I've been meaning to post these for awhile, but quite low on the priority list!
Foster Child #3 LOVES the vacuum cleaner. He'll actually crawl to it when it is turned on. He has no fear of it, and once even laughed when it was on.
Foster Child #2 has been going with us to the singing portion of our chuirch's worship service. However, when he tells us he wants to he says, "I want to go to surgery."
Oh, and while I'm at it....
When he went with us today to church, he refused to go into the nursery when it was time, and Iowa Gramma (who took him) had a hard time saying no, so he came back into the service, ended up falling asleep on Foster Dad's lap, and awoke startled when the whooping and hollering took place after the baptisms!
And since I was too busy on Friday cuddling with my new nephew and catching up with my sister and mom, I didn't have a Fess Up Friday, so here you go.
I was so exhausted on Tuesday, but my kids had napped in the car on the way home from picking up something from my cousin's house, that in order for myself to get a nap, I excitedly told the kids we were going to have a pajama party in my bed, and snuggle up together to watch a movie. Yup, they watched the movie and I took a nap!
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Quote of the Day
We're in the middle of making monster cookies, and I had to stop to document what Foster Child #1 said. She was using our handy dandy Pampered Chef Measure All Cup to remove the peanut butter. She had to flip over the cup and push down the bottom of the cup to let the peanut butter drop into the bowl. As she's doing this she says, "Oh, it's like a giant" and stopped herself! First and foremost, Foster Dad and I were proud of her for not using bathroom talk in the kitchen and knowing she should stop herself. However, Foster Dad and I were chuckling on the inside, not only because we knew what she was about to say, but probably more so because she was pretty right on!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Fess Up Friday
I volunteered in the church nursery on Sunday, after I switched with someone who I thought was scheduled for last Sunday. However, I misread the email and realized we were both scheduled for 2 weeks from now and she wanted to switch with someone to take that week (the 17th) for her and she take the 3rd. A lot of help I was since I obviously can't switch for a day I am already scheduled to volunteer!
Now, I am very ashamed to admit this next confession, because it really is a bad mommy moment, but that's what fess Up Friday is all about after all.
Foster Child #1 wanted to give her Bible Study teacher a picture she hadcolored scribbled. When she asked me if she could bring it with her, I responded by saying, "But Miss C., it's not even pretty." I know, not a very proud mommy moment. I definitely hurt her by saying that, as evidenced by her wide eyes getting teary eyed. And yes, I did ask for her forgiveness later.
Oh, and Foster Child #1 definitely got back at me later. She gave me a taste of my own medicine by saying, "Mommy, you look fat today." Yeah-ouch!
My friend Kim once said that my FUF posts share "to the world the stupid things I've done and that they are never really THAT stupid." Well, this week I can admit and fess up to something really stupid and downright dangerous that I did. Once again, didn't want to post this, lest anyone think I'm a horrible mother, judge me, and then talk about me behind my back about my stupidity, but you know what? We all have faults and have made some pretty bad errors. At least I'm secure enough to admit that I am far from perfect.
On Tuesday (wow, Tuesday was just an all around bad day for me!) Foster Child #3 fell asleep in the car after Bible Study, so when we got in the house, I laid him down on the family room floor to sleep since we'd have to turn back around in about an hour to take Foster Child #1 to school. I fed the 2 older kids lunch, and decided to unload the dishwasher and reload it since we had some time before we had to leave again. I looked up at the clock and realized I really needed to move to get out the door. I left the dishwasher open since I wasn't completely done loading it, and would do it when I first got back home. I went to do Foster Child #1's hair, but also realized I needed to change Foster Child #2's diaper. I stationed myself in our office to do these things facing the hallway to the kitchen. By this time Foster Child #3 was awake and crawling around. I did the diaper change while Foster Child #3 crawled toward the pantry. "Perfect," I thought, "the pantry will keep him occupied." When I was done with Foster Child #2's diaper change, I didn't ask him to keep an eye on Foster Child #3, which he totally would of done if I asked him, and I couldn't ask Foster Child #1 since I was doing her hair. All this time, I was sitting in our office facing the hallway to our kitchen, however, I couldn't see the kitchen because the pantry door was open. I finished doing Foster Child #1's hair, and went to retrieve Foster Child #3 from the pantry, only to see he wasn't in there, and it was then that I saw the HUGE bread knife lying on the kitchen floor in front of the stove! Foster Child #3 had crawled out of the pantry (I couldn't see him because the door was blocking the view to the kitchen), and not only went into the kitchen, but around the corner to the open dishwasher, where the only thing I had loaded on the bottom shelf was a big bread knife he grabbed and then dragged to the stove. Foster Child #3 was still in the kitchen away from the knife and sitting in front of the washing machine WITHOUT A MARK OR CUT ON HIM! Yes, I was stupid. I should have totally closed the dishwasher, especially since I knew a knife was in there, and especially after I realized Foster Child #3 woke up.
