Happy Halloween

I've been getting a lot accomplished these past couple of days. I am really trying to simplify my life and make things run smoother around here, the better things go the less stress for all of us right? Anyways yesterday I cooked up some biscuits and made some sausage patties. Then I assembled up some sausage and cheese biscuits! Instead of eating them I froze them for an easy breakfast or snack for anyone to have. It was really quiet simple and really economical because in the store I believe they are quiet expensive to buy, even more so at Mc Donalds or wherever. I got the biscuits on sale for 98cents, the cheese I used I got for 98cents, they were have a really good sale at Marsh. The sausage I already had in my freezer from when my parents gave us half a hog, so all together it was less than 10 cents a sandwich. Not to bad if I say so myself. I have 3 more rolls of those biscuits in my fridge that I will probably do the same with. I told hubby about it and he thought it was pretty awesome:)
I also cleaned and organized my laundry room a little yesterday. It was in desperate need of that so that was a big accomplishment!
When the kids got home we carved pumpkins, that was fun. Today I roasted the seeds from the pumpkins. I had never did that before so that was cool, easy to. The hardest part was getting all the nasty pumpkin guts off the seeds and cleaning them.


Here are the pumpkins that the kids carved. Emma didn't carve hers obviously but the older kids did theirs all by themselves. Normally Bennie or I help trace out the shapes or something but not this year. They are getting so big and grown up:)

Here is little Emma in her pumpkin outfit today. Notice the matching orange binky,,,so sweet:) Tonight for trick or treating she is going to be a chicken....i cant wait. I will take pictures and post them for y'all.

Here is a couple of Jess and Gary getting all the gooey gunk out of their pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!

Some things I am thankful for

I know its not thanksgiving yet, but sometimes I think its nice to remind ourselves what we are thankful for in our lives. So I am going to list a few:

-my 3 awesome kids. I can not imagine my life without them


-being able to have the 3rd child Emma, we thought we were done having children and then one day decided to try for another-she has blessed my life in more ways than I can list-I can honestly say she changed my soul and the way I do things in life


-my husband for giving me my 3 children

_my husband for providing for my family so I can stay home with my children and be the mother and wife that I always wanted to be.

-my parents for setting a example for me. Its amazing how the way we are raised affects how we turn out in life and how we do things

-the few true friends that I have. I don't see nearly enough of them, but deep down in my heart I think that if I really needed them they would be there.

-the changing colors of the leaves in the fall and the crisp fall air

-coffee!!

-living in America!

-snuggling under the covers

-LIFE!


I could go on, but those are just a few that came to my mind at the moment. Have a wonderful day!

Menu plan October 26

-stir fry with rice
-Ravioli with garlic bread
-roasted crock pot chicken, potatoes, green beans
-cream cheese chicken enchiladas, refried beans
-ham steak, rice, potatoes
-chili, cornbread
-tater tot casserole

Our weekend

Well our weekend went very good. Hubby managed to stay awake for his class Sat. morning after working all night. Then he came home and slept for about 5 hours then off on our date night we went. We had a great time. Red Lobster was wonderful! Then we went to a couple of stores and came back home just to enjoy being alone together. He was great. While we were out he would open my car door for me, and he held my hand. Sometimes he can just be so sweet. We had a lot of fun!!!! Then this morning we went and picked up the kids and came back home. Life back to normal! No, I love my family! I honestly cant imagine life without them. Bennie and I did a lot of talking while we were out together about the kids and when they get older. We discussed how we might handle things that come up,,, I dread the teenage years. I really do have pretty well behaved kids. I hope they keep it up as they get older.
when I woke up this morning I felt like trash! I finally caught the cold that everyone else has. It sucks!!! But I've got to keep going. Over all it was a great weekend. Ben even said that he had the best time. WE haven't had that much fun together in so long. Its nice to be alone sometimes. Now he is back to work tonight. He took a little nap today. He might have to stay over until ten a.m., everyday this week. Poor guy.:( He really is working hard for us. And I love him!

