Hosts with the mosts

This week has been another blur! Work has been going well-- I'm still adjusting to the busy-ness of it, but I'm still happy there. The math is getting harder, and it's tough to lecture on such hard material over and over-- that part is the roughest for me, I think. Next semester will be easier in that regard. And there's a chance I may get to do some large-scale lecturing as a guest lecturer for a professor who, frankly, isn't a great lecturer at all. I'm excited about that. And the opportunity I told you about before for Brad, where he might take on some more responsibility, is looking somewhat possible. We should know more in a week or so. Good things!

We spent our evenings this week getting the house cleaned up in preparation for a little party we threw last night. A friend of ours from church is moving to West Palm Beach to do a masters there, so we wanted to give him a proper send-off. Being on a tight budget means being creative when trying to host a dinner party, so my goal was to do it for less than $20. I pretty much succeeded! I made red sauce from scratch (well, from canned tomatoes, etc., but it wasn't Ragu at least), which I made into lasagna, pasta pie (the same one I made with my niece a while ago, with the standing-up noodles), and angelhair pasta with sauce. We also had salad, and I made rosemary garlic rolls that tasted a lot like Macaroni Grill's bread. And we also made two batches of cookies-- Doubletree Inn chocolate chip ones, as well as mighty good snickerdoodles. Making stuff from scratch saved a lot of money, but we're spent! Today we will celebrate Ralph's 60th birthday with the family, and then come home and crash.

Here are some pictures from the last week or so. We put up the tent I'll use for craft shows in the living room. Made for a fun camping feel for a few days.

We went to Bob Evans after a particularly trying day on Wednesday and got these hand-wipes on the way out. For some reason I just thought the little sayings were funny, as if the hand-wipe had its own voice.


And finally, we have a little deal worked out with Rico-- he mows our lawn, Brad sharpens the mower blades and helps with upkeep with the machines. This is Brad using his new grinding wheel. Looks so cool with the sparks, don't you think?