Happy Mother’s Day

11 May

Saturday Night, the Man of the House surprised me with this lovely little flower bed, all planted and pretty and he took me out for a drive and bought me an Orange Dream milk shake (yummy). Then Sunday morning he and the kids came down with cards and mint chocolates. I got a little misty eyed about the whole thing.

Thanks DH for taking the time to think of something nice. It means a lot to me.
Thanks kids for being such good kids. I think I focus too much of the time on the things that they need to improve and forget that most of the time my kids are well behaved, obedient, and kind to each other. What more could a mother want?

Flowers and chocolate! check!

Oh, I know! How about a Women’s Carhartt T-shirt in Mary Kay Pink?

Thanks Dad 🙂

Protien is my Friend

9 May

I have to share this in case it will help someone else too!!

So I’ve been murderously morning sick for about 3 weeks now (It seems longer.) I know there are women who get much sicker than I do, which is small consolation. I don’t actually throw up ever. I just feel like I’m about to all day long. Like being very car sick all the time.

It’s really hard to make myself do things like clean the house when all I want to do is lay on the couch and moan,”I’m so ill, I can hardly speak.” (name that movie)

Tuesday the man of the house felt sorry for me and grilled steak for dinner so I wouldn’t have to cook. (Perhaps he felt sorry for himself, too. Meals I cook when I’m feeling like ralfing don’t often end up tasting very good.)

Anyway, all Tuesday evening after eating a big steak, I felt amazingly well. Wednesday morning, I wondered to myself, “Was it the steak?” So I had a bit of leftover meat at about 9 am. I felt pretty good for most of the day.

Eureka! I sure wish I’d figured this out 5 or 6 pregnancies ago. But I’ll take it! I can’t eat steak every day, but I do have eggs (Which I can eat if I don’t think about eating them first. I just tell myself, “I’m cooking these for the Man and the kids.” Then suddenly they are on my plate and disguised with a little ketchup and some fried potatoes and I can get them down.) And I’ve got protein powder (non flavored) that I can add to things like milkshakes and soup and oatmeal. It is a little tricky, because what I feel like eating is mashed potatoes and frosted flakes and ice cream and veggie soup. But those things don’t make me feel better.

So I’ve gone from feeling awful to only feeling mostly tired and vaguely queasy once in a while. I can actually function without having to drag myself about layering on the guilt to force myself to keep moving. I’m happy. My new motivation does not extend to finding pictures for this post.

Serendipity

13 Apr

Sometimes If I just click on tabs on the side of blogs, I end up somewhere cool.

This lady did a blog last year-12 crafts til Christmas and shared what she did.

and she made a PDF file of how to make a Pillow Buddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love her forever.

and my children will love her forever once I’ve purchased fabric and created these for all of them.

They’ll love me forever also.

Now, do I make them for Easter, Birthdays or Christmas??? (listed in order of nearness in time. Probably Christmas is the only realistic choice–but not the fun choice.)

Apricot Chipotle Chicken and Sunday cooking

11 Apr

I’m not a Sunday Cooker. All my life growing up, Sunday Dinner was a pot of pinto beans. Mom would put it on the stove to simmer on low while we were gone to church and when we got home, we had bean soup for lunch with bread and butter. On special days (or perhaps if there wasn’t bread) Mom made cornbread. We never ate supper on Sunday–just lots of popcorn or leftover beans later in the evening. This was so ingrained in me, that I don’t even think of eating supper on Sunday and am always surprised when someone else wants to eat at 5 or 6 Sunday evening.

What? Me? Cook a meal on Sunday Evening?
Surely you jest.
Go scrounge some leftovers from the fridge.
Fix yourself a dang quesadilla.
How about popcorn?

However, perhaps because we are spending more Sundays at home these days, where before we always went to visit my parents or his parents….

Or perhaps the sheer volume of requests for food has risen as my kids get older and are actually beginning to eat food….In fact the announcement that “I’m Hungry” seems like the #1 thing I hear these days and I feel like I’m fixing food constantly…

Whatever the reason, I have begun very reluctantly to fix supper on Sunday. Yesterday around 5pm, I faced the reality that everyone was hungry, despite the fact that I had already made Elephant Ears and re-heated yesterday’s Tortelini after church.

