Debbie Delozier :: A Casual Affair

We had such a wonderful evening last night. Most of our church family gathered together, with guests from in or out of town, and our Praise Team as hostesses. They awed us with their beautiful voices and treated us to burgers with all the tasty sides. My J (as a request from the Praise Team) put together a beautiful powerpoint presentation to show while the ladies were singing. He received so many compliments from the group afterwards, but if I must say so myself (and I’m not biased at all, you know) it was a beautiful presentation. Dessert and fireworks finished off our wonderful evening. Thanks ladies for the special treat.

Today I am under orders from the big boss around here (J) to take it easy today. With all the fun (and walking) we had on vacation my silly old knee is acting up again (as in swollen and painful) and I’m having to wear my brace again for awhile. One of these days I’m going to have to do something about it I guess. J told me not to set the alarm last night and I slept in this morning, waking only slightly for a sweet warm kiss when he left. When I did make it out of bed at 8:30 I found a nice fresh hot pot of coffee waiting for me. Am I married to the most wonderful fella in the world or what!!

The only thing on today’s agenda is making my Cassie’s chocolate chip cheesecake for tomorrow’s Rotary dessert and also a batch of my herbed toasty pieces to go along with the large Chef salad I’m making for the Rotary’s lunch tomorrow. I’m also putting a flank steak on to marinate for a while so that J can grill it and some corn to go along with the Insalata Caprese (the teenager loves “loves” this) for our supper.

I’ll leave you with some pictures of some of my goodies from Mexico.

Beverage dispenser. Last night I used this to serve pink lemonade

Isn’t this a wonderfully, beautiful, large bowl?

Remember me mentioning the large platter that was broken? Here it is after my “repair”. As long as you don’t look really close you can hardly tell where it is. (hint – it is on the top of the right hand curve)

Y’all have a wonderful day!

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Yes; every day, run of the mill sounds pretty darn good to me. It has been very hectic the last few days. We’ve been playing catch-up so that we might have what might resemble a normal week this week.

After getting home on Friday I started on laundry; with J’s help I finished 5 loads leaving 3 to do on Saturday. J ran in to the office, there were a few little fires he needed to put out before they became very big. I spoke to DF who had a list of things the Praise Team needed from Sam’s for Sunday night’s festivities.

About 5 pm Jade decided she was too hungry to let her little mad hullabaloo continue. She came to me in the kitchen, weaving in an out of my legs and meowing like the sweet little thing she can be at times. She led me to her dish and I gave her nice fresh food and cool, clean water. After she ate her fill she still walked around as if she was a bit tiffed with me but later in the evening when I sat to watch a bit of tv she couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She jumped across the chair and onto the love seat and moseyed on over, situating herself right in the middle of my lap. She wouldn’t look at me (just to let me know the matter wasn’t exactly closed yet) but we were headed in the right direction. Later she even went to the door of the teenager’s room and decided to make up with her too. By bedtime she was right in the center of our bed as usual.

Saturday I woke early to get started on the catch-up game again. J had brought cylinder sheets home from the office on Friday night so I started a load of laundry and then sat down to what turned into just over 5 hours of cylinder posting. Now I won’t have to look at them again until Tuesday.

While I was doing the paperwork and finishing the laundry, J got his yard mowed before the sun got too high in the sky. After we finished those tasks I worked on menus for lunch jobs next week and finalized a few lists to take to town. After we dropped the teenager off at the married daughter’s house (they had tickets to the opera you know) J and I got started on the grocery lists for the Praise Team festivities, next week lunch jobs and re-stocking the refrigerator with fresh foods for our own meals. Believe me when I tell you that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow last night.

Today began as any normal Sunday, I showered and readied for church. I took the decorations for tonight with me just in case I had a moment here or there to do a few things. As it turned out, I didn’t have a Sunday School class today and Michael was the only teen there this morning so he helped me doing the climbing up and down on the ladder while I told him how and where to put things.

