Year: 2012 (Page 2 of 3)

Texas Trip for Six

May 25, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

We were so please that everyone was able

to get off work for our trip to Texas this time.

It had been 5 years since we had all been.

The only problem was that the cars we have now only hold up to 5 people.

It worked out well though, with two cars and three

people in each (divided up by musical taste)

we had plenty of room for guitars and food and

homeschool curriculum for my nephews and niece.

The only thing was that it cost us over $600 in gas.

Still cheeper than renting a van.

Our first stop in Texas was at Texas Pride Barbecue.

We arrived just a little too early at 10:45 AM

after driving 14 hrs. and 45 min.

Time to stretch and take photos:

Are these cows?

Joel stayed up most of the night trying to make sure

that the siblings driving his car didn’t fall a sleep.

Lunch family style.

After lunch, we drove the last two hrs. to Mo Ranch to see my family.

Mike and I saw a big gray fox there.. twice.. no photo.. too quick.

I didn’t take any pictures of my family.. because they are so much more

talented than I at taking pictures and it seems unfair to make

the kids pose one more time for another photo.

I did take some pictures of Mo Ranch’s Greenhouse.

I need to check out their chapel on another visit.

We had a great time seeing everyone.

I’ll have to blog more about it later..

Someone send pictures.

After Mo Ranch, we spent a few days in San Antonio.

We went to the Alamo, saw Switch Foot in concert and some dear friends..

James took these pictures for us with his ipad.

Remember the Alamo. It’d been a long time since Josh had been.

Judi and I tried on Joel’s new hippy glasses at County Line BBQ.

He’s so proud of them. Got a compliment on the 10 seconds after he bought them. Looked for a leather beaded vest to match the whole rest of the trip.

County Line’s BBQ beat out Texas’ Pride’s hands down.

We ate lunch at our favorite Mexican buffet, Ponchos.
Just raise the flag and they’ll bring you more to eat.

This is a picture from our favorite park in San Antonio, O.P. Schnabel.
Its been done up really nice with new maps and mile markers.
And the Bandera YMCA on the premises has a new
swimming pool with big double tube slide.

We also got a picture of the house we rented when we were expecting Judi.
The things I remember most about this house is that it had a garden
which I killed and we found mouse droppings on our key board.

We left Christmas day of that year for Mike’s first government job in IL.

Judi was born 10 days later. Glad she gave us some time to unpack.

One of the places we miss most in TX is our favorite grocery store, HEB.
We got to shop at the newest, largest HEB Plus: a whopping 182,000 sq. ft.
They sell everything from organic food, to T-shirts, to TVs.

We brought two HEB briskets, one large package of
HEB sausage, and one package of HEB Fajitas home to AL with us.
Anyone know how we can get it shipped?

We had a great time visiting Mike’s family near Breckenridge, too.
Karen and Kyle have grown by leaps and bounds.

Mike’s parents treated us to dinner at Chester’s,
the best hamburger place in SA.

There were so many grandkids that we split up to play hands and foot.

The winners of each table played a championship game.

These two computer nerds played a round too..
but were unable to defeat the runners up this time.

Mike’s aunt and uncle and two of his cousins stopped by for a visit.
All five of these cousins live in the area now; several are becoming
empty nesters and grandparents. It was great to catch up with them.

More when I have pictures.

Love,

Jenny

Rainbows and Double Rainbows

May 10, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago Judi called me on her way home and said,

“Mom come out side.. there are rainbows.”

I made her back up and position my car under the rainbow. 🙂

There were at least 2 rainbows that day.. I think I saw three.

And since then there have been 2 more in the same spot.

Mike said maybe it’s a sign that we are doubly blessed.

We are so doubly blessed and I love the rain,

the nice Spring we’ve been having and the rainbows.

Thank you, Jesus.

Love,

Jenny

My SWC Garden (WIcking Planters expanded)

May 10, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Last year one of my friends gave me a

houseplant/flower arrangement for my birthday.

It was a nice surprise.. but left me distressed..

I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever owned.

I looked up how to water plants (I can kill them by

over watering or under watering.. lots of experience)

and discovered Self Watering Containers and Wicking gardening.

The plants have gotten huge.. I’ve been having some

trouble with them getting “leggy” (a new plant word I learned).

