Loving Life

We've been taking care of my in-laws chickens while were gone this past week.  I wait until the girls get home from school to do this chore, as they love to help! While the chickens are let out to get some exercise, dust baths, and fresh air, the girls happily go tromping off through the woods to build fairy houses. They had already put the roof on by the time I got there to take a picture, so you can't see all the cute little furnishings they made for the fairies on the inside. The one day I did bring my camera was the day it was just about ready to start raining.  Therefore, these pictures in the woods look dark and dreary.  Just imagine beautiful afternoon sunlight streaming through the golden leaves and you'll have every day except this one.  :) Yesterday, the girls found an exceptionally large egg in the coop.  We suspected it might be a double egg. We cracked it open for breakfast this morning.  Yep, a double egg it was! ...

So perhaps you were thinking I had died or something since I haven't posted in awhile.  I want to assure you that I am alive and well.  Life got pretty busy this past little while, so blogging took a back seat for the time.  One of the biggest (and most fun) things that happened just this last weekend was getting to be at my lovely sister's wedding.  Here is the beautiful couple (my sister definitely got the beauty genes in the family!) Here is their family with five beautiful girls! My brother's wife was able to fly out from VA and be the wedding photographer.  She does AMAZING pictures.  If you are ever in the market for pictures that make you look like you should be in a magazine check out Keesha at RubySky Photography ! (plus when you check out her website, you'll hear one my favorite bands ever, but more on that later!).  Here is Keesha working her magic. The wedding was outdoors at their house.  They had rented a big tent canopy for ...

I apologize once again from my absence.  The weekend got a little hectic.  We had a major cleaning frenzy on Saturday since we were having a pile of people over on Sunday after church.  The kids did an awesome job of helping us out.  Definitely appreciated that!  I also did a large amount of cooking and baking over the weekend - unfortunately there's nothing left to show from that activity.  But the rhubarb pies were delicious!  Monday morning brought our last birthday celebration for Abby.  We invited four of her little friends over (two sets of siblings) to spend the morning with Abby.  She got some fun stuff including her very first Barbie.  She likes it a lot because it has hair extensions you can put on and "cut" off.  She is also enthralled with her birthday balloon that was given to her.  Here's a picture of her opening presents with her little friends watching. I am not one of those parents who go all out for birthday ...

First of all, I want to say a big thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who left a comment on my last post or sent me an email.  They gave me piles of warm fuzzies.  I didn't write my feelings out to get back pats, but mainly because I was tired of feeling bad and listening to the whiny voice inside my head.  So I thought if I wrote my thoughts out it would help me with my whininess and aid in promoting an internal change for me.  And I ended up getting bonus back patting too.  : ) So, that aside, let's get on to my favorite topic... food!  Strawberries are starting to get cheaper in the stores and less green looking, so I bought some at our local grocery store (actually I got them for free since I was able to redeem them using my "points"!).  I told Aaron I wanted to make some strawberry shortcake with them.  I was appalled when he was indifferent to that idea and then had the audacity to say that he doesn't really like strawberry ...

I learned a valuable lesson today.  Never ask your 10 year old boy to help you with your dilemma when it's choosing between making cookies and not making cookies.  The boy will always side with the cookies.  He ended up making them mostly by himself (no bake peanut butter cookies).  He was quite proud of himself. So now we have cookies that we have to eat.  I know, it's a rough life I lead.  I spent the morning at the doctor with Ana.  She's been having a random fever for quite awhile now.  It usually shows up in the afternoons.  So far all the tests they did came back negative.  So now it's a wait and see type thing.  I usually don't take my kids to the doctor unless it's been going on for a long time (like this one) or they seem more than just normal sick that takes time to heal.  We had a nice time together with just the two of us.  David and Abby hung out at a friend's house.  David took his school work there an...

Here's a recap of my Christmas week by the numbers: 10 - mini loaves of bread that I made for Christmas dinner 3 - kinds of pies for Christmas dinner (apple, french silk chocolate, peanut butter) 9 - packages of cinnamon rolls (of various sizes) to give out as gifts to the neighbors 78 - grins and giggles from Abby over receiving more princess junk 10 - number of girl cousins David has 3 - friends we invited over to share Christmas dinner with us. 86,158 - grams of sugar I consumed over the last 5 days - give or take a few 26 - hours I spent in the kitchen on Friday (or so it felt) 215 - dishes I've washed 128 - more dishes to go 6-8 - inches of snow we got 10 - minutes the kids lasted during sledding (they gave up too soon during the course preparations) 45 - minutes Aaron and I had alone together sledding once the kids copped out.  It felt like a mini-date! 3 - cookies left out for the Christmas mouse on Christmas Eve 0 - cookies left from the Christmas mouse the next morni...

