random photos

The first 3 photos are what I used on our Christmas card. I usually like a group shot but the kids were less than cooperative this day and I was lucky to get the few I did. I put the photos into a college and called it a day...

Maddie is on the right. The boy in the middle is the guy all the girls are going gaga over. Not a great photo, but he was being a little sheepish with the girls

and I was trying to be fast with the camera. Much to Maddie's dismay(and delight I'm sure) their friendship has been made into big news at school. Wugh is all I have to say. I am so not ready for this. And the big guy turns 5! Wyatt's birthday is actually on Wednesday but we had the family over this weekend to help him celebrate. Lots of Legos were given and tons of food was eaten. In fact I finally got my MIL to try my caramel popcorn. She refused it over and over during the holidays there will be refusal no longer! She ate the majority of the bowl!

Sophie. I had to edit thephoto a bit because it was pretty dark, but wow! I can finally see a bit of myself in Sophie..I know there is a resemblance but as a parent, it's hard to see yourself in your kids. And check out her highlights-Beautiful!

Menu Monday

Yay! Head over here for more menus' by some awesome cooks!

I'm making a slight shift in how this meal planning/meal cooking thing is done here. I have already established a Leftover/Fend for Yourself night every week which I look forward to every week, but now I want to simplify things a bit more. So I am establishing "Meatless Monday"! Our Monday meals will now be sans meat. This will allow me to stretch our food just a bit more which is always good! I am also really looking at our scheduled activities for the week and making meal choices that make sense on a particular day. For instance, Friday is Troy's firt day off so I like to have a little heartier (and hot!) meal for us that day. But we are also doing indoor soccer on Fridays, so this week I am making Chicken and Dumplings in the crockpot. It will be prepped earlier in the day, and will be ready to go when we get home.

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Sunday-Tacos and fresh fruit

Monday-Homemade Macaroni & Cheese and peas( Meatless meal & PTA meeting)

Tuesday- BBQ Beef Sandwiches, roasted potatoes and onions & applesauce

Wednesday-Chicken Fingers,

Thursday- Leftovers/Fend for Yourself (Scouts)

Friday- Chicken and Dumplings and french bread(Soccer)

Saturday- Hoisin & Honey Pork Roast, steamed broccoli and rice.

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I have the recipes for the last two items on the laptop so I'll pop back on and link it up.

(re)discovering reading

(re)Discovery

Books. I decided last year that I wanted to return to my love of reading. As a younger girl , I used to spend hours reading at home, the library, school. I began reading adult nonfiction when I was in the 8th grade because I had basically read all the Young Adult section of our public library. First it was Stephen King then Danielle Steele(!) and Dean Koontz. Oh and lots of autobiographies. My love of reading continued on through high school, but once I entered college and moved out on my own, there were more interesting things to do than sit and read LOL

So last year I began my path back to reading with the Twilight series. I had totally resisted the earlier hype but finally had to see for myself what it was all about. And in doing so, I rediscovered my passion for reading! Getting lost in characters and time passing so quickly because a book doesn't leave my hand till it's finished=AWESOME.

Troy actually paid attention to this and decided to invest in my "new" hobby and he bought me a Kindle for Christmas this year. I quickly downloaded 10 free books and a couple of $5 reads and have been making my way through them since.
I actually cried when I opened it. Silly, huh? I'm not sure why, really. I didn't talk about wanting one constantly, maybe mentioned it in casual conversation how cool it would be to have a Kindle. But never in a it's- all- I- want- for- Chrismas- kind of way.

Perhaps I cried because he had paid attention to a change I had made. And after 16 years, him noticing something new was important to me,was like a gift itself.

I kind of think he might regret it though. I keep hearing him say " are you going to put that thing down and talk to me?"

Menu Plan Monday

Week of Jan 2, 2011(wow!)

Cheeseburgers, chips, pears

General Tso's chicken, rice, broccoli

Roast with veggies

BBQ Beef sandwiches, roasted potatoes, green beans

Creamy Chicken over Rice, sauteed zucchini

Enchiladas, refried beans, fresh fruit

and always a night of leftovers!

As always, check out mpm at orgjunkie.com for hundreds! of menu ideas!

Going to bed late, getting up early, no schedule, very little time away from each other...the kids are ready to go back to school tomorrow! And I'm ready for that as well...I can finally clean my floor and keep it clean for more than a day!!

New Years Eve 2010

The last day of the year. And I'm sort of ambivalent LOL. Not sure why that it is. Maybe because we don't mark the closing of the past year with partying and silliness. We just hang out at home, eat something yummy(tonight enchildas made for us by my MIL), play video games with two of the kids(one is going to a sleepover) and make a toast to our family and future at midnight. Not such a bad way to close out the year.

