Can't wait for Breaking Dawn!!!

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Yes I am not a teen or tween (not even close!) but I am still totally going crazy waiting for the final book of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, to come out in 1 day 4 hours and 15 minutes. Aaakkkk!

I had been biding my time re-reading all the books but I finished up yesterday. Now I have nothing to do but obsess about how I am going to get it ASAP!

I ordered through amazon like two months ago expecting it to arrive at my home on the release day as they did with Harry Potters last book BUT it looks like they aren't even going to mail it out until the 4th.

I live in a tiny little town with NO bookstores to speak of....only a Walmart and I don't think they are going to have it out on shelf at midnight. I am not even sure they will carry it and the gal at the customer counter didn't know either.

So what is a gal to do?

This is all EMILYS FAULT!!! She got me the first three books for Christmas and started this huge obsession. She is a VERY BAD GIRL! Now I am going to have to pick her brain and see if she has any other great book recommendations....I think I like her taste in books! :)

Where does eating candy get you?

In the good old days I used to save up all my pennies from pulling weeds around the yard and walk down to our favorite penny candy store 'Scott's Market'. It was run by the nicest old man and his wife. If Scott's wasn't open or we didn't want to cross the "big road" we would go to Seven Eleven instead. We would spend all our money on candy. How my Mom ever survived 4 kids on constant sugar highs I don't know.

Sadly, as I grew I continued the tradition. Whenever I was out and about I would go get me something sweet to eat.

I got married and my sugar indulgence got worse. Shane is a popaholic and has to get his daily fix. I would go with him to the gas station and get some candy while he got his drink.

As I had babies I couldn't go with him to the store as often but he would always bring me back a Milky Way or something chocolate.

Well as the kids grew we allowed them to start getting a treat each day we went to the store as well. They are now also official sugar fiends like myself (all my doing).

So what does this get us beside the usual pure bliss of taste bud heaven?

It gets lots of fun and pricey *silver sparkles* in my kids mouths almost each time they visit the dentist. It has gotten me three root canals from all the cavities I got as a kid (and I am only 32!) I know for a fact it has helped to add this "fat tire" around my midsection. I also have to much insulin. Each time I eat something sweet my blood sugar shoots up. My body responds by sending out to much insulin. The insulin throws all the sugar into my fat cells (thus the "fat tire") and my blood sugar drops and then I feel like CRAP and want more! HELP!

So is it really worth the taste bud high we get?

I am thinking NO! Time for a change. It might not help my teeth out as the damage is done but maybe it would help my kids in the long run?

Time to wean ourselves from the sugar monster!

My Moms Chocolate Chip Cookies! (For Lisa)

2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup softened butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
3 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 12oz. package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Heat oven to 375°. Mix shortening, butter, sugars, eggs, vanilla, salt and soda together with blender. Add flour and stir in well. Add chocolate chips and nuts (optional) and stir in well. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on greased baking sheet. (I never grease mine and they are just fine) Bake 8-10 minutes or until light brown. Cool slightly before removing from baking sheet. Makes 7 dozen.


I have found that using a few different things really helps to make your cookies very rich.

1. Use real butter.
2. Use dark brown sugar.
3. Use milk chocolate chips not semi-sweet. My favorite is the Girardelli's milk chocolate chips.
4. Use real vanilla extract.

I also pull them from the oven a little earlier than the recipe states so they are super soft. We also like to pop day old cookies (if they last that long) into the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds to warm them back up. This way they taste fresh from the oven again. Yum!

Much ado about nothing!

That title just sounded right for this post (because it really is about nothing). However, now I think I am going to have to go out and see if I can rent that old movie. I loved it when I saw it on its release day...I wonder if I still would.

Well we are definitely bummed out this weekend. The poor kids did not do much but play with the neighbors this week. I have been laying around way to much because my darn tooth is still hurting pretty bad. I get surgery on the 28th so I gotta make it another week and a half. (I can do it!)

We have had a two day trip to Lagoon planned for several months now for the first week of August. I am afraid that I am not going to be feeling that awesome for it but I refuse to miss out on it. I am going to be praying for a quick recovery.

I am currently baking some yummy oatmeal raisin cookies. That is the buzzer now.

Well I guess that was my nothing...but now I won't feel guilty for not posting. Now I need to get my order for jewelry in to Amber. Hope I am not to late!

The eaters of Cookie Dough!

One of my kids favorite things to do is make cookies (My Moms recipe) and eat half the dough BEFORE we even start cooking them.

Growing up I always remember that as being my favorite part as well when my Mom would make us cookies. Yum!

Well I decided we had better stop doing this due to the possibility of salmonella poisoning. So I explained to my kids why we should not eat the dough and for several months when we made cookies we did not eat the dough.

Making cookies is definitely not the same if you can't gorge yourself with the dough to the point of being sick.

So last night we caved in and ate the dough just like old times.





