Caramel Apples...mmmmm!

I can hardly wait for the fair to come! One of the treats I only get at the fair is the caramel apple, sliced, with the warm caramel sauce poured over it! This is one of my all-time favorites! In one of my feeds I get through my Google Reader I saw this tutorial for a miniature Carmel Apple. Now I know it is not rocket science to make caramel apples but this is a fun twist. I just didn't think about doing it on a small scale using a melon scooper to make apple balls to dip into the sauce. Check out this tutorial. My kids are going to love this! I think this might be our next Family Night refreshment!

Food....

Tonight my menu plan had listed the Overnight Waffles and Cinnamon Syrup. I quadrupled the waffle batter hoping that it was a smart move not having made the recipe before. It turned out great! I am glad I made such a big batch of the batter, it will keep for a few days in the fridge. I will cook up all of the batter and freeze the waffles for the kids to make toaster waffles. The syrup was really great too! I had just made some homemade butter and so this was a great meal! Will keep that recipe for sure.
For someone who doesn't like cooking a whole lot I am really enjoying Kate & Sara's great blog that I mentioned in an earlier post and have in my sidebar. I have also found a few others that I have mentioned recently too. But here is a new one, Betty Crocker.com I love to get more ideas! The less thinking up new ideas on my own the better for the whole family! I have subscribed to their Dinners Made Easy Newsletter. It has been fun to see all the great ideas. Who knew that NOT ALL Betty Crocker comes from a package?

This week's newsletter had some dinners and desserts for 300 calories and some great looking chicken! I will be adding some of these to my upcoming menus! There are some great tools on this site as well. You can have a recipe box to save favorites you come across and you can add the ingredients of each recipe to a shopping list too, all at the click of a button!

No I don't work for Betty Crocker! But I think this is a great find! I'm hungry now!

Do you know the # 1 song when...?

Do you know the #1 song when you were married,
graduated from HS, or when you were born?
My sister sent me this fun link. Give it a try!
The #1 song when I was born was a
Frank and Nancy Sinatra Song, "Somethin' Stupid"!
I checked it out at iTunes and Yuk!!!!

#1 Song Search

What was your #1 when....? Leave me a comment with your song and when it was #1

Camping at Pine Flats

As mentioned in an earlier post my sister and I took the kids and went up to the Lowman, ID area and camped at Pine Flats campground. We found it on the US Forest Service website. You can check out photos and all the amenities a campsite has to offer and make your reservations too!
We had a great time. The kids loved exploring and making up games, playing in the hot springs, and roasting marshmallows for s'mores. We even sang songs by the campfire. Emily did NOT loving the nights! She would fall asleep and wake back up 20 min. later and do this all night long. The first night I thought maybe it's because she is teething. The second night was just another repeat of the night before. My sister got up and took over about half the night and that saved my sanity! When we got home Emily's nightly routine returned to normal! Go figure! Steve was just sure that she didn't like sleeping away from her Daddy!
I have trimmed my photo selection from 300 down to 33 that I have placed in a slideshow.

Menu Plan Monday

This week's menu plan is:

Monday: Crockpot Thai Chicken/rice
Tuesday: Overnight waffles/cinnamon syrup (scroll down a little to the recipe)
Wednesday: Hamburger Stroganoff/Rice
Thursday: Bread bowls/Spud Special Soup
Friday: Homemade pizza
Saturday: Tostadas beans/rice
Sunday: Baked Chicken/veggies/rolls

If you notice a lot of rice in my menus it is because I love rice and would eat it everyday. I try to be more healthy by making brown rice most of the time.

Dang, where'd my biscuit go?

I am working on getting a photo album and slideshow of the 300 photos from our 2.5 day camping trip. I won't post anywhere near that number so it is taking some time to trim the selection. However, this photo couldn't wait. I had to post it while I still remembered why I took the photo!
We got into camp late, pitched the tents and put together a dutch oven meal of sloppy joes. We were eating in the dark at about 11:30pm. My sister goes to get something out of a bucket and in meantime drops one of her biscuits off of her plate but can't find where! The next morning as we are preparing breakfast we open a bucket and there sits her biscuit! We had a good laugh!

Getting Organized...another great blog

I have recently found another great blogsite for getting organized. This site has hundreds of pages of forms from birthday lists to shopping lists, emergency lists, calendars, etc. They help you build a notebook similar to the Flylady's control journal. I am combining both concepts into my family control journal/notebook.

The Organized Home

Check out this great cooking site!

I have just added a new element to my sidebar that will take you to a dynamite food blog ourbestbites! These girls do some awesome recipes and their photos make you want to run to the kitchen and give their recipe a try! I do not enjoy cooking much at all. I love to bake breads and sweet things. Coming up with a new recipe or cooking a fantastic dinner is not on my love to do list! However, I have loved trying their recipes and checking out the great stuff they have added to their page. You really should try the Brazilian Lemonade for a great summer afternoon beverage! Oh, the rice you should try the Lime Cilantro Rice with Pineapple too! Even to just lurk around their site is a treat!

