Memories

Greek Ravioli Skillet

Greek Ravioli Skillet. A perfect combination of salty and pasta. The combination of pasta, beef, Feta cheese, and Kalamata olives come together with zucchini, Basil, and tomato sauce to create a perfect Greek dish.

I mentioned yesterday that 9/11 holds a special, weird, place in my heart. Three different events happened on that day to just kind of leave me in tears. Losing my grandma was extremely difficult for me. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents (both sets, all 4 of them) growing up. Both my parents worked, so for many summers, I stayed with one or the other set of grandparents. Losing my first grandparent was difficult. You have no idea. I was in my early 20’s so I was lucky, some people don’t even get to meet their grandparents. I was extremely lucky.

So, what does that have to do with Greek Ravioli Pasta? Good question.Well… My grandma was half Greek. Her father actually came through Ellis Island. Once upon a time I went to New York City and did all the touristy things, including touring Ellis Island. That was CRAZY the things they went through coming through there. WOW! My great-grandpa died when my grandma was 5 years old. He got pneumonia a couple years before penicillin was invented. Had he gotten it after, he would have probably been saved, maybe anyway. Who really, truly knows.

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9/11 – Never Forget

“Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.”- Former President George W Bush

“We’re going to find out who did this and we’re going after the bastards”- Sen. Orrin Hatch

What more is there to say that they haven’t already said?

Your Earliest Memory | Blogging 30

Oh heck, my earliest memory? I have a lot of memories and to know which one is the earliest is a bit difficult. So let’s go with this one since we’ve been recently helping my parents renovate their deck.

When I was about 5-6 years old, my dad was building a new horse barn. We had a hay barn that we had makeshift stalls in for the horses, but he wanted something a little more permanent. So that’s when we (by we I mean mom and/or dad) got the idea to make a permanent horse barn. It either had 4 or 5 stalls plus a tack room. As a kid, I was always outside. I remember walking out to the barn area looking for my dad who I knew was out there. When I walked around the corner of the new barn I saw him on a ladder, hanging on trying not to fall. The ladder had shifted on him and the only thing keeping him from falling on the ground was he was holding himself and the ladder up. It’s hard to describe…

I just looked at him and said, What are you doing? I don’t think he’d ever been so happy in his life to see someone. He immediately yelled at me to go get my mom. She came out and helped him down. But I just remember looking up and saying, “What are you doing?” very innocently.

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My 34th Birthday

 

Here we are, halfway through the next month and I still haven’t recapped/talked about my birthday.

I should tell you I hate birthdays. Not because I don’t like getting older. No, I’m fine with that. That means I’m still alive. I just hate the day. In more recent years I haven’t had good birthdays. It’s been forgotten by family and friends (not all, please don’t take offense if you remembered!!!). It gets treated like another day. It’s just not a big deal. And I guess I feel like it should be a big deal? I don’t know. Maybe I’m full of myself… ha.

When hubby and I got together, it seems like he gets week long birthday’s and I barely get a day. I guess I was a bit jealous of that. The reason he gets that is that if his birthday falls during the week, we’re supposed to get Tbug to celebrate, but that doesn’t always happen. So we celebrate on his birthday. I’ve thrown him surprise birthdays. Plus we’ve celebrated his real birthday on a weekend we had Tbug. Multiple times all of this has happened.

This year, my hubby decided to give me a week long birthday. This morning I saw a quote on Facebook:

I know good men still exist because I am lucky enough to have one.

A friend from college commented that she couldn’t help but think back to our Memoirs class and how much she learned about him. Maybe this is something I should have written about in class… Although I’m not far enough removed from it to use for a memoir.

Anyway, let’s quit procrastinating and let’s discuss

my birthday.

My birthday started out the weekend before my birthday, if you ask hubby. I had been wanting to eat at the Japanese Steakhouse for a while. He decided we were eating there and that was the start of my birthday.

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How To: Can Tomatoes

The other day I was down at my grandma’s and she made a comment that really kind of stuck with me. As you know I started a garden this year. This is my second attempt but first successful attempt at a garden. That’s cool, right? I planted green beans, corn, tomatoes, peppers (assorted), and carrots. At my house, we really don’t eat many raw tomatoes, so I called my grandma up and asked her to help me can them. She agreed. So what exactly did she say that stuck with me? That she was proud of me for learning how to do this because it is becoming a lost art. Wow! It was one of those things I thought of but never really made note of.

How to: Can Tomatoes

Midwestern at Heart: How To: Can Tomatoes. This is my Grandma's tried and true method of canning tomatoes so you have fresh tomatoes from your summer garden all year long.

The first thing you want to do is decide what you think you’ll use these tomatoes for. I told her I was going to use these for tomato sauce or pasta sauce eventually. Keep that in mind when trying this method!

I have a mixture of Beefsteak and Roma tomatoes in my bucket.

Midwestern at Heart: Bucket of Tomatoes

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10 Reasons to Visit Cozumel, Mexico

I keep mentioning Cozumel and our trip. Are you sick of hearing about it yet without hearing about it? Yeah, me too! haha. So here is 1 of a couple posts on Cozumel… But this one is Why You Should Visit Cozumel!

