Weekend Wrap!

 On Friday, Samuel was Star of the Day and we were invited to come and watch Samuel talk about his pictures to his class (we sent in 15 pictures of him from birth on up!) and answer any questions they had. At first he was a little embarrassed that so many of us came, haha. It was Ben and I, Eliana and C, the baby I watch. But he was also happy at the same time.

He pointed to every picture with the wooden pointer and explained in minimal detail about each one, which we thought was funny. He kept turning to me to ask when pictures were taken or how old he was. His teacher said, "Good thing your mom is here to help!"

The kids asked him all sorts of questions about the pictures or about the facts he shared. He put that he wants to be an artist when he grows up and one kid asked him what kind of art he wants to do! He didn't really have an answer for that:) I am so glad his teacher does things like this to make each kid feel special!

It was gorgeous on Friday! Eliana and I sat on the front porch for a long time and played and then brought Baby C out to eat his lunch outside when he woke up. We were determined to soak up as much Vitamin D as possible!

Mr. C LOVES to take wagon rides and he thoroughly enjoyed the ride to school yesterday! He had a big birthday this week and we got to celebrate with him yesterday!

We got a special Easter box in the mail from Ben's mom yesterday! Once we got permission to open it (how can you ask kids to wait??), I took it upstairs and assembled all of the Easter baskets. Wow, these are lucky kids!

They were sort of stunned at first and said, "Whoa!" Believe me, they were excited!

They stared for several long seconds and then dug in! Talk about goodies galore!

Happy kiddos! Thank you, Grandma!!

Eliana loves her new pink bunny and it has gone with her everywhere since yesterday! It sleeps with her, went to the birthday party and to church today:)

The kiddos picked out a pack of trucks for Baby C for his birthday since he loves to drive the boys' matchbox cars and I wanted to think of something to go with it. Something homemade to show how special he is to us. This is what I came up with! It is a little mat made of felt for him to drive his cars on. Not perfect by any means but it was really fun to make!

 

A house with a little dog...

A man fishing in the pond. That was Ben's idea:)

A park bench and some trees..

The swing set

And a truck. Kind of a fire truck/ambulance combo. Oh well! The boys were like, "How come you didn't make anything like this for us when we were little??" ha.  It was really fun to make a little special something for a special little guy. He's been like part of our family for this past year and we all love him!

This is what Eliana looked like when she woke up this morning:) haha. She looks different every time she comes out of her room!

At church today, they handed out palm leaves to all of the kids, who waved them on their way out to their classes. Eliana got a huge kick out of the palm leaf and used it to torture tickle us on the way home from church. Stinker!

We cleaned our place all up spic and span for our small group this afternoon, only to have everyone cancel for one reason or another. At least we all get to enjoy a clean house! That's a nice way to start the week. Then this afternoon, I made some homemade yogurt and BBQ sauce. The yogurt won't be ready to put in the fridge for another 2 1/2 hours. I am really really hoping it turns out!

Not that I'm going to eat it. Blech. I wish I liked it, believe me! But I have texture issues and yogurt causes an immediate gag reflex in me. So, this time I will have to rely on my families opinions to see if this recipe is a keeper! If it is, this will save us a ton of money. They all love yogurt and go through it so fast. It's not cheap either! This recipe makes 4 qts and a little over a pint of yogurt for a total price of $3.88! It lasts for a month in the fridge, has the probiotic bacteria and you can add whatever mix-ins you want!

I'll let you know it this works out! That's our weekend in a wrap. Hope yours was nice, too!

That's all for the weekend!

Fruit Roll-ups and Prayers!

 Well, I did it! I made homemade fruit roll-ups. Or fruit strips. Or whatever you call it.

Ta-da! It was actually SO easy. I followed a recipe here. Basically, you puree 3 cups of fresh or frozen fruit, a few TB of honey and a couple tsp of lemon juice, pour it into a saran wrap covered baking pan, spread it around and baked it at 170 degrees for 6 hours. That's it!

The kiddos each ate two, I ate some scraps (cut off the edges to make it nice and neat) and I rolled up the rest for later! I would probably add a little more honey to the mixed berry combo because it's a teeny bit tart but other than that, delicious!

