It’s Never Too Late for Thankful Thursday

April 22, 2011September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

So I was too tired last night to link up a thankful post even though I’d had one floating around in my head all week.

Then I got home today and found a brown paper package in the mail from a little birdie who’s encouraging me to write more and I got motivated.

Some random thankfulness this week….

Easter eggs. The empty, plastic kind that are all over my floor and causing this precious moment…

that necessitated a quick grab of the camera and then the realization that removal of the lens cap is always a good idea.

Good books. I’ve been time traveling with the Outlander series lately on recommendation of a friend at work and though it’s good escapism, let’s be honest. It’s probably not making me a better person. Even if I am learning more than I ever needed to know about eighteenth-century Scotland. But during some quiet time at school this week I began One Thousand Gifts. And had to stop immediately before I cried in front of my students. Raw, emotional intensity right from the beginning. The first chapter is entitled “an emptier, fuller life.” Someday I hope so. Now I can’t wait to dive into Bird by Bird and share some of my reflections with you.

(and hopefully some of that writing won’t take as long to compose as this post since I keep having to stop to rescue Amelia from the Sissy Monsters and then cuddle her for a minute while she demonstrates her latest skill–giving kisses!)

My husband. I realize I don’t blog about Joshua all that much and he worries when I say I have written about him (smile) but he has been the reason I can find a moment to be thankful this week. Lately I’ve been the busy one with rehearsals and meetings and efforts to squeeze in some exercise, so you would think my house is a wreck and my kids are surviving on pop-tarts. Not so. He’s made dinner (I’m buying steaks more often), given baths, cleaned the kitchen……and made me thankful God gave me him.

school

Is that an Irregularity?

April 21, 2011 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

It’s the question of the week.

We’re giving the CRCT at school this week and are being very extra super careful to do everything exactly right. This is very hard for a group of Type-A personalities….yeah, right.

Everyone is so focused on making sure that nothing happens to cause any sort of testing malfunction that this morning when a thunderstorm erupted over the rooftops of our very quiet, very serious building, one of my students said, “Um, Mrs. Brackett? Is the principal going to have to fill out a form about this?”

Well, actually she just might. And what do we do if there’s a tornado warning? These are the questions no one thinks to ask until the sirens are going off. Except we thought of it during this storm, so now we have a testing in a tornado plan.

That’s right. The test must go on.

Seriously, though, my kids are doing really well. They’re very focused until it’s over and then they’re a little hyper. But not much else is new. Teenagers don’t wake up until ten a.m. anyway.

I got Joshua good tonight, though. See, those of you in the “real” world of business who get to leave for lunch and take unscheduled bathroom breaks can’t really relate to all this. So when he asked me if I wanted to take in some of the girls’ Easter egg candy to give my students during the test, I told him very seriously that we were already providing candy that had been inspected and pre-approved and that I’d had to fill out a form for the state listing everything they were given so I couldn’t possibly take in contraband.

He stared at me for a moment. “Are you serious?”

As a standardized test under lock down in spring I am.

j/k…as my students would say, j/k!

project 52

Project 52.11…I Think

April 18, 2011September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett2 Comments

I may not be sure what week it is, but I know for sure there are only 25 school days left on the calendar. Yippee!

And I know that the CRCT starts in approximately 36 hours. Yikes.

Busy, busy, busy springtime celebrating big milestones like birthdays and growing up girls. Why can’t they just stay little?

Because when they’re little (like 5 years old) they have the ability to throw up for 24 hours straight and then want to eat sausage for breakfast the next morning and then throw up again in the car. When you’re grown up you know how ridiculous it is to eat sausage after 24 hours of regurgitation.

And here’s a belated Project 52 shout out to some awesome side dishes especially the macaroni.

When I ‘fessed up to my imperfect birthday cake and my sort of successful fried chicken, I neglected to tell you how incredible my sister’s contributions were. Katy made the macaroni, potato salad, deviled eggs, and helped salvage the cake. Which she all pointed out to me about 30 seconds after my blog posted. I owe her a good sisterly post soon.