And amended the soil with mulch for better drainage.. so far so good.

My husband also surprised me for my birthday

with some Purple Sensation Alliums.. you can read

about the Wicking Planters I built for them here.

A few weeks ago we bought some dianthus (the pink flowers)

to go with them at a botanical garden sale.

One of my alums bloomed early..and I wish

I had taken a picture.. because the others

aren’t doing so well and haven’t bloomed yet..

see their yellowing pointed leaves?

I thought their soil might not have enough drainage too.. but they

actually needed water today and had tiny webs on them.. spider mites?

I am thinking about rubbing them down with alcohol and

spraying some dawn water on them. E-how’s answer.

These flowers are doing great. I converted their pot into a SWC, too.

They look much better than last year when I was(n’t) watering them.

I got a new watering can for Mother’s day.

Isn’t it cute? I use it for the dogs and house plants.

And see the tumble weed behind it? Do you think it

rolled here all the way from Texas?

Before my alums started looking sickly I got all excited

about trying a SWC vegetable garden with Judi.

This is her last year to homeschool and I thought it’d be

a good learning experience for the two of us.

So after reading tons of stuff on the internet about

SWC, how to make your own, what you can grown in one,

soil recipes, how to grow small watermelons on a trellis,

and how to build a cheep trellis.. this is what I’ve got.

The two blue totes I had on hand and I bought the

three flexible totes and nylon trellis at Walmart for $5 each.

From left to right I have: Big Beef tomatoes, Mountain Pride tomatoes,

Jalapeno, Cajun Belle, Orange Bell Pepper,

and two Sugar Baby Watermelon plants.

So far so good. The watermelons have already doubled in size.

I am using a different soil recipe than I did for the wicking planters:

3 parts potting soil, 2 parts mini mulch,

and 1 part perlite (I used sand.. it’s cheeper).

I thought I could use the rest of the nylon trellis a cross the middle

to support the pepper plants.. it needs some re-thinking.

Love,

Jenny

St. Louis Zoo and Goodwill Outlet

May 9, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

Saturday’s forecast was pouring rain, but

God answered our prayers and after a short rain delay

Mike spent the day at the Cardinals game with his friend Russ

and James and I spent the day with my friend,

Ranae and her youngest, Caleb.

While waiting out the rain, we went to

Ranae’s favorite store: the Goodwill Outlet Store..

where they bring out carts and carts of stuff and sell it by the pound.

I bought 2 tops, a jacket, a skirt, a pair of shoes and shorts for just over $4.

After Chinese for lunch, the rain cleared up and

we had a beautiful day at the St. Louis Zoo.

Ranae, James and Caleb

It took me 6 tries to get this picture of this Okapi with his tongue out.
It actually stretches out even farther than this photo shows.

Giraffes

Caleb

They had coolest penguin exhibit.

Cool.. as in a nice break from the heat and

cool because they weren’t hidden behind foggy glass.

Loved the bears and the beautiful day

God gave us at the Zoo and ball game.

Love,

Jenny

St Louis History Museum and Science Center

May 9, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

The St. Louis History Museum is about

exactly that.. St. Louis History.

I thought that was kinda narcissistic to

have a museum that was only about your city..

until I realized how much history they had to tell.

The city was founded in 1764; making it almost 250 yrs. old.

The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair had a huge impact

on the city and honestly the world, too.

Over 60 nations held exhibits there.

World’s fair exhibit room.

The Fair was held to celebrate the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

The History Museum, Art Museum and
many other buildings were built for the Fair.

Native American Indians and Peoples from other

newly aquired U.S. territories were invited to join in the displays.

The museum had expanded a great deal since we had last visited.

Loved this pink kitchen. It reminded me of our house in San Antonio.

What is it about cars that is so appealing?

These chairs from the Cardinals old stadium could be
the very seats that we sat in last time we attended a game.

They are now a museum piece. Does that make us old?

Congrats to the Cardinals for winning the World Series last year.

Things made in St. Louis.

I didn’t get a photo of one of my favorite exhibits,

a lunch counter displaying the “sit ins” of civil rights movement.

I enjoyed the voice recordings they had of some of the participants

who told of their experience and why they felt compelled
to join the quiet protest. So interesting.. they were allowed
to shop in the store just not eat there.