Sitting in my church pew with MB on one side of me (in the teenager’s place as she was still at her sister’s) and LY on the other side of me, I finally felt things were back to normal. If I ever wonder who I really am or what I’m really all about, all I need to remember is: At the core of my identity, I am a child of God. He knows me and calls me by name.

I am home and things are back to normal; hallelujah!

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I think the best part of any vacation, no matter how wonderful the vacation has been, is returning home. Even with all the unpacking and putting away, the laundry to catch up on, the mail to open, the grocery lists to make, the pounds of paperwork from the office to catch up on, and everything else there is to do, it just makes me feel good to be home where I can do it all at my own pace. I can even do it all naked if I want to, which I might have to do if I don’t get the laundry done.

In definite contrast to yesterday, we did not want to take our time today, we wanted to get the last leg of the journey done and get on home. I woke before 7 and jumped in the shower, called the girls, dressed and we all went down for breakfast. We were loaded and on the road by 8:45.

The only glitch in our hitch, was just outside of Tulsa (about 15 miles) traffic was backed up for miles and miles on the turnpike. I do mean “backed-up”. The traffic was at a standstill. Car ignitions were turned off, windows were rolled down and there were even people milling about out of their cars. Normally, I would have let things like this irritate me, but what kept coming to my mind was Psalms 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God”. To me, this is saying: it is all going to be fine, everything is taken care of. So the girls, J and I talked, kidded and just kept still. After about 30 minutes, which by no means is any time at all compared to big city back-ups and standstills, the traffic started moving again and we were all, once again, on our way. We have no idea what the hold up was, as we were somewhere toward the middle and never saw any signs of any trouble or anything.

No matter now; we are home, the car is unloaded, things have been put away and I’m on the 2nd load of laundry. While unpacking I found that the platter I bought at the market in Mexico has a good-sized chip out of it. I will try to repair it to the best of my ability and if it doesn’t repair exactly I guess it is just one of those things that happen.

As I walked in the door I began to call for Jade. I thought she would run up to the door to see us; but she didn’t come running out to see us. I had to go find her and when I found her she was meowing very angrily. We’ve never left her this long before and even though she was taken care I guess she was very mad at being left alone at all. I picked her up in my arms to hug her and she turned her head away from me and said “meeeeoooowww” and jumped out of my arms and ran to the back room. J and the teenager even tried to talk to her and she was not having any of it. I do hope she gets over her mad very soon as I can not stand it when she is angry with us and I really need to have her jump up on my lap and snuggle in a bit.

Even with an angry kitty it is still good to be home.

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This is the part of the vacation when you wish you could just click your little red slippers together and chant “There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home” and suddenly be home.

We left San Antonio this morning and could have driven straight through, all day, and been home this evening; but, as we are an adventerous bunch we thought we’d take our time and have taken little side trips here and there.

J and I swam in the hotel pool this evening for a bit. The girls, I think, are spending their time on the free wifi in their room as they’ve been in a car without their internet most of the day and are trying to make up for lost time. Sometimes I wonder how my sisters and I made it on those long summer vacation trips from Oregon to Oklahoma; 3 of us in the back seat of a car without a cell phone to text our friends back home, without ipods with earplugs so that we could each listen to our own music and without a computer to play games on. How did we do it? Times have changed for sure.

We should be home by mid afternoon tomorrow. I’m starting to look forward to it now. I miss my kitty, Jade, and I’m sure she has missed us. My dad (Thanks, Daddy!) has stopped by the house a few times to make sure she has water and food and that she is alright, but I know she needs to be held and kissed on just a bit. Like her humans she likes to be hugged and kissed on now and again.

Today, while driving, my mind has been turning back to my responsibilities at home and things I need to plan and do.
Tomorrow I will call DF and see what plans they have made for the cookout at the church. If she has a list of things they need me to get and do I will go from that. Saturday I can go get the groceries we will need at home, for the cookout, for next week’s scheduled lunches and also drop the teenager off at her sister’s house (they are going to the Phantom of the Opera Saturday night). Hopefully the married daughter will bring the teenager home on Sunday as J and I will have to decorate the church for the cookout and Independence Day celebration that evening.