However, one of the reasons I share this confession is because I KNOW without a doubt God had protected him. That although I was stupid and made an awful mistake, God was there to cover my mistake, so that no harm was done. And how amazing that our God is the perfect Shepherd protecting all of His little ones!
(Ooops, and now one more thing to confess. Never told Foster Dad about the dishwasher/knife incident until just now as I was reading for him my last paragraph, and he said, "What are you talking about?")
And this is a long enough Fess Up Friday, and I didn't even get into the night I fed my family doughnuts for dinner. Surprise, surprise, that was on Tuesday also!
Now, I am very ashamed to admit this next confession, because it really is a bad mommy moment, but that's what fess Up Friday is all about after all.
Foster Child #1 wanted to give her Bible Study teacher a picture she had
Oh, and Foster Child #1 definitely got back at me later. She gave me a taste of my own medicine by saying, "Mommy, you look fat today." Yeah-ouch!
My friend Kim once said that my FUF posts share "to the world the stupid things I've done and that they are never really THAT stupid." Well, this week I can admit and fess up to something really stupid and downright dangerous that I did. Once again, didn't want to post this, lest anyone think I'm a horrible mother, judge me, and then talk about me behind my back about my stupidity, but you know what? We all have faults and have made some pretty bad errors. At least I'm secure enough to admit that I am far from perfect.
On Tuesday (wow, Tuesday was just an all around bad day for me!) Foster Child #3 fell asleep in the car after Bible Study, so when we got in the house, I laid him down on the family room floor to sleep since we'd have to turn back around in about an hour to take Foster Child #1 to school. I fed the 2 older kids lunch, and decided to unload the dishwasher and reload it since we had some time before we had to leave again. I looked up at the clock and realized I really needed to move to get out the door. I left the dishwasher open since I wasn't completely done loading it, and would do it when I first got back home. I went to do Foster Child #1's hair, but also realized I needed to change Foster Child #2's diaper. I stationed myself in our office to do these things facing the hallway to the kitchen. By this time Foster Child #3 was awake and crawling around. I did the diaper change while Foster Child #3 crawled toward the pantry. "Perfect," I thought, "the pantry will keep him occupied." When I was done with Foster Child #2's diaper change, I didn't ask him to keep an eye on Foster Child #3, which he totally would of done if I asked him, and I couldn't ask Foster Child #1 since I was doing her hair. All this time, I was sitting in our office facing the hallway to our kitchen, however, I couldn't see the kitchen because the pantry door was open. I finished doing Foster Child #1's hair, and went to retrieve Foster Child #3 from the pantry, only to see he wasn't in there, and it was then that I saw the HUGE bread knife lying on the kitchen floor in front of the stove! Foster Child #3 had crawled out of the pantry (I couldn't see him because the door was blocking the view to the kitchen), and not only went into the kitchen, but around the corner to the open dishwasher, where the only thing I had loaded on the bottom shelf was a big bread knife he grabbed and then dragged to the stove. Foster Child #3 was still in the kitchen away from the knife and sitting in front of the washing machine WITHOUT A MARK OR CUT ON HIM! Yes, I was stupid. I should have totally closed the dishwasher, especially since I knew a knife was in there, and especially after I realized Foster Child #3 woke up.
However, one of the reasons I share this confession is because I KNOW without a doubt God had protected him. That although I was stupid and made an awful mistake, God was there to cover my mistake, so that no harm was done. And how amazing that our God is the perfect Shepherd protecting all of His little ones!
(Ooops, and now one more thing to confess. Never told Foster Dad about the dishwasher/knife incident until just now as I was reading for him my last paragraph, and he said, "What are you talking about?")
And this is a long enough Fess Up Friday, and I didn't even get into the night I fed my family doughnuts for dinner. Surprise, surprise, that was on Tuesday also!