I want to please ask for your prayers for my 10 year old nephew. He is very sick and has been in the hospital since yesterday. The most recent update this afternoon is that he has a rare strain of pneumonia and that/or motrin use caused him to have a really bad reaction causing blisters and sores on his face/mouth. I am not going to say the name of the Syndrome so you won't be tempted to look it up like I did. It's truly awful and very serious! He is on oxygen, morphine and an IV and is having a rough day with all of this. He will not be allowed to go home until he can get off the oxygen and can start eating and drinking. Please pray that he heals quickly and that there is no lasting damage to his eyes or his lungs. And also for my sister and the rest of the family. This has been exhausting for all of them! 

The kiddos and I spent a long time this afternoon trying to find the perfect funny get-well card to send to him to brighten his day. Not as easy as it sounds! We ended up sending a silly video card, hoping to bring him a little smile. Thanks so much!

Cheap and Yummy!

 Yesterday Ben was home, as his hours at work are shorter now, and so he, Eliana and I got to spend some time together! It was strange being just the 3 of us. Eliana definitely didn't mind the extra attention:) We had to hang around home for awhile so that our maintenance guy could do the yearly home inspection and then we made a trip to one of our favorite libraries and Goodwill. Ben scored several Shakespeare books (he is a VERY well-read individual!!) and Eliana and I found a few little treasures, too. We found a few good children's books to add to the prize bucket, a couple canning jars and a pair of summer shorts for Samuel. I also found this adorable set of Alphabet flash cards:

I must've had my phone turned the wrong way because both pictures are a little off. Oops! They are brightly colored on one side...

And have cute old-fashioned pictures on the other side. They are really sturdy and cost only .99 for the set! Eliana has been having fun with them.

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So far my first month of budgeting is going SO well!! E and I did our 2nd grocery shopping trip today and once again made it just under $100! I even found a couple of really good deals! I am not a couponer, as I mentioned in my first budgeting post, but I went ahead and checked to see if anything I was buying had a coupon and found one at Target for noodles and for pasta. I was thrilled to see they were already on sale so I grabbed 7 boxes of various noodles for $.78 each and got 3 jars of spaghetti sauce for only $2.12! Stocking up on things like that will only help my subsequent shopping trips be even cheaper!

I was much better this time about sticking strictly to my list. Last week really opened my eyes to how easy it is to impulse buy. I practically put blinders on this time and forced myself to keep walking and not even be swayed a tiny bit by the sweet 3 year old voice saying, "Can we get that?" every few minutes. I am feeling really good about this so far. We were out of eggs by Sunday night and worked hard to ration our milk so we had a little left this morning. We are going through about 2 gallons a week! This is really helping us be aware of how much/how often we eat and really appreciating what we have around the house.

And get this: (READ CAREFULLY) Budgeting meals do NOT have to be boring!! Really. So far, we have all really enjoyed the meals and I have tried several new things like Broccoli Rigatoni (SO good!), Mexican White Bean Soup (It made enough to freeze some, too!), and tonight's meal Bean Burgers on Pretzel Buns with Roasted Veggies. I will share some of the other meal recipes soon! Here is the Pretzel Bun recipe I used. They were great! Next time I would make them a little ahead of time because there was a lot of preparation going on at the same time. I would also double the recipe and freeze some. Yum!

The bean burgers were great! I started with an original recipe on allrecipes.com but changed it up a bit. It made enough for all us for dinner, a couple for leftovers for lunch tomorrow for B to take to work and 19 more to freeze.....that's right. 19:) My freezer is getting stocked with all of these extra meal portions!!

I cook up 2 lbs of dried beans this morning (and afternoon) and froze a couple of quart jars of them and had enough for all of the bean burgers!

Bean Burgers

1 lb. dried pinto beans, soaked, cooked and drained (follow directions on bag!)
1/2 cup minced onion
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
4 eggs
1 tsp garlic powder
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
Salt and Pepper
3/4-1 cup flour
oil for cooking
cornmeal

Preparation:
1. Saute onions in 1 TB oil until nicely browned, stirring often. Set aside.

2. Put well-drained beans in a large bowl and mash, mash, mash!!
3. When beans are well-mashed (or as mashed as you want), add in eggs, breadcrumbs, onions and seasonings and mix very well. Add in flour 1/4 cup at a time until the mixture is just stiff enough to form into patties. It will be a very soft mixture and your hands will get messy!!

4. Heat oil in skillet (we used our cast-iron skillet). Sprinkle cornmeal on a large plate or cutting board. Grab a handful of bean mixture and lightly pack into a ball. Gently press the ball into the cornmeal on the plate to form a pattie. Repeat on the other side.

