This past week has been crazy. I honestly can't even remember the last time I updated.

The brakes are fixed, $400 later. At least it's taken care of now and I shouldn't have to worry about it for a while.

Some of my friends with whom I used to teach in Chicago came down for the week to visit relatives, and the night before they left, they stayed a night here. We hit Boston's for dinner and then came back here for the fireworks (which were held on Saturday for some reason). I have to admit, I miss having Rob and Cathy around. It was a good time.

Sophie has been quite the potty queen this week. She's used the potty several times here and has been using it for Cassidy and Grandma as well. She's well on her way!

We hit our one year anniversary at Dream Dinners this visit. I actually wound up having my name embroidered on an apron because of it. I thought it was very nice of them to bother with any sort of recognition at all. They're just that awesome.

Work has been interesting. I'm learning quite a bit about their current POS as well as the new POS systems we're considering. I work across the street from the Arlington Highlands which makes for some seriously tasty lunches.

Last night, B and I went to Avocado California Roll & Sushi for dinner. The food was excellent, although the restaurant itself wasn't overly inviting and the staff wasn't overly friendly. We started with Banana Tempura and Miso Soup and then split the Fresh Avocado and Double Shrimp. We were both quite impressed with the food. After dinner, we went over to The Melting Pot for drinks and dessert. B had a glass of Gewürztraminer (don't remember which label) and I had a Bellini Martini (should have had the Mojito) and we shared the Yin & Yang. It was the perfect finish.

Today, Sophie and I are supposed to be meeting up with Kay and Leila for a play date. We'll probably hit a McDonald's play area just so the kids don't have to play outside in the heat. Perhaps after that, Sophie can take a dip in the pool. Otherwise we'll have to wait until tomorrow.

I need to remember to post my entries from thebrenljidol here. I wound up backing out right after I started work since I just didn't have time to get the entries written.

Outside of that, not a whole lot going on here. We've been crazy busy and I'm hoping this weekend will allow me some time for catching up on a few things (like reading the f-list). One of these days I'll update my userpics and get all the blinkies uploaded... One of these days.

A humorous link for all you techies out there...

Sophie decided she needed to take a digger in the hallway today and landed right on the corner of the wall where the hall meets the kitchen. The poor kid has a bruise over her right eye and on her right cheek. I called the doctor's office to make sure they had this fall on record, but also to find out what signs I needed to watch for as far as a concussion was concerned.

She was pretty well behaved today and seemed to be acting like nothing happened but I noticed her pupils were not the same size. Of course, I didn't notice this until the doctor's office had already closed. My mother, Sophie, and I all sat at the CareNow for an hour before they finally told us they didn't have a CAT scan machine.

At that point, I dragged everyone home to change a "shewy" diaper, grab some food for the baby and me, grab B, and then head off to Cook Children's in Fort Worth. She was still very well behaved, even with a few bouts of serious tears when having to deal with all the strange people at the hospital. She wasn't terribly fond of the ID bracelet they had me put on her, nor was she terribly fond of the thermometer wand they ran over her forehead. She really didn't like the CT scan, and I can honestly admit that was the most difficult part of the whole day for me as well. I never want to see my baby girl strapped to a table like that again, ever.

Thankfully, she held out for us, even though she was seriously hungry and tired by the time it was all said and done. The CT scan came back normal and now we just have to monitor her every two hours or so to make sure she's okay. We might need to make a trip to the pediatrician Monday if her pupils are still doing whacky things.

I'll be calling Staci in the morning to let her know we're going to have to skip our Dream Dinners session and reschedule for next week. Between the crazy night we had tonight and the fact that we still have several meals in our freezer as well as the fact that B will be out of town next week, we're simply just not ready for Dream Dinners this week.