The Serenity prayer

I found it. I need to print this out and put it on my fridge or something.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful worldas it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things rightif I surrender to His Will;That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with HimForever in the next.Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Bad week :(

I have had kinda a bad week. That's my explanation for lack of posts. I feel like I whine and complain on here to much already, but then I was thinking, and the reason I started this blog was really just to get my feelings out. So anyone reading this I'm sorry for the down mood.
First off my kids and the kids I babysit for have been sick. I haven't felt the greatest either but I wouldn't really say I'm sick. Second my husband got switched to third shift. I think that's my main problem. It wasn't his fault and there is nothing that can be done about it so I need to just get over it but it makes me sad to not have him here at night and to have to try to keep the kids quiet through the day when they arnt used to that. He used to be on thirds a long time ago and we had sooo many problems. I think that's what I'm afraid of. I don't want it to go back to the way it was. But he is different now so I need to just keep hoping for the best.
i need to be thankful, because the reason he had to go to night shift was because they fired the 3rd shift boss, So he is more or less replacing him. At least he has a job right?.

And now I find out that he has to work tonight, actually he has to go in a 6pm then work til 6:30am, then he will need to be at school for his college class at 9am til 11:45am Sat. morning., hopefully he can stay awake for class. We are supposed to go out Sat. night for our anniversary, its only been planned FOREVER! He is gonna be exhausted though. Hopefully he can come home from class and sleep for a few hours then wake up and be in a good mood to go out. We will see. The thing is none of this is his fault, so I cant be mad at him. Its just the whole situation that gets me down..

My weight loss this week was non-existent. i know it was due to the fact that I was sad and lonely and did a little emotional eating. Totally my fault and I need to stop it!!!

Hopefully I can get out of this funk and have a better week next week. I know there is some saying,,, I cant remember how it goes exactly, something about change what you can, accept what you cant. Darn it, I cant remember it. Have a great weekend!

9 years

Well today is my husbands and mine 9 year wedding anniversary! Its amazing to me. We have definatly been through some tough times. There were times that I thought we wernt going to make it but our love always pulled through. Marriage is very important to me. Neither of my parents are still married to each other. I want to stay true to my vows always and forever.
I really do love my husband and I know he loves me. Since its the middle of the week we wont really celebrate today, but Saturday my mom is going to babysit and we are ging to Red Lobster. I am very excited. We dont get much alone time together. I will let you know how it goes.

Menu Plan 10-19

Here goes for this week. I'm trying a couple of new dishes:)

*spaghetti with garlic bread

*cumin chicken W/ apples, rice, green beans

*pizza casserole

*stir fry w/ rice

*bisquts & gravy

*Red Lobster for hubby and mys anniversary---I'm so excited!

This weeks weigh in

Good news! The new scale is working beautifully, its consistant so I know its working..
Drum roll please......................................lost 2.2 lbs.... Yay! I'm happy with that :)

An unexpected compliment:) and Emmas dr. appt.

My husband said something really nice to me tonight, and gave me a compliment without him even realizing he did it i think.

A lot of the people reading this I think know who flylady is. Well a couple of years ago I signed up for her emails and got her book. I loved it and learned a ton...Then we got rid of our Internet so i didn't receive the emails anymore, I still kinda followed the same schedule but just fit it to suit me. Anyways, fast forward to now, last week I re signed up for the emails just to give me some encouragement and such. Well today hubby was on the computer and started looking at the emails, those of you that know my husband know how grumpy and such that he can be and how few the compliments come around here., .. he said..."whats all these flylady emails", to which i cheerfully replied, that I signed up again to get her emails....then he said ,"Well that's dumb, you don't need her, you do a good job keeping up with things without it"
Now to my ears, that was wonderful to hear, because that means he is happy with the way I am keeping house and he really does know and see what I do. I had to smile, it made me very happy!

Emmas doctors appt. went okay, she weighs 26 pounds and is 30 1/2 inches long...so of course she was off the top of the chart on both of those, she only actually gained 3 pounds since her last visit. She grew like 4 1\2 inches i think,, everything checked out good accept he is worried about her cold. He gave her some medicine and I have to do breathing treatments on her 3 times a day:( It is awful because she hates it and doesn't understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing it and she screams and fights the whole time... in the meantime I feel like awful because she thinks I'm just being mean...I hate it! Unfortunately it looks like she is going to be like Gary when it comes to getting colds. Its only the 2nd time shes really been sick but both times she has had to have breathing treatments...poor thing.. Its ok though, it could be worse, I hate when my kids are sick.. I just love them so much....

Do you know what this is????