Seeing this replica in the museum brought on a little déjà vu.

We’d just seen the real one in D.C. a couple of weeks earlier.

The Science Center was one of the kids’

favorite places to go when we lived there.

We used to spend hours at a time there.

Playing with all the exhibits.. including this tornado exhibit.

🙂

They had a bunch of new exhibits..

I thought it was funny to see my ipod photo in this display case.

This time we saw the whole Science Center in less than an hour. 🙁

Makes you miss having little kids.

Jenny

St. Louis Art and History Museums

May 9, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Mike and I have different ideas of how vacations should be spent.

I like to plan a head; know what we are going to do;

maps and schedules in hand.

Mike likes to “be lazy and do nothing.”

I don’t know what that means.

I think it means that he wants to sit around

playing on his ipod or lap top or watching the

news in the hotel room until he is bored,

then ask me what I want to do.

Several times it’s turned into hours of driving

looking for a place to eat.. that isn’t there anymore.

We obviously didn’t starve this trip.

James got the Smokehouse Burger at Smokey Bones.

So this trip we tried to carefully balance maps, schedules,

being lazy and knowing where we were going to eat.

I did my homework so I’d know what

I wanted to do.. and not be lost thinking he’d planned it all.

I did some Google research on St. Louis attractions.

After living there for 4 years, you’d think we’d know,

but the kids were really little then and we didn’t have Google

(How’d we live with out Google? I’ll never know.),

so we mostly did whatever was free and kid friendly..

the Zoo, the Science Center..

In my search, I found the Fitz Bottling company

Where you can eat lunch and watch them bottle root beer.

The food was great. Root beer had corn in it.

We called a head to find out if they were bottling that day.

They were.. we expected a tour.. but got a window view.

All in all an enjoyable experience.

The St. Louis Art and History Museum are free..

thanks to St. Louis city taxes.

This statue of St. Louis was given to the city by France.

We had no idea who St. Louis was, so James looked him up for us.

He was a very passionate French king in the 1200’s who helped the Crusaders.

Several cities around the world are named for him.

Judith and Holofernes by Giorgio Vasari

We wondered why there hasn’t been a movie

made about Judith.. a very thrilling story.

The Account Keeper by Nicolaes Maes

I am falling in love with Dutch artist this year.

Can’t go wrong with birds and my favorite color.

Beautiful.

Some modern art.. I actually really liked…

inspired by the opening of the Berlin wall.

I liked this painting of the Crucifixion because it’s so active.

by Tiepolo

And of course this one by Millet

The Knitting Lesson

The art museum was much bigger than I remembered.

I think we only saw 3 rooms the one time we went before.

They are in the process of making it twice as big.

The basement rooms were lots of fun.

Love,

Jenny

St. Louis Trip

May 9, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

We recently discovered that it is only a 6 hr. drive to St. Louis.

What a nice surprise and I so hope to see more of my friends there.

We stopped for lunch in Kentucky at Kentucky Fried Chicken. 🙂

And made it to the last house we ever rented in Lebanon by late afternoon.

Mike thought it looked smaller and bluer.. it looked just the same to me..

except it has a nice white vinyl fence now and the apple trees are huge.

The towns around had grown up tremendously.

Last time we got gas in this area we paid 78 cents a gallon.

1998 – no kidding.

This house in O’Fallon was the very first house we ever bought.

1100 sq. ft. for $50,000 now worth over $100,000.

I was actually happily surprised at how both houses were holding up.

With rain in the forecast, we planned as many

outdoor activities our first day there.

We went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for the first time.

Well worth the trip. Would like to go back again.

I got a ton of awesome pictures…

If you don’t want to see them all, skip to my next post.

Amaryllis

My alums with some gorgeous tulips.

Iris

Tons of Azaleas .. we liked the evergreen ones the best.

Did you know pinecones grow all in a row like this?

James by the Japanese Garden

I want one of these.

Bridge over the lake.

It was sunny and cool.. beautiful.

Lots of little birds hopping around.

On to the Art Museum.

Love,

Jenny

Coleman Funnies

April 27, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

My kids say the funniest things and..
I am always wanting to write them somewhere…

I bad about losing the ones I scribble down.
If I post them on FB, they may never speak to me again..
They never read my blog so.. I am starting a new post label.