• I actually won a little contest over at Get My Knit On because for some reason the name Lorenzo Lamas will forever be burned into my brain. Go me.
• We're looking at ordering a turken or turducken for Thanksgiving this year. Yum! My parents are coming down after Thanksgiving so this really won't be on Thanksgiving. My mother also said she doesn't like duck, so if I can find a turken, we'll skip the duck, I suppose.
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• Quite a few people participated in the Top Five I posted last week. All the comments have been unscreened. catscar had the suggestion to use a poll instead of screening comments, and I think that's a marvelous idea. I now own top_five, but haven't done anything with it yet. For the people who played last week, would you be interested in joining the community or would you rather just play here? I think for now I'm going to post a top five topic for the week and let people fill it out as they can. I'd love to have suggestions for topics. Let's see if I can keep up with once a week for something like this. ;)
• We're probably going to the Fort Worth Zoo next Wednesday. I'm pretty excited. I just hope the weather cooperates (as of right now it should be beautiful that day).
• We might be going to Middlefaire this year. Some of B's friends are going down there to play.
• The Dream Dinners menus for the next couple months look out of control good! I doubt I'll be ordering too much in November, though. I am not using Dream Dinners for Thanksgiving dinner.
• Anyone want an extremely blond peekapoo?
• Tonight is Tuscan Turkey Medallions with garlic and Parmesan penne pasta, spinach salad, and grilled corn on the cob. I wouldn't bother with the corn if B wasn't planning on using the grill already. Now, if he would just get home!

That's about all I've got. It's a big bag of nothin', really. Because of that, I'll leave you with a cute picture from our last pool time.

• I am still trying to get the laptop configured to my liking. I've been having issues with Semagic not wanting to work correctly, but they are minor issues. I am still having minor issues with Trillian as well, but that issue is even smaller than the Semagic issue.
• Probably the most frustrating issue so far is the fact that whenever I try to install the drivers for my old Photosmart printer, the silly thing freezes. *sigh*
• .
• Sophie is really becoming rather unbearable with her teething lately. She has been constantly wanting to nurse and has been constantly cranky when I try to redirect her. Since I'm so tired of little miss crankypants, I just cave and let her nurse whenever she wants. Hopefully teething will be over soon.
• I need to do a little shopping soon. We are needing another car seat for Sophie as well as a potty seat (she has shown a little interest and I don't want to miss my window of opportunity here). I believe we'll also be picking up some jumbo crayons for her. Maybe I should make some chunks for her instead.
• Speaking of which, I think it's also time for a pudding paint session soon. I think she'll get a big kick out of that.
• We have another Dream Dinners session coming up this Saturday. Tonight, I made maple thyme pork chops (they were cooked a little too long, but that was all my fault), bountiful baked beans (FIVE different types of beans!), and asparagus. All in all, the dinner wasn't bad. It would have been perfect had I not cooked the meat too long, though.
• Our lunch today actually used the leftovers from last night's roasted pecan chicken. B and I split the chicken to add to our big salad. It was quite tasty.
• I knit a little tonight. I have three and a half boats left to finish on this blanket and then I can start working on the cables. I am so ready to be done with this thing.
• Sophie surprised me the other day with a new sign. She put her hand up near her head and started shaking it. I had *no* idea what she was trying to sign. Then she signed wind and leaf and it dawned on me she was trying to sign tree (which she did pretty well, but I'm slow on the uptake at times). When I exclaimed "TREE!" she got all excited and started nodding her head.
• Of course, her spoken vocabulary is growing all the time as well. She tends to try to say the longer words and sign shorter words. She says buhnabies (butterflies), cado (avocado), mahnamel (watermelon), bellybuh (belly button), nooduhloos (noodles) and more. The kid cracks me up with the whole butterfly thing, too. She will get stuck on the first part and say "buhnabuhnabuhnabies." Sometimes she never even gets the end out at all. There are some shorter words she likes to say, but not many. She says nuh (nurse), breh (bread), mih (milk), chee (cheese or Chui, depending), cheechee (French toast), pish (fish), pea (peach), appie (apple), and others I don't remember.
• We had a Rainsoft water filtration and softener system installed a few weekends ago and absolutely love it.
• B has been looking at sheds, so that will probably be next on the list.
• Hopefully, B will be able to get to installing the baskets underneath the bathroom sinks so we can finish getting organized in there. As it is right now, I have all of the stuff out of the cabinets and in a laundry basket. I have to keep the door closed to our bathroom so Sophie doesn't wander in there.

Man, I really had a whole lot of nothing to say.