I had some chicken thighs in the freezer and offered to bake them one way or another. The Man of the House voted for something glazed and sweet-like, perhaps oriental? After a quick search through my cookbooks, because I didn’t want anything I make regularly, I found this marvelous recipe in a Taste of Home Magazine. It turned out deliciously!! Next time I’ll actually make rice and a vegetable to go with it, but it will be on the menu regularly from now on.

Chipotle-Marmalade Chicken

**(I didn’t have Marmalade, only Apricot Jam–I’m looking forward to trying it with the marmalade) so it is actually

Apricot Chipotle Chicken

**This is a slow-cooker recipe, so it could be done while you were gone to church for Sunday Lunch as well.

**I baked it in the oven and it was perfect

**The recipe that follows is my modification, which was basically more salt and apricot jam instead of marmalade. I do want to try the marmalade sometime.

**I thought it would be pretty spicy. Usually things we make with chipotle are, but it hardly had any heat at all. I might put in more chipotle sometimes when I want some burn.

7-8 Chicken Thighs-skin off or on as you prefer. I think Thighs work better in slow cooked recipes than breasts. Chicken breasts dry out so much during cooking.

salt & pepper

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.
Spray a 9×13 baking dish with olive oil and line up those pretty thighs in the dish–or put chicken in crock-pot.

Mix together
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup apricot jam (or orange marmalade)
1 Tbsp. canola oil
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp minced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. (You find this in a can at the grocery store. You never need a whole can at once, but I put it in a little glass jar and it keeps FOREVER in the fridge. Like seriously a year and doesn’t go bad. Bacteria doesn’t grow well on chili peppers. Sadly the same is not true for roasted red peppers.)
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt

Pour that over the chicken, cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for 1 1/2 hours or at 250 degrees for about 3 hours or in your crock pot on low for 4-5 hours. (Those times are sort of guesses–in case you are like me and always doing things last minute, I’ll tell you what I did. My chicken was partially frozen still when I put it in the oven. So I baked it at 375 for 45 minutes. At that point, I checked it and it was still quite raw in the middles. We decided to go visit Grandma and eat later, so I reduced the oven to 250 and we left it baking for about 2 1/2 hours. When we got home, the chicken was done and falling off the bones tender. Perfect.)

So the chicken is done and tender. Remove it from the baking dish/crock pot and pour all the pan juice into a small sauce pan. Bring the liquid to a boil. The boiling will push the fat to the center and you can skim it off pretty easily.

Stir together
a heaping Tablespoon of cornstarch
2 Tblsp water

Stir into the boiling sauce and cook about 2 minutes until thickened. Ladle sauce over the chicken.

One last thing: If you taste it at this point and it seems a bit flat, add more salt. Yum 🙂

Really one last thing: I’m sure it’s good with rice and steamed asparagus or broccoli on the side. It was good with instant potatoes and grapes last night.

My To Be List

9 Apr

Wordle: MyBeList

Have you ever heard of Wordle?

I just found it thanks to Pink&Green Momma, though apparently my children have known about it “forever” and just didn’t think to share with me. Wordle allows you to create word cloud art. You just type in the words you want–type the word more than once to make it bigger. Then you get to play with the font and color.

Beware. It is addicting.

Wordle: MyBeList2

Heat :)

5 Apr

Did I mention my birthday/Thanksgiving present last year?

No??

Shame on me. I meant to. I totally posted it in my head at least twice.

My Dad installed a new super capacity Water Heater in my house and finally hooked up the hot water pipes that run through our floor.

All winter long we have been warm and toasty.

It may be hard for you to imagine a tile floor that feels toasty warm to the touch. but that is how my floor is. And it heats the air (by convection). The whole downstairs is warm without any cold spots or drying out like central heat does.
And, since the water heater is propane, all I need is 1 deep cycle battery to run the water pump and we can have heat even when there is no electricity.

Sweet, huh.

The pipes all come in right in front of the stove, which is why the princess pies are all curled up like cats in front of it. I have my favorite spot to stand in the morning while I make breakfast.

You can actually feel on the tile, the warmer paths where the pipes are and the cooler paths in between. We left it on once, thinking if we ran the floor long enough, it would even out. But the house got too hot, so I had to turn it off.

I love love love love my radiant floor heat.
I also love my winter electric bill.