But I do feel like something is brewing as I go into the New Year. I want to make changes in myself and how I do/handle things. I want to remember the strong, confident person I used to be. Somehow,I've allowed motherhood to own me, to define my entire self. While being identified as a Mom isn't entirely bad, losing faith in myself and my abilities is not so great. Well this year I plan to change that. I intend to rediscover the things I've allowed to lay dormant over the last decade. Now I have found some things in these past years that I really enjoy, like papercrafting and photography, and with those, i plan to push myself and discover how much further I can push them.

So with that, I declare my One Little Word of 2011: (Re)discover.

Sad and a Recipe.

So our hard drive bit the dust and I lost all my photos from Nov '09 to Early Dec '10 :( .
I went from hyperventilating to not wanting to talk about it to searching the web to find a way to recover those photos. No luck. The whole season of soccer, photos for the school yearbook, day to day stuff..gone. Could have been worse though like baby or wedding photos.
So I received an external hard drive for Christmas and will be figuring out how to backup all those photos very soon.

Along with the photos were fonts, files, recipes and drivers. I'm taking a little time each day to reload the lost items so I can get things back to normal. As soon as I can find my camera software, I'll begin posting photos again.



We had a wonderful holiday season. We spent time with family and had a LOT of great food. One of those yummy items was a buffalo chicken thing I made. The bookmark I made of the page is gone so I'll post it from memory.

Buffalo Chicken

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3/4 cup hot sauce(like Franks Red Hot)
1 cup cream cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

-marinate chicken breasts in 1/2 cup of hot sauce in fridge for one hour
-heat 1 tbsp olive oil in medium pan and cook chicken until juices run clear
-remove from heat and let cool until you can handle. Shred chicken
-Mix cream cheese, and 1/4cup of hot sauce, salt & pepper then add shredded chicken. Mix well.

This mixture is DIVINE! I used it in two ways:
I filled filo dough and rolled it, baked it cut it in slices and it was good.
Then I made little purses from filo and baked them for individual servings. Yum.

But you can do so much with this-baked pastry cups with the filling topped with cheese & browned in the over. A calzone (double the recipe) ..possibilites are endless.

Reappearing

So photos first:


Maddie and two of her friends before her 80's inspired Skate party. All the girls looked fantastic and their dress was a combination of St Elmos Fire meets Valley Girls meets Breakfast Club!

Wyatt in a corn maze. Well it wasn't really a maze more of a "corn was planted in rows with a path". But he had fun.

My Halloween-ers. Wyatt, a StormTrooper, Maddie is not Oscar the Grouch, she's a can of green play-doh. and Sophie is a Motorcycle Mama. She was supposed to be a cowgirl , but we just couldn't find the right components.

Sophie, the morning of her last game and the day she made her first GOAL!! It was so awesome to watch. She set out to do it, and she did! TOtally proud of her!

Maddie, the day of her last game. It was freakin' cold! Everyone was bundled up!

Ok, so Wow, totally disappeared there for a bit. I'm back today ...not sure how long it will last though.

So, for the one person(Irene) who reads this, here is what I've been up to, in no particular order:

-running my tale off for PTA-Scrap Night, Book Swap, Movie Night, Breakfast with Santa. All of these events are within two weeks of each other.

-Christmas shopping. Used to love it, want to hate it now but I can't pass up a good deal. Went out on Thanksgiving Night and didn't return home until 7am on Friday. I think I'm still recovering,.

-Making lots of Caramel Corn. Want to be sick of it, but I'm not. LOVE IT!

-Finished a few crafty gifts to give as gifts.

-Still working on a few crafty gifts to give as gifts.

-Offending my Husband.

-Playing with camera, but still not feeling like I'm "getting" it. *&#!

-Avoiding house maintenance. While, the surface looks ok, the corners and behind doors is a big 'ol mess.

-Taking photos-but not great ones.

-Finished outdoor soccer and made crafty gifts(which included photos I took all season) for all 30 girls

-Thinking about what I want to do next year and have come up with nothing yet, except to stay away from the caramel corn.

-Got an all clear for no tumors on my parathyroid! YAY! Turns out I'm low on VIT D

-Hosted Thanksgiving for the 3rd year for my parents and In-Laws. Sometimes I wish Troy wasn't an only child from his Mom.

-Planning Christmas Day Brunch at our house. What should I make?

-Offending Maddie by simply breathing in her direction.

-Rescued two dogs that literally knocked on our door. Two Chiuauas that were cute as can be..found the owners after two days.

-Went to an adult only Halloween party for the first time ever. Had a blast and so happy that I have friends in this neighborhood that I can "let down my hair" around. I dressed as Rosie the Riviter and Troy was Dwight Schrute. Funny.

Listened to my friend as she dealt with a huge mess in her life. Glad I can be a sounding board for her, but frustrating to watch the same thing ahppen over and over again.

So there ya have it.

I'll be back.

Maybe.