We made some "Christmas Playdough" yesterday.  What is Christmas playdough?  We made some regular homemade playdough, added green and red food coloring to each half, added glitter, and also some peppermint oil to make it smell yummy.  They kids liked it.  Here they are being their normal goofball selves with it. Later in the day, I found David reading a book to his sisters.  What a great brother he is.  They look very intense.  Notice Abby's crown and sequined shirt?  I think she was a king at this point in the day. I had to make treats for the community-wide youth group Aaron is helping with.  I decided to make cookies for the 25-30 kids who would be there.  But I couldn't decide which of my most favorite four kinds to make.  So, in a flash of brilliance, I decided to make all four kinds.  Each makes a small (2 - 2 1/2 dozen) batch, so I "only" made about 9 1/2 dozen cookies yesterday.  A fair amount got eaten by the yo...

Yes, I'm spoiled. I clean a house on a somewhat monthly basis. I get paid to do it. But, that's not all! I almost always walk away with other things as well.  Here's a typical cleaning day pictured. You'll notice that the frappuccino bottle is empty.  Usually, depending on how generous I'm feeling, I save around half of it to share with Aaron.  Not yesterday.  I knew he had spent the morning at the coffee shop sipping coffee and eating cookies, so I had no mercy for sharing MY frappucino with him.  : )  Sometimes a chocolate bar is set out for me as well.  I was happy to see it was dark chocolate.  Aaron doesn't like dark chocolate all that much so I don't have to share very much of that either!  I had a square of it yesterday - delicious!  So, J. & M., thanks again for all the wonderful things you give me.  You guys are so awesome!  (and not just because you leave things out for me). You remember my giveaway winning fro...

I got a fair amount of work done out at Aaron's folks yesterday.  It was a gorgeous day and I wanted to finish up the outdoor work before winter officially hits.  I finished getting the garden area cleaned off and learned a valuable lesson in the process - don't forget your work gloves at home!  This was the biggest cut.  There are about 8 other smaller ones all over my hands.  This one bled for quite awhile and through several bandages.  Blech.  I also came home smelling like manure thanks to the farmer nearby spreading manure on his fields.  Double blech. Here is David and Abby playing their favorite game together.  They take turns hiding Abby's princess figurines around the area for each other.  It's very cute and solidifies David's status as best big brother in the world. I got into a bit of a baking frenzy today.  I do this every once in awhile when I'm in the mood to bake.  Then I go overboard and make LOTS of...

Remember how I told you my goals of prepping for the marathon? I planned on going to bed early every night and eating healthy (mainly meaning cut out sugar since I normally eat fairly healthy). Well, I haven't done so good with that this week. I don't believe I've gone to bed before 10:30 once or even before 11:00 this week. Usually it's been after 11:00. What have I been doing, you ask? Well, many different things. Last night, I was actually in bed by 9:30 and told Aaron I was ready for bed and would be waiting for him (remember, neither one of us sleeps well without the other). So he came in a few minutes later with the game of Boggle in hand, ready to play. Let me tell you that this is unheard of! Aaron does not LIKE the game of Boggle - I think it has something to do with the fact that I consistently crush him whenever we play together. So it has been years since just the two of us have played together. David and I started playing together, but we have r...

Today, I get to stay home for the ENTIRE day! What a treat! I've hardly had a chance to be at home the past three days with various appointments, meetings and taking kids to various activities. So today is a day to catch up a bit at home. On the agenda for the day is to get in a full, unrushed day of school, get the house clean and to deal with this pile sitting in my kitchen. In "Ideal-Land", I would get all of them dealt with by the end of today and have many quarts of nicely canned applesauce to show off from my labors. However, Ideal-Land rarely happens. I've been chipping away at this pile over the last week doing a small batch here and there as I have time. I love having a pile of apples to preserve in some way. I don't love the process, but definitely love the end result. I made a couple of apple pies last night for our small group. They were so yummy - unfortunately, Aaron ate the last piece as part of his complete nutricious breakfast. So there is no mor...

We've had a good week of food. Some weeks I do really well with making good, sound meals. Other weeks feel more rushed and make whatever comes off the top of my head type meals which are sometimes suspect. Ideally, I would plan a week or two in advance of meal ideas for a few weeks at a time and then I would just pick what I feel like making that day. That helps with my 4PM oh-no-what's-for-dinner angst. Plus I can do my grocery shopping excursions around those meal plans and make sure I have everything I need. I usually go grocery shopping once every two or three weeks - so I have to plan well in advance! Having had numerous gatherings last week and this week helped me be a little more organized in the meal planning so here are just a few of the highlights... Ana always wants to be in on the food action, since she wants to own her own restaurant someday. So when I was busy making food for various gatherings, she was busy scouring her cookbooks for ideas of things she c...