Some Random bits of wisdom I gleaned from the Universe this Month

4 Apr

And some other things I’ve learned before, but were brought back again to me with power.

I will contend with him who contendeth with thee and I will save thy children. Isaiah 49:15

Exercising 2-3 times a week for 3 weeks will result in me losing 5 pounds-even though I wasn’t great with the dieting part! WOO HOO!

Having someone chew you out for a couple of days is no fun, but you can learn from it.

Having people chew you out nearly every day for 6 weeks can make you wonder if you really are so mentally unbalanced that you didn’t see all these problems yourself before someone else pointed them out.

[We should] Pray for guidance, Do our best, Act with confidence and God will guide our steps. (David A Bednar, April Conf 2011)

Working consistently toward a goal for 30 days is both rewarding and confidence building.

Finding out that you have to face something difficult is better than knowing something is wrong, but not knowing what it is.

Facing something difficult with someone you love is better than facing something difficult alone.

Laziness never was Happiness. (thanks sister)

If you have ever had a month when the 6 days that your baby was so sick with flu that she threw up every 2 hours for 48 hours and then couldn’t keep food down for the remaining 4 days AND that week was so much easier than everything else you had to deal with that it felt like a blessing from God to just rest and take care of your baby BUT you still sort of complained about it because it was the only thing that wasn’t so devastating that you could actually talk about it THEN you will have some idea of my feelings the past few weeks.

When we have a vision of what we can become, our desire and our power to act increase enormously. (Dalin H. Oaks April Conf. 2011)

The Future is as bright as your faith. Thomas S. Monson

IMHO–ha!

22 Mar

So, I don’t know about you, but I loathe it when people whine or complain on facebook. Maybe it is because whining on facebook is usually something like: “I’m so tired of this weather” or “I’m so tired of people who judge” or “I’m so tired of being pregnant” or just plain “I’m so tired.”

Whining and complaining on a blog, however, is totally fine. Why? you ask. It has to do with the fact that a blog post is longer than a one line status update. So you can explain how you feel in a more exact way–what’s really bothering you.

Plus, blog whiners usually put in a little gimme like- “I know I’m just being a baby about this and I should really be grateful right now, but I just feel whiney….” So I can totally relate to that. They know they are being a baby and acknowlege it

And then, there are times when people have truly, deeply sad things happen and that is worthy of a blog post. A one-liner on facebook is too trivial to handle that kind of hurt.

What do you think? Does whining on facebook bother you?

hmmm. that sounded cranky. I’m really not cranky today. I am totaly wiped out! P90X plyometrics. Not for the faint of heart. It is now 1 1/2 hours since I finished working out and my face is finally close to normal color. It was a flaming beet red. Is that bad, in your opinion? I may not get much done today. Moving hurts. (whine whine whine–I know, when I can fit into my size 12 jeans I’ll be so glad I did this–so you don’t have to feel bad for me. I’m glad I’m doing it! Victory will be S-W-E-E-T.)

I have complained on facebook, much to my shame. And it wasn’t very satisfying, let me tell you. By the time I was over it, people were still commenting sympathetically and I felt so shallow. What happened was, I got a haircut on Valentine’s day. I showed the girl in the hair salon a picture of what I wanted and she talked alot about doing this or that and I said that sounds good and I wound up with the haircut she had instead.

This is what she did. After 4 weeks, I can almost make my hair look like how she styled it. Thank goodness I have a super awesome flat iron.

I felt okay about it until I got home. Then I had a complete meltdown and ate a bunch of chips and Nacho Cheese (and whined on facebook shamefully. In my defense, it was not a one-liner.) Then I ratted my hair like this.

Then I laughed at myself and I was fine. Besides, the haircut does look modern and like I know what is going on in the world–which was the ultimate goal. I was tired of people telling me I looked like a runaway from Little House on the Prairie or an escaped polygamist. Sheesh! How much more black eyeliner do I need to add?

The princesses all wanted to get in on the silly messy hair pictures.

One of the reasons I was originally upset about the haircut was that I had set my heart on bangs, and I couldn’t see any when she styled my hair. But I found them. So I felt better.

This is another look I have not been able to replicate again. Too bad. Nobody would tell me I looked like a polygamist if my hair was like this.

New Exercise Program

10 Mar

This is Cutie Pie. She dressed herself. Who says you can’t mix different stripes? Who needs pants when you have super awesome tights like these?

