a rare peaceful moment

The fancy dinner i made

I roasted a whole chicken. It's not the first time, but it is the first time I've ever cooked with my fresh rosemary and thyme i have growing. It's also the first time I've ever made anything with fresh dill. Also, the first time i've ever made barley. So I decided to take pictures of this blessed event.

The barley salad dish was pretty good. I kept cooking the barley because I thought it was supposed to get soft like rice. I guess it doesn't. But I did like the texture of it.

Now, what to do with the rest of my dill???

I was taking the stems out of the mushrooms before sauteing them for the barley salad. This particular one took more time :)

my favorite toy

i just love this toy. Every time I pull the string i get giddy. It makes me giggle pretty hard for some reason.

a long haul

The kids and I are finally home getting back into routine. It was such a long road trip. We were gone for only 10 days but it felt like a month. I really appreciate Adam when I don't have him! We visited friends in Oregon for a couple of days and Fisher just loved Kaiya and Coren. He got to play pretty hard. I think his favorite place was behind their house in the dirt hillside. I kept finding his shoes out there because he would take them off when they got "durdy" and proceed to play barefoot. We left Chris and Jade's and headed further north to my mom's. We saw my sister, Jade's new baby, Summer who is so stinken perfect. She was born a whopping 11 lbs! Actually, she was almost 12 lbs. We also saw my aunt suzie, and cousins Hayden, Elise and Evon and Evon's son Preston. I haven't seen them in years so it was really good to spend time with them. We had a birthday picnic at a really cool park for my Grandma's 80th! So there was a lot going on. Although the road trip was looooong and tough to do by myself, the kids did pretty good. There was some whining and some mishaps (fisher hit his head pretty good on concrete while we were taking a break) but all in all it was okay. But every time I do one of these trips alone I say "I'm never doing this again!" Now Adam wants to go to Idaho in less than a week! At first I was like, "no way!" The thought of all that packing again and hours and hours in the car again are not at all appealing. But I think it's important to go see family, so why not? Adam will do all the driving at night while the kids hopefully sleep! I will not be able to sleep and will certainly be pretty grumpy because of this! Adam will have his mountain dew and sunflower seeds and go all night. It's a scene that has been played many times.

Fisher was pretty good at the drums (see the videos at end)

Our friends have a giant saint Bernard that the kids just loved

A friend brought over some puppies. It almost made us want to get one...almost.

Fisher's first time on a merry-go-round with friend, Coren.

Some of my family. I haven't seen them in forever. It was my grandma's 80th birthday celebration. My sister couldn't be there because she just had a HUGE baby.

My cousin Hayden with Finley. They both have amazing blue eyes. The last time I saw Hayden he was not as tall and had a squeaky voice.

My grandma and grandpa (my mom's parents)

My new neice. Isn't she so adorable?

My sister and her family

This is my nephew's spiderman move.

My neice. Newborn, but looks like a 2 month old!

Trying to figure out a transformer.

The flowers Adam brought home for me when we finally returned home :)

We have had a wonderful week. Fisher has played with so many friends: our neighbors, Titus, Max, Jack and Allie, Silas, am I forgetting someone? Each day, another friend. Also, Fisher went to BounzaPalooza, a place full of bounce house things. It cost's 5 bucks for a half hour. It was worth it. He needed to get some energy out. We also stopped by and visited our old neighbor, Bev. I don't know if Fisher remembered her, but he sure remembered the toy she used to always let him play with.

Fisher helping me skim the fat off the chicken broth.

I boiled the chicken broth down so it's very concentrated. I read about that somewhere and thought I'd try it. I tasted this broth because it just smelled so good. It tasted amazing. I think because it was so concentrated! This is great because it takes up less room in my very crowded freezer. I don't know what I'm going to do with all the pizza and ham n cheese pockets I made tonight.

Our magnolia tree out front is blooming for the 2nd time this summer. It's so pretty.

This is my front porch right now. I know, the red crate just adds so much. I don't know how that ended up there actually. I think Adam was sitting on it one night and there it stayed. This chair Rachel gave me a long time ago. The arm needs to be fixed and I want to refinish it but that is just one more "to do".

Finley is pulling himself up now. I do not remember Fisher doing this at 8 months. I don't think Fisher crawled until 9 months. Well, Finley has got me on the run now. Poor kid has hit his head numerous times. It's lumpy enough without all those blows to add to it.

Here's Fisher going down the giant slide at Bounza palooza.

Try as he might, Fisher could not climb up this.

He loved this dinosaur ride. For a quarter this dino went for quite a while.

Guess What?