Now if you don't know Cory very well then you don't know his need for cleanliness and fear of germs. This kid washes his hands like 50+ times a day to the point his skin starts splitting. I have to moisturize his hands at night and he has to sleep in cloth gloves for relief. Does this stop him from washing? Nope! He also is my worrier. He worries about his Dad every time he goes to work. He worries if he cannot see me or doesn't know where I am at all times. And last night he worried we were all going to get sick and die after the salmonella talk we had before.

He sat by me asking how I felt for well over 3 hours just to make sure I was not getting sick. After that I think he decided we were going to live and went to play his play station.

Well we didn't get sick but I still worry about if we did. Is it enough to keep us from eating our beloved raw cookie dough? Guess I should look up stats and see just how common it is. Maybe there is a substitute for eggs? Looks like its time for a google search.

Well it looks like I can safely use pasturized egg substitute (such as Egg Beaters) or even replace the egg with applesauce. Awesome! Guilt free cookie dough splurging coming up!

Paystrup Family Reunion Pictures.

I didn't get a lot of pictures but I did get some and thought I would share them.

What is crying good for?

I love crying. What is crying good for? Lets list them shall we?

1. Helps make your nose so stuffy you cannot breath through it, or, if you are incredibly lucky, it just runs like a river during and after your cry.

2. Makes your eyes turn a beautiful shade of red that lasts and lasts. It might even be mistaken for pink eye if your lucky!

3. It gives you one of those awesome headaches that have Excedrin written all over it.

4. It just makes you feel crappy (I mean great)!

OK... So I hate crying as you can see. It is a weakness I try my best to not indulge in. I refuse to watch all those "chick flicks" out there that some women watch just for a good cry. (Gluttons for punishment?) If I hurt myself I just swear and jump up and down really hard to avoid the tears. If I am caught in a sad situation (funeral etc.) I do my best to put my mind someplace else so I don't succumb to the sadness enough to cry.

Times when it is good to cry (or I can't seem to help it)? That is easy. If my kids get hurt...I cry. If they are emotional from bad things that happen at school I cry. My daughter went in to get her tonsils out....I bawled like a baby. Thank goodness Shane had left to pick up her meds or he would have died of embarrassment.

And my most favorite reason to cry that just can't be helped???

Tooth Pain!

I rather give birth several times a day than have tooth pain.

I was lucky enough to have a root canal on one of my top molars a year and a half ago. I could never understand why people were scared of the dentist until I had this experience. To make a long story short I had two infections with this tooth during the root canal and I even bawled at the Dentist’s office when they went in to "open it back up" to let the pressure out without a shot first. (Humiliating to say the least) I had to change antibiotics twice because they made me throw up so much I could hold nothing down including the Lortab for the pain. Not good.

When they finally got me all done and sent me home I could still feel my tooth. Ok...not normal I know ( I even saw the nerve the doc pulled out so I know it was no longer in my tooth) but hot and cold still hurt like crazy. I could not chew on that side of my mouth because it hurt. Was I going back to the dentist to tell him this...? HECK NO! I decided I was going to ignore it...drink room temp drinks and not chew on that side of my mouth. I didn't go back to get a cap on it either because I was scared of more pain. This seemed to work well for a year and a half.

Well a few days ago I got a toothache from you know where. Just my luck the Dentist office was closed. I still had about 5 Lortab from my root canal so I lived on those until I could get in a few days later. They took an x-ray and sure enough the same dang tooth is infected AGAIN! The last few days have been PAIN galore. Yep...you guessed it...I even bawled like a baby the other night when it was at its worst and two Lortab didn't even touch the pain. Luckily the antibiotics are now finally kicking in and shutting down most of the pain. I can survive on ibuprofen again but I have to go get my tooth worked on again. This time up in the big city. They have to do another root canal on it (from the top through the gums). The dentist thinks I might have a branched canal or something else that caused my first root canal to fail.

So I expect a lot of crying in the near future due to some great tooth pain. Boy am I excited. I will be keeping the Excedrin (or Lortab), Visine and tissues handy for the next couple of weeks. Maybe I will even go out and rent a few "chick flicks" and kill two birds with one stone.

My try at a template!

I love making new templates and had to try my hand at making one for my blog. For some odd reason my links are not working so I gotta mess around and see what I did wrong. lol. So please ignore any strange things going on with the blog...it is just me messing around behind the curtain.

(I figured it out. It was my z-index on my container div. I took it off and now you can access the links. Problem is now my "paper" is no longer under my ribbon. Gurrr... Why am I trying to style this using CSS when I am so good at tables?)

Starting a blog.

Yep, I'm nuts. I am going to attempt to start a blog. I was inspired to start one (thanks Anne and Sue) after a much needed Paystrup family reunion put together by my Aunt Marilyn. It was awesome to see the cousins and family that were able to make it!

I hope to be able to keep up with whats going on with the extended family a little better this way. I enjoy reading about what others are up to and this eliminates the phone. (Yes, I have a phone phobia, pathetic but true.)