Experimental Lunch

I can admit that when it comes to food, I'm a bit skittish. When I've been in other countries, I have no problem eating the food in front of me, or any type of food at a friend's house here.  That's never an issue.  My dilemma comes when I am faced with the idea of buying something that I usually don't get and preparing it in my own home.  Today's case?  Kale.  I have avoided kale like the plague.  Frankly, it just looks completely unappealing sitting there on the shelf in the produce section.  Something about stiff, crinkly leaves and the promise of a bitter flavor has had me avoiding it.  Recently on Pinterest, I saw a recipe for Kale chips.  On a whim, I mustered a bit of determination and bought kale yesterday during my shopping trip and today I made kale chips for lunch to go along with my orange.  Though I will put less salt on them in the future, I have to say that I was pretty impressed.  I have serious doubts that H1 or H3 would even consider trying them, but I'll certainly try them again.

~H2

Rainy Day Fun

It's a gray and wet day here in this part of Virginia! At the moment, the rain is a cause for celebration. My garden is quite happy after so many weeks without it. In the meantime, it also helps for creativity around the house.

 After breakfast (oatmeal for me, pancakes for H3), we took a nice walk through our neighborhood. Our street has a nice sidewalk, and the houses along it are historical. Most are in beautiful condition and have lovely gardens. H3 loves to stop and spent all the flowers and look at the "ant houses." The search for ants does slow our walking progress down quite a bit, and though I do try to hurry her along a bit, I can't entirely squelch her joy. This morning, the end of our walk was in the drizzle. We had to jog home so we didn't get drenched.

 When we got home, I decided it was time to do some baking. H1 had been wanting a strawberry-rhubarb pie, and seeing as we had both strawberries and rhubarb, it was time to make a pie! H3 kept trying to steal my pie crust while I was rolling it out. She loves it. I let her have a little, and then baked some leftovers with a little sugar on it to go with her lunch. Anyways, here's the end result!

After the pie came out, I decided it was time for some banana bread.

Rainy days require different activities around here. H3 loves to spend a lot of time outside. I can't wait until we have a fenced-in yard, but for now I spend a lot of time out there with her. On days like today, I try to line up a few different activities to keep her occupied. We spent some time working on a puzzle, then up in her room, reading stories. While she was still playing up there, I came downstairs and laid out stamps and markers with paper and let her have some fun!

Thus far it's been a good, fun day. I've got dough rising now to make some rolls to go with dinner tonight. The plan for dinner is an Italian Sausage Bean Soup, with those rolls on the side. H1 and I will also split an artichoke. And then we have the pie for dessert. I'm not asking for H3 to eat most of the menu tonight. She usually eats whatever H1 and I are eating, but there are some exceptions: anything to do with salad or beef (neither of those go well with her stomach), and some of the odder vegetables. I can't picture her successfully navigating an artichoke, though I will still offer it to her. She is slowly expanding her eating habits, for which I'm grateful. Sandwiches are finally on the menu now, for the first time ever!

 When it comes to my family, I've learned to frequently praise God for the little things, like having the chance to be home and make meals for my family, and spending time with my little girl. I have to confess though that these last couple weeks have been rough. H3's potty regression (after having been potty trained for 8 months) has really started to wear on me. Still, we're taking one day at a time!

~H2

Moments at Church and an Upcoming Tour

I had a neat moment at church today.  Most of this pregnancy, I haven't assisted in the nursery since I can't lift much as far as weight goes and it's hard for me to hold some of the kids we have back there.  This morning though, I stayed to help out because there were a couple of new kids and it seemed an extra hand was needed.  Our nursery is for ages 0-3, just for reference.  These two new ones were both around age 2.  I spend most of the time cuddling the little girl on my lap.  She seemed pretty timid with all the noise, and any time another child cried, she started as well.  Snuggling her close though, I could feel her relax and she even started to smile.  Something about this child just gripped my heart.  She was so precious.  I left the nursery feeling blessed to have been there with her.  Maybe this morning wasn't for me to be in listening to the sermon, as much as I love hearing Pastor Bill preach.  I think this morning was about me remembering that "the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

After church was worship practice, so H1 stayed for that while H3 and I headed over to a nearby park for a bit.  H3 really enjoyed spending some time outside.  It was a beautiful afternoon.  We picked up H1 at 1:15 and headed home.

Now, we're taking a few minutes to collect ourselves before heading up to St. Francis Hospital for our tour.  Since this is a new hospital for me, I registered for a tour.  During this time, we're supposed to get a good look at the labor/delivery rooms and get some more information on hospital policies. Since I'll be delivering with a midwife, there will be some things that differ between my midwife's methods and options versus one of the hospital's on-call doctors.  Either way, it's good for me to know what's there!  The tour is at 5pm, so we'll see how this goes!

~H2

Look What We Found - Church/Community Yard Sale

This morning was our church/community yard sale. H1 and I arrived early (with a sleepy H3 in tow) to help set up. I should have taken pictures while we were there. It was huge, and crazy, and a little bit of everything. Most of the time I was helping out at our children's ministry table, so my time to browse was limited. H1 was able to look a bit more, but he was also assisting different people for most of the 3 hours we were there, not to mention trying to keep our energetic H3 in line. She's not very good at staying near us....

We did, however, manage to find a few things of interest and spent about $20 total. I'd have to say that H3 made out like a bandit, but I'll get to that in a moment.

First up is this little metal radio flyer wagon and a little Sleeping Beauty nightlight.  While H3 is not generally allowed to watch any of the Disney "Princess" movies, except for Beauty and the Beast and Tangled, she knows who each character is, thanks to her friends.

Next up is a little hot roller set. I do have naturally curly hair, though it