Tag Archives: Holidays

Kitchen Wall Spice Racks

Posted by Santi on April 8, 2013 Comments Off

I’ve decided to go ahead with my first plan of buying my mother a spice rack for Mother’s Day which will be here real soon. Her old wall spice rack fell and broke into a million pieces a few months ago, what a mess that was! Now I don’t proclaim to know a whole heck of a lot about spice racks, but I’ve been taking a bit of time and looking around online and I’ve seen a few kitchen spice racks that I think she would welcome into her kitchen.

My mother is one of the best cooks around and she really depends on her spices. I’m not sure why she hasn’t replaced the broken one, except that maybe she knew it would be a good gift idea for someone to get for her on the numerous gift giving occasions, much like I plan to do for Mother’s Day. My mother is a hard one to buy presents for, so this is the perfect opportunity for me to get her something that she really needs and hopefully will use for a very, very long time to come.

April Fools

Posted by Santi on April 1, 2013 Comments Off

Today is April first better known as April fools day, kind of makes you wonder who has pulled the best April fools joke. I saw one today on the Internet that showed a baseball player the team pulled a joke on and held a news conference to tell him he had been sent to the minors. He made the team is was just the teams way to make him feel at home and foolish at the same time.

Easter Thoughts

Posted by Santi on March 30, 2013 Comments Off

Tomorrow should be a nice easy going Easter family get together that we are hosting this year. We are expecting between 9 and 11 guests, won’t know for sure until it happens. We were very careful as to who we invited and with luck we might manage to avoid any butting of heads or conflicts. That of course is always the mission at each family gathering but it rarely works out that way as we grow older and more drama keeps us busy and at each others throats for numerous reasons.

I’m sure that there will be plenty of conversation to be shared at the extra long table that we purchased for entertaining groups of friends and families throughout the years. The wife very carefully thought out and made place cards at each plate setting with the names printed on them just to make sure that there is a good mix of people that like to talk scattered throughout the ones that are on the quiet side.

Last Easter my brother-in-law pretty much hogged the whole conversation talking about his recent Mass Texting attempts in to boost business and Text Marketing is getting more popular these days and getting a lot of attention in today’s marketing. He has tried email marketing, which I think is a waste of money. For the most part all of those emails land in people’s spam and are not given a second thought or look. I am sure he will be sharing his recent results at dinner. Hopefully he will have some good numbers to brag about and then we can move it along to another person will another subject this year.

I’m glad that we don’t have any little kids that are expected to show up. It is supposed to rain all day and that would totally ruin the best thought out Easter Eggs hunt. Hunting for eggs would just really suck inside a house, especially a house that you aren’t familiar with. Been there and done that before, don’t want to have to do that again.

Only One Good Day

Posted by Santi on March 26, 2013 Comments Off

This is the big Good Friday weekend with Easter up and coming on Sunday, which is when everyone wants to have a fun weekend outdoors. But unfortunately, the weather forecast is for cooler days and lots of rain, at least it isn’t snow! Today is not raining yet, but you can feel it in the air and you know that it is coming, sooner or later. Let’s hope we all get at least one good day out of the weekend to do something outside, at least for the kids sake in their attempts to find all the Easter eggs that adults have spent so much time preparing and hiding with love and pride.

After Easter is all over and said with are kids are on Spring Break, one of those days we are going to head out to the river and just let my daughter splash around in the shallow water by our favorite picnic spot. The river bottom is not too mucky and not too rocky at this particular spot. I cannot tell you where this special spot is – it is our family secret and we don’t want a lot of other people to come there and spoil it.

 

 

A Long Road Ahead

Posted by Santi on March 5, 2013 Comments Off

Just the thought of our 16 year old daughter leaving the nest, flying off and traveling half way across the world to attend college in Japan in just a few years, gives my wife and I a sickness in our guts that only a parent can understand who is experiencing much the same thing. She is the baby and time just flew right out the window these 16 years and now she is in high school looking at scholarships and deciding what classes and what colleges she is interesting attending in less that two years and how to get there and what type of lodging and/or housing is going to be available when she gets there. So many questions and so little time. It looks like we will need to start spending more time with her while she is still here. Maybe take some road trips together to some various interesting places that she doesn’t need to fly to Japan to see and enjoy!

She has been teaching herself how to speak the language as best as she can using the Internet in her spare time. There doesn’t seem to be any place that teaches Japanese and very few of the colleges that she has looked at offer it either, but she has found a few that she is excited about. They will send her over to Japan for part of her studies which has me more nervous that a cat’s tail next to a rocking chair. She has been looking online a various lodging opportunities like the Osaka Teikoku Hotel and the Rihga Nakanoshima Inn, both sites I have looked at myself and can’t make heads or tails of any of it since I know not a word of Japanese. But I’m impressed that she can. This is going to be a long hard road with this one I can tell you that.

She gets great grades and never gets in any type of trouble, she could use some more community service that colleges really look hard at these days. If there was something Japanese related around here that she could get involved in I’m sure she would jump at the chance, she is totally in love with the Japanese language, their history, their culture and all the Japanese related Animes that are all over the Internet and Pay TV subscribers. Something that I really never got into nor see why they would but I’ve never been a big fan of animation at any time.