In other news, the Man of the House and I started a new exercise program. His goal: be in shape to max out his Army Physical Fitness Test in 8 weeks.

My Goal: lose 20 pounds so I can be healthy. I am at my heaviest weight ever, 175 lbs. I know you are all shocked because you picture me as skinny, gorgeous, and multi-talented. Hah! I have recently begun to suspect that the reason we have no new baby-pie’s entering our family could be related to my weight. Not Cool.

Well I am getting up at 5 (okay 5:30) AM every morning and exercising. I’m also almost dieting. Which means I try to make healthy choices but I still eat cookies sometimes.

The Exercise plan that we are following recommends taking before and after pictures so you can see how super you did while following their plan. Seems easy enough, right? Except why would I want to take a picture of myself right now? The whole point is that I don’t like how I look. But laying that aside with the self-assurance that it is a goodbye to the old GlowWorm picture, there is still the problem of the picture. See, all the examples in the book are Men in swim trunks and women in bikini’s/sports bra and shorts. Now while I do actually own a sports bra and shorts, I would never ever ever wear them without a t-shirt over it all. Nor would I ever leave my house in that ensemble for any reason, except perhaps if a random fire started in the middle of my exercise routine.

So why would I take a picture of me like that? I would never show it to ANYONE. I would never post it even here for you my loving fans. Even if I make a miraculous transformation and the P90X people invent a $5000 prize for the best set of before & after shots, I wouldn’t submit my picture.

A certain person really thought that I should bare my stomach for my before picture. Just the thought makes me feel slightly nauseous. No one needs a picture. I’m sure you all know what bread dough looks like after you let it rise once and then punch it in the middle. That’s what my stomach looks like. The following are the compromise before pictures that I took. A certain person is concerned that I won’t be able to see my progress without the bare tummy picture. I am quite certain that the fact that my jeans fit or possibly my skinny jeans or possibly new jeans (please bless it to be true!) will be all the proof I need.

The pictures don’t look as bad as in real life—somehow the fat rolls that are clearly visible when I wear that shirt sort of faded into the shadows. Not sure how that happened.

Cutie Pie felt no qualms about baring her belly.

True Confessions

9 Mar

Once upon a time, there was a mommy who agreed to carve a jack-o-lantern for her childrens for Halloween.

Carving the pumpkin went pretty smoothly, even the part where she made the childrens scoop out the slimy seeds.

But then the mother realized that she didn’t have any tea light size candles to put in the pumpkin’s head and light up his face.

After searching around, she found a half-burned up pillar candle (blueberry scented). The only problem was, as many pillar candles do, this one had burned down inside itself so there were high walls of wax shielding the flame from the pumpkin’s face, so no light could be seen.

So the mother decided to trim the walls off and expose the flame.

She did blow out the candle and pour off the hot melted bit.

She found a knife to trim with. *****Note: this candle was not made of that soft glowy see-through-ish kind of wax. It was a speckldy,hard, parafin-ish type of candle.

The mother began sawing on the candle. She did think, “hmm, I shouldn’t cut towards myself with this knife.” But the mother couldn’t figure out a cutting angle that wasn’t towards herself, so she just kept on and hoped for the best.

The tricksy knife slipped and stabbed the mother, right in the fleshy palm of her hand.

It was a very burning feeling. The mother took a quick peek at the wound. Luckily it wasn’t very deep into her hand–just about an 1/8 inch under the surface, but about 1/2 inch wide and 1/2 inch long. She washed it, packed it with Triple Antibiotic Ointment and covered it with a band-aide.

The childrens had to be satisfied with a non-light up jack-o-lantern. But the mother made a delish-i-ous treat to distract them. So they forgot the whole thing.

The pillar candle was vengefully thrown in the trash.

The Mother was too embarassed to tell her husband about the stabbing, because she had been using a knife in a foolish manner.

So she never told him.

She didn’t wash any dishes for about a week. Luckily, she had just washed them all recently, so the pile up didn’t seem much out of place, and the husband made no comments.

After about a four days, the wound healed shut and not even a scar remained to mark the spot.

The mother cannot even remember for sure which hand was stabbed.

The mother does not let dishes pile up like that on a regular basis any more, so must be careful not to stab herself again, lest someone notice.

The childrens are older now and might tattle on her too.

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