Loving Life

Well, we had a truly horrible dinner tonight. My mom had given us some bratwurst that she and my dad didn't care for. Often times, my family will happily eat things they don't prefer, but not tonight. I can now see why she gave them away. They were quite horrid. Thanks a lot, Mom. David, the ever growing hungry boy, didn't seem to mind them too much and downed two of them fairly quickly. I did not finish mine. To go with our nasty brats, I tried out some cheddar rosemary muffins from our cookbook challenge. For the first time ever, we all agreed on how to rate it. A big fat one - the lowest rating possible. No one was able to eat a whole muffin. The rosemary taste was overpowering of everything else. It also seemed to call for too much baking soda as it had that baking soda taste in what wasn't flavored with rosemary. Blech. I hope the birds appreciate them more than we did! Thankfully, I had made a salad to go along with our meal and had roasted some sweet potatoes as ...

Hey guys! Guess what?! I have hands! They're so cool! I can look at them and hold them. They are also really good to chew on. Other than that, they still seem pretty useless to me. But I still think they are pretty and really like looking at them and admiring them. Every once in awhile, Mom puts me in a tub of water and gets me all wet. I really don't know if I like it all that much. She always tells me this joke every time she puts me in my tub: "How does a Mennonite girl take a bath? First she fills up the tub... then she turns on the water." Mom grew up Mennonite, but I'm not sure why she always tells me this joke and then giggles about it as she looks at me in my little tub. I'm clearly not amused by it. Another thing I like doing is sitting in my bouncy chair. I often sit there and tell David what to do with his school work. Mom tells me I shouldn't be so bossy when David isn't working on school work, but David doesn't see...

...can be found in one of these cupcakes. I made these for a friend's birthday. Chocolate ganache peanut butter cupcakes. The recipe was taken from our cookbook challenge. They were definitely good, but my enjoyment of them were hampered by knowing exactly what I put into them. They were also very time consuming. First you make the cupcake part. Then you make the peanut butter filling which then needs to be put inside the already baked cupcakes. After that, you dip them in the ganache that you made (if you aren't familiar with that - it's mixture of chocolate and cream), and finally you top it with the peanut butter frosting that you have to cook on the stove top using butter. Lots and lots of butter. Had someone merely set a cupcake in front of me and told me to eat it, I probably would have enjoyed it much more. In order to keep us from eating them all, I gave some to some friends down the street and sent some home with the birthday girl. The rest of our family, each...

When Aaron and I first got married, I relieved him of the responsibility of making a big deal about Valentine's Day in our marriage. I don't want him to get me something because he "has" to do it. He does a great job of surprising me with little things throughout the year, just because so I feel quite loved by him throughout the year. So I was quite surprised when he came home from the city two days before Valentine's Day with these lovely roses for me. It was super sweet of him. They are gracing my dining room table and make me smile when I pass them by. I grew up with this tradition and have carried it on in my kids. Every Valentine's morning we would wake up to a hand cut out heart from our Mom with a note on the inside of it letting us know how much she loved us. I usually remember to do it very last minute. This year was no exception. Keilah woke up at 5:15 to nurse that morning and it was then that I realized I hadn't gotten my hearts done yet. ...

Hi everyone! It's me, Keilah. Mom thought it would be nice if I would post on here every once in awhile to give her a break from writing. I would have written sooner, but I got sick and had to get better first. I'm currently on some steroids to help with that. Dad keeps trying to talk Mom into getting me a set of dumbbells since he says this is a time I can legally bulk up. Mom doesn't seem too keen on the idea. I turned two months old a bit over a week ago. I like being here in my new life. I thought it would be fun to tell you a little bit about what I like doing.  I like to smile at people. I also like to eat. I tried rolling over from my tummy to my back one time. It scared me and I cried. I decided to not do that again. I really like sleeping. I've overheard Mom say how much I spoil her when I go to bed at 9PM and don't wake up until 6AM. News flash, Mom: this has nothing to do with spoiling you. I sleep that long because I like it. If I want to se...

Before I get to our cookbook challenge, I need to catch you up on all that's been going on over here. I have written about four posts in my head, but haven't had the time to actually get to the computer to do it. We've had some sick kiddos here the past few weeks. The older girls got sick first - Abby missed almost a whole week of school with fever, colds, and ear infections. Once they both started feeling better, Keilah got sick. Her breathing got pretty rough and ragged early on this week. Yesterday we went back to the doctor as she seemed to be having a harder and harder time breathing. Her O2 levels were really low and we were almost admitted to the hospital as she wasn't responding to the treatments they were giving her in the office there. Thankfully they gave her 10 final minutes to see if the treatment would work and they got her O2 levels up to an acceptable range to where they felt okay letting us go home - as long as we brought her back in the morning. After ...