Our summer challenge!
The wait is now over for all of you who have been anxiously waiting on the edge of your seats to find out what our summer challenge is going to be!
With gas prices continuing to rise, our summer challenge will be to go carless as much as possible this summer! I spent almost $100 to fill up the tank today (yikes!) and I don't feel like doing that on a biweekly basis as we have been. $200 is just too much to spend on gas a month, especially since we live in such an accessible city.
I'm not exactly sure what this will look like. We either will try to keep our mileage under a certain amount each week, or we'll just challenge ourselves to cut our gas spending by half. We have a little bit of work to do before embarking on this challenge, like actually tracking what our mileage is each week, but here's what I do know:
I will walk with the kids to stores like CVS and Walgreens, plus the library and the 3 parks near our house.
We will totally utilize my new bike plus our Burley bike trailer and baby bike seat.
We'll try to take advantage of being home as much as possible, but not being hermits! We'll experience simple joy in playing in our backyard on the swing set, splashing in our pool, and having picnics on our backyard grass.
I'll grocery shop by biking to the store and using the bike trailer to carry our groceries home.
We will probably start attending a church close to our home that we will walk to on Sunday mornings (or Saturday evenings).
This doesn't mean we won't go anywhere far, after all we do have family and friends that live quite a distance away, but whenever we can be intentional about walking or biking someplace we will!
I'm excited about how this will necessitate a slower pace of life for us. We'll have to really take our time going places, since I don't want us to rely on our car. Additionally I think my waistline and thighs will thank me for this challenge!
Each week, I'll post how much gas we used and I'll also post at the end of the month what our total gas spending was. Whatever we don't spend on gas will go into our new car savings! Blogging our results will be the accountability I'll need to help us reach our goals.
(And if I'm feeling really brave, I'll post my waist measurements each month to see how this challenge has slimmed me down!)
With gas prices continuing to rise, our summer challenge will be to go carless as much as possible this summer! I spent almost $100 to fill up the tank today (yikes!) and I don't feel like doing that on a biweekly basis as we have been. $200 is just too much to spend on gas a month, especially since we live in such an accessible city.
I'm not exactly sure what this will look like. We either will try to keep our mileage under a certain amount each week, or we'll just challenge ourselves to cut our gas spending by half. We have a little bit of work to do before embarking on this challenge, like actually tracking what our mileage is each week, but here's what I do know:
I will walk with the kids to stores like CVS and Walgreens, plus the library and the 3 parks near our house.
We will totally utilize my new bike plus our Burley bike trailer and baby bike seat.
We'll try to take advantage of being home as much as possible, but not being hermits! We'll experience simple joy in playing in our backyard on the swing set, splashing in our pool, and having picnics on our backyard grass.
I'll grocery shop by biking to the store and using the bike trailer to carry our groceries home.
We will probably start attending a church close to our home that we will walk to on Sunday mornings (or Saturday evenings).
This doesn't mean we won't go anywhere far, after all we do have family and friends that live quite a distance away, but whenever we can be intentional about walking or biking someplace we will!
I'm excited about how this will necessitate a slower pace of life for us. We'll have to really take our time going places, since I don't want us to rely on our car. Additionally I think my waistline and thighs will thank me for this challenge!
Each week, I'll post how much gas we used and I'll also post at the end of the month what our total gas spending was. Whatever we don't spend on gas will go into our new car savings! Blogging our results will be the accountability I'll need to help us reach our goals.
(And if I'm feeling really brave, I'll post my waist measurements each month to see how this challenge has slimmed me down!)
Friday, April 1, 2011
Success!
Although I've been a coupon, and thus stock-up shopper, for a couple of years I had yet to have an eat from the freezer/pantry challenge for a WHOLE month. We've done it before for a week at a time, but never a whole month, which just seemed so daunting and overwhelming. I would not consider myself a creative cook so I was envisioning a lot of spaghetti in our future! However, it was a success! We survived the whole month eating from our pantry and freezer, with a few exceptions, of course. And I think that's pretty darn good, considering that what we had in our freezer were a LOT of bagged vegetables, and about 8 servings of mashed potatoes!
Here's some of the low down:
We did shop during the month for necessary consumables, like milk, baby food, and fresh fruit.
I did also buy fresh ground turkey on 2 occasions when it was under $1.99 a pound-an absolute steal!
