Teacher of the Week

Billy brings his high school football players to mentor 3rd grade students every week, and those 3rd graders nominated him for "Teacher of the Week."

Take a look at the article!

Congratulations, Coach Cook! :)

Another Freebie

Willing to give your name, e-mail, and birthdate to Quizno's? They'll give you a free sub coupon. I just tried it... and it works! You have to use the coupon within 5 days, though.

I find this stuff at dealigg.com - lots of electronics, but sometimes I find gems like free coffee, free blankets, and free Quiznos!

And apparently, it's fashionable to be a conspicuous cheapskate these days. 

Free Download of Not For Sale

During the month of February, you can download the audiobook Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It....for free.

I just downloaded the Mp3s, and it was fast and easy. Now the hard part: listening. But so important.

Listen with me?

YouTube Orchestra

I just found out that YouTube and London Symphony Orchestra are creating the first collaborative online orchestra. Winners chosen from the online auditions will be invited to play New York City's Carnegie Hall in April.

Such a cool idea... Trey and I had a blast clicking through the audition videos.

I found out about this via Abraham Piper's twentytwowords.com, since he is passing the word along about his friend who is auditioning and asking people to vote... which I did! 

Trey was in the room with me when I watched the video on Abraham's site, and he was entranced. Asked me to play the 'gi-o-vin' video eight times yesterday. So instead of sitting in front of the computer all day, I played Joshua Bell in the house and in the car. We'll see how long this lasts....

(I won't lie, I was daydreaming for a few minutes about having a violin prodigy on my hands....)

Deeeelicious

Em and I share an Allrecipes.com account, so we can put all of the recipes we find in the same 'box.' I think she found this recipe for Chicken with Asparagus and Roasted Red Peppers, so we tried it last night, and it was so good! Probably one of my favorites in years. (Besides her Chicken and Asparagus Bundles find). 

I served it with the chicken cubed and over whole wheat pasta. With only 190 calories per serving (sans the pasta), you can't beat it!

Braggin' on my sis

How could I not brag on her? (grin)

Em's drawing was chosen as picture of the month by jetpens.com!

I'm not sure if it will be featured for next month or in the next few days/weeks (you'll have to let me know, Em), but I'll post when it appears on JetPens.

I'm so proud!

One down, three to go

Dad, Mom, and Andy came to visit this weekend, and we had Christmas in February. Thanks for coming, guys! We had a great time.

Mom and I were looking at the kitchen with pastel green walls and partially peeling wallpaper, and I was sighing with frustration at one of the four rooms I need to get done/painted.  She decided that we should try and get something done while they were here, so with her kind-hearted help, we peeled off all of the wallpaper in record time. So we went to pick a color. I wanted a bold something-or-other, and started with this:

but the cranberry red looked so darn pink to me (not as pink as in the picture, but pink enough), that I couldn't handle it. So we chose again. Mom found this gorgeous herbal garden green (to which these photos are not doing a bit of justice), and I am really happy with it. The fam had to leave on Sunday evening, but I stayed up 'till 1 a.m. and finished. Feels real good to have a non-pastel-y kitchen! Can't wait until my curtains and decor are finished...

The kitchen is a total mess, I know. But after painting for hours and hours, do you blame me? Thanks for all your help, family! Love you!

Hilarious and disgusting

Have you seen the Cakewrecks blog?

I get a big kick out of heading over there once in awhile. The latest post is gross (cakes made to look like feet - ew), but some of them are really funny!

Brrrrrr

It was warm enough to venture out for a jog last week. Plus, I suckered Bethany into pushing the jogging stroller, so it was quite a nice outing. Love you Bobo!