Found in Fishers

Life Happens

This is it. The big contest week. I hope everyone is trying hard to spend just $50 for 5 days for meals. I say this because I have not started. Life Happens.

The first obstacle was our 24th wedding anniversary on Monday. I was all set to celebrate dinner with Juan on Sunday night. But, because the weather did not cooperate on Saturday, he had to reschedule his photo shoot from Saturday to Sunday. I was not going to delay the celebration. And, I was not going to eat from the dollar menu on my anniversary. In today's society 24 years is a true milestone and I was going to celebrate a quiet meal with my hubby. We went to Bella Vita. Bella Vita is an awesome restaurant on the Geist Reservoir. We ate alongside the marina as the weather was perfect. So was my lemon chicken with artichokes and capers. Yum! The conversation was fantastic. We need to do this more often and again for sure at Bella Vita. What a big difference when you eat at a family owned restaurant. Here's to Juan for putting up with me for so long. I have a rather intense personality. Ok, and a bit controlling too. It is not really controlling but more that like I like things my way. :) Patient man.

I also found out on Monday that I was moving offices at work. This was a big surprise to me. There are five people moving. I really won in this move. I am the only person moving to a larger office. And, I would say it is probably the best office in the building. A little cold in the winter but a dandy office. The new location just happened in the moving around as my boss moved to the front of the building near the superintendent so she wanted me to move into the curriculum department that previously did not have room for me. I convinced Mark to help me pack up my office last night and move the heavy boxes into the hallway. After working until almost 8:00, I was exhausted and had a major taste for Dos Enchiladas at Tijuana Flats. If you have not been there, you must go. Liz works there. They have the best tasting Tex-Mex food in town. All fresh ingredients. I just love the enchiladas. Two corn tortillas with steak, red sauce on top and covered with fresh tomatoes, onions, olives, and cheese. So yummy. I had them Tuesday night. Felt a little guilty about not starting my contest but I could not ward off the craving. It was stronger than me.

Today, well it was better. I did stay in my $10. We had polish sausage and I made my fettuccine/broccoli salad. It was good and did stay within the $10 a day budget. Tomorrow? Forget about it. I will make a meal for the family in the $10 range. I am thinking Italian Sausage in the crock pot but I am leaving after work to go with some friends for dinner and hear a Celtic band in Broad Ripple. An Italian restaurant, my favorite. I think the real problem is that eating out is my favorite hobby.

Coming soon, the Indiana State Fair. Can't wait to do some new tasting this year.

The 5 Day $50 Challenge - join in!

Pay attention blog readers! I have a new adventure for you.

During these difficult economic times, I have a challenge for me and my faithful readers to save some money next week. With the extra money you can use it to make an extra payment on a bill, donate to a charity, donate food to a local food pantry, etc.

 The challenge is to feed your family dinner for $50 total from Monday through Friday. Start thinking about some ideas. Share them on my blog. What can you buy and cook for the week and still keep your family satisfied? Since I am making the challenge, I get to make the rules:
    *The challenge is from Monday, July 27 through Friday, July 31
    *If you have a family larger than 4 people, feel free to add $2.00 per extra person more per day in this challenge. That means the Duggar's can add an additional $160 for the week.
    *If you go out to dinner, you still have to stay in your $50 per week budget. Looks like my 24th wedding anniversary on Monday will have to come from the McDonald's Dollar Menu, yikes!
    *Share your menu ideas by commenting on the blog next week. It is easy to do so join in.

Are you up to the challenge? Let me know.

Paint, Fabuluso, and some elbow grease

The dogs are on their way back to Lansing, whew. It was a long week taking care of five dogs. Probably because I was home on vacation at the same time. After the clan drove off the driveway, I started to get the house back to normal. I started with washing the kitchen floor. Five dogs running in and out of the house for a week, yikes. I moved to dusting and vacuuming and then cleaning up counters and cleaning the patio door. The floor was pretty darn dirty and hairy too. The carpets not as bad since I tried to keep up with that every other day or so.

Next up was painting the trim on the door frame in the laundry room and touching up the door. Deagan has not learned to stop jumping up on the baby gate on the door so I needed to do some painting today. Looks much better already. The last job was cleaning up the deck. I had to wash the deck off because there are two dogs in particular who think they are princes and will not pee in the dog run but rather on my deck. Got it all scrubbed up and clean otherwise on the first hot day, the man-cave will smell. Right now I have the sprinkler running in the dog area for about an hour to clean up the smell too. I have to do that a couple times each summer so I thought it would be a good time to clean up the rocks so that it does not smell.

