Britany's Blog

Out of the clear blue, during lunch today, the following conversation ensued:

M: “Mommy, are you sure there’s not a baby in  your tummy?”

Me: [Wondering if this is some kind of modern-day prophecy] “I sure hope not.  Why do you ask?”

M: “I was hoping for a girl baby.”

Me: “Why do you want a girl baby?”

M: “Because girls are kind.  And besides, I want to name her Kalee.”

Me: “Is there someone in your class named Kalee?”

M: “Uh-huh, and she’s my friend.”

[Since I had no idea how to spell Kalee, I just looked up the name in Wikipedia.  Here's what I learned, and now the whole conversation totally makes sense: "Kalee was the home planet to the Kaleesh, including cyborg General Grievous, a warlord who hailed from this planet."  In case you don't know who General Grievous is/was, he's a Star Wars character.]

A few minutes after that exchange…:

M: “When I’m an inventor someday, I’m going to make a gun that you can shoot at bad guys to make them good guys.”

Me: “Really?”

M: “Yes, only when you shoot it at good guys, it will make them into bad guys, so you hafta be really careful.”

Ah the ramblings of a 5 year old.  I’m sure going to miss that come September.

Do you remember how the TV show “Seinfeld” was a show about nothing?  Well, this is a blog post about nothing.  I just wrote a note and pasted it on my Facebook page called “25 Random Things” and so, since my mind continues to come up with more and more random things (I could hardly think of 25 at the time, but now I’ve got a million!), here is the continuation of my list.  Only this time, I’m going to call it “25 Random Things I Wish I Had Put In My 25 Random Things List”.  Catchy!

1. Today is an ice day.  Church activities for the evening have been cancelled.  And Brad is even working from home.  So it’s a three-fer.

2. I think Samuel may actually be sleeping today during naptime.  Hence, this lengthy blog post.

3. I’m freezing, and the temp is set to 70 degrees in here.

4. I’m almost up to 150 members of my mob in Mob Wars (Facebook game).  Brad’s mom MOB is almost maxed out at 500.

5. We’re having the Riley’s over for dinner next weekend.  I can’t remember how long it’s been since we saw them, but they’ve never met any of our kids.

6. I have some new pics to post, but there are a few that I can’t put up here.  Like the one I took this morning of Samuel on the potty with his underwear on his head.  Nice.

7. Matthew and Peter have started showering instead of bathing at night.  That’s another picture I can’t post – Matthew dancing around in the shower like a total goon.

8. Peter has a front tooth beginning to appear (finally).  He will be so glad not to be toothless anymore!

9. I took all 3 boys to get haircuts in the freezing rain yesterday.

10. Matthew LOVES preschool.  And so far, the report on his behavior has been nothing but glowing.

11. My favorite thing about Matthew’s new preschool is the way they teach the fruits of the Spirit.  Yesterday was a peach.  He never remembers the actual thing they associated with the fruit, but he can usually tell me what kind of fruit it was.

12. M’s preschool is at an Episcopal church and the priest is Father something or other (I can never remember).  When I asked Matthew his name yesterday, he said “Father Abraham!”.  I said, “Is that really his name?” and Matthew said “Well, I don’t know, but we sang a song about Father Abraham today.”

13. The heater has finally kicked on and it feels soooooo good.

14. There is a rodent living in our attic and every morning, at 5:30am like clockwork, it begins digging around just above my head.  And the pest control person can’t come until Monday.

15. I didn’t make the bed today and it’s driving me crazy.

16. I have a list of things I wanted to accomplish today but I haven’t done any of them yet.  All I did was make Russian pancakes for breakfast and Aztec Quiche.  There’s a joke in there somewhere.

17.

Samuel and I are loving our Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was the horse outside of "Wal-Mark".

18.

Playplace at the mall...

19.

Lunch at the mall

20.

Perfect attendance!

21.

The guest of honor couldn't stay awake.

22.

The place we stayed in College Station.

23.

Dad and Trey at his baptism. Brother Chris said he would pay for a pair of shoes just like Trey's if Will would wear them. Will said he would not only wear them, he would stand up in front of the church and pray in them.

24.

Grandparents with all current Grandchildren.

25.

Current couch configuration. Until we can carry the one in back upstairs, I'm considering it "bonus seating".

Happy Ice Day, all!

This morning, as I was getting Peter ready for school, Samuel was quizzing me about why he can’t sit in the front passenger seat of the car.

Let me backtrack for a moment…Last week, I had a conversation with Samuel and Matthew while waiting to pick Peter up from school, during which I explained attempted to explain air bags.  Somehow, it resurfaced this morning.

As I was barely awake and in no mood to discuss the details of air bags, I tried to give Samuel the “short version” of what an air bag is and how it works and why he cannot sit next to me in the car.  It went something like this “If you were sitting in the front seat and we had an accident, the air bag would come out and it could hurt you.”

Samuel looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, then said “If I had an accident and I was sitting next to you, the air is going to come out and clean it up all by itself?”

Yeah.

Next time I need to remember how a 3 year old brain works.

I don’t have much time so I’m just going to post some pics of the recent Father-Son camp-out.  Wish me luck.

