martha

this book is a little bit overwhelming .. but a lot AWESOME!!

 

Hello, my name is Audrey, and I wish I was Martha Stewart….

     Except that whole prison, insider trading thing. If you really think about it, Martha gets paid to be a great house keeper and a great mom; although, I have no idea if she is great at either. I would love to get a pay check for making beautiful meals, keeping a beautiful home, tending an amazing garden, and doing crafts with or for my kids. Those are my favorite things to do, if you take out the keeping house part. I LOVE my garden! I think I was born with a black thumb, but I figure if I keep messing it up and learning from those experiences, I can force my black thumb to turn green someday. I am very persistent! I LOVE doing arts and crafts projects, but I wish I could come up with the idea, get it started, and then have someone else finish it for me and clean up, and if I was Martha, that would be true. I also love to cook. When J and I got married, I didn’t know how to cook anything. My mom signed Nancy and me up for a 14 week chef certification class. I learned so much! J gained 30 pounds in 14 weeks; you can’t eat like you are in a restaurant every day and not gain weight. I now love to cook and love to bake. The only other thing is the housekeeping, and I don’t love that. I am not good at it, but God blessed me with a husband who really could not care less.  So you see, I sort-of wish I was Martha Stewart.

Oh well…

Have a good one ..

Audrey



Road Warriors

This is a post for my fellow road warriors headed for Florida this summer!
     It is summer here in Fort Worth, although you might not guess that based on the weather! As soon as summer starts people around here start heading out on vacation and one of the favorite destinations is Watercolor/Seaside, Florida. I know this because I was there last week and saw several of our sweet families!! My husband and I have mapped out a path to get to Florida that involves really great food, and when you are on a road trip food is the thing that makes it all ok.  Pack a lunch in your ice chest so you can have lunch on the road without making yourself sick with a drive thru burger. There is great food in Florida, don't waste the calories on bad road food. Also, pack your swim suits, sunscreen, a few towels, and an old sheet for the beach.
     First, if you leave in the morning and head towards Shreveport, then take 3132 down to I-49 and head south until you get to I-10, and go through Baton Rouge. Now, here is what we have learned... even though it sounds like a good idea to stop in Baton Rouge, actually, it's not. Baton Rouge has too much traffic and too many people, so keep on going through Baton Rouge, stay on I-12, and stop for dinner in Slidell, Louisiana. There is a great Hot Dog Bar with outside seating so the kids can be crazy on the patio without disturbing anyone. It will be a later dinner, but it is worth it! The place is called Bruiser's and the address is 1904 Front Street.

     Bruiser's has several kinds of hot dogs but not such a big menu that it is hard to pick, which is very important when your brain is fried by seeing what feels like a million miles of highway pass around you. After a little out of the car time, get back in the car and keep heading east. We always stop in Daphne, Alabama. We do this for several reasons... #1 FOOD! There is a fantastic breakfast place in Daphne called the East Side Café. Holy moly, great food! Being honest, I ordered 2 breakfasts because I just couldn't decide. I had the stuffed French toast, AMAZING, and Jason and I split the Cottage Sandwich with bacon and sausage. Oh My Goodness, so, so good! The kids were happy too with outside seating and pancakes, what could be better than that?? Even my super picky eater had a few bites of pancake and a piece of bacon.

Now, you are set for a great day! You are only 2 hours from Watercolor or Seaside and you can go ahead and park in the public parking, put on your swim suits and have an extra beach day by getting there Saturday morning instead of waiting for the 3 or 4 o'clock check in. Go have lunch, and then spread your sheet on the beach, there is a public area just west of the watercolor beach, and sand shakes out of a sheet much easier that a towel. let the kids play in the water and get all their pent up wiggles out, and enjoy the beautiful sunshine!

getting slime out of carpet

So, I was walking through my living room last night and stepped on something cold. I picked up my foot, expecting for it to be wet, but it was not, and I couldn’t see anything on the carpet. I got down on my hands and knees and cautiously inspected. I could see a trail of quarter size dots of something clear. After looking at it and not being able to figure out what is was, I touched it. Gross, I know! But, this is the kind of thing that happens in my world. I picked a little of the mystery substance up with my fingernail, and upon seeing the greenish tint, it dawned on we what was embedded in my carpet… slime. Now, if that isn’t bad enough, what I thought about next is that my 7 year old son got this slime in a party favor. That party favor was from his birthday party, which means I had just sent green, carpet killing slime into 12 unsuspecting homes! AHHH!! If you are one of the moms who fell victim to this horrible lapse in judgment, I am so very sorry!

