August 2022 12th

August 2022 in review

August started off with a bang, and I’m not ready for senior year to start. Not ready at all.

I don’t know when I will be.

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Week 1

Technically the big picture with my Awkward Unicorns is on July 31, but I got home from that event at midnight, and there was no way I was going to stay up and get that written in there, so August it is. We went and saw Newsies down at Zilker and it was AMAZING! I super loved it, and wish I could have gone to see it a few more times than we could.

The Artist is volunteering at a therapy farm, she does various chores and all sorts of stuff, and this particular day there was a baby sheep that we were both able to hold. I thought it was a goat at first, but no, it’s a baby sheep that has to be bottle-fed and everything. It was absolutely adorable!

We studied two countries, Oman, the top left meal, and it was okay, nothing anyone was particularly excited by and then North Korea, which was a barbecue meal, and that one was pretty good. I liked it, but apparently some of my kids aren’t big fans of pork.

This was news to me.

Friday we had a giant D&D one-shot combining several different groups into one giant problem, and it was lots of fun to see Superman run this giant campaign with 15 other people.

Then we headed down to Houston and Galveston for vacation!

Galveston!

For the second year in a row we rented a house in Galveston with my brother and his family before school started and enjoyed hanging out on the beach.

We went down a day early and stayed in Houston. Jeff, The Artist, and I went to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. We had a blast walking through and seeing all the art. I don’t think several of the docents were all that happy with our making fun of some of the Renaissance artists’ renditions of some of the babies or comments on occasional bad perspective.

I mean, most of our comments were on point and were properly admiring of the artwork, just sometimes you run into this piece of art that needs to be mocked. They did not necessarily agree.

But, on to the real vacation.

It was a great week of playing in the ocean, playing D&D with the cousins, who got to learn about it for the first time. They had a blast, and just generally hanging out. Everyone came back exhausted, we got lots of great stories, which wouldn’t really make sense to someone else, but for me are great memories.

Week 3

August 2022 12th

Apparently, this is the week of kids having fun picking on each other or the dog.

The top two pictures are Superman attempting to put sunglasses he found on Leezard, and her just laying there and you can practically hear her thinking, “This is my life. Why is this my life?”

And the middle picture of all three kids on the top is all three of them arguing over who is cuddling with the dog. You can’t see the dog, but I assure you, somewhere in that pile of teenagers, there is a dog.

Not pictured, but happening this week, we had all sorts of fun trying to finalize the kids’ classes for ACC. We got an email saying we hadn’t paid a bill that we never received a bill for, and because of that The Artist was dropped from her classes, but when we went to go see her account, it said she owed nothing. He showed us screenshots saying we owed $80, but no accounts we logged into said she owed anything.

While all of that nonsense was going on, the class filled up, and so she signed up for another class, which had a book that cost nothing, but the bookstore we are REQUIRED to use, was charging “to be decided” taxes. What does that even mean? And then I spent 20 minutes trying to get it to accept my payment for the free book with to be decided taxes because it kept saying there was an error.

At the end of it all I said, “Tea is not enough to deal with my frustration. I need a Dr Pepper.”

This was on top of my car going in the shop earlier that week and we kept getting non-specific answers of what was wrong before finally getting 3 days later, “Oh, it’s the battery.”

UGH

Then, Jeff got the news his entire department was being transferred over to India, and they were supposed to spend the next 3-18 months training their cheaper replacements, and they would be given other jobs elsewhere.

For a few hours, it was looking like we might have to move to Minnesota, which thankfully is not the case. It was less than exciting.

We learned about Venezuela, Uruguay, and Gabon for geography, the top 2 right pictures are our meals from Venezuela and Uruguay. Gabon was interesting because the recipe was beignets, and I’ve been amused at the number of former French colonies that claim beignets as a favorite national dish. This was one of the first times I think the recipe really came out well. So it’s my favorite beignet recipe.

And that’s week 3, my lasagna for dinner tonight should be coming out soon. This was one of those days where the recipe just was not going well. In case you’re wondering, no matter how much might say it tastes better if you pre-cook the noodles, DO NOT pre-cook oven-ready noodles. It causes so many problems.

Week 4

August week 4 2022 12th

We studied a couple of different countries, switching continents. I made an Ethiopian flatbread, which is a strange combination of crepes and pancakes. I rather liked it, but it wasn’t a good base for the meal I used it for. I’m used to being able to use flatbread for tacos. The texture of this didn’t quite work right for it, though I liked them.

I put some Eswanti avocado salad called Slaai. From my brief read of the dish it seemed like it should be a good topping for tacos, but I didn’t think about how the ginger would interact, and that gave it a very different flavor profile then I thought.

That was not a hit. Later that week we tried Panamanian carne guisada, which the recipe described as beef stew, but isn’t. I knew this, when I’ve seen carne guisada served it was a slow-cooked shredded beef. That’s what this recipe created, so I don’t know why it was listed as a beef stew. Either way, it tasted great and it’s going into my recipe rotation (no picture of that).

The Artist continues to volunteer at Simple Sparrow Farm, I got a picture of her interacting with the baby sheep they rescued, that looks like a goat. He hangs out with the dogs on the farm, despite their attempts to get him to be with the sheep, and so he rather acts like a dog. It cracks me up.

The boys had a Kung Fu demo team show, and it was pretty cool to watch. Their youth pastor and small group leader both made it to different shows, and they were pretty happy to see that happen.

I read Kiki’s Delivery Service, I saw it on sale on the Nook and picked it up for a couple of dollars, so Jeff, The Artist, and I watched it together. I scaled back the snacks somewhat to account for not having 5 people to make snacks for. I’m thinking of making this an actual book study, and not just snacks. We’ll see. I would have to go back and reread it while looking for vocabulary words, and discussion questions.

Finally, pictures like that bottom picture make me smile. As we get ready to do geography each day the kids all pile around the dog claiming they’re going to cuddle with Leezard and the poor dog just stares at them like, “Why me? Why aren’t you stopping this Mom?”

So, that’s our August. It’s been a busy August, and I’m still trying to figure out just how it all ended.

How was your August?


Comments

One response to “August 2022 in review”

  1. Natalie PlanetSmarty Avatar
    Natalie PlanetSmarty

    Wow, it’s a busy August indeed. It’s a bummer about Jeff’s job, but it sounds like at least his company is serious about keeping their Texas people. We are all waiting to see what happens once VMware gets acquired. I want to leave but I missed “the sweet spot” when everyone was hiring. Now it’s more downsizing, so it’s rather depressing. It’s exciting to start a senior year but it sounds like TX community college system is rather messy, or at least your college is. A is busy with college applications already and it seems like she was in school forever even though it’s been only 3 weeks so far.

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