Finally time to do some relaxing. Well sort of. I do have to get the laundry done and do some last minute things before going back to work tomorrow. Darn. I am not ready! I already warned Sarah that they are not allowed to take two week long vacations. Maybe by January Deagan will be much calmer and actually just lay around like my two dogs. I have a couple scratches to repair on the wall in the laundry room, maybe I will do that this afternoon.

Now, to figure out what to do with the damaged carpet...

Doggy Trouble - Guess it was too good to be true!

After a full week of dog sitting, I was just thinking this morning how smoothly things were going. It is not easy to take care of five dogs. It is not easy to take care of a puppy, especially an 80 pound puppy who does not understand his size. Things were going well. We had a routine set up since I was on vacation.

I would get up in the morning and let the dogs out, feed them and let them play either inside or outside until about noon. At noon the dogs all went in their cages until about 4 or 5 when they came out and played again for about an hour. They would eat, I would walk Deagan and they stayed out of their cages until about 10:30 or 11:00 at night. It was a good routine. And, except when we went to Cincinnati, I kept a pretty close schedule. So of all days for the dogs to be naughty, I would have expected them to be out of sorts on Tuesday. But, they were excellent. It was today. Yes, today. The day I was home almost all day long that they decided to act up.

First of all, Deagan has been full of vinegar all day long. He has been into everything so I have had to watch him like a toddler. We lost our electricity for about an hour so I took Deagan outside on his leash around the house and for a mini-walk. We did stay on schedule for the most part but Juan, Mark and I decided to go to dinner tonight. After all it was the last day of my "stay"cation. In that short time, I think Deagan was trying to dig an escape route.

We were gone about an hour when I came home to let the dogs out. It seems that Deagan pushed the bottom part of his cage forward enough to grab onto the carpet and pulled the strings. You know, the strings kinda like unraveling a sweater. Well, he unraveled my carpet in the basement. When I went to get him, I wondered what the blue ball of fuzz was. I am thinking he was doing some kind of digging motion and started to pull strings up and just kept pulling until I came down. Right in the middle of the carpet. No hiding this one. Drats!

After letting the dogs out, they ran around the house non-stop. Deagan would not stop teasing Charlie. Charlie would not stop barking and Baxter just napped on my lap. I tried everything to calm them down and get Deagan busy. Finally, I gave him one of Sally's bones and it did work as long as the bone was around. Once again Deagan teased Charlie. Deagan emptied the clothes basket in the laundry room. He tried to eat my twigs near the fireplace. He kept licking my feet and teasing Charlie the whole time. I took him outside for awhile to get rid of some energy before putting him to bed just a few minutes ago. He wore me out tonight.

As I sit here blogging about my day's doggy trouble, John yelled up that one of the little dogs left him a special package on the floor in his office. That was the icing on the cake today. Hurrah! The O'Brien's come home tomorrow. The dogs go home Sunday. Whew, today felt like a whole week.

Nothing special, just some work around the house

"Stay"cation day 4 was not too exciting. Last night we did not get to see the Rocky Horror Picture show. Randy found the movie box but no tape inside. That was ok, we visited anyway.

 Thursday brought a day of getting some errands done and fixing up the house. Mark and I worked in the yard for a few hours. I also painted the front door and started to put on a new door handle. It really was not much of a "stay"cation event but I guess not everyday can be an exciting day. Not sure what tomorrow will bring.

I am very happy with the front door. It remains black but really needed a paint job. I also have been wanting a new brushed nickel door handle. We got the locking part on but the handle requires an additional hole be placed in the door and Juan's drill needing charging. I put on the old handle until tomorrow. Additionally tomorrow I will paint the white trim around the door frame. Just a little freshening up. I really want to stencil the word "welcome" on the door. Juan did not think about it for more than a second and said absolutely NO. Darn it, the paint fairy might need to do some secret work one day. Honestly, he should at least go look at it. There is a house in the neighboring subdivision that has it stenciled. I think it looks great. We'll see. I would also like to add a kick plate to the bottom but not one that your have to screw in the door the magnetic kind, have not found one yet.

