Spring Is In The Air

 Spring is in the air... and summer's on the way...

Girls Cooking

 This past weekend, Caroline and Lee Lee made dinner -- Dr. Pepper chicken in the crockpot with homemade catsup.  Hunter of course was a helper.

New Helper

 While the big kids were skiing, I had a new helper in the kitchen...

He even wanted to sit and watch the oven while the scalloped potatoes cooked (in the over for over an hour).  Luckily, I was able to distract him after a few minutes.

Chef de Cuisine

 Yesterday afternoon, Tracey came home from school and promptly finished all her homework for the rest of the week.  Then she and I did her spelling practice together.  Then, she started asking if she could make something in the kitchen.

She occasionally asks if she can create something in the kitchen, and the answer is usually "No" because I don't think food is something a 7-year-old needs to experiment with.  Food is expensive, and we're not going to start poking around in the kitchen hoping a weird combination will taste good.

But yesterday, she came to me with a cookbook in hand.  She had a princess cookbook that she will occasionally ask if we can use to make something and my response is usually "no" because we don't have either the ingredients or the time - usually both.

But yesterday, she had chosen a pudding, whipped cream, and blueberry parfait.  She asked if we had each of the ingredients, and we did... and she asked if she could make that recipe.

And finally, I had no reason to say "no".

She made the pudding, and 30 minutes after it chilled, she assembled the parfaits, and ALL of siblings LOVED her creation - pudding whipped cream and thawed frozen blueberries -- even Brady could have one.

I still have a hard time knowing what to do with my incredibly grown up daughter who is maturing and developing into her own person, every day.  She has her own interests, her own determination, and an incredibly inventive and creative nature.

This Girl!

 Mama:  What are you eating, Lee Lee?

Lee Lee:  A potato lollipop!

Little Thanksgiving Chefs

After two days of cooking and baking we enjoyed a relaxing Thanksgiving and delicious meal.

The twins especially love to help in the kitchen -- Caroline really enjoys it and if Caroline is having fun, Howard is not far behind.

Mom Fail

A few mornings ago, I made the kids scrambled eggs and we had little cubes of ham that were supposed to be used in salads, but they needed to be used, so I cut them up a little more and added them to the scrambled eggs.  My kids LOVED this breakfast, and I was tickled by the fact that they were eating eggs and ham.

So a few mornings later, I made eggs and ham again, but added a little green food coloring to it.  I was so excited to serve them green eggs and ham for breakfast... but there was one oversight on my part.

Apparently we've never read the book Green Eggs and Ham to our kids.  We don't even own it.

So, these pictures were taken of Tracey as she was running away from the table, crying, and (literally) saying, "I DO NOT LIKE GREEN EGGS AND HAM!"

 

10(ish) on 10

The other day I remembered to take 10(plus) pictures on the 10th of the month.

Here they are:

This was one of the rare mornings I awoke before Tracey came in our room.  I got up, and dressed, and ready for the day... and laid back down in bed to stay off my feet until I had to get up because at 29 weeks pregnant, my back gets really sore by the end of the day.

Within 60 seconds of my snapping the selfie of my resting time, Tracey was up, awake and in bed with me ready for the day.

 

Hugs will Lloyd before we got the babies up.

This was a full basket of clean laundry just waiting to be folded.  I paused from my folding to change a messy diaper... and Caroline took that opportunity to create a cozy cave.

I don't know if Howard is excited about eventually turning a somersault, or if he always wants to see life from a different perspective, or if life with all these girls requires him to stop and strike a yoga pose in the middle of the day, but he assumes this position several times every day.  Check out that flexibility.

Caroline got a hold of my iphone at one point and this was the result.

As I was snapping pictures of our day, Howard crawled in my lap and absolutely loved when I flipped the camera around for a selfie of him.

Working diligently on a block tower.  She concentrated on this task for over 30 minutes all while her two siblings squabbled about which blocks were theirs to use.  Caroline focused on her task of building a tall tower... then it would fall, and she would happily build it again.

