The Kassel Family Project Life 365

Pizza Hut runs a reading incentive program called “Book It!”  Children in Kindergarten through Six Grade can earn a free personal pan pizza every month if they read and rate ten books in one month’s time.  Reading ten books a month is nothing for Laura as we read more than that every month.  However, we finally remembered in the beginning of January to fill out one of the forms and have Laura rate the books.  She was so proud of her first Book It!

Tonight, we ate at Pizza Hut and she got her personal pan pizza.  She was so excited to be able to eat her own pizza that she earned by reading the books.  We’ll have to make sure we remember to fill out the form for February.

Family, popcorn, and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.  Good times!

We have a camera arsenal now…  It’s hard to believe a year ago, we had one camera and I hardly ever took pictures with it.

The black one is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel given to us by my Dad. We just got this one at Christmastime and are still “playing” with it.  The larger silver one is a Canon PowerShot S2 IS that used to belong to my sister, Tracy.  It works as long as you don’t need to zoom.  It sometimes gets the dreaded E18 error and the lens won’t retract.  The smaller silver one is a Canon PowerShot SD800, currently on loan from my work.  It’s my “test” pocket camera for my purse.  I love it and hope that work just wants to throw it out.  I’ll be digging it out of the trash should that happen.  Lastly, I have the camera on my phone.  Ironically, I had to use my phone camera, which does not take the best-quality photos, to take the picture of the arsenal.  Oh, what a difference a year makes…

We have family portraits hanging in the hallway leading to our downstairs.  The frames have been there since John was about 18 months old.  I tend to change out the pictures when we have a new set taken.  Currently, the pictures are from our August photo session and our Christmas photo session.  This morning, John noticed one of the pictures from August of Laura and him and he got all excited.  Andy and I told him that there were more on the other side.  He turned and saw the Christmas pictures.  He let out a “Beavis and Butthead” type giggle and said, “Awesome!”  I immediately cracked up laughing.  When I told Andy what he said, Andy just got a big grin on his face and shook his head.

I love to cook and I love to try new recipes.  Menu planning allows me to build in a couple of new recipes every month.  If I like the new recipes, I need some place to put them.  Some of them I store in my “recipe box” on the various websites that I use.  However, that doesn’t work for all my favorite recipes that I have in various cookbooks and written by hand.  For this purpose, Andy found someone who made an online recipe database.  Andy sent him an email and he shared the code so that Andy could set it up for me on our family website.  I LOVE this thing and I’m always adding new recipes.  The recipe database contains recipes that I’ve used for years, new recipes, and recipes that other people have added.  The recipe database is most of the reason why we have a computer in our kitchen.  Check it out!  Add recipes if you want.  I would love that!  The website is http://www.kasselfamily.org/recipes/.  The username is cook and the password is food.

Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Ken got the kids a one-year subscription to National Geographic Kids magazine.  We are anxiously awaiting the first issue!  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Andy returned home from Austin, TX, today.  He flew into Columbia Regional Airport and we picked him up at the airport.  The kids are always so excited when they get to help pick up Daddy from the airport.  They wait with excitement for the plane to land, taxi to the parking spot, the plane door to open, and for Daddy to appear.  After Daddy is off the plane and the kids have said their hellos, they like to watch the baggage be unloaded and help Daddy get his suitcase.  I was excited to see that John is almost tall enough to see out the windows in the baggage claim area now.  It was a fun weekend filled with friends and birthday parties, but we were all happy to see the end of the weekend and the return of Daddy.