Because lefthandpinkie asked about it, I'm going to share my experience with the whole world. :)

I absolutely love Dream Dinners for many reasons.

• I have a month's worth of meals planned and ready to cook, all stashed away in my freezer.


• I can do most of the prep work for those meals in about two hours with B on a Saturday morning.


• Most of these meals fit on one shelf in our tiny side-by-side freezer.


• Dream Dinners offers me more variety than if I planned the menu myself since I am often afraid of cooking new dishes (not trying, just cooking). I'm more willing to try the foods on their menu for some reason.


• Clean up time is cut since most of the dinners require only cooking dishes and no mixing or measuring utensils.


• Portions are more controlled.

My first experience with Dream Dinners was when I was visiting my family in Michigan at Christmas. My sister started doing Dream Dinners shortly after her baby was born and we had several of the meals while I was there. I had a difficult time wrapping my head around the entire concept, but the more meals I saw her make and the more I tasted, the more interested I became. I asked her so many questions about Dream Dinners I'm surprised she didn't just drag me along to a session then. It wasn't until my second trip to Michigan this year that I went to a session with her.

Every store is different and there are a few things I liked about her store that mine doesn't do and vice versa. My experience up there was wonderful and is what made me finally decide to go ahead and sign up for a session at home. When Tracie and I walked into her Dream Dinners, she was handed a packet of labels for the meals. These labels were the instructions she would need for the actual cooking. She then explained to me that I would be making my mother's meals (Mom only ordered five meals). She also explained that the best way to approach each meal is to read the instructions carefully before starting. We washed our hands, donned the Dream Dinners aprons, and gloved up. Since Tracie split up the labels, I was able to look at the five she'd given me and know which meals I needed to prepare. At this store, the meal names were hanging above each station which made it very easy to locate the stations I needed. Each meal had a set of instructions for three and six servings (some were only available in six servings, but not many). These instructions were printed on a piece of paper that was then laminated and set up to stand at each station, three serving on one side and six serving on the other. I made my five meals and then helped Tracie with one or two of her meals. We packed them all up in a laundry basket and that was it. While we were there, they made one of the meals for us to try. The also offered coffee and water. Tracie placed her order for the next month before we left and by doing so earned a free meal (still not sure how that works, but I'll find out in a couple weeks).

At our store, B and I walked in and met the owners (mother/daughter team). They led us back to their coolers and showed us our shelves. On one of these shelves sat two bottles of water, two chocolate pieces, and our menu list (nice touch, I thought). We didn't receive the labels up front, which I found I really missed. Instead, they had labels in two filing boxes, one for three serving meals and one for six serving meals, both in alphabetical order. The main reason I preferred receiving the labels at the beginning was because it was nice to have all the labels on hand without having to run after them. Also, they recommend placing the label inside the main bag so it doesn't fall off in the freezer and when they're all up front in the file boxes it was a little more difficult to separate them. They didn't have the meal names hanging above the stations, but they did have the meal instructions hanging on the sneeze guards. It wasn't quite as easy to locate the meal, but the instructions weren't tipping over all the time, either. They had little snacks set out for us, but they didn't prepare an actual Dream Dinners meal, which was a little disappointing.

Now, for the really fun part. Most of what I've typed so far makes little sense without this.

I believe at both stores there were six stations with two to three meals at each station. Upon approaching each station at Tracie's store, we had to change gloves. We didn't have gloves at my store except for one of the meals (cream cheese stuffed sandwich that required hand mixing, ew). Each station is basically a salad bar cart with a sneeze guard. All the ingredients necessary for the meals at each station are contained in the cold bar, with extras or larger portions contained in the coolers beneath. Each station also had all the measuring tools necessary to make each meal. Typically, the first line of the instructions would be to set a Ziploc bag in either a big crock or a green cup (small crock at my store - bags didn't fit well, but it still worked), depending on the size of the bag. At that point, ingredients were dumped in and once everything was in, the bag was to be closed and the ingredients mixed (usually). Sometimes marinades were added to meats, sometimes the meat was kept separate. The chicken was flash frozen so the pieces weren't all stuck together. The pork, beef, shrimp, and fish were all vacuum sealed, if I recall correctly. Some meals had side dishes (this month I ordered pork chops with bountiful baked beans - one side I don't have make). I think every month they alternate a dessert or a breakfast item. The first session I had here we had peach crisp. Next month there is a ham and cheese strata.