I have been a busy girl today! Do ya know what this is????? Apple butter! Yay..first ever made. I put everything in the crock pot last night and then canned it this morning. Then I went on to the juice that I got from the apple peels and TRIED to make apple jelly... stress the word tried...I'm very sad. I don't think its going to turn out. The first time I did it this morning it was so runny. and I read that you could try again with another package of pectin, so I tried and guess what it is still looking pretty runny:( It is pretty in the jars but when you pick up the jar its just like water... I know what happened, I was stupid. I was working away at everything this morning and I had my juice and pectin working on the stove waiting for it to boil, I looked at my water bath canner and was worried I wouldn't have enough water so I went and filled up a container with water to add to the canner...well my brain had a lapse or something and I poured the water into the apple juice~~~~~VERY BAD!!!!~~~~I knew immediately what I had done,,, so you know what I did,,,I didnt know what to do so I just scooped out some of the liquid from the apple pot,,,now I know that there was pectin in it and I don't know exactly how much I poured in or how much I scooped out....I was freaking out here guys...I panicked! So I just thought well maybe it will still turn out and kept on going,,,,and as I already said it didn't work....then I saw you can try again if it doesn't set so I tried again, but I'm thinking its not gonna work either....So while it looks beautiful in the jar, I'm not sure if I could do anything with it. Here is the apple jelly one the left and the apple butter on the right... The apple butter is very yummy by the way, it turned out great.

So here is the question I post to anyone who might know... can I do anything with the not turned out right apple jelly? Is it okay if I use it as like apple syrup or something? Any help would be appreciated. thanks,,,,,,,,,,,,,

In about an hour I get to take Emma to the doctor for her 9 month checkup.. I will let you know how it goes, she has a little cold right now, so I'm glad he can check that while we are there too.

-leftover meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans

-taco night

-something with cabbage, heads were on sale so I bought one, any suggestions on a good recipe?

-lasagna, garlic bread

-homemade pizza

-broccoli soup (never got around to making this last week)

Apple and pumpkin picking

Sunday Gary was feeling better so we decided to go to the apple and pumpkin place. Emma seemed cranky but it was such a beautiful weekend and we know that there arnt gonna be many more weekends like this before the snow comes! We had never been to this place before. I was very impressed. It was so much fun. You go and get your buckets then its off to the apple orchid.
This is what I call team work. Most of the apples on the bottoms of the trees had already been picked, so we had to reach up high.
We picked around a bushel of apples, probably a little more. It cost us $33.00, but it was so worth it because we know where what we are eating came from.

Her is Emma amongst a bunch of pumpkins, it was a little set up they had to take pic's but she wasn't very happy. She was hot and cranky. But I think this picture is so cute!

We all got in a hay filled wagon then and rode to the pumpkin patch. We let the kids pick there pumpkins, Emma even picked a little one.


It was a great day. When we got home I was so excited and made my first batch of applesauce! It is so yummy! I didn't even have to add sugar. So I'm really excited cause I can give Emma this also! It is so much tastier than anything in the store!

I still have about 1/2 a bushel left. I'm trying to decide what to do with them......maybe apple butter...or more applesauce,,,,I don't know yet.

Update on my sicky boy,

Well I thought my little man was feeling better yesterday, so we loaded everyone up to go to Walmart. We got there and got out of the van. Started walking through the parking lot towards the door and he started throwing up everywhere! Lovely.....Thank goodness we wernt in the store yet. So we loaded everyone up back into the van and went back home,,,major bummer!!! Emma was not happy, she didn't want to go back in her car seat so she screamed! Today he seems better but I'm not gonna chance it. We will just stay home and hopefully get some outside chores done that we have been putting off. I really hope he is better because we were supposed to go pick apples this weekend, maybe it will work out tomorrow.

New weigh in...

Okay. I got my new scale last night. It seems pretty accurate, but I was very disappointed. The number difference in the new scale and the old scale was like around 10 lbs., higher than my old one, so it makes it look as if I haven't lost anything..:( so I say ....whatever, I am starting over as of today. I am going to go with this scales numbers, (I threw my old one away this morning). Today is like day 1, I am going to do this darn it!!!! The thing is I am not going to get all obsessive about it, I am just trying to be more healthy, and I know from past experience that the weight will come off, hopefully sooner than later though!

