I'm Back!

Is it really true? Yes! Here I am! And since I have been MIA for a while, I have some posts brewing for ya! First off, just to let you ladies know, I am feeling much better! The nausea has pretty much passed now and I am not as tired.


I just had an ultra sound on Monday( can't tell the sex yet- not for another 6 weeks!), but it went very well. Everything is checking out ok, and the technician assured me there is only ONE baby in there. I tried to take a picture of the ultrsound photo for you

Can you see the little hand waving at you? hee hee.

Ok, now here is a great little poem (a "revised" Goodnight Moon, shall we say) that I think you will enjoy! I found it in the Dr's office while waiting for my check up!

Goodnight Mom

(with apologies to Margaret Wise brown)

In the messy green family room , there was a telemarketer ringing the telephone. And a crying toddler because his brother just popped his red balloon. And a picture of---

The cow jumping over the moon(which someone colored on with permanent marker)

And there was a missing teddy bear, and a girl with gum in her hair.

And one to be scolded, and laundry to be folded

And a very hungry spouse, and something stinky in the house(that no one else seemed to smell)

And a comb and a brush and a colicky baby who just won't shush. And a frazzled mommy screaming

Goodnight messy room. Good night scribbled on moon. Goodnight cow getting out while she can

Goodnight telemarketers and the popped balloon.

Goodnight long gone teddy bear. Goodnight cereal bar smeared all over the dining room chair.

Goodnight spit up and Goodnight leaky sippy cup.

Goodnight much-too-little house and Goodnight grumpy spouse.

Goodnight comb and Goodnight brush. And Goodnight to a certain 4 year old who just needs to hush right now I mean it.

Goodnight Elmo. Goodnight toys we'll pick up tomorrow, or the next day.

Hello Chardonnay and Tivo--

"me" time

finally.

Pilgrims And Indians!

Boy, have we been having fun! Thursday was Kevin's Thanksgiving day feast at school. I was told to dress him up as an Indian. ( I went to Walmart and picked up a little tan fabric for 2$ and cut a hole for his head and cut fringe around the bottom. Simple and easy!) Add a little construction paper feather hat and here's what you get:

I took several pictures, but he must have had an itchy nose! In just about all of the shots he has a finger in his nose! Gee wiz!

It was a lot of fun, and all the kids looked very cute.

Then, today we had Ryan's feast! More food and fun! And he was told to dress like a pilgrim. So I put him in brown pants, white dress shirt and a belt. They all made hats in school. I tried to get a good picture of him but that bugger always hides from the camera!

As you can see, there is a big empty spot in the top row. When we were about to snap the pictures Ryan ducked down! Arrg!

Here's a better one......

We had a great time! Tomorrow is the real Thanksgiving feast! I, for one, can't wait! I am so looking forward to all that food! Holidays during pregnancy are the best! (especially when you're done with morning sickness!)

So to all of you, we hope you have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving with your families! Enjoy, and we'll catch up with you when our tummies relax from the shock!

Sweet Things

Ok- I know I haven't posted in a while. You don't have to tell me. Actually, now would NOT be a good time to bring it up. You can talk to me about it in say, 4 more weeks.

Anyhoo....

Here are two sweet things I have een enjoying this week:

#1 Our Anniversary! We celebrated 11 years this week. It has been a wonderful 11 years, and it just keeps on getting better! I love you, Honey!

and

#2 would be this:

Oh yes. Lots of this. Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

Happy Birthday Baby!!

It's Jeff here. I've hijacked Danielle's blog to let you all know that today is my beautiful bride's BIRTHDAY!!

I love you honey! I can't believe you're only 28 years old!! ;)

Ick!

Well, I have been feeling a bit too "icky" to post lately. Mostly I've been trying to catch a few zzz's whenever I can. A few things have been making me feel ill, and I've been craving some things I don't usually eat, like celery and peanut butter. And as much as I LOVE coffee, I can't go near it!
Last night I was really hungry at like 10:00pm. My ever so sweet hubby got up to make me an egg sandwhich! I felt much better.
Thanks honey!

Fall Fun!

We had a lot of fun playing in the leaves the other day....

We only have one tree in the front yard, so it was a pretty poor excuse of a "leaf pile" but somehow they managed to jump in!

And then today it snowed!

Kevin's Pumpkin Picking

In all the excitement of our recent news,, I had forgotten to post about Kev's field trip! He went to a different farm than Ryan. Since kev is only half day preschool we had to stay close by. We had a really good time.......

My stupid computer won't flip this picture for me. Dang. Tilt your head to the left to see it. sorry.

Luckily rain that was in the forecast held off til the very end of the outing, so we were thankful for that. And Kevin got his "perfect pumpkin".

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Pumpkin Picking!

This week was Ryan's pumpkin picking field trip! It was great! We had beautiful warm weather. His class went up to Heaven Hill farm in Vernon. It is a huge place. They have it all. Animals to feed, hay rides, corn maze, pig races, haunted house and carnival (for the weekends only), and much MUCH more. We were there all day, and I think we still missed some things.


