"The Way You Make Me Feel"...

All STRESSED out!!!!!!

There you have it (above) me paying my respects for The King of Pop. Even though my king of pop is Coca-Cola. As you can tell Thriller and Beat It were a little before my time. Yes, he has been around forever and it is a shocker that he's not on this earth with us anymore, but frankly I thought he had serious issues.

Now, back to why I am all stressed out. Just take a look...

Need I say more!

This has been going on since Wednesday. Let's see...

Leighton

• Up Wednesday night 3 times (I think, I lost count)
• Had a croupy cough & croupy breathing
• No fever until Friday
• Went to the doctor with B Thursday & got some steroids
• Puked all over herself while laying on the couch Friday evening
• Woke up Saturday with a little fever & NO croup

Hayley

• Low grade fever Wednesday
• Up Thursday night 4 times (I think, I lost count)
• Went to doctor with B Thursday arriving with a temp. of 104.
• Drank 1/2 gallon of Tylenol at doctor's office
• Friday still low grade fever
• Woke up Saturday feeling GREAT & ready to play (@7:30 am !!!)

I just want to add that it is pretty predictable what the house is going to look like when I get home from work after B has kept both kids while they are both ill! Boy did he surprise me Thursday! The dishes were washed! The floor was mopped! The toys were put away! All sixteen pairs of shoes were lined up by the side door! And (the best for last) the kids were sleeping!

Is this guy awesome or what!?!?!

Also he practically met me at the door and informed me that he was going to W/D to get some food.

"For dinner?"

"No."

"Oh, for your lunches?"

"No."

(light bulb came on) "You're just going to walk around to get out of the house and away from the kids for a while."

He smiled and shut the door.

The End

Menu Plan Monday

Here's another trick that I use. A lot of times I will plan out my menu while I'm at work. And what would happen is, I would sit there and not be able to think of anything to cook. So one afternoon at home I sat down and wrote out a list of every entree', side dish, and bread that I knew how to make and that I knew my family liked. The problem that I would come across is that my food lists would be at home and I am writing my menu at work. So one day I brought my food lists to work with me and typed them in my email. So, now I have my food lists with me wherever life may lead.



Sounds a bit crazy I'm sure! But the goal is to keep life movin' and you gotta do crazy things sometimes!

Here's my menu for the week:

Monday
Goolash
Steamed Broccoli
Fruit Salad (the kind with the marshmallows)
Croissant Rolls

Tuesday
Salmon Patties
Grits
Baked Beans

Wednesday
Beef Stew
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/easy-beef-stew-54045.aspx
Rice
Biscuits

Thursday
Homemade Beef a Roni
-Ground beef, strain, add 2 cans of tomato sauce, 1 can of water, 1 box uncooked macaroni noodles, simmer for 15 min. top with mozzarella cheese!
Sweet Peas
Pear Salad

Friday
Chicken Spaghetti Bake (recipe from Tara Libby)
Garlic Bread

Wordless Wednesday

Menu Plan Monday

I am going to try to do this every Monday. I thought about posting a menu on Saturdays or Sundays. We will see how it goes, because a lot of times I plan out my meals Monday or Tuesday so I can go to the grocery store Wednesday while the kiddos are with my in-laws. I also plan out my menu for two weeks that way I only go the grocery store once every two weeks. I usually have to stop in for diapers and milk but it's a lot quicker! So, I might only do Menu Plan Monday every two weeks, can you tell I haven't put too much thought into this. Also, I do not know how to link a site to my recipes so for now, a hint is I get a lot of good stuff from kraftfoods.com. I'll be working on that for next time though.

Monday- Chicken Fajita Salad
http://thematzats.blogspot.com/2008/05/chicken-fajita-salad.html

Tuesday- Braised Tomato Spareribs
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/braised-tomato-spareribs-104762.aspx
Okra and Tomatoes
Rice
Mac and Cheese

Wednesday-Crock Pot Lasagna
http://mimismakingmeals.blogspot.com/2008/11/crock-pot-lasagna.html
Green Beans
Breadsticks

Thursday-Beef Strognaff
Squash
Steamed Broccoli
Crossiant Rolls

Friday-BBQ Glazed Chicken
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/so-easy-bbq-glazed-chicken-92086.aspx
Black Eyed Peas
Cream Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/cream-cheese-stuffed-tomatoes-57001.aspx
Italian Bread

Saturday-Blackened Chicken Pizza
http://thebigmamablog.com/category/im-cooking/

Sunday-Scalloped Potatoes and Ham
http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/new-look-scalloped-potatoes-ham-69207.aspx
Fruit Salad
Garlic Cheese Buscuits

Here a Bonus if you like sweet stuff for Breakfast, B is more of an Eggs and Bacon breakfast person, take your left over buscuits (plain not the Garlic Cheese Buscuits) icing (plain old cake or cookie icing) and some of your favorite jelly (I use strawberry). Stack it all up buscuit, icing and jelly ontop ummmm so good! Be sure to have a big tall glass of milk too. I do that on Sunday morning then send the kiddies to the nusery at church! All wired up on icing at 9:30 in the morning!!!

Love

Have you ever heard a really good song about love? I know that sounds SUPER cheesy! But as most girls do when they hear a good love song on the radio they go "Oh I want that to be sung in my wedding!" I have a song that if I could turn back the hands of time this song would have been sung. Love Is Not A Fight-Warren Barfield. This song has really spoke to me recently.


