Anyway, the only thing that I was asked to bring to Easter dinner this year is cheesecake. Last year I surprised everyone with one and it was a big hit and now it looks like it will be our Easter desert tradition, which is fine by me. I love cheesecake, any kind of cheesecake and cheesecake goes with just about everything.

My mom lives so far out in the country that she doesn’t have access to too many things. The closest grocery store is about 50 miles away from her house. I don’t know how she does it, but she loves it out there. I could never be that far away from convenience! The utility company doesn’t even offer internet connections out there, so she had to get wild blue satellite internet to keep in touch. I will never understand why after so many years of living in Chicago mom felt like she needed to move to the country. She raised my sisters and I to be city girls through and through, and then all of a sudden she was sick of the lifestyle. I’m supportive of her decisions as long as they make her happy. She comes to see us pretty often anyways, so the way I see it, she gets the best of both worlds. She has her peaceful country life, and then she can come and see her children and grandchildren in Chicago whenever she wants to get back to the faster pace.

Today when I called, he was all excited about some tickets to a basketball game. For a lot of people, I guess the month of March only means, March Madness as the college teams all fight for their rankings at the end of their season.

There has been a lot of talk and buzz about fighting bullying. So many kids are falling victim to bullies at school. We can all do our part by speaking out against bullying and helping our kids realize that they are special and not victims.

The years that our family did have to suffer through those issues was a very stressful time for all of us. We were constantly being dragged to court to defend our custody and support judgements. Thankfully the family lawyers that I hired was very generous in allowing me to send him monthly payments for years on end, without ever charging me interest on the outstanding balance. I’m so glad that those days are behind us; I hate to think that any of my own kids will ever have to go through that kind of experience in their marriages.

I wanted to get my parents something really special for Christmas this year, and had no idea what that would be. They spend most of their time together now that they are retired, so I thought it would be nice to get one big gift that they could share and use around the house. They pretty much have everything that they need, but have never been extravagant, and hardly ever spend on the extras. I was really stumped, and was starting to get desperate. I was lucky to come across http://www.giveadish.com/ the other day, because I found the perfect gift. I am going to connect Directv for them and pay for a year of their service. They have never had access to all of these channels and sports before and I think that they are really going to like it. I know that my dad will definitely like the fact that he can watch all NFL games, and my mom will enjoy the movie channels. It would be great if they actually like it because I always have the hardest time finding them something that is practical and enjoyable.

Then I went to the pantry and was looking around.  I found a can of Healthy Request Cream of Chicken soup, and a can of Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom soup.  I pulled them out.  I rinsed off the chicken and cut it into strips and put them in a covered casserole dish.  Then I opened the cans of soup and poured them over the chicken, put the lid on and cooked it at 350 for a half hour.  While that was cooking I cooked up some minute rice, some dinner rolls and some veggies and we had a great meal!  I’ll have to cook that again sometime!  Definitely put that in my recipe box!

In addition to being able to search through a lot of different vendors for an item like white teen desks or custom suggestion cards the site also offers comparison reviews and an entire section of tips about products and “how to” do things, like how to take care of your fingernails and how to pick out the best vacuum cleaner for your needs.

While I was browsing around, looking at the listings of books I realized that this might be a good website to use to buy the baby shower present that I’m going to need next month for Sarah. I found a lot of cute crib bedding, and I’m having a hard time choosing between the green and black crib bedding and the girl farm crib bedding. I think I’m going to need to find an excuse to go to Sarah’s house to get a sneak peek at the nursery before I decide for sure what to buy.