5. Fry the bean burgers in the skillet on both sides until cooked through. Serve on a bun with cheese, lettuce and tomato. YUM!! They were a huge hit with everyone and I am so happy that the extra work of making them all resulted in 2 bags of frozen burgers for later meals!!

I served the burgers with a side of roasted broccoli and cauliflower, which was delicious!

Who said cheap has to be boring??

Park and Recreation!

 During the long (long!) winter months here, we drive by the neighborhood parks, empty of children, buried under thick blankets of snow and we dream of sunny spring or summer days when we can set the children loose again! That day finally came this weekend, after 4 1/2 very long (did I mention long?) months.

Ben had a paper to present at a conference yesterday and the weather was really nice so the kiddos and I walked to a nearby park and spent a good part of the late afternoon soaking up some much-needed vitamin D and getting fresh air!

They all spent an extraordinary length of time on the seesaw horsing around:) Zakkai brought his basketball to play in the court but had to wait for some bigger kids to leave.

Eliana LOVED the seesaw! Samuel caused a lot of trouble standing in between them:)

My trio!

Then Eliana became a conductor and took us to warmer places on the train.

It was a great way to spent the afternoon! Makes the rainy days bearable when you know more of these kinds of days are coming.

Eliana got herself alllll dressed up for church today! I did a little "tweaking" before church and swapped the polka dot pants for some pink leggings but other than that, let her be:) She gets herself dressed in wild combinations all day. She changes her clothes at least twice a day!

After church and a little quiet time, we headed to the park again this afternoon, this time with Daddy and our neighbor Mikey in tow.

Eliana did some fancy sliding today:)

The boys and Daddy played a lot of basketball and then they came over to climb on the train. Well, the boys, that is. Not Ben:)

Eliana hanging' on the swing...

Oh, to be a kid again!

Yesterday morning, the kiddos were a little rowdy so I put on a music CD I got from the library and before I knew it, they were all dancing and having a great time! I need to do this more often!

When we go to the park, Eliana takes off running and runs 'til she can run no more! She has this really cute bouncy run:)

Hope you had a great weekend!

Homemade Yummies!

 Well, this week is rolling right along! Hard to believe it's Thursday already. Eliana and I completed our first successful "budget cut" shopping trip and boy was it an eye-opener! I had NO idea that I was such an impulse buyer. I really thought that I only got 2 or 3 things extra each time and that it wouldn't add up to much. At the very least, this experience has really gotten me to examine my habits closer and challenged me to be more careful. More on that later.

I made my first homemade snack ~ graham crackers!

They smelled SO good as they were baking! The graham crackers were a hit with everyone. It was a little hard to roll them out as thin as they should have been because of the dough (very stiff) so I can work on that to improve for next time.

And there will be a next time! Here is the recipe I used. I had to used light brown sugar since I couldn't find any dark. I may even cut down on the sugar a bit next time because it was sweet enough with sugar and honey. Very tasty! Can you imagine how good s'more would be??

Next up, homemade fruit roll-ups!

Sweet girl:)

She scared awake super early this morning by the booming thunder. She cried and cried for awhile about the "scary funder." Ben brought her in to snuggle with us for our last few minutes of precious sleep. But it was too late. The continuing thunder stopped her from being able to go back to sleep. Which stopped us from going back to sleep. Bummer!

Needless to say, she is slumbering peacefully for a rare nap at the moment:)

Samuel and I have been coming up with pictures for him to bring to school for next week, as he is "Star of the Week." He specifically requested a picture of him with his Thomas trains (special memories!) and family pictures. We had fun walking down memory lane.

Man, when I look at the boys and how much they have changed, I can hardly believe it. Staring at those pictures of little Samuel with his chubby cheeks and little boy joy over trains bring a little lump into my throat. Those were precious days!

Zakkai is not in any of these pictures because he was....otherwise occupied:) Ben finally gave him a MUCH needed haircut last night. I will try to sneak a picture of him today, if I can. He has stick-straight hair and when it grows too long, he begins to resemble a scarecrow with a mullet. Poor kid. We always feel terribly guilty until we cut it!

Happily, the scarecrow is gone and Zakkai's adorable face is back again!

And I want to wish a very happy birthday to my favorite Grandpa in the whole world! His unshakable faith is an inspiration to all who meet him, especially Ben and I. We are so thankful to have his love, his wisdom and his encouragement. We are praying this year is so much better than the last few months. Love you, Gpa!