Sunday morning I woke Judi up an hour before time
to leave for church to give her time to shower if she needed to.

She is not at all a morning person and was not too happy with me.

She wants me to wait to wake her until 15 min. before time to go.
She’s told me this before.. but I just didn’t get it. I love mornings.

To get her point across this time she said emphatically,
“I value sleep more than I value beauty.”
I think I got it.

Today we were talking about possibly going to
Fiesta Texas this summer and Judi asked,

“Is ‘fiesta’ a Mexican or American word?”

I laughed.

In her defense, she said, “Well, I’ve been studying

Spanish for so long now that I don’t know which is which.”

Spanish is her favorite subject.

I am so thankful for the good medicine of

laughter my family shares with me each day.

I hope you’ll take time to treasure those moments with your family, too.

Love,

Jenny

Making Meal Planning and Preparing Easy

April 23, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 3 Comments

Cooking has never come naturally to me.

So I’ve been working on making

cooking and shopping as easy as possible.

I’ve been finding recipes on line and

printing them on 4×6 cards for a while now.

I like using this protective photo magnet sleeve to hang

them on my oven vent while cooking… easy and accessible.

I list the ingredients on the left with what to do with each one on the right.

Once abbreviated, most recipes will fit on the front of a 4×6 card.

Longer recipes are usually too complicated for me.

I write notes right on the card while using it; making it easy

to adjust the recipe to our taste and reprint it on a new card.

This one called for too much red pepper.

I found this mini planter at Michaels to hold my 4×6 recipe collection.

If at least three of my four kids like a recipe,

I give it a star for each and it goes into my box.

If fewer than three want me to ever make it again,

it goes into the trash.. unless I really like it.

A few months ago I made this menu planner out of a

14.5″ x 24″ frame that I found on sale for $10 at Michaels..

I used scrapbook paper in my favorite colors to define each section.

There’s space for six 4×6 recipe cards in the top half.

Keeping these visible helps keep me inspired.

I’d seen many ideas on how to hang recipe cards;

on a string with clothes pins, in pockets, on cork board…

I like magnets and decided to attach

washers to the glass to attract the magnets.

Learn from my mistake and don’t use hot glue ..

Many burnt fingers later and.. it peels right off the glass.

Double stick tape does the trick.

I decided week day magnets would be a set-up for failure,

and made vegetable themed bottle cap magnets instead.

The bottom half of the frame holds a list of

easy meals that I made years ago to help me stay

out of the rut of making the same thing every week

And this shopping list..

I had hoped framing these would inspire the kids to

mark their wish lists on it.. so far they haven’t.

Occasionally they’ll call out, “Mom we’re out of ____”

And I’ll tell them to add it to the “list”.

Dry erase marker wipes right off the glass.

On “Shopping Day”, I print out a new shopping list,

and one or two new recipes from my “Recipes to Try” computer file.

Then I mark my list as I go through my recipes,

check my menu planner/list, fridge, and cupbords.

It’s working pretty well. We’ve tried a bunch more new recipes

since making the menu board. Even Judi has gotten on line

and helped me find new recipes to try.

Love,

Jenny

D.C. Birthday Trip: The National Zoo and Old Town

April 10, 2012 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

After breakfast at Chick-fil-a in Crystal City,

we road the metro to the National Zoo station.

We were so glad that these escalators were working..

after riding this one up 3 stories..there was another one story

escalator to ride before we reached street level.

Hilton on the hill.

Mega crossing at the zoo entrance.

We arrived early and went to see the pandas first thing.

This one was still sleeping and rolled over

and covered it’s ears when the loud kids showed up.

This one was out for it’s daily jog..

Down the hill and

back up and around again and again.. it’s behind

waggled back and forth like a duck. So cute.

We were also just in time to see the Gorillas

come out for their morning hide and seek game.

The zoo keepers hide their food and

they rush out to find it before the others do.

This one chased down a younger faster one that found the one he wanted.

The big one above found three balls full and ate every last drop..

ignoring the little one above that was asking, “What about me?”

Majestic

The sun felt good.

After lunch in China Town we went to

Old Town Alexandria.

Saw the Potomac River and

Christ Church, where George Washington

and Robert E. Lee worshipped.

And ate BBQ at King Street Blues

A nice ending to our D.C. trip.

Love,

Jenny