I have a confession to make.  When they got home that Sunday, I was in the thick of my cooking and I didn’t retain much of what they told me happened on the camp-out.  After looking at the pictures just now, I can see I need to go back and let them tell me all about it.  And this time, I should really try to pay attention!

My house may look like this…

January 12 and yes, that's my tree in the background.

The stockings remain hung by the chimney...well into 2009.

...and the laundry. Oh my word, the laundry...

BUT, my freezer looks like this:

Here's what 29 frozen recipes looks like

Enough said!

Well, as of about 7pm tonight, I was finally done with all the chopping and preparing tasks so I could begin my Once-A-Month-Cooking.

For those keeping count, that means that I started all of this on Thursday (with a trip to Sam’s) and it has taken me until tonight-Saturday-JUST TO GET READY TO START COOKING.  Seriously, when I think of Once-A-Month-Cooking, I don’t normally assume it takes THE ENTIRE MONTH to get the 30 meals made.  At this rate, I might as well – I don’t know – COOK!  Every night!  Like a sane person!

Instead, here is photographic evidence that I have, indeed, gone crazy.

Now that everything's ready, time for bed.

The highlight of the trip for me was when two women passed Samuel and said “I hope you have a lot of money!”  He never even blinked but shouted back at them “Yeah, I do” and just kept on going.

It’s a good thing one of us knew what he was doing.

1. Brad and Peter are camping.  So it’s just me and the tantrum twins.  No, they are not twins but they sound exactly the same when they whine at me.

2. I thought since I would be here alone with two whiny preschoolers, this would be a perfect time to cook 30 meals in one day.  Please slap me next time you see me.  Thank you.

3. I have been up with at least one child every night this week, except for one night when Brad took whiny preschooler duty and was up with two of them in the same night.  Ha.

4. It’s 10pm and I am cooking 7 pounds of chicken on the stove.  What was I thinking???

5. Next time some one goes camping around here, it’s going to be me and I won’t be spending the weekend at any campgrounds.  Or with any children.  I will be at a spa somewhere, recuperating from this weekend.  But at least my family will be well fed.

So you know what’s really important when you’re cooking?  Measuring ingredients, or so it would seem.

To qualify, I did measure – I just measured wrong.  I put 1 3/4 cups of water in my taco meat instead of 3/4 cups.  Now that my meat is well, shall we say, A SOUP, I was thinking a whole lot of boiling might be in order.  So since I have time to kill, I decided to update my blog.

Hmmm…what else would you like to hear about?  OH YEAH, today was Matthew’s first day of Preschool!  I actually started uploading photos of him onto my computer – approximately 3 hours ago.  But when my Memory Manager program told me that I needed to back up my pictures, I stupidly agreed.

Can I just interrupt myself here to say that we are only 8 days into 2009 – only four days past our great 2 week vacation – and I already need another 2 week vacation???  Can I get a witness?

Where was I?  Oh yeah, preschool.  So the short story is that we decided to put Matthew in a 2 day a week preschool and he loves it.  The long story would take too much time and energy to write.  And I think it might be wise to go check on my taco soup.  Hmmm…taco soup.  Maybe I should just go with the flow and add some beans and um, whatever else one would put in taco soup.

Maybe not the best idea, trying to cover my mistake with more mistakes.  I did that the other night when I decided that I was once again going to attempt to make spaghetti sauce from a can of chopped tomatoes.  Am I the only one who this problem?  I add a little garlic powder, then some italian seasonings, then a little salt, some sugar.  Then I taste it, gag, and begin pouring more seasonings in until the color changes from red to reddish brown and it tastes so bad even Brad agrees we need to pour it down the drain.  I mean, seriously!  Why doesn’t that work???

I’m tired, and so I’m going to end this blog entry before I start to complain.  I know, too late.

I promised Bethany I would start posting some recipes from our heart-healthy list.  I think this may be it, but I’ll keep looking.

3/4 cup egg substitute (equal to 3 eggs)

1/4 tsp. salt (optional)

1 cup low fat cottage cheese

1/4 cup skim milk

1 cup unbleached flour

2 Tbl. sugar or 2 to 3 pkts. of Equal sweetener

Combine first four ingredients in a blender.  Blend until smooth.  Add flour and sugar and blend again.  Spray a griddle with non-stick coating.  Cook pancakes until golden on both sides.

Yield: 12 4-inch pancakes (6 servings)

One serving: 2 pancakes

Calories per serving: 120 with Equal, 135 with sugar

Serve with Fruit Sauce:

1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries or sliced strawberries or one 12 oz. package frozen raspberries or strawberries

2 packets Equal sweetener or 4 tsp. sugar

1 Tbl. lemon juice

Fresh fruit: Place 1/2 cup of fruit in blender with sweetener and lemon juice.  Blend until smooth.  Add remaining fruit and stir into mixture.

Frozen fruit: Thaw fruit.  Place half of the fruit in blender with sweetener and lemon juice.  Blend until smooth.  Drain remaining fruit and stir into mixture.

*Both recipes from Quick & Healthy Recipes and Ideas by Brenda J. Ponichtera

Please post any of your favorite recipes, especially heart-healthy vegetable recipes, for us to try!  In 2009, we’re all going to try to eat better.