack, Madi and I are going to the food markets in Belton and Austin.  Then in the afternoon Madi and I  are going rock climbing with her swim team.  Finally, on Sunday, we are going to see Jack's grandparents in Palestine, Texas, for the day.  It's going to be a busy weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it ~ even though I wont get to bake and enjoy some cupcake yumminess!

Wish Madi luck tonight!  She gets pretty nervous singing in front of lots of people.  She's going to do fine, I'm sure and boy are we excited to see her singing on that football field!   I'll take pictures if I can and post them later.

Enjoy your weekend!  It's actually a long weekend for some (hopefully YOU)- yippee! 

Bouncing Back!

As you may remember from several of our previous posts, we've been pretty worried about our Mexican Plum Tree for months.  Six months actually!  Well, check this out....

Jack's hard work, research and patience have really paid off! We're finally seeing signs of life as new growth have started to sprout from the branches and the trunk itself is looking healthier. What a relief!

Jack and I planted the tree back in April and for about a month and a half, we watered it twice a day, every day. Our watering unfortunately tapered off as the temperatures climbed and apparently even native and hardy well-adapted types of trees for Central Texas can really suffer when enduring long periods of temperatures in the 100's with little to no rain. The plum tree is in a raised bed that we built to house it and some other heat and sun tolerant plants in the back yard along the fence. It slowly but surely lost most of its leaves and by the end of May the tree just looked pitiful. The bark on the trunk and branches turned a charred blackish color and most of the leaves and plums had fallen off. We just couldn't understand why it was in such bad shape.

Jack researched possible causes and talked with Oma from Oma's Garten Pflanzen in Killeen, Texas. She told him that even tough trees need supplemental water during the hottest times of the summer and that as a young tree, our little plum needed a good soaking at least once a week. Now, a good soaking means a soaker hose or a steady drip from the water hose for long periods of time – preferably over night.

*Ok, I'm going to let Jack take if from here to explain what else he did for the tree. It's best to let the guy with the green thumb talk about this part. I'm clueless!*
I tried the full sick tree treatment recommended by Howard Garret, The Dirt Doctor and other respected local natural and organic gardening experts in the area. Every week the trees leaves, trunk and root zone were sprayed with a mix of liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, molasses, and orange oil. Sometimes a drenching of alfalfa meal tea was also added. I also tried adding compost to the root zone of the tree heavily and more recently, added some organic fertilizer, Texas greensand and dry molasses to the bed surrounding the tree as part of our fall fertilizing regimen.

Honestly, I think all of this may have helped the little guy limp along but, only after a really drenching rain of 6-12" and a couple of weeks of considerably cooler weather did the tree bounce back in any noticeable way. We will do the best we can for it over the winter months and will likely cut back some of the upper branches during its dormancy. Hopefully, we will be rewarded in the spring with lots of flowers and new growth. I know that we will be sure that the bed is watered routinely and deeply throughout the summer next year and hopefully it will do much better. If nothing else, it will be a year older and a year tougher after this experience!

*Yeah, what he said! :) Seriously, do you see why I asked him to write that part?!  So anyway, we're obviously really excited that our Mexican Plum is bouncing back!

Well, hopefully we'll get our desktop computer back soon so that I can share the pictures of Madi's recent swim competitions and the other events I mentioned in my last post. But, in the mean time, I do have some pictures that I took in Austin on Tuesday while Jack and I were "playing hooky".  He took the day off from work and I took a break from school so that we could spend some much needed time together, just the two of us. We'll write a post about it as soon as I get the pictures loaded (onto a different computer and then backed up onto a portable hard drive, of course!).

Have a great rest of the week! The weekend will be here before we know it, thank goodness!

Ramblings...

I've been itching to write a post for a while now.  Mainly because it's been well over a month since my last post, but also because there's a lot to write about.  

Things have been crazy busy for us since Madi started back to school and I started my Fall Semester. Granted, I only have two classes, but one of them is math.  Math is not my friend.  Math sucks all the fun out of my life and gives me little free time for things like writing a post.  Madi also brings math homework home every night - even on the weekends.  Jack contributes by trying his best to help us both with our math work. This keeps all three of us from doing other things around the house, going fun places and generally having a life. Honestly, we are all sick of math!

Madison's Swim schedule has kept us busy the last two weekends.  She participated in the Round Rock Unclassified Meet last Sat., Sept.25th, in Round Rock, Texas. And yesterday, she swam in her first ever Middle School swim competition - Belton Middle School vs. Lake Belton Middle School.   I would love to share pictures from both of these events, but I can't.   The computer that I loaded the pictures on crashed (again) last night and so, I can't get to any of my pictures. Ugh!