So, I found myself googling something that I had never thought about before, how to get slime out of carpet. I read a few posts about it, but I don’t like to use too many chemicals around my house, so I settled on trying vinegar or alcohol. I picked all of the slime off by hand that I could. I have heard from our janitorial service at Reading Friends that you should never soak your carpet, so I started by putting vinegar on a towel, putting the towel over the spot of slime, and waiting for a few minutes.

I went to work after about 5 minutes and was happy with the green that came up, but as you can see, my carpet is dark, so it was hard to tell if all the color came out. I let it dry and was sad to find that it was still sticky. Bummer….

But I still had the alcohol to try, and using the same method as with the vinegar, all the sticky came up and my carpet seems to be as good as it was before the slime melted into it. Just in case you ever find yourself needing to get slime out of carpet (or hair… that could totally happen!) I would say to start with the alcohol and then, if there is color left, try the vinegar. The alcohol may do the trick all on its own and you will have saved yourself a step

 

Have a good one ..

 

Audrey

 

 

 

I Felt Like a Crazy Person!

Have you ever had that moment when you are lying in bed and night and burst into tears because you are completely overwhelmed with your life? Well, I have, in-fact, that was last night. I was getting into bed and just started crying! I had a broken dishwasher and a sink full of dishes. I had not managed to do a single load of laundry in 4 days, so with 6 people you can imagine the laundry pile. I had done a weekend’s worth of homework with my 2 children only hours earlier. My children were 2 HOURS late to bed, which translates to no mommy time. And to top it all off, I had made a cake that was NOT good! My husband had been sitting in a chair all weekend watching a golf tournament which only made things worse. I have to tell you, I have a great husband! He is very helpful, very involved with the kids, and he had told me the week before that this was a big golf weekend and he wanted to watch. He told me this when I was planning on painting his office. He did not think that was a great plan, because he wanted to watch golf, so I had plenty of warning about how my weekend was going to go. But, on Sunday night, that did not make me feel any better! I was tired, I was disorganized, and I felt like a crazy person. What pushed me over the edge was thinking about what time I would have to get up to conquer the dishes before my sweet house keeper showed up. No way was I leaving that mountain of a mess for her to wrestle! Doing the math on how much time was needed to get myself ready (Jason get the kids ready), make breakfast, make lunches, and have time for the dishes… that was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I cried. I cried some more. I prayed a little, but not as much as I should. And then I fell asleep. I woke up this morning feeling much better. I got myself and the kids ready while Jason tackled the dishes. I started the laundry and sorted the rest into piles. I even made lunches for the week! That’s right, now I am ahead! Even though it is raining, my world is feeling pretty sunny! I hope everyone’s Monday is going as well as mine!

Have a good one ..

Audrey



An empty sink and a stack of clean dishes makes the whole world feel better!

 

an introduction to the authors

promises of best picture quality for future posts
sadly, this is the best and most recent (probably 5 years ago) picture we have of just the three of us

 

Hello!
We are excited to debut the new blog for Reading Friends Fort Worth! I {Nancy} have a personal blog and I really enjoy writing it so I convinced Audrey that Reading Friends should have one too!
If you are not familiar with who/what we are here at Reading Friends, please refer to our "About Me" section.
Audrey and I will both be writing the posts and they will be about everything from things going on here at school to things going on in our homes and with our family.
For today, I will start with an introduction ..
I am Nancy .. Audrey is my older sister .. and together we run the office at Reading Friends. Our mom, also Nancy, started the school in 1980 so we both grew up here.
Audrey started teaching 15 years ago and then switched to the office 5 years ago. I started teaching here when I was in college but took several years off to work retail in the fashion industry. While I loved my old job, I made the decision to come back to Reading Friends to have more time at home with my family. I had my first daughter, also Nancy {we keep it simple around here}, in September and I have loved having the time to be at home with her and my husband. Plus I get to spend my mornings getting to know all of the little ones around here which is pretty great!
Audrey has four children. Janey is 9, Deuce is 7 and Tommy and Spencer are 4. You will love hearing the stories that come out of her household! Her kids are hilarious and between the four of them, they keep Audrey and her husband on their toes!
I hope you all enjoy our blog!   

    with love..

nancy