Weigh in postponed

Just wanted to jump on here real fast and say that i will be posting my weigh in tomorrow, We are going to Walmart tonight so I will pick up a new scale while I am there, I just don't feel I can trust mine anymore.... but don't expect much as in a loss ,, I just feel fat so I am not expecting much. Tune in tomorrow

Sicky

My son is sick. He has a really bad cough. Poor thing, every since he was a baby, whenever he gets a cold it instantly goes to his chest and is awful. One time he had to stay overnight in the hospital with pneumonia. Finally after a couple years the doctor sent us home with a nebulizer(breathing treatment machine), because that is the only thing that would help break up his cough. Every time he would get a cold we would end up having to take him to the doctor because it would get so bad, but after we got that machine, whenever he starts sounding bad I use the nebulizer on him a couple times and he gets better. So hopefully he will start getting better, he is staying home from school today, supposed to be resting, but its hard to keep him laying down, he wants to be playing. Right now he is in his bedroom sooo excited because he just found my c.d. that has the song "black betty" on it and that for some reason is his favorite song in the whole wide world. So he is rocking out to it right now. He is so funny. Anyways hopefully his cough gets better so we can go apple picking this weekend. I want to make some home made applesauce and maybe some apple butter, and I found a u-pick place that Bennie said we could go to this weekend. I need to call today and find out how much they charge. Right now in the stores apples are running around a little under a dollar for a pound so I wanna make sure its a better deal than that.

Big loaf of bread

Check out my big humongous loaf of bread that I made. I used Tereza's basic bread machine recipe.I put all the ingredients into the bread machine and let the dough cycle run. Then I took it out and free formed it into this loaf. It got even bigger when I baked it. I normally take it and divide the dough into two loaf pans but I wanted to try something different this time. It turned out wonderful! Here is one of my babysitting kids enjoying a piece with my homemade jelly!

The Zoo

We had a great weekend. It went by way to fast for me,but it was wonderful. I just love doing things that make my kids happy. Its not very often that we do special things like going to the zoo, so when we do , I think the kid appreciate them more. I took lots of pictures while we were there. Here are a few.. this one is of Emma sitting in the kangaroo's pouch, she was kinda scared when I sat her in there. This is a peacock, that was sitting right beside of us on the rail as we were waiting for the zoo train. I couldn't believe it was so close.
And here are the kids on the train.
The goat that they let you feed and pet. We didn't get to feed them because it was the end of the day and they have to regulate how much the little goats eat, but there were brushes there that the kids used to brush them. Daddy enjoyed the baby goats too:)
This was a little set up they had for fall out at the front gates of the zoo. We tried so hard to get Emma to look at the camera but with all the people she was to busy looking around.
Jess and Emma in the big dinosaur egg,

and Gary in his:)
We took Emma on the carousal for the first time. She liked it until it started moving, it went up and down, so she was a little scared but it was fun.
Oh, this was real cool, Bennie was holding Emma letting her look through the fence at the wallabies and one just hopped right up to her and stood there for the longest time. Then she burped and it scared the little guy away:)
And here is Gary in the kangaroos pouch.
It really was a lot of fun. I had never been there in the fall. They had the whole place decorated up with pumpkins and corn husks. It was beautiful. After the zoo we went out to eat, then to toys r us and Sam's club. the kids behaved very well and everyone had a great time! I couldn't have asked for a better day.

Menu plan 10-6

Last weeks menu plan went along great! Here is the plan for this week:
*spaghetti
*ham steak, rice, green beans
*corn chowder-this is a new recipe I will be trying from fix it and forget it lightly cookbook
* pizza with bread sticks
*meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn
*cream of broccoli soup
I will make homemade bread and treats to go along with all of this. Have a great week!

Weigh in :)

Well I'm happy to report that I think I've lost 5 pounds in the last two weeks. As you know from last week, my scale wasn't working quiet right. Its still not working great but this is the number that I get the most and I'm pretty sure its right, so I'm happy! Hopefully I will get a new scale tomorrow. So so far:



total loss-9 pounds

lbs. to go-41

Question

I've got a question for anyone that has had or has little ones. My daughter is almost 9 months old and I am still using the baby laundry detergent for her clothes. I've been thinking of switching over to the regular laundry detergent that I use for the rest of the family(which is tide). But I cant remember for the life of me how old my other two were when I started washing their clothes with regular soap. So how old were your kiddos when you made the switch. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Oh, I just thought of one more question,,, has anyone out there ever used the Members mark(sams club) baby wipes, we are going there this weekend and I thought about buying them but I hate to buy such a big box and then end up not likeing them. IF you have used them what would you compare them to? I dont want anything thats going to be rough on my little ones touche:) thanks again,,,,,