bountifulplate

Last night, Lauren and I went for the fifth year in a row to see The Nutcracker .  It is put on by a local ballet company and since they change things from year to year, it's never the same.  I was remarking to her that next year hopefully we would be able to go together, but it's a possibly she might be spending Thanksgiving of 2014 with new friends from college.  Especially, since the furthest school she has been accepted to is over five hours away :)  I told her something like, "I have you now, so let's enjoy it." I spend time (more than I should) worrying about what the future holds. The realization that I have finally came to at the ripe old age of 50, is that when I do that, I kind of lose that precious time of  "living in the moment."  After multiple eye tests over the past few months, it's been pretty much determined that I have glaucoma.  That type of eye disease is a sneaky one, you basically don't know that you have it until you have l...

The hubby and I were discussing the other day how special education students were treated back when he and I were in school.  He remarked to me that in his time, they were "hidden away" from the rest of the students.  When I was in elementary school, I can remember seeing the kids in those classrooms pass by us in the hallway.  I don't ever recall seeing them in the lunchroom or playground.  I'm so glad that times have changed.  Even though Dominic is in a "self-contained" special education classroom, he does get to go to the art, gym and music classrooms.  He also gets to eat lunch in the school cafeteria.  He loves hot lunch on Thursday - pizza!! Given Dominic's abilities, he is able to be "mainstreamed" into the general education classroom for small amounts of time.  Every moment he is able to do that gives me so much hope for his future.  I absolutely love what Dominic's current teacher is doing.  He has started a peer-to-peer progra...

Dominic spelled this out (with no prompting from me) with his magnetic letters the other day on our fridge: When I saw this sentence, it got me to thinking, how do you know if you're doing a good "job" at being a mom?  Motherhood is an unpaid job, you don't get $5.00 from your family every time you complete a load of laundry, or wash a bunch of dirty dishes, do you?? If you make a terrific dinner, does your family leave a "tip" on the table? Probably not!  When you are a mom, you're basically "on-call" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. When you work for monetary compensation, unless you're the big boss, you most likely have a performance appraisal at a minimum, once a year.  This is where you're told what areas you're doing well in and areas that you may need to improve on.  There are plenty of people out there that like to dispense their own "appraisal" on how you're doing as a mom,  lik...

Before Lauren left for school today, she handed me a permission slip I needed to fill out for a school-related trip she is going on shortly before Thanksgiving.  One of the "rules" is that no electronic devices (such as an i-Pod, i-Pad, cell phone, etc.) are allowed.  Lauren was telling me that she is "plugged" in from the time she wakes up until the time she goes to bed.  The hubby and I both like our television shows.  He loves watching sports, I could watch the Food Network all day.  Dominic plays educational games on the i-Pad.  It got me to wondering, is our family just a little too plugged in? Could we actually go an entire day without using the computer? a cell phone? the television? other electronic devices??  I think social media is especially hard on today's tweens and teens.  If you're not tweeting, texting or posting your status updates, you feel like you're out of the "loop."  I like Twitter, but I mostly read other people's ...

Are you getting tired yet of looking at all the Halloween candy your kids got when they went out trick or treating?? Are you looking for a way to "recycle" it?? Well, look no further! The only thing additional you need to make this delicious chocolate candy bark is a bag of milk chocolate morsels to use as the base.  Yep, that's it! This was super duper easy to make. Here is all you have to do.  Cover the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan with aluminum foil and lightly spray with non-stick spray.  Set aside.  Using whatever "snack" size candy bars you have on hand, chop into small pieces with a sharp knife on a cutting board or plate.  I used nine snack sized candy bars, plus a couple handfuls of mini M&M's I happened to have in my pantry.  Feel free to use as many or as few candy bars as you want. Set aside the chopped candy.  Melt a 11.5 ounce package of milk chocolate morsels (any brand) either in a small bowl in the microwave or in a ...

When you have a child that has special needs, even the smallest amount of progress they make can seem monumental.  On Sunday morning, Dominic put this message on our fridge. The money I invested in these plastic magnetic letters have more than paid for themselves many, many times.  I told Dominic the "menu" options and he decided he wanted two waffles.  I told him where they were and he got himself his own breakfast, even pouring the syrup!  Dominic literally was eating the entire day - he must be going through a growth spurt. He goes to religious education class on Sunday nights and as we were heading out the door, he said, "thirsty." I knew it would be a while until he could get a drink, so we turned around and he drank a quick glass of water.  We were a few minutes late to his class, but his teacher is very understanding, so it wasn't an issue.  Dominic has a favorite pair of pajamas that he wanted to wear to bed Sunday night.  As I...

Lauren just completed her first quarter of her senior year of high school.  She has known from a young age that she has wanted to go to college.  At one time, she wanted to go to a school in California, but has since decided that she doesn't want to be more than five hours away (one-way) from us.  Narrowing down the schools she wanted to apply to took a while. Once Lauren came up with her three top schools, then it was time to start working on the applications.  There is an application called "The Common Application" (Common App for short) that is used by several hundred colleges and universities.  Basically, you fill out all the information once and it is used in addition to the individual college's requirements. Two of the colleges Lauren wanted to apply to didn't use the Common App, but the third school did. When it came time to start filling out the applications, we did the easiest application first and went ahead and sent it to the school. We found out abou...