Foodies on the Road to Cincinnati

Tuesday was a busy day for the Reichanadters. We decided to take a day trip to Cincinnati. Our first stop was to Ikea. We started with a delicious lunch, the special of the day, bratwurst. We even were able to snatch a much sought-after window seat. Check out of view of the parking lot.

It is hard to leave Ikea without something. Juan joked that Ikea was for Scandinavians and "pretty" people. But, we did not seem to have a problem loading up our cart. I ended up with a couple cardboard boxes for my closet and wooden hangers. Juan ended up with an assortment of candles. Yes, candles. I think he wanted to doll up his man-cave.

Following Ikea we went to Jungle Jims. Jungle Jims is a 300,000 square foot grocery store in Fairfield, OH. It was recently featured in the Indianapolis Star and caught John's attention. I have been there already on two occasions, most recently in June when I went to a literacy workshop in the area. After leaving Ikea, I did have to take some teasing because I told John to turn one intersection too soon so he quickly lost trust in my ability to get us there and went back to TomTom.

The international section in the store is about the size of Kroger. It is amazing. There are rooms featuring food items from many different countries. France, Ireland, Spain, and more. We spent quite a bit of time in the Hispanic food aisle. I picked up my favorite cookies with marshmellows and coconut, Juan filled the cart with his favorite snacks he finds in Mexico. I also bought Fabuloso! It is a cleaning product that I like to use. I bought the lemon scent and already used it this morning to clean the bathroom. Love the neon yellow color and smell.

At the Jungle, visitors are called Foodies. Every department at Jungle Jims is big. In the pet aisle I picked up a couple bones for the dogs and a kong to keep Deagan busy this week. In the wine department, found more Mad Housewife wine. Found some yummy candy that I ate when I was a child, my favorite is Teaberry Gum. They even have a post office, bank, and phone center in the store.

After several hours, we still had not finished looking through the store but decided that we better start heading home. We had 5 dogs to let out and stretch for the evening. We knew we would be back because Juan found a close place to get his Mexican snacks.

Had a great time and lots of laughs!

Enjoying my "stay"cation

What do you call time off work with no place to go? A"stay"cation of course. The best part about it is I get to sleep in my own bed each night.

Ok, here is the real story. After working long hours each week all year long, I often like to spend some of my vacation time just staying home. This year we thought maybe a couple short trips or so this summer would be fun. We did quite a few weekends away the last few months and I also have some weekends planned in August to go camping with the family. The reality is that I planned time off work around my need to babysit my sister's dogs. I thought I had them last week while they went to Disney so I took this week off. After I finalized my vacation and summer schedule, I realized I had the wrong week and took off the week I have all the dogs. The week I really cannot leave anywhere overnight because it is not that easy to find a dog sitter for 5 dogs!

I have some things planned though. First of all, Pat, Sarah, and Liam came a few days early to hang out in Fishers. We went out to eat a couple times but since it was raining on Saturday we decided to hit the Children's Museum.I have been wanting to get to the museum to see the King Tut exhibit. I think every family in central Indiana had the same idea on Saturday. There were few parking spots when we arrived at 11:30 so we had to dash in the rain to get inside. Soaked, we stood in line about 30 minutes to get the tickets. The Tut exhibit was extra so the O'Briens took a pass on it. Mark, Liz and went in. It was good. I was glad I spent the money. Sorry no pics allowed. I expected to see more artifacts but what I saw was interesting and it took over an hour to see everything.

The most fun for adults in the Children's Museum is to take goofy pictures of yourself and others. It was actually quite funny. As Liam would go through the exhibit, we would take funny pictures of each other. Everyone had fun! That is the best part of a kid's museum. You get to touch everything!
We have some other things planned this week too. I would like to go to the German restaurant downtown, maybe Mounds State Park, probably go see a movie or two.  Wednesday night I am hoping to have some friends over to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have yet to experience that movie. Then I will probably have to find it in a movie theater to make the experience real!
Keep checking, it should be a rather eventful week.

A taste of San Francisco

This is the last post about San Francisco. It was a great trip but now that I am back to work, time for the real world again. We could not go to San Francisco and skip the unique food choices. Therefore, we decided to eat a least a couple times around the city. Our first meal out was in China Town. As we walked the streets looking for an authentic looking place, we did stumble upon a restaurant that looked rather amazing to me. If I closed my eyes and opened again quickly, I swear I was in Beijing. People were hanging out their laundry just like Beijing and the layout of the restaurant, just like in Beijing. In many of the restaurants we were at in China, the seating area was upstairs. Restrooms either downstairs or even down the street. Just like this in San Francisco. The restaurant was up a steep staircase to the second floor.