Here's a whole bunch of pictures from our day....

Kevin's turn is next Tuesday! Woo hoo!

The Pneumonia Wars

This particular adventure has gone far enough. The ride stops here. I am getting off!
First Ryan had pneumonia, now both Kevin and Sean have it! I think finally, after going back and forth to the Dr's office a few(too many)times, we have the right medications to take care of this.
I hope.
The boys have been pushing through, bless their little hearts. They are very resilient. More so than myself, probably. And little Kev still makes me laugh. At first when we thought he just had bronchitis, he was telling everyone he had "brown-chitis". I thought that was very cute.
Here's another one from Kev:
Scenario: Mommy sees Kev watching movie intently while sucking on his fingers(just as intently)
Mommy says: "Hey Kevin. Those fingers taste good?"
Kevin takes them out of his mouth. Smiles and says, "Tastes like chicken."
I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair.
Where do they get this stuff?
Hopefully everyone will be back up and running by the end of the week! I'll keep you posted on our progress and any other good "Kev-isms"!

Adventures In Mothering!

Our local MOPS group has officially started here, and boy am I excited! I LOVE Mops. I so look forward to those meetings. Seeing my other mom friends,talking,eating (of course),hearing speakers, making crafts! All this while the little ones are off enjoying their classes and having fun themselves! This year I only have two with me. Ryan graduated from mops now that he is in Kindergarten.


So the MOPS theme this year is " Adventures In Mothering". Whew! What a statement that is! Nan, I know you can attest to that!
Some of the girls and I were talking about what we think of when we hear the word "adventure". First, I think this:

But then Great Adventure is purely fun. Mothering is not always fun. So When I try to think of "adventure" again, I come up with this:

Well, this isn't exactly it either. Too much danger in this one. Although sometimes it does seem as if this is me:

I have a bloggy mom friend who's had a roller coaster of a day. Through it all she has a great sense of humor! You have to read her story.

We all have crazy days at home and even crazier experiences when we are out in public!

I guess that's all part of the "adventure". We will be going over many different aspects of this mothering adventure during this years Mops season. Hopefully we will be uplifted and encouraged, while having fun along the way.

So here we go girls! Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Good Food, Bad Ovens......

Ok. So I have been making some really delicious food lately. I have done a delicious venison roast last week with a recipe that was fantastic(props to my girlfriend Anna for that one!) I made that with some Basmati rice and also green beans with garlic and oil. Mmmm. Sooo good!

Then another night I made venison meatballs that were out. of. this. world. I think quite possibly THE BEST meatballs I have EVER made. Even better than beef. And I have to say, I really make good meatballs. So we had delicious hoagies and salad that night.

Umm, then I think the next night Jeff made western omelets that were oh so good. And i got the night off. I'm ok with that.

Then yesterday I made a cross rib roast. Ok. I'm going to be honest with you. Roasts intimidate me. There, i said it. Yes, I know they are easy, just put them in the oven and go on your way. But they are also easy to ruin. (For me anyway). I'm always so afraid that they are going to be dried out!
So, I had this Cross Rib Roast that I decided to make. Why not? It's got to be cooked some time, right? Right. So I marinated it in milk overnight on Friday.
Saturday, I took it out and rubbed some flour and salt and pepper on it and seared it in the cast iron skillet with a little lard. ( pork fat rules, you know)
Took the roast out of the skillet, and put it into a larger pan for the oven. Then I used the same skillet to do some garlic and onions that I had chopped up. (and I used like 5 cloves of garlic. man that smelled good).
Once that was sauteed, I added some bouillon in about a cup of broth and scraped the pan real good to get everything off the bottom and into the mix. Then poured it all on top of the roast, covered it with foil and let it cook in the oven on 275 for 3hrs.

With that I also made mashed potatoes. FROM SCRATCH. (which I haven't done in well, ummm, anyway....) and also some steamed broccoli.
This roast came out amazing! I was soooo nervous. I checked it at 3 hrs and it seemed like it needed to come out. I was praying it would be ok. I really didn't feel like having to go out and buy a different dinner! I was so happy it turned out so good!

And let me tell you something. My Hunky Hubby has been one Happy Hubby this past week.
Not all weeks are like this.
Macaroni and cheese is our friend, and chicken nuggets are no strangers either. But this was a great cooking week! Ever have one of those?

While Jeff and I were talking about food the other night it reminded us of how since we've been married we have never had a good stove. I shall share some of the saga...
When we first got married, we were renting and our oven was terrible! it was a small apartment size one and the oven temp was way off. (like we are talking at least a hundred degrees hotter. no joking)I had to keep a thermometer inside all the time! I only found this out after burning the first apple pies I ever attempted to make in my married life. There were many tears that day.

The second place we lived in was also a rental and it had an apartment size stove again. This one worked ok, but at this point we had two children and I would have like to have a bigger stove to cook on. The landlord replaced the oven with a larger one shortly after we moved out. oh well.