The teenager has another week off of work as the family of the little girl she sits for is on vacation next week. I might need her help around the house next week any way so that will be great (if I can get her to stay home instead of running around with friends).

I’ve posted some of our pictures in the photo gallery (see tab towards the top) of our time in San Antonio and Mexico, if you have time to look at 30 or 40 pictures head there.

I’m turning in for the night and tomorrow we will be making the final leg of our vacation. It has been a fantastic and fun vacation and we’ve even had some time here and there to relax a bit but (refer to the title) there’s no place like home!

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We all took a dip in the pool before turning in last night. You would have thought we’d had enough of water after a full day at Sea World, but the pool looked so inviting and it really helped our tired, over-worked lower extremities.

Upon checking my email before turning in I had an email from a former Nowatian who now lives in San Antonio. I wish we could have stopped in to see her for a quick catch-up but unfortunately we hadn’t left enough time in our whirl-wind schedule. Now I know we have to come back again and leave time for a visit.

The dip in the pool helped enormously because we all started day 3 well rested and re-energized. We had planned on spending the day “over the border” at Loredo, Mexico, so after a quick, small bite of breakfast we headed further south to our destination of Nuevo Loredo.

We parked the car on the American side and made the trek across the Red River. We walked through one market and I saw a beverage dispenser I liked and decided to buy it on our way back. We walked on toward the next market area when we ran into Carlos and Poncho Lopez. My sweet J who is always thinking of ways to make my life easier hired Carlos (actually Poncho Lopez was doing all the work) to take us to where all the locals shop more in the town and past all the tourist places.

Carlos was a very pleasant and accommodating man and took me to a spot where I could buy a few pottery pieces. He waited for me outside the shop and carefully placed my purchases in the cart before helping us back into the cart. Here are a few pictures.

Mexican $1 Store

After we had had our fill of shopping for the day Carlos turned Poncho Lopez back toward the border and they dropped us off right at the border entry. He took our picture for us before we parted.

The rest of our time in San Antonio was spent at the Alamo, the River Walk and a bit of tourist shopping. I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the River Walk area.

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I woke Tuesday morning not feeling well at all. I had trouble with my allergies all night and at some point in the early morning hours developed a pounding headache. Around 7 a.m. I took a (another) decongestant and an Aleve, on an empty stomach, mind you. About 30 minutes later my headache was subsiding, the pressure in my ears didn’t seem near as bad but the 2 pills I had taken had decided to cause havoc in that big old empty stomach of mine.

I decided I had better get something else in my stomach besides those 2 pills, so I grabbed a handful of carrot and celery sticks that I had in the refrigerator and quickly ate 3 or 4. As carrots and celery, neither one are very absorbent, they didn’t really help the matter. As a matter of fact, I think they made things worse because now my stomach was telling me it wanted to get rid of everything I had put into it in the past 30 minutes.

I guess all my bumbling and grumbling woke J up and when I told him what I had done he quickly put on some clothes and went to the hotel lobby where they were serving breakfast. He grabbed a cherry danish and 2 biscuits with gravy for me. I wolfed down the danish and sat and waited to see what would happen to my poor, abused stomach. Within about 15 minutes the danish had absorbed the nasty acid, and gave the pills something to bounce off of instead of my empty stomach walls and I was able to finish the rest of the breakfast he had brought for me.

Once my stomach had recovered I felt like my old self again and was able to get dressed and begin our vacation day.

We readied ourselves, met the girls and headed for a day full of fun and sun at Sea World. Because my J is so smart and makes arrangements ahead of time we were able to walk right past all the ticket counters, present our computer printed tickets and photo Ids and walk right on in. I’m married to the smartest fella!!

While we were waiting for the Lagoon area to open (J had another surprise up his sleeve for me there) we decided to watch the high energy dolphin show. There were tricks from the dolphins, tricks from high-flying acrobats and high-diving frogmen. There was something going on either in the water or in the air at all times.