Camping

My sister and I took the kids camping up by Lowman, ID. We left on Tuesday and came back on Thursday. The kids had a great time and the weather was good too! I have more photos and details coming. I just couldn't wait to post this photo. My sister took the kids down to the hot springs while I stayed with Emily during her nap!

Another great blog

I have found another great blog that I have added to my RSS feeder. She has some great info for families and inspiration for moms! I have enjoyed reading her blog.

Planning with Kids

Another yummy recipe...

I have recently found another great blog that I have added to my Google Reader and she has some great recipes that she shares. This one for overnight waffles is what I am going to try next with her cinnamon syrup. Check out the recipe and her very well done blog!

yourhomebasedmom.com

Cornmeal Pancake Recipe

Here is the link for the pancake recipe that we are going to have for dinner tonight. There are a lot of good looking recipes on this website. I will be trying some more from their recipe box. They give the nutritional info on the recipe too! This website is kind of fun to browse through.

Bob's Red Mill - Cornmeal Pancakes

P.S. I had purchased the bag of cornmeal at Cash-N-Carry, in Boise, and 25 lbs. was about $12. Which was a better deal than the small bags of cornmeal you find in the grocery store.

Do you smell that?

Steve and I were in the office doing some late night reading/blogging on the computers and Steve asks if I smell something burning. We look around the office and don't know what would be burning and so we go back to our computers. But the smell doesn't go away and seems to be getting stronger. Steve leaves the office and the smell is stronger in the hallway. Steve looks downstairs and I go to the kids' rooms. I start in the boy's room and check their fans and they are both shut off. I go over to the girls' room and the smell is very strong! I go over to Katie's bed and we find the little light from inside her Cinderlla lamp was between her two pillows and it was turned on! It had burned through the pillow case and into the bottom of the top pillow and was burning down into the bottom pillow. Oh my, did it smell in there. The tag on the pillow had melted also. Steve got some water and we poured it onto the pillows to be sure we had stopped any burning. We are both so glad we were up late. It is scary to think what would have happened if we were responsible and went to bed at a respectable hour. The kids had been in bed 2 and 1/2 hours when we found this. Wow! I don't want to think about what could have happened.

The girls are woken-up while this is going on and I come back with my camera and Kristina tells Katie "Mom's going to blog this you know!"

Crazy faces, crazy feet

These kids just crack me up! I was just standing in the kitchen and Katie comes up and starts making faces at me! And conveniently my camera was very close by and so I decided two could play this game and I would blog her crazy faces! Then Carson comes in this afternoon and tells me when he gets hot his hair just puffs out, all by itself of course! And again out comes the camera and then the crazy faces fly! Never a dull moment!Now for the crazy feet! This is my Logan. He will purposely dress with his shirts inside out and backwards. He is totally comfortable going anywhere dressed like that! It must be more comfortable, I just don't know. I won't let him go to school like that, anywhere else I don't sweat it!

So it was time to run some errands and I tell everyone "get your shoes on, let's go!" Logan, of course has shoes strewn from the yard, to the car, the laundry room(where his cubbie is and where the shoes are supposed to be), to his room, you get the idea, they are everywhere. He couldn't find two matching shoes but he was able to find a shoe for each foot! We ran our errands that day and Logan went around with his shoes matched as you see them in this photo! Crazy kid!

Menu Plan Monday

I am posting my first menu plan. I have been trying to get things more organized and feel like I have some control in my life, and this is one of the areas I am working on. Two of my boys had Cub Scout requirements to fulfill requiring them to plan a menu for the week and that got me started. I have planned menus before, I am good at doing it for a while and then I slack off. It does make my day easier when I know what is coming and I don't have to do the last minute struggle to come up with a meal. I found these great menu planning calendars at enlightenedhomemaker.com and they are great! I love a nice looking form, it makes me excited about being organized!

I love getting ideas from others for meals. We have tried some of the dinner ideas my friend, LDS Mom has posted. At one time when our families were much, much, smaller we used to take turns cooking for the combined families. So one night I would cook for both families and take their portion over to her house and she would do the same on another night. It was great! Now we both cook for bigger families individually than ours were combined years ago. It was fun getting someone else's recipies and cooking!

My biggest problem is dreaming something up each day and we get in a rut, and I get bored making the same meals all the time. I have often thought it would be great to have a network of friends to just call and ask "What are you making for dinner tonight?" So I was thrilled to find this Menu Plan Monday blog! Dozens and dozens of people post their weekly menus and the host of the site of course posts hers! I have weeks filled into August of menu ideas! I absolutely love it!

