Kite Flying, Kiting, Kitification?

Yesterday was a great Family Day! We started by sleeping in, breakfast, and then off to pick up our Angel Food order. I tell you, Angel Food has been such a blessing to our family by way of providing an affordable alternative for grocery shopping. So a big "Fa'afetai lava" to Lika and Jason for letting us know about Angel Food. After we put our new found bounty away, we went to visit the Master Clubs' Regional tournament (which was being held here at the St. John's Building on the Campus). Barbie had several current and former students participating in various activities from the Young Preacher Boys, to Music Ensembles, to Basketball shooting, to Arts and Crafts. It was very exciting for all the young people, and Barbie got to see some people from her old school out in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida.
After our rounds at the Regionals we sped to lunch. "Sped" - it was lunch, but not just any lunch: it was Santino's. For those of you who don't know what Santino's is (which is probably everyone but Res because it is not a national chain), it is a great little pizza and sub shop. It is not just the fact that we like to eat there, but we were also meeting some dear friends of ours for lunch. When we go there, I can pretty much narrow the menu down to one of two items: the Islander Steak Grinder (which is what they call there subs because these types of subs were first sold to immigrant workers at the shipyards who happened to be welders and grinders, hence the name of the sandwich) or the Carribean Pulled Pork Grinder. Now they both have there pros and cons. In this corner, the Islander has teriyaki steak strips with bits of pineapple and sautee'd onions with a helping of both provolone and white american cheese on a good roll and then finished off by toasting it through a tunnel oven at 475 degrees. Yummy!!! And in the other corner the Pulled Pork is kind of like a Kalua pulled pork with this not-so spicy mustard sauce and sauteed onions with provolone and white american cheese sent throught the Tunnel del Fuego (I thought another description of the tunnel oven might be redundant). And the winner by knockout, and still champion: "The Islander Steak Grinder." Barbie got an order of their fantastic Garlic Cheese Bread with a side of marinara sauce and both Dianna and Jarod got slices of cheese pizza. A very successful lunch.
After lunch and a nap, we found a store downtown called Ever'Man a health food and organic grocery store just to browse. A lot of interesting stuff, but a lot I didn't know what to do with. Example, Tofu Steaks and Tofu burritos................... Okay, we went in there to look at their selection of ground flour. I had no idea there were so many different types of flour. I for one was overwhelmed.

Well, after the health food place, we set out for the beach to try our hand at perhaps a new family hobby. Kite flying. Now you understand where the title comes in. It was a Red Flag day, but that was okay, the kids don't like the waves and the cold of the Gulf anyway. Luckily, we were there to harness the power of the wind to fuel our imagination in order to soar to new heights. Our kite we got is a 3D WW1 bi-plane. I have to say that having never flown a kite before, it was more work than I thought it would be - not in a bad way at all. It wasn't a challenge to get the kite airborne, but to keep it there. So much fun. Barbie got to unspool the entire spool as she flew the kite. She is definitely the best flyer in the family. When we first got started, Barbie and I took turns playing "kite retrieval expert" -getting the kite out of the water and back into the air. Whenever the plane would corkscrew and dive into the water, Dianna would yell, "Man overboard!!" It was very cute. Well, we had fun.

I hope that the Arkansas Family had a good trip to Austin and a safe trip home. Hope you all have a great week and remember that we love you guys. Here are some pictures from our weekend. Love you.

Barbie making strawberry jam.

Jarod found the flat of strawberries. Dianna with one of her latest poses for the camera. Dianna and Daddy flying the kite. Our bird of fancy. Man overboard!!

Another day in the life

Not an exciting day, by a long shot. But, hey, a blog is for documenting your everyday experiences, right?
Does this week seem to be a year long? Even Dianna is feeling the long week. When she woke up this morning, she asked if it was family day. (That's what we call Saturdays, since we get to spend them all together, usually.) When we told her no, she nearly cried, saying that it had been too long since our last family day. Only one more day to go, baby, then we can have our family day.
Regular work and school duties today. I gave an arithmetic test and our first health test today. The grades in arithmetic have been not-so-great this year, but this test was much better. The health tests came out really well, too, with LOTS of A's and B's.
We made taco rice for dinner. White rice with taco meat, cheese, and sauce. The kids were crazy about the cheese and much less excited about the rice and meat. If I had known that, I could have saved the trouble of cooking the rice and meat, right? Just could have put out a slab of cheese and called it done. Instead, I've still got dishes to clean now that I'm finally finished with grading.
Went to a stamping party tonight and had a nice chat with a friend whose son is dealing with some of the same disobedience issues we had with Dianna last year. It was nice to be able to encourage her that this, too, shall pass. It's such a blessing to look back to where we were with Dianna last year this time and to see how far she's come.
Ah, well. Time to do the dishes . . . right after checking facebook.

Saturday, March 14

Started the day today with Whataburger for breakfast. We've decided that since we've done such a good job of eating at home more instead of eating out that we can make Whataburger a special Saturday breakfast tradition. Yum.

We went to Walmart to pick up a couple of specific things and walked out spending about 4 times what we originally intended. Walmart is of the devil!

We decided to try a newer park area near Pensacola Bay next. The park was created for the end-of-February visit by the King and Queen of Spain and does not have any playground equipment, just a walkway next to the water and plenty of grassy area to play on. We really enjoyed it, even though it was quite windy. When it started raining, we dashed for the car and home for a nap.

So happy together!

Getting as close as they can.

"I can't do this because it's too windy!" Dianna says.

Posing pretty. Don't they look so cute? Are Jarod's crocs on the wrong feet? He put them on himself and was very proud of himself. Dianna is wearing a belt we bought her at Walmart; her shorts were so big on her that, without it, they would have fallen right down!

There were so many pigeons and gulls about, even though they aren't in our pictures. Dianna and Jarod decided to be birds, since they had such good examples all around.

Made ham-and-bean soup for dinner -- a new experiment, thanks to Angel Food. It was good; we still have two packages of bean soup mix, so we'll do it again next weekend and see how we can improve it.

We went back to the same park this evening. Still windy, slightly cold, rained again.

Stopped by the doughnut bakery, as Dianna calls it (Krispy Kreme to the rest of us), on the way home. What a treat.
It's 7:56 now, and the kids are in bed. Mommy and Daddy are just relaxing in the living room. (Mommy's the one blah, blah, blahing on the computer . . . seriously, we shouldn't call this a blog; we should call it a blah . . . Daddy's watching CSI: Miami, a favorite show.) In about an hour, we'll put the pot roast in the crock pot with onions and garlic. By the time we wake up in the morning, the meat will be cooked through and perfectly edible. We'll wait until we get home from church to eat, though, and by the then the roast will be fall-apart tender.

We talked to the Bailey family briefly today, to wish Mom and Dad Bailey a happy 39th anniversary. Praise the Lord for their commitment to each other and for a healthy life that has kept them together for so long. We are so lucky to have great examples of marriage from both sides of our family to follow.

And, seriously, that's our entire day. We are so middle-class-boring. And that's the way we like it. Dianna told us today that she had so much fun doing all those things with us today. Oh, we love getting to spend time together . . . just being together and soaking each other up. Wish we could do more of it.

Have a great Saturday night! Missing all of you and looking forward to reading your next blog entry so we can be caught up with you!