Now we have our own home. We were blessed to have been left with a wonderful washer and dryer, dish washer, and refrigerator from the last owner. But the stove. Ah yes. The stove.

The oven works fine. The burners are an enigma to me. I think at this point two don't work at all. The large Burner that I use the most only works intermittently. I could turn on the burner for the teapot and come back in 20 minutes and the coils are still black.
If I am in the process of say, scrambling an egg, it's quite possible the burner could turn off in the middle of cooking. It's very aggravating. I hate this stove.
At least once in my life, I would like to have a really good,large,working stove that doesn't cause me unneeded stress. Do any of you have something like this that you need to replace? Something that always breaks down? Do you have story like this? Do tell!

Signs Of The Terrible Two's

1. Milk splattered against three out of four walls in the morning.
2. Goldfish strewn down the stairs
3. UFO's (aka full dinner plates) flying though the air with such precision as the Olympic Discus throw.
4. Screams of displeasure which measure at decibels to be heard not only throughout the entire neighborhood but probably also on Jupiter.
5. Stomping and kicking with such force as to believe you are in the midst of a stampede on the African plain
6. The word NO uttered more times than you can count
7. A migraine the size of Texas
8. Heaven's phones ringing off the hook with requests for this to please end swiftly and a little less painfully

Tapped Out of Ideas

What do you do when you have a sick child cooped up in the house for a week and a half? (and you are sick and feel like death is looming over you as well). Any ideas? (Besides go crazy). All I have heard besides "I don't feel good" is "What's fun I can do?" This is my least favorite phrase. If I never hear it again, I will be a happy camper. Ryan has said it so much, that now the baby is repeating it.

I am all out of projects,stories,paint,glitter,and the like. It was too cold or too rainy to go out. There were no more books to read, there was nothing to be baked,cooked,mixed,fried or even mashed.

Well, I the other day, I told them to get out their crayons and find all the broken ones. Then take all the wrappers off. If we didn't have a lot, then we broke and unwrapped some more. This kept them busy for a bit.

Then, we put them in cupcake papers

You can tell Sean didn't quite get the idea. he was just throwing them into the pan.

I set the oven at 250 and put them in for only a few minutes. They melt really fast!

This is what we got:

Beautiful rainbow crayons! Circle shaped! How exciting.

They look good enough to eat! Which we had to remind Sean not to do.

Anyway, that's all I have left. I am tapped out. I want to go out. I want Ryan to go to school. The Dr says he can't go back until friday.

It's going to be a long week.

We've Got One!

Well, one out of four ain't bad! We are pretty sure that this one is "Dinky".

It looks as if the other's won't make it. We found out that there is a certain kind of aphid that is on the milkweed. If the aphids get on the caterpillar and are on him when he is inside the chrysalis, then they eat the caterpillar inside. We are just so happy that we had one come out! AND, it happened on Sunday when we had many family members here for Ryan's birthday! We all got to see it happen.

It was really neat watching him "pump up" his wings! It took quite a while. Eventually Jeff got tired of holding him, and placed him on our purple Butterfly Bush. He sat there happily for the rest of the day. When we went to bed we checked on him, and he was still there. I was worried about him. I thought something might come along and get him!

Thankfully, in the morning he was ok! We were out all day, and when we got back he was gone. Once and a while, we see one flying around, and we say "It's Dinky!" We are all so excited about being able to witness the transformation. It was something we'll never forget.

Kevin's Turn!

Well, Kevin had his turn apple picking and boy did he have fun! He is so excited to be able to do this now. Oh, how he has waited for Pre-k! He is loving every minute of it!

We picked McIntosh apples, and these green ones called Mitsu apples

They were yummy!

Oh, and I never did go apple picking with MOPS this week. Ryan has been coughing for a couple days, so I took him to the Dr on Thursday and it turns out he has Pneumonia! We're kicking off this school year with a bang! So far the others are ok, but we'll see. Sickness tends to spread pretty fast around here, so goodness knows what's ahead!

In the meantime we are doing school work that Ryan's teacher sent home for him.(he was so excited about that!) and doing extra pages in our devotion book, playing go fish, painting and watching movies, movies and more movies.

Today it is yucky and rainy outside, so it is a good day for relaxing and (hopefully) napping. We'll see how it goes!

APPLE PICKIN' TIME!

That's right! It's that time of year! We love apple picking!! It is so much fun. Today was Ryan's first Kindergarten field trip to one of our favorite orchards. It was great. The weather was perfect, and there were no bees bothering us either! After picking a bag full, we all had a snack of apple cider and donuts. Oooh, those apple cider sugar donuts. I could eat a whole bag of them! *insert drool here.*


Tomorrow Kevin gets his turn for his first Pre-k field trip to the very same orchard for even more apple picking fun, and yes-more cider and donuts!


Then on Thursday we are going apple picking with MOPS to guess where?! The same orchard! For more apples and more donuts!!


Looks like I'll soon be posting a few apple recipes! (Once I am able to get up off the couch from eating all those donuts!)