1. The SCUBA Diving! Oh my gosh, the SCUBA diving in Cozumel is amazing. The water temperature is like 80-84 degrees F year round (26-29˚C). The sealife is out of this world. There are reef and nurse sharks, turtles galore, fish of all shapes, sizes, and colors, and so much more, including if you’re lucky a potential Hammer Head Shark AND Seahorses. No, the sharks aren’t scary. At first I thought they would be, but they aren’t. When people yell or give the Shark sign, others go running, camera in hand. The visibility seems endless. You could be at the surface, see the ocean floor, take off for it and it’s sitting at 80-100 feet down. I mean the visibility is a dream.

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Did You Make It?!?!

You see this pier right here? I have a fun story about this pier…. Hold on….

So in May, I’ve mentioned in passing a few times, we went to Cozumel, Mexico. When you board a dive boat, right there under that roof is usually where people enter the dive boat they are going out on.. that and a little bit to this side even. You know, those big pillars are to tie boats off to to keep them at the dock.

I’m not sure exactly how deep it is right there at the end of the peer, but it’s deep enough that dive boats can get in easily. I’ve heard around 20 feet… I now my friend Grady accidentally had his gear dropped off a boat and they had to free dive down to get it.

Okay, so now that you have a little back ground history…. Let’s proceed with today’s story.

The last night we were in Cozumel, around dinner time I ran out to get sunset pictures (the above photo is from the first night….). There were 3 people, appeared to be a mother and 2 kids possibly. The girl I assume was daughter was probably early 20’s and the guy I assume to be son was late teens. So guesstimate mom’s age by those numbers… if she was near 20 when she had said daughter, we’re looking at least at age 40.

They were getting ready to go out and do a night dive. They didn’t seem real confident in their diving abilities based off their conversations of, how do I put this on, where does this go, did I set this up correctly, etc. Hey, as a new diver I was there too. It happens to everyone until you get some dives in under your belt.

Now, those things on your feet, they’re called fins, not flipper. In our group if you call them flipper’s someone starts singing “Flipper, Flipper, Faster than Lightning”… you know the theme song from the show Flipper form the 70’s…. <crickets>

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We Lost Her

If you remember here recently I asked for some prayers for my husband’s grandmother. At that time we weren’t sure if she’d ever leave the hospital, but she did. She pulled through and they released her. It actually got to the point she’d have good days where you knew she knew who you were and then there were days like in the hospital when she’d look at you dazed and confused.

About 6 months ago when she was in the hospital she signed a DNR. That right there was difficult for most of the family to understand, but she knew her place with God and was ready to go home when he called. She didn’t want to stay alive on machines only.

June 29, a few friends came up from Texas. Their first goal was to see Grandma W. Hubby and I ran in to town to see both Gary and Ruthie, but also Grandma W. The whole time we were there she never opened her eyes and she had very difficult shallow breathing. The nurses told the family to prepare for her to not make it through the night. She did.

Hubby’s cousin was coming down from Nebraska the next day. I’ve always heard that when people are preparing to leave this earth that there are people they are expecting/waiting to see. Once they’ve seen them, then they move on. I whole heartedly believe that.

My Grandpa was alive until I made it to Southern Oklahoma to see him. I remember driving down Father’s Day weekend 2008. I stayed with him and talked to him. He didn’t know I was there but they all said he did. My dad went down with me. My mom originally didn’t want me to see him like that because she didn’t want me to remember him like that. I told my mom, just stop me. I don’t usually speak that way, but I was going no matter what. I’m so glad I did and while I remember how he looked, that’s not how I remember him. I left around 7pm that night to make 5 1/2 hour trek back home. My mom called at 2am to say he’d passed away. I believe he was waiting to see me. And while maybe that sounds a little conceited… I still believe that with my whole heart.

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11 Quotes to Remember About Life

The other night as I was lying awake at 2:30am I was thinking about a lot of things… mainly life. I got tired of thinking about life so I jumped on Facebook. Isn’t it funny how sometimes when you least likely expect it you see just what you need?

Life is an interesting thing. I wake up some mornings and feel like I should be 20 because I feel like in life I’m where a 20 year old is, yet in a little over a month I’ll be 34 (does someone want to please verify my math….). What does that sentence mean? Well obviously, I don’t know my age but I know my birthday. Okay okay, seriously, that sentence means, I have an almost three year old. A lot of my friends had that in their early 20’s. In my early 20’s I wasn’t responsible enough. I knew that then. There was no question in my mind of that.

When I got out of college I had a pretty new degree that said I was qualified to teach high school students 9-12. I was 22 years old. If I were to teach a senior in high school, I was looking at 17 and 18 year olds. That made me 4-5 years older than they were. Would they have listened to me? Probably not. I didn’t get a job right out of college as an agriculture teacher. I spent that first year out of college as a substitute teacher and a part time server. Wow did I learn a lot that year, including how to do proofs (you know those things in Geometry that I failed in high school… No, I didn’t fail Geometry, just the proofs unit….).

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