The blocks are still taller than her, thank goodness.


She did have fun at this party….just not at this moment.


Mocking from her big sister would be the reason for the picture above.


BFF…at least until we send them to three different schools next year.

Happy Birthday Hailey! Thanks for sharing your day with us!

madelynne · thankful Thursday

Thankful Madelynne Thursday

April 15, 2011September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

This Thursday I am thankful for Madelynne who always keeps us laughing. I haven’t blogged about her a lot lately but just so you know, she’s gotten taller. And wiser. So she thinks.

The other day she was playing hide and seek with her daddy and he ran into the closet in our bedroom and shut the door. Well, I was in there hanging up shirts. Of course she and Belle started pounding on the door and yelling. Finally, Madelynne said, “We better just leave them alone. They’re in there being romantic.”

Then this afternoon she gave me a word problem. “Mommy, if you have two squirrels and 100 more come scurrying up, how many do you have?”

She likes to challenge me, she says. I told her the answer, but apparently she didn’t believe me because at dinner she asked her daddy what 100 plus 2 was. When he told her 102, she replied, “Oh, I guess Mommy was right.”

Nice to know she has a lot of faith in my ability to count!

She also washed these dishes the other night because Joshua was gone and she said since Daddy was gone somebody had to wash the dishes.

What am I going to do with her?

birthdays · Paynes · perfectly imperfect · sisters

Imperfectly Perfect Birthdays

April 13, 2011September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

I wasn’t going to blog about this at all. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I was mad.

Then, I got convicted.

I’m NOT perfect. Deep breath. I wish I was. But that would be boring and everyone would hate being around me, right? At least that’s how I feel when I’m surrounded by people who do things so much more perfectly than I do.

So the first part of today’s installment is confession.

We celebrated my sister Calley and my brother Corey’s birthdays this past Sunday. Their birthdays are ten days and six years apart and they both wanted fried chicken. Seemed like a plan. Then, disaster.

(This isn’t the embarrassing part yet. This is just what led up to it.)

Mama got sick. Really sick. 102 degrees and shouldn’t be out of bed sick. We descended anyway. Side note: I think I get this perfection thing from her. I mean, really, she should have cancelled instead of believing she’d be better in twenty-four hours.

So I got put in charge of a few things. Like the cake. Another side note: My mother makes perfect cakes. See example below.

Well, obviously I can’t compete with this.

But I thought I could reasonably pull together a pretty good chocolate cake for Calley. After all, last week I whipped out the Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever and it was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

I intended to make that sheet cake again but changed my mind at the last minute and instead tried a chocolate fudge cake from one of our many cookbooks that we have more for decor than actual use.

Well, evidently this cake is not meant to be made in two round cake pans with the purpose of layering.

Nope, didn’t work. So there I was on Sunday morning, no more butter, an imperfect cake and a failed attempt at making cream cheese icing with Philadelphia cooking cream cheese which, FYI, doesn’t work because the cream cheese is thinned. For cooking. Not baking. Duh, it says that on the package.

This is the picture I took and figured if I did post this would be the view you got.

Gee, doesn’t it look great? Yeah, this is what it really looked like.

It was…a little flat. But it did taste good. I should know. Half of it came home with me and I’m trying to get that plate cleaned off so I can wash it and I hate to see good ingredients go to waste….

I also made this for my brother. Nothing like pre-packaged assembly. Well, I did have to mix the cream cheese and whipping cream. And of course my mom had the perfect cream cheese because she would never make such a mistake.

Actually, I’m sure she’s messed up plenty, but I don’t remember it because she somehow makes things work anyway. Maybe one day my girls will feel the same about me.

Here’s a preview of our Sunday afternoon at Paynes-a-Plenty. Picasa slideshow to come if I can figure it out.

48 pieces of fried chicken….

Loving the swing.

Well this looks good at least.

Happy Birthday Calley!

This so captures the moment. I think I was telling Corey that I didn’t want to hear about the chicken if it wasn’t done because that’s what microwaves are for.