All vegetables are washed and cut if necessary. All meat is chopped if necessary and some meat is actually cooked. Some of the meals we have found will actually serve more than the number listed. Their lasagna will feed way more than the suggested number, same as the peach crisp. The chicken portions tend to be on the small size so I try to make sure we have some hearty sides with the chicken. A lot of meals call for ingredients that aren't incorporated into the bags such as rice, tortillas, sesame seeds, spaghetti noodles, etc. Because we never eat as much rice as they recommend, we always have extra rice. We didn't have enough tortillas for the BBQ pork (it made a lot more than I expected). It's all hit or miss at this point, but that's okay.

Each meal is contained within a dry bag (a Ziploc bag without any loose ingredients) and the instruction label is placed inside the bag (B was sticking them to the inside of the main bag and I was sticking them to the outside of a smaller bag contained within the main bag). Once the meal is complete, it is then placed on a shelf in the cooler where it will wait until all the meals are together and the checkout process begins. During this time, the person doing the checkout will make sure all the extra ingredients for the meals are included (rice, tortillas, etc.).

The minimum number of servings that can be ordered is 36. That is six six-serving meals or 12 three-serving meals or a combination thereof. The more servings ordered, the greater the discount. I ordered 72 servings for the month of July and paid an average of $3 per serving. I figure that four three-serving meals and one six-serving meal each week will be enough for us to last for a month and will allow for leftovers for B's lunch and big dinners if we have company. That adds up to 72 servings. In this month's order, we had steak, pork chops, shrimp, fish, chicken, etc. so there's a variety.

Because all of these meals are kept in the freezer, there is a little forethought involved. I write out my menu for the month once I've placed my order and print out the menu calendar (I use Keep and Share for that right now, although I'm always looking at other calendar applications). I try to take a meal out of the freezer one or two days in advance depending on the type of meat and how long it might take to thaw and then I place it in the refrigerator. If meal plans change because we go shopping or something, we can always have the meal on a different day since I rarely have every day of the month planned (it's nice for me to leave myself a little room for creativity). Some of the meals require more prep than others (I had to skewer the shrimp to grill it). Some require no prep, just cooking time (lasagna). Some meals take a while to bake and some are done in mere minutes. It all depends on the meal. Also, some of these meals are not put into bags but are put into baking tins instead (lasagna, peach crisp) and are then ready-to-bake.

There are a few things I don't really like with Dream Dinners and the gears are still turning in my head with solutions. I don't like all the Ziploc bags that are used, although it makes sense to do it this way as far as storage is concerned. It just seems like an awful lot of waste. From what I can tell, each store orders from Sysco or similar and the quality of some of the ingredients isn't exactly what I would purchase for myself. While I can bring in organic or local alternative ingredients, I'm still paying for the ingredients they provide (I honestly wouldn't bother bringing in my own ingredients).

Dream Dinners offers sneak peeks and private parties which are at times other than what are listed on the schedule. I plan to have at least one sneak peek soon. B and I really did have a good time putting these meals together and it's been fun preparing them at home as well. I think others would enjoy at least the sneak peek session.

It's also made me want to try making new dishes more often. The other night we had Halibut Caprese that turned out a lot better than I expected. Last night for dinner I made stir fry and fried rice. I have made stir fry before, so that was no big deal, but the fried rice was a bit of a challenge for me. It turned out very well, though, and was very fun to make.

Obviously, I'm very pleased with our Dream Dinners experience. There is a menu and nutritional information listed on the website. I can't think of a dish I've had yet that I hated or even remotely disliked, but I have had a few that I've absolutely loved. I'm pretty excited for the next session. Not only does it help me plan my menu for the month, but it's also good quality time spent with B.

I'm no expert since I've only actually done one session on my own (and every store is different), but feel free to ask questions if something I've said doesn't make sense or if I missed something entirely.