The family loves to see the plan and let me know if I have strayed from the planned meal! So here's this weeks menu, finally!!! I will post recipies in my next post.

Monday: Breakfast for dinner - Corn Meal Pancakes (recipe is from the bag of cornmeal)
Tuesday: Corned Beef & Cabbage in coconut milk (This is really, really good)
Wednesday: Mac-N-Cheese NOT from a box
Thursday: Homemade pizza
Friday: Hamburgers, Chips, Drink
Saturday: Chicken Enchiladas
Sunday: Soup & homemade bread bowls

Breakfast and lunch during the summer is a serve yourself affair. Occasionally I will make a bigger breakfast or more of a meal at lunch, but usually the kids are happy making their own kind of sandwich, having some fruit or veggies/dip and pretzels.

This just made me laugh out loud!!!!

This was on the blog I just posted about in my last posting. I just died laughing when I saw this! I had to post it too! In fact, everytime I look this I just can't help laughing!

Fun Blog to read - and she has give aways too!

Check out this fun blog, wordtoyourmother, I lurk her blog frequently just to see what funny stuff she has posted! She loves to do give-aways too! I never win anything inspite of entering every survey from my receipts at Lowes, Jack in the Box, Home Depot, candy wrappers, etc.

Backyard Fun!

We put up a new trampoline on Wednesday.

Thursday we started putting a new pool up only to find after we started filling it that we needed to level the yard or the 6500 gallon pool would be soaking our yard and the neighbor's too.
So Friday we started draining the pool. Saturday Steve picked up two yards of sand and the kids helped to shovel it off of the truck onto the driveway. Then the kids loaded the wheel barrow and brought sand over to the pool area. After we got the pool set-up again and started filling it, the kids took the last yard of sand and wheeled it over to the empty sandbox. We had enough sand to fill it to the brim! We had no idea that the sandbox would be such a big hit with ALL of the kids. Emily was taken in and promptly started to eat the sand. Jonny, who is 13.5 (who reminds us frequently that he is not a kid anymore, a teenager!!!!!) was out in the sandbox too with his Legos!
All the time while we are working Kristina would say "This is the best summer ever!" I am so proud of all of my kids! They all worked so hard out in the hot sun to get this stuff done. It was the kids' idea to start hauling the sand to the sandbox! It helped that I was passing out popsicles on a regular basis to add to the fun and keep them hydrated too!

Prayers

Mom to Carson: "Head to bed, and don't forget to say your prayers"
Carson to Mom: "Always do and Mom, does Jesus hear my prayers when my mouth is shut?"
Mom to Carson: "Yes Carson, He does"
Carson to Mom: "Cool"

My Grandma

On our return trip home from our visit to Steve's parents' we stopped by to see my Grandma Tuttle. She and my Aunt Sally live in Kennewick, WA. We didn't have a phone number, just an address and so we took our chances that they would be home and ready for a visit. Our last visit was a couple of years ago and the kids loved getting to meet my Grandma, their only living Great-Grandparent.I am so glad we stopped. My Grandma is such a sweet lady. I hope that I will be just as happy and sweet when I am 90 yrs old.

4th of July Celebration

The children had a "blast" setting off fireworks. Grandpa made sure that he got stuff the kids could light off. I am not sure if he even lit one firework! The trick is keeping everyone in the right order so they don't think they have missed out on a turn to light stuff. Emily was a real trooper through all of the loud fireworks, she didn't seem to be frightened at all! The neighbors must have set off hundreds of dollars, the big stuff you see in shows!There were fireworks for a couple of hours after we were done. We could have just watched what they set off and been just fine! But the kids don't see it that way. They want to light some too!

4th of July Trip to Washington

At the last minute we decided that we would pack-up the family and head to Washington to visit Steve's parents for the 4th of July holiday. It is quite a chore to get everyone packed-up and leave the house in order too. Our life is an adventure, always something exciting coming our way. The adventure began this trip when our van overheated less than 2 hours into the trip. I should have taken a photo but did not. We are on the side of the freeway, sitting on the back of the van in the shade. The kids have their blankets and pillows spread out like we are on a picnic at the park. We asked them when was the last time they got to sit and watch cars go by on the freeway anyway! Many people stopped to see if they could help. We just needed to the let the car cool down enough to inch along to the nearest exit. Meanwhile, Steve is calling his friend who has done car repair in the past and talks through some troubleshooting trying to figure out what the problem is. We finally make it to Baker and coast down the exit to the gas station and Steve checks the radiator and it is bone dry! Well, go figure! He filled the radiator and bought two gallons of water and we were on our way to the grandparent's home! Hooray!


On the agenda for the next day was to go and watch the Tall Ships come into the harbor in Tacoma. The kids got to run the beach and find treasures which I informed them needed to stay on the beach.














There is a new park in Sumner that Grandpa wanted to take the kids to and they loved it!