Its Been Awhile....
3:27 PM - Posted by Sarah Klayman - 2 comments
So, remember when we had our first day of school.....2 years ago! Guess we got a little busy!

I don't know why, but I woke up this morning with the desire to blog. I know, weird. When Keenan first decided to start this blog I told him I thought it was a great idea but I was not going to commit to writing any posts on it. He was starting his first year teaching and I was getting ready to go back into my third and I knew how crazy teaching is. The last thing I wanted to do was commit to writing posts. He got 10 posts written.....then he wrote about The First Day of School. If you scroll down a bit, you will notice that that was the last one written...until today. I guess things got busy for us! And now, here I am, with all my non-committing, waking up and actually wanting to blog. I don't even know what I want to write about so....here goes:

Not only did I wake up this this crazy desire to post on our blog but I woke up with so many things on my mind to get done. So. Many. Things. It is not unusual for me to wake up Saturday morning with a pretty long to-do list and normally I wake up between 7 and 8am (the joys of being a teacher). This morning, however, I set my alarm (just in case) for 9am so I have time to do some things before I go pick up my Bountiful Basket (more on that below) and the alarm woke me up. Then, I reset it for 10am...seriously. Woke up at 10am thinking of my many things to do (remember, not so abnormal), but I had already lost 2-3 hours of my "get it done" time. Ahhh! I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed off to get my basket.

Bountiful Baskets is a non-profit co-op where I (along with many others now too!) get my produce each week. The basket is guarenteed to be 1/2 fruit, 1/2 vegetable. I did it for the first time about 8 weeks ago thinking...surely, this cannot be as good as it seems...but it SO WAS. I have been doing it every week since. It costs $15 (plus $1.50 processing fee since it is non-profit) and here is was I got this week in my basket:



Just in case you are so shocked by the amount of produce here and cannot quite get over it in order to count all of the items, here is what I got: broccoli (2 big bunches), pineapple, lettuce, 10 bananas, 7 potatoes, 3 onions, 4 lemons, 5 grapefruits, 3 tomatoes and a carton of blackberries. WOW!

We split our basket with Keenan's brother and wife each week, so we really end up paying between $7-$8 for half of this awesome produce. I saw in one of the first few weeks of the co-op, a man had gone to Wal-Mart to price compare the produce and it would have cost $49 for the same items. For real!

Needless to say, when I stumbled onto a pic of all this produce on facebook (a lady I used to work with in Madison County a few years ago runs the Athens division) I was amazed. Again, I signed up for the first week a skeptic but it really is one of the coolest things ever. Here is the national site where you pay for your basket- Bountiful Baskets -They also have a facebook page for the Athens division- Facebook Group -

By the way- you're welcome for just changing your life. Well, probably anyway-haha!

Ok- so I also just made a list of all the things that I should probably blog about- like my meal planning (apparently, everyone I know does that now), my homemade laundry detergent (which I LOVE LOVE LOVE!), our upcoming trip to Scotland this summer, my new camera and an upcoming craft day, but alas- if I blog about them now (even though I REALLY want to), I will run out of things to write about and not post for another 2 years.

So, here's to me hopefully posting at some point again this year...and to me getting all those things done in 3 less hours than I normally have!

Sarah



First Day of School
6:11 PM - Posted by Keenan - 2 comments
We are officially a household of teachers! Sarah returned to Gum Springs and got her students on Thursday. I began at Westminster (WCA) this week and met my students on Friday. We are both thrilled to be teaching this year and are excited that our schedules are more in line than they've ever been (to bed early, rise early). We'll talk more about school later; just wanted to post after the first day. For now, it's off to celebrate a friend's birthday. Goodnight.


Winston
10:39 PM - Posted by Keenan - 0 comments
Boone has this toy duck named Winston.

Correction, Boone HAD this toy duck named Winston.

We got him a week ago. For the first few days Boone carried Winston around in his mouth like a security blanket. Wherever Boone went, he had Winston in his mouth. Wherever Boone laid to rest, there was Winston resting, too. The duck even had a quacker so that every few minutes we would hear "quack, quack!!" as Boone was squeezing the toy in his mouth. Then we came home from the doctor yesterday morning to find that Boone had been playing a little bit rough with Winston. His poor little body had been ripped apart, and his insides (cotton, go figure) were strewn all about the living room. Boone even did the service of dismembering the quacker from Winston's throat - he had set it nicely next to the shreds of fabric that used to be Winston's left wing. Poor, poor Winston.

Another $10 racked up on Boone's bill of destructive behavior.



Anniversary Weekend
1:41 PM - Posted by Keenan - 0 comments
How do you spell anniversary? This year it's F - O - X.

July 12 will mark our wedding anniversary, and to celebrate we're going to see the Phantom of the Opera at the Fox in Atlanta this weekend! They're advertising it as the last tour. Whether that's true or not, it was enough to sell me on the idea. I enjoy a good show, and Sarah loves Broadway, so this should be special. So glad I married that girl! 2 years and counting!


3 Gardens
12:04 PM - Posted by Keenan - 0 comments
It's difficult to grow things when you live in the woods. That's ironic considering all the natural growth springing up around us. There is one spot around our house that you would say receives "adequate" sunlight. That spot is our back porch. More specifically, that spot is the back, left corner of our porch. So last winter we bought a few pots, some soil, and several packages of seeds. After the first green sprouts broke through, we were optimistic about the garden we had created. What we've come to learn, however, is that you may do everything by the book and your work will yield results of varying success. The first picture here is a shot of our beautiful cucumber plants. They flowered in early June and are producing small cucumbers.





These are our tomato plants. No chance they'll produce tomatoes this year, and in all likelihood they will die before we ever have a plot sufficient enough for them to produce fruit. Nonetheless they make for a nice decorative piece on the deck.








This is our spinach crop.

Yeah, it sucks.

Can't wait for that spinach salad we'll be eating in 2012 . . . maybe.






I suppose that means we're 1 for 3. That's not bad if we're talking batting average. We'll look to improve on our results next year. For the time being, get excited about cucumber salad!!!


Family Reunion
12:13 PM - Posted by Keenan - 2 comments
We spent the holiday weekend in Cincinnati, Ohio with my family. No Klayman reunion would be complete without food, golf, ping-pong, Mafia (game), fireworks, and lots and lots of music. Here are the pics.



Sarah & my mom in their golf cart.




Our host & hostess.




The Jazz Ensemble graced the evenings from the foyer.



My brother tearing up the guitar for some James Brown.



Sarah playing cornhole.









The Back Seat Driver
3:38 PM - Posted by Keenan - 2 comments



They think they're in control. They think you need them to watch the road for you; that it's their responsibility to alert you of any danger. I'm talking about the back-seat driver. We all deal with them at one time or another. Mine just happens to be a dog. Meet Boone, my back-seat copilot.




On our way to Ohio for the 4th!