I also have some pretty good shots of our nephew, Jason and his middle school football team, The Cavaliers, during their football game this past Tuesday night.  I can't get to those pictures either!  Once the computer is fixed (and hopefully it can be fixed) I'll post the pictures from all these events.

My Mom and sister, Virginia, both celebrated a birthday the week before last.  I have pictures but again, I can't get to them. Pretty darn frustrating!

Jack's Mom and Dad celebrated their 40th anniversary on the 17th but, we have no pictures for this historic date but, congrats to them, again.

We also have an update on our Mexican Plum tree. That will have to wait too I guess.  

So, all the above ramblings are my excuse for not updating our blog before now. Well, that and the fact that my husband is absolutely worthless when it comes to updating this blog (he wrote that so, it's okay)  :)  Hopefully, I can share pictures of everything in the next few days or in the next week.  Depends on the computer situation.  I could really kick myself right about now for not listening when Jack tells me to back up my pictures!  As much as I hate to admit it, he was right!

Yesterday evening I found a beautiful lacewing butterfly hanging on the underside of a Okra leaf and snapped a few pictures of it.  Luckily, I had not loaded these pictures on to the computer, so I do have a few pictures to jazz up this post a bit! 

Hopefully, I have redeemed myself somewhat at this point.  Y'all enjoy this beautiful Sunday!  

...because she is always there for me.

This is day three of Madison’s 7th grade school year. So far, it is “awesome!” She thinks all of her teachers are “really nice, except for two” who are just not as nice or funny as the others. She especially loves her homeroom teacher and says he is “hilarious”. She gets to see her best friend, Carly, during third period and during lunch. She’s really happy about that.

School starts for Madi at 8:15am and so I drop her off at around 7:50am so that she can spend some time socializing with her friends before the first bell rings. Her 7th period class/last class is Middle School swim tea and though school ends at 3:45, they (Middle School swim team) continue to practice until 4pm. After that, Madi stays at the swim center because from 4:30 to 5:30 she has practice as usual with the Belton Swim club. So, her days are long, nearly 10 hours! This has been the hardest thing for me, but so far and thankfully, it doesn’t seem to bother her.

Here are a few pictures I took of Madi when we picked her up at the end of her first day…

~I feel sorry for her having to carry all those bags!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

~She doesn't look like it here, but she was one happy girl!

Once we picked her up, she talked for HOURS about how “awesome” her first day was. She was bubbling over with excitement! Jack and I enjoyed listening to all of the first day awesomeness! :)

And speaking of awesome things, once home, Madi showed Jack and I a “Student Interest Inventory and Information Sheet” which one of her teachers had asked her to feel out. Question number 12 on that sheet was: “What living person do you admire the most and why?” Madi’s answer was, “My Mom because she is always there for me.” I was like, “Wow, Madi! Me?! That’s so sweet!!” and I hugged her and kissed her real big! Needless to say, the waterworks were on; tears of pure happiness, joy and pride. I just pray that she will always love me like this. That when she’s older and she thinks she knows everything and when she’s at an age where parents are nothing more than annoyances, she will still “admire” me.

So, Madi’s off to a good start this school year. A big Thank you to those of you who called or sent thoughts, prayers, messages and/or text!! You really helped make Madi’s 1st day of 7th grade special!
~♥~

Madi's first day of 7th grade...

As I mentioned in a previous post, today is Madison's first day of 7th grade!  She was so excited to get out of the door this morning that I never really got an ideal 1st day picture of her.   I got two of her standing in our living room and the rest (about 6 total) were taken by me chasing her down or by twisting my body in all sorts of unnatural/painful ways in order to get a picture of her in the car, in the seat behind me! 

Anyway, she looked great!  A little sleepy, but great!  She had her outfit picked out for about a month already.  *Thank you Nana & Papa for the super awesome outfits! 

Rockin' her sunglasses and peace signs! I swear I think I wore something similar to this when I was in the 7th grade back in the 80's!

She & Bella were both ready to go!  Madi is starting to get down right impatient! Ignore the straw in the background...

Thank you Jason for Madi's cool new swim bag!  She loves it!!

She's finally smiling!!  But, only because we are IN the car and on our way!

One look at the c.r.a.z.y school traffic and loooong drop off line and her impatience returns! 

"Where is my Madi going with all those bags??"

She never even looked back...

 

Thank you Cami, Johnny Dad & Jason for calling to wish Madi a great first day!!  I hope you, Jason, are having a great first day yourself!!  Hope 8th grade is the best yet!