On our last evening in San Francisco, we took a shuttle provided by the conference folks to Fisherman's Wharf. You cannot go to the wharf and not eat fish so we decided to find the best price for Fish and Chips. We also wanted to eat outside. We found the perfect place at the Fish Grotto and enjoyed a delicious white fish meal before going through the souvenir shops. I picked up a couple things for my family. Like many other tourist spots, every shop pretty much had the same stuff. I was able to stop by the famous Boudin's Bakery and picked up a loaf of sourdough bread for John. Delicious.

I hope to get a chance to return to the second part of this training next summer. The best part was the focus on lesson design and structure that matched our philosophy at HSE. I took away so many ideas that will apply to all subject areas and all grade levels. I also appreciate the three teachers who attended with me. What amazing people and teachers. Our kids in Fishers are lucky!

San Fran Sites

We had three nights to enjoy the San Francisco area and took advantage of every moment to catch as many sites as possible. We not only were able to share with our San Fran newbies in the group some of the interesting sites in the city but also see some new ones for me as well.

On our first night, we decided to take public transportation from the hotel to the downtown area. We took the BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit train. The first leg of the trip required that we take the hotel shuttle to the airport. There we purchased a ticket and rode the BART to Market Street. The BART goes 80 mph. We know this because we asked the conductor.

Once on Market Street we did some sight-seeing. Actually it was more like people watching. The Gay Pride parade had  ended a couple hours earlier so many people were dressed with beads and other whatnot to celebrate the parade. We were a bit amazed at what you can wear in public in San Francisco. Don't think it would be OK in Fishers to wear a man-thong in public. And, a girl with stickers covering her privates. A bit risky.

We walked to the street car station and tried to hop a street car to ride the line past all the piers. As soon as we got on, we were asked to get off because the driver was on a break. He also would not let us ride the direction we wanted. Therefore we crossed the street and waited the next street car. Guess what, same driver! Guess his break was over. We got off at Pier 39 as I wanted to see the sea lions that hang out at that pier. When it was time to go back to the hotel, we again got on a street car. This time it felt a lot like we were packed sardines. The driver crams as many people in the car as possible. He even opened the back door and had us squeeze it. Yelling the whole time at people to squeeze more people on. There is no way 1 more person could have got on that car. It was pretty funny. Good thing it was not too hot outside.

Back to the BART, the hotel shuttle, and to the conference registration by 6:00. We made it just in time to register and eat at the opening dinner. I was glad we took the opportunity to see part of the city that night. It was a crash course in public transportation. Good thing one of the teachers in my group was really good at following maps because we were on the run that afternoon and the signs were not tourist friendly.

Streets of San Francisco

 What a great time in The City. I went along with 3 teachers to learn more about our new social studies program. We actually became trainers of the program. The great part, we were dismissed at 4:00 each day to explore the city and that is just what we did!

We wanted to experience as much as possible in the Fog City so we decided that taking public transportation was the best way to see San Francisco. On Monday, we decided to take the cable car through the area around China Town. We picked up our ride on Powell Street where the line started. These cars have been around since the 1870s. It was quite interesting how the car gets to the end of the line and the workers literally turn the car on a lazy susan to send it back the other direction. Our goal, to ride the car the entire line hanging on the sides.

When we first got on, the car was very crowded and therefore there was no spot on the side to hang on. We went ahead and got off in China Town looking for something to eat. We really wanted something authentic or "seedy" as the guys said. We checked down some alleys and walked the streets looking for one of the most authentic looking places we could find. In the end we landed in a restaurant that gave us a free coupon for pot stickers on the corner. The meals were delicious, generous portions but we did not get all the pot stickers as promised. Then when then bill came with us thinking we would also get 20% off the bill, it was not quite that. We called it Chinese math! The coupon worked, it got us to the restaurant. It was ok, we had a great time.

The streets are so steep, we surely burned the calories from dinner just walking around doing some shopping and getting back to the cable car. Once on the car we really did get to ride the whole line and we were on the sides hanging on like we planned. What a great view. What a great time. Experiencing the culture of the area made for a great evening.