Tracey finally got tired of Howard knocking over her up-right towers, so she built a big cake on the floor.

We recently got an Instant Pot, and it has been such a game-changer for me in the kitchen.  It is used pretty much every day for some aspect of our meals and our kids have loved almost everything we've cooked in it.

Here are the twins loving their spaghetti chicken, and homemade yogurt.

The homemade yogurt is a huge hit, and so good for us.

Everybody in?  Blastoff!

Hubby came home with a Rifle Middle School shirt for me, which made me SO happy.  The teachers all got the cutest baseball-style shirts this year and I commented on how cute they were.  Hubby mentioned how much I liked them to the powers that be, and came home with a shirt for me.  This is my first ever Rifle Middle School shirt despite doing Hubby's laundry for the past six years (and now most of his wardrobe consists of Rifle Middle School apparel)... and I do work in Rifle Middle School through my work with blind students.  So, I was really excited.  I don't know that the shirt will fit me during this last trimester of pregnancy, but it should be a good size when I'm not pregnant.

 That was our day... Loads of fun and lots of little ones.

 

Preparing for Company

I'm going to have to write these "small glimpse into our life" posts more often because it allows me to share quick, short, mini-stories from our day to day life that I want to remember but don't always, in and of themselves, warrant a full-blown lengthy blog post.

On that note... more glimpses from our life as I prepared for company yesterday.

We are hosting a Memorial Day Cookout today with just a few families, all of whom have young children the same age of our kids.

So, I figured I would throw together an easy but delicious fruit salad... well, note to self.  The easy fruit salad takes about four times as long once you remember that you're cooking for families with toddlers, and toddlers need apple and pineapple pieces cut to a much smaller "bite size" than adults do.

Whenever I cook or bake something while the kids are awake, I've always sort of adopted the philosophy, "I am trying to be productive in the kitchen... so I surrender the rest of the main floor to the forces of my children."  It's not a perfect science, but it usually results in my cooking or baking a relatively successful dish that is not burnt beyond edibility.  Well, after spending about an hour (on and off) in the kitchen creating toddler-bite-sized fruit salad I surveyed the rest of the main floor... my kitchen philosophy does not work so well when we're having company the next day.  The fruit salad might be ready for company, but the rest of the floor looked like a tornado swept through.  I need a new system when I'm cooking for company.

Lastly, in an effort to recover some damage to the family room, I said to the kids,

"If we can get this room picked up a little, we can have some time in the bounce house before bath time."  

(Because the rule is that the bounce house cannot be inflated until all toys are put away and the floor is picked up.)

Tracey did not miss a beat and replied, "I'll sit right here and watch you guys."

Ummmm... excuse me?

Those were funny parts of our yesterday.

Happy happy Memorial Day to you, and please take some time today to remember those who have sacrificed so much to keep our country free for so many generations.

Just as I type that, I am so humbled to look back up on this post and realize how much freedom was wrapped into our yesterday.  I cannot even list every freedom we enjoyed yesterday from the activities we chose to do, to what we wore, to the fact we attended church, to the fact we live in our own home that we chose to buy, to the fact that my children played while I prepared for friends to come over tomorrow, to the fact that we're expecting our fourth child, to the fact that my husband was working all day in a job that he chose to take that he enjoys doing, to the fact that I make the rules in my house with my children, to that fact that my three year old was free to jump in with her opinion about cleaning... and I was free to correct her on who all was going to help clean the living room.

Trying to understand and quantify freedom to an American-born citizen is like trying to describe water to a fish.

 

So True

These are both way too true to be funny...

 

While I Was Cooking...

While I was cooking... as in during the three minutes while I was handling raw elk, getting it ready for the crock pot... this is what Tracey Ann did.

So, we had to make do for the rest of the day...

Too Funny!

This was too funny not to share.

via

 Last night, I successfully made a hamburger casserole with deerburger meat from Chris' hunting success... and the fire alarm didn't go off... and it was really delicious!