At 11 the Lagoon area opened so we followed J through the turnstiles and over to his pre-rented Cabana where there was a bucket full of bottled water on ice, Panama Jack Sunscreen, a beach towel featuring Shamu for each of us, and lounge chairs all waiting for us. Once we were settled in the young girl brought us each a lunch of turkey wraps and chips. Again, I’m telling you I’m married to the smartest, sweetest fella around.

After our lunch the girls took off and J and I walked around the park, took in the cute ski show and went back to the cabana to have an ice cold drink and set in the shade awhile. We ended up riding around the lazy water river ride on tubes a few times then going to see the Shamu show after a bit. We then strolled over to the dolphin area where I became friends with an older gal who loved to have her nose rubbed.

We saw all the attractions and many of the shows and spent a lot of time resting in the lounge chairs and shade of the cabana while being catered to by a friendly young man named John.
About 7 pm we gathered up the cameras and purses that we’d stored in the locker that came with the cabana (really cool because you don’t have to carry your purse and stuff around all day), returned the locker key to Cabana Boy John headed back to the hotel and a much needed shower and comfortable bed.

It was really a wonderfully fun day, the girls had a fantastic time (I think J and I heard “thank you�? a million and one times) and it was all made relaxing and stress-free for me because my J made all the extra pre-arranged surprises.

Stay tuned for Day 3 (Mexico and a Day with Carlos and Poncho Lopez)

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Sunday afternoon we began our journey to San Antonio and Sea World. It was a little later than we had expected, but we did, indeed, get away. As usual, Jade saw that we were packing up bags and ran and hid, just in case we might change our minds and take her anyway.

Because of car accidents on the Turner Turnpike at Wellston we took a detour on Historic Route 66 instead of waiting in traffic. We stopped to take a picture of Arcadia’s Round Barn.

Outside of Arcadia we saw this piece of art: Now that’s pop art.

We stopped for the night in Fort Worth. We didn’t make reservations for our first night out for the simple fact that we didn’t know exactly how far we would get and in what town we would be staying. We ended up in a Motel 6 with double beds in each room. Here is the conversation we had:

Me: Which bed should we sleep in, the one by the air conditioner or the one by the wall?
J: I want the one by the air conditioner.
Me: Okay, but you’ll have to sleep by the a/c unit. (that side of the bed would usually be my side and I didn’t want to sleep next to the a/c unit and window).
J: I will, cause that’s the bed I want.
(it took me a minute, but I finally caught on)
Me: You mean, you don’t want me to sleep in the same bed as you?
J: There are 2 beds.
Me: Yeah, we’ve been in hotels with 2 beds before and still slept in the same bed.
J: But these are double size beds.
So, we slept in separate beds. Actually, I slept pretty good too.

The teenager called our room at 7:30 am. She hadn’t slept very well during the night (strange bed and anxious to get on the road I guess). We all got dressed, loaded the car and headed on down the road.

In Round Rock the teenager spotted an IKEA store. Her sister (the married girl) always talks about her and the wonderful son-in-law going to IKEA when they are in Dallas, so we had to stop. Of course the teenager texted the sister and it wasn’t long before we had a short list of items to pick up for the young married couple, which we did. I picked up a few items for myself, too.

Getting back into the car we headed on south toward San Antonio. Coming into San Marcos we saw the outlet mall we’d heard so much about. You guessed it, we stopped. We killed a few hours and sweated off a few pounds walking around the place. The teenager bought a little something and her friend M bought a little something. J and I didn’t see anything we really needed or wanted.

Jumping back into the car we were, again, southbound. Arriving in San Antonio we found our hotel, checked in, unpacked and are now taking it easy.

I’m off now to enjoy my time with my fellow travelers.

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Today was the Director’s meeting at the bank. I had to start on their lunch items yesterday. As you can see the cookie platter held 3 different types of cookie. The bank had ordered 1 dozen of each type; as each recipe makes about 3 dozen I sent the rest to the church with the teenager for their youth meeting.

