If I leave something in the pantry long enough...

Sooner or later I'll get around to making it.  This weekend we finally tried out these cupcakes.

Fairly easy to make, and pretty yummy as well.  Daughter LOVED helping to bake these.
BTW, they're all gone.  Food Lion did not have these on the shelf when I did my shopping yesterday.  I hope Betty Crocker still offers this product.

Distraction

I have been attempting to establish a meditation practice.  I did a 28 day online program via Yoga Journal, and recently purchased an app for my kindle fire called insight timer which is pretty cool.  You can set you preferred length of time, choose from a variety of start and finish bells and even have interval bells.
This morning right after I started the timer I heard my daughter get out of bed.  She rattled around in her room, or the bathroom or the hedgehog's bedroom.  (yes, hedgie the hedgehog has her own room) Within 3 minutes or so, she comes into my room.
I briefly tell her, "I'm meditating, wait for the timer to finish."
She takes a seat near me on the floor.  For about 30 seconds.  From there she climbs onto the bed an fidgets around a bit.  At some point she turns on the TV and continues to whistle and fidget and be as distracting as possible.
When the timer finally chimed, I turn to her and say: "That was very distracting."
She says: "What?  The bell?"

This is great!

Oh, dear.

I've been a bad blogger.  No posts in a year or better?  At some point, it will be time to stop MommyBlogging because my daughter will want her privacy.  That doesn't change the fact that she is awesome.
We're getting ready for Mayra to start 3rd grade.  We left the public school system in favor of Caravel Academy, a smallish private school near our home.
Our big, big news is that Mayra has her own horse now.

How did this happen?



She had gotten to a point with her riding where once a week lessons weren't advancing her skills, what she needed was more riding time.  That pushes us into leasing or buying, and with leasing it's still somebody else's horse, and if the kid gets attached and they decide not to lease any longer, or if they sell the horse, then your child will be devastated, so right or wrong, we dived into horse ownership a bit earlier than we had initially planned on.  We found a good barn, and we get good help which we appreciate so much.

recent pics

My baby is growing up. Sniff.

It's been a quick, cold winter so far at our house. Christmas break went by in the blink of an eye. Mayra is still enjoying her violin lessons even though she would rather not practice most nights. She has told me she misses her old school, and wanted me to scan and email a copy of her collage bunny to the art teacher at last year's school, so that Miss Diane could see that she still does collages. It really makes me sad to have such a bright daughter dislike school as much as she does. Some mornings (like today) she doesn't even want to get out of the car. Maybe next year will be better.

It's already time to start planning for summer camp. So far, there is a farmers helpers camp nearby that sounds good, and it would be great to find a riding camp. Not sure what else we will get into. Would like for her to do a cooking camp, but we shall see.

Something I never, ever did...

Teacher sent home a note last week inviting me to the award assembly because Mayra would be receiving an award for Citizenship. Imagine my surprise when she alo got an award for math. I was never, ever good at math.

So here's the funny part. Mayra had asked over the weekend what she would be getting for her award. I said probably a piece fo paper, or maybe just a pat on the back and an "atta girl."

Her thoughts?

"Well I guess a trophy would be out of the question."

I'm really happy that she is doing so well, but felt kinda sad for the kids that didn't get a certificate. Maybe next time.