Guess what?........Chicken butt!!! Haaahaaa
(It's really just the tail, but still...gross)

I've been working on having a heart of praise even when I'm tired at the end of the day still doing laundry. I want to do my daily tasks with a good attitude but it can get hard to keep your chin up with seemingly unending cleaning and picking up and seemingly nothing to show for it. I have to come to grips with the fact that my house isn't a house on Better Homes magazine cover. I've tried. First of all I just can't seem to buy the right things. I'm returning about 99 % of what I bought to redecorate. Second, I'm too busy running after my kids to get any of this redecorating done. I've done zero since my blog about picture frames! I had a great surprise today. My neighbor two houses down came over to have a play date. I had gone to her house to introduce myself because her son had stopped me on my way out to ask about my kids. I guess he hasn't stopped talking about the people in the green house (us). So we had a good time. It was just fun to have something unexpected brighten the day. As far as my home ec. duties I got some stuff done today...I'm still deciding if this pre-plan cook till you drop week is going to be worth it. I guess I'll know at the end of the month.

Finley is trying to get in the "boat" as Fisher calls it.

Fisher is enjoying his apricot breakfast bar. They were a little crumbly but quite tasty for a whole wheat, no sugar breakfast.

My homemade bread gets dry and crumbly after it's short shelf life so I ground it in the processor. Tomorrow, when I make lasagna, I'll throw this in the oven for a few minutes to make bread crumbs. Now I don't have to buy them!

This is what is left of my chicken I cooked today. I separated it and got a bunch of shredded chicken. I also cooked my pinto and black beans that I soaked last night. My house got pretty steamy. I had to open all the windows and doors.

I wish you could smell my chicken stock. I think this is the best I have made yet. I think it was all those delicious vegetables I threw in. First I used a colander to strain out the big chunks. Then, I put a clean cloth down in the colander to fine strain it. It's in the fridge tonight so the fat will rise for me to skim it. I read somewhere that you can cook your stock longer to get all the water out to make a more condensed stock. Less space in the freezer may be a good thing. I may try it.

Today was also my laundry day. Although I didn't get all of it done, I did make a dent! Fisher's car seat cover is now in the wash. He had a few accidents in it, but I couldn't wash it cuz I needed to use it! Sick, I know. But sadly true.

All in a days work

Surprise, surprise I had nachos for lunch today. Have I mentioned that I LOVE nachos. I just made a little mini plate for myself. I really needed a break. I am so very tired tonight. It's after 10 and I just sat down to do my blog before I hit the pillow. I'm finding that I really like blogging about my day. When I look at the house and think "what did I do today?" I've got it documented. It somehow makes me feel more accomplished. So, here is what I did today:

First of all, those carrots I cooked and blended filled up the door of my freezer. I put all the icecube carrots in freezer bags.

Remember all those bell peppers I got on sale, well I spent all day chopping them. Some are chopped little, some are chopped big for things like shishkabobs. I don't know if I spelled that right. Some are just sliced and I placed them in freezer bags with sliced onions. These I will use for a couple quick fajita nights. I froze them on cookie sheets first before I portioned them into freezer bags. And some I didn't freeze because I chopped them even finer in the processor with onion and put them in a couple of meatloaves which come a little later.

Here are some MORE carrots from my 10 lb bag that i shredded and froze for whatever my heart desires.

Here is the mix of peppers, carrots and onion for my meatloaves.

My handy mixer mixing my meatloaves.

One of my meatloaves. It's now in a freezer bag.

the kids playing in the sun room while I chop my life away.

I had to take a break and play too.

Fisher's feet finally BARELY reach the pedals. He's got it figured out but has yet to master it.

I made some homemade ranch mix.

My beans are soaking overnight. These are black and pinto.

Here is my freezer as of today. It's getting full. I still have 2 meals I plan to fit in there!

This is all my ends and stuff from the produce I chopped today. This is all going into my chicken pot.

These baked potatoes were part of dinner that I forgot to take a finished product photo. I made cheesy baked potatoes with broccoli. It was good.

I even made breakfast for tomorrow. Apricot bars. I had to try one.

I browned some of the hamburger for a couple freezer meals I plan to make...

This is what's left of my 10 lbs of hamburger. It awaits lasagna on Wednesday.

Some of that hamburger went into cheddar ranch burgers that are frozen now. I plan to make homemade hamburger buns when we eat them. We'll see how it works out.

After I put the kids to bed I got to work on the 2 chickens I had in the fridge. I cut the breasts off (I'm getting pretty good at this)

and freeze them

The rest of the chicken goes into the stock pot to become shredded chicken, then chicken stock. But that will come tomorrow. I have to go to bed. The chicken can wait in the fridge another night.