Ok, even though I am already married (Yes, sorry guys I'm taken. And this is funny because the only guy that reads this is my husband!) I can only hope that this song is still around for my daughters weddings. (Aww my stomach just got all flip floppy thinking about them getting married!) Assuming that I am not going to live vicariously through them, wink wink! And hoping they don't get married at the same time ooooorrrr I'm gonna have to sell a kidney!

This song has so much truth to it. Here are some of the lyrics plus my interpretation:

Love is not a place
To come and go as we please (don't leave every time things get bad)
It’s a house we enter in
And then commit to never leave (marriage is forever)
Lock the door behind you
Throw away the key
We’ll work it out together
Let it bring us to our knees (pray about it together)
Love is a shelter in the raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
If we try to leave,
May God send His angels to guard the door (pray for God to protect your marriage)
No, love is not a fight but it’s something worth fighting for

(You can listen to the song-just crank up the volume)

Fun In The...Well, Overcast?

This was about all the kids really played I guess the adults were enough entertainment!

See the expression on our faces. Like we are bracing for the impact!

I really don't know why I had one eye closed in every picture.

I'm pretty sure it was this move here that had us ALL hurting for the next 5 days!

This was sooo much fun! If you are ever bored on the weekend and just don't feel like driving to the nearest water park you've got to try this! If you can find $12 for the tarpe and some friends that are just as CRAZY as you, I promise you'll have a BLAST!!!!!

Thank you to Matt and Hollie for hosting!

And thank you Hollie for providing the pictures

It Tasted Like An Old Boot

This Sunday School's lesson was about unselfish love. If there were a word that means the opposite of love, it is selfishness. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.

Here is a thought that I learned (and I can't remember where I read this), if I were to complain that B is being selfish by spending time at the gym rather than helping me with the kids at home, I am being selfish for thinking that way. Does that make sense?

The assignment this week was to pick one way that you can demonstrate unselfish love to your spouse.

When I started thinking about what I could do for B a certain list popped into my mind.

This list came from FamilyLife.com (it's GOOD you should check it out) Simply Romantic Tips for Him/Her.

You know until I came across this list just a few months ago I don't think I ever understood what romance was. I now know that it's not a scene from a movie or a candle light bedroom. The best way to get this across is for me to just list some of things from this list. There are 87 of them so I'll just pick a few. But seriously check out FamilyLife.com.

• Holding hands
• Find a book that he/she is reading a leave a note in it every 20 pages or so
• On those chilly mornings go out and warm up his/her car

After church we came home to eat lunch. I had put a roast in the crock pot at 8:00am for 4 hours with carrots and potatoes. When we came home and I started to cut the meat it wouldn't even cut it was sooo tough. The veggies didn't even taste cooked, I had no milk for the kraft mac and cheese and apparently you can't store buscuits in a ziplock bag. Maybe next week we'll just go out to eat!

In The Beginning...

Sunday, while we were in the car to Dylan's 2nd birthday party, by the way Happy Birthday Dylan, B and I were going over the discussions in our Sunday School classes.

Let me fill some people in. Our Sunday school class has teamed up with other Sunday school classes and then we have separated, dividing men and women. There were about 15 women in class Sunday and I would speculate there were about the same number of men. The class is about marriage and discussing what the Bible says about a lot of the things young married couples face.

Back to driving in the car. B and I were asking each other how the other one's class went. I told him I thought it went really well. I didn't tell B this but sometimes in a larger group discussion like that I will have some input on a topic and then my heart starts POUNDING, my feet and hands start SWEATING, (yes I said feet), and my metabolism kicks in (yes I said that too). I know it's just the devil attacking me and I get these flash backs of my Speech class in college.

But there is usually someone who has the similar thought and shares it for me. I just want to send out big THANK YOU to Becky. She piped in for me last Sunday morning. The question was how do put your husband before your children? What I wanted to say was something that I learned when I was pregnant with Hayley. Let me rephrase that, while I was big as a house about to pop pregnant with Hayley.

It went like this: "In a sense, your children merely pass through your home." What was meant by that was they only live in your home for a time while they are growing up. "When the children have grown up and moved out a lot of times the husband and wife are estranged from each other because for all these years it has all been about the children." That is why it is soooo important to make time for just each other!

That's some GOOOOD stuff right there!

Whew, kept it comin' I hope the next 5 weeks are jammed packed with that kinda info!

Now if you thought that was good listen to what B had to say.

They talked about Adam and Eve. As we all know Eve ate the apple first then tricked Adam into eating as well. B said," and as ALL men do, Adam turned and pointed the finger to God. Adam said, 'Well this is the woman that You gave to me.'"

But B (and later I learned too) said but it's the man who's in charge. So Adam should have taken responsibility in that situation.

I have never looked at it quite that way.

And down the way Hayley and Leighton must have been busy learning new stuff too like how to say there prayers, other than just the daily "kankyou Jesus for this food. Amen."

Because now Hayley shows off her skills at the dinner table.

(watch the last line)

"God is good

God is great

Let us thank Him for our food

By his hands

We are feed

Thank you Lord

For Hayley's breath"

No joke the first time B and I heard this come out of her mouth it was all we had to keep it together at the dinner table.

She is definitely mine, she's got the mind set that the world revolves around her!