I made a couple of surprising substitutions. We had Shepherd's Pie one night, but didn't have any gravy. My mom was here and suggested we use cream of chicken soup as the gravy. And this time her advice was spot on, unlike this time.
Another time, I truly believe God was directing me in what to cook. I wanted to make meatloaf and was looking for a particular recipe. Well, before I found that particular recipe I found another one which used many more ingredients, but I had them on hand, including fresh carrots, that I really had no other wise plans for.
With the meatloaf we had leftovers, but rather than eating it again 2 days later, as was my plan, I happened to notice on the recipe that it was one of those meals where you cook once and enjoy 3 times. I flipped over the magazine page and found a recipe for Speedy Stroganoff, so we were able to have a completely different meal, but using the same meatloaf! With that meal, I decided to be brave and substituted cream of chicken soup for the sour cream (since anyone who knows Foster Dad knows he hates the white stuff) and used some FREE Garden Delight Pasta rather than the egg noodles, and it turned out quite delish. And yes, I was very proud of myself that I took a risk and it turned out so well! And seriously, God's hand was all over that!
We did have quite a few brinners, but you don't hear any of us complaining! :)
And finally, I truly think we had more in our freezer than we originally thought at the start of the month. We did have some frozen pizza in there, but also some Woodland Park Italian Beef that I had made back in January, Shredded Salsa Beef, some chicken thighs, and a couple of other meats that we were able to space out over the month so we had good variety! (Our side dishes, however, were rather monotonous-mashed potatoes!
And because we accomplished such a big challenge, we are about to undertake an even bigger challenge come this summer! Stay tuned for the announcement in my next blog post!
Here's some of the low down:
We did shop during the month for necessary consumables, like milk, baby food, and fresh fruit.
I did also buy fresh ground turkey on 2 occasions when it was under $1.99 a pound-an absolute steal!
I made a couple of surprising substitutions. We had Shepherd's Pie one night, but didn't have any gravy. My mom was here and suggested we use cream of chicken soup as the gravy. And this time her advice was spot on, unlike this time.
Another time, I truly believe God was directing me in what to cook. I wanted to make meatloaf and was looking for a particular recipe. Well, before I found that particular recipe I found another one which used many more ingredients, but I had them on hand, including fresh carrots, that I really had no other wise plans for.
With the meatloaf we had leftovers, but rather than eating it again 2 days later, as was my plan, I happened to notice on the recipe that it was one of those meals where you cook once and enjoy 3 times. I flipped over the magazine page and found a recipe for Speedy Stroganoff, so we were able to have a completely different meal, but using the same meatloaf! With that meal, I decided to be brave and substituted cream of chicken soup for the sour cream (since anyone who knows Foster Dad knows he hates the white stuff) and used some FREE Garden Delight Pasta rather than the egg noodles, and it turned out quite delish. And yes, I was very proud of myself that I took a risk and it turned out so well! And seriously, God's hand was all over that!
We did have quite a few brinners, but you don't hear any of us complaining! :)
And finally, I truly think we had more in our freezer than we originally thought at the start of the month. We did have some frozen pizza in there, but also some Woodland Park Italian Beef that I had made back in January, Shredded Salsa Beef, some chicken thighs, and a couple of other meats that we were able to space out over the month so we had good variety! (Our side dishes, however, were rather monotonous-mashed potatoes!
And because we accomplished such a big challenge, we are about to undertake an even bigger challenge come this summer! Stay tuned for the announcement in my next blog post!
Fess Up Friday
Hmmm, why isn't Foster Child #3 napping?
Oh, it would help if I had turned off his bedroom light!
This next confession is coming from Foster Dad who left the burner of the stove on while we were eating dinner on Wednesday night. He didn't realize it until he took the pot of fettuccine alfredo back to the kitchen and back onto the stove while he was cleaning up dinner and realized it was cooking again! Oooops! (And yes, my hubby takes over cooking duties on Wednesday nights since he is home all day.)
Oh, it would help if I had turned off his bedroom light!
This next confession is coming from Foster Dad who left the burner of the stove on while we were eating dinner on Wednesday night. He didn't realize it until he took the pot of fettuccine alfredo back to the kitchen and back onto the stove while he was cleaning up dinner and realized it was cooking again! Oooops! (And yes, my hubby takes over cooking duties on Wednesday nights since he is home all day.)
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