The rest of the lunch consisted of the usual sandwich, chips, pickle spear and a small fruit platter. The sandwich of choice was my Club Wrap which consists of ham, turkey, bacon, shredded mozzarella, shredded cheddar, sliced red onion and diced red ripe tomatoes. I made the wraps 1/2 on sun-dried tomato wraps and 1/2 on spinach wraps.

The final offering for lunch was a birthday cake for Sean. I made the cake and took the candles and the other decorations to the bank and told A that she could finish decorating it just before she lit the candles. The cake is a 13″ chocolate fudge with chocolate frosting. Chocolate on Chocolate; Yummee!!

That was the tasty stuff today. Tomorrow I will pick up my dishes and the rest of the day will be spent on readying ourselves for the vacation.

J will soon be home so I’ll chat with you later.

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I was flipping channels late yesterday afternoon and came upon one of these afternoon talk/self-help shows. There was this young (late 20s early 30s) man brought on the show by his sisters and mother. This young man and his wife (who was too embarrassed to come on the show) were $200,000 in debt. He owned (or was making payments on) 3 or 4 high-priced eye-catching (I call them vanity) vehicles, a boat (which was his second one because he saw someone on the lake in a bigger one which resulted in him trading his first one in for a larger one “and no doubt larger payments“) and a large camper that he and his family had used twice in I don‘t know how many years.

The Dr asked him why he thought these things determined his own self-value. The young man answered “it makes me feel good at the end of the day for people to think I’m successful.

The phrase “for people to think I’m successful” hit me like a ton of bricks. It seemed that it didn’t matter that he saw himself as successful but that others saw him as successful.

Because I’m a ponderer and like to mull things over in my mind I began to think about success and what my definition of success was.

My conclusion (it didn’t take me long to come to it): I’m a very successful woman.

1) J and I have a successful marriage. Not because we don’t disagree and argue every once in a while (you can’t live with a person day in and day out forever and not disagree or argue). But because those disagreements and arguments don’t define our marriage. Our marriage is defined by the mutual love and respect we have and show for one another and that those are the things that matter to us at the end of the day.

2) I (we) have successful children. Not because they make 6 figure incomes or straight A’s, but because they are happy, well-rounded individuals. They have loving, compassionate and giving hearts and they like who they are. I like who they are.

3) I go to bed each night happy that I may have brought a smile to someone’s face, or made someone’s load a bit lighter, or if I’ve helped another along their life’s journey hoping I’ve made it a bit easier.

4) I care what I think of me when I lay my head down at night. Don’t get me wrong, I do care what others think of me: I care what J thinks of me; I care what my children think of me; I even care what my parents and J’s parents think of me; above all I care what my Lord and Savior thinks of me.

Having a bigger house or 4 or 5 cars in the driveway doesn’t determine my self-worth. The people I love and who love me determines my self-worth and I am a very successful woman.

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Don’t ask me why they call it Mexican Wedding Dessert, I don’t see that there is anything Mexican or Southwestern about it. Of course, I knew that before I made it, but I thought I’d try it anyway.

I think some good changes might be 1) pecans (or walnuts) instead of peanuts 2) chocolate with the peanuts instead of the vanilla.

Here is how you make the original dessert. I was told the Rotary members really liked it.

We’re going to do this in layers; so, here we go.

1st layer: We chop up some peanuts, mix them with flour.

Melt some butter:

Mix the melted butter with the flour & peanuts; press into a 9×13 pan:

Bake this at 350 for 20 minutes. After 1st layer has completely cooled (1 hour) we start the 2nd layer.

2nd layer: Blend cream cheese with powdered sugar; when this is completely mixed, fold in 1 1/2 cups of the Cool Whip. Spread this on top of the 1st layer.

3rd layer: Mix pudding according to package directions and pour over 2nd layer.

4th layer: Top with remaining Cool Whip and sprinkle with more chopped nuts.

To make this dessert you will need:

1 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 sticks butter
4 oz. cream cheese
2 sm. French vanilla pudding
1 1/2 c. chopped nuts
1 c. powdered sugar
3 c. Cool Whip

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