Given a choice between a bowl of vanilla bean ice cream and mango sherbet, unless I'm PMS'ing I will almost always go for the sorbet. So when I won a sherbet party from Hola Fruta I was beside myself.

The day the boxes arrived I wanted to grab a spoon and hunker down on the couch but since the five cartons (uh huh, FIVE) were shipped on dry ice they had to temper (fancy word for thaw a little) in the freezer overnight.

I invited our neighbors over for the tasting using the mardi gras beads and invitations that came in the party kit but they weren't able to come for two whole days and I figured it would be tacky and rude to serve sherbet with giant scoops little divets missing so I waited. I hate waiting. And every time I opened the freezer there they were:


Hola Mango! Hola Peach! And Ole Margarita! And hi to the steaks. Wednesday took forever and day to come but finally I got to set out all the cartons and spoons, scoopers and bowls and we got our sherbet on!

Can I tell you how good this sherbet is? It's not icy or grainy but smooth like an ice cream. We let the kids taste as many flavors as they wanted. Drama Kid was in heaven because he rarely gets dessert at home let alone as many scoops as he wanted.

General consensus was the Mango rocks the house but they're all really good. I have a quart and half left and I'm so sad because I have yet to see Hola Fruta in my stores and the giant stack of coupons they gave me are going unused. Sigh.

What about you? Sherbet or ice cream? What's your flavor of choice?

*The Hola Fruta people didn't ask me to post about this.

I'm Only A Little Whiny

About a month ago, our adopted soldier asked that instead of sending care packages to him, could I ask my friends and family to gather shoes that he and his unit could distribute to the Iraqi children.

In his email he said that so many of the children don't have any shoes and their feet are cracked, bloody and infected. That about broke my heart into thousands of little pieces and I sent a message to family and friends asking if, rather than taking their kids' gently used shoes to Goodwill, they could give them to me.

I also sent a message to a local radio station, to Ellen, my neighbor's school and my son's school. I sent a pair of Drama Kids' hardly worn sandals as a "test" pair to see if they would be well received since they're not brand new. Sgt. said the people in the villages are rather proud. When he got the package he said they were perfect and he'd let me know once he'd given them out.

I have about 20 pairs of shoes in my garage right now, but I really hoped I'd get a better response from the schools. I've been bummed and mopey and disappointed that I haven't been more successful at the ONE thing Sgt. has asked of me. Then I got an email today that lifted me out of my funk a little.

This is the kind of stuff we don't see enough of on the news. I'm happy someone was successful. I've tried but can't pick out my son's pair. Knowing they are there and will go to a child in need makes me smile.

On a side note, several people have asked how to get involved with adopting a soldier. I received two emails recently from Adopt A US Soldier and for the first time in years there is a surplus of soldiers waiting to be adopted. The weather in Iraq is about to change and fleece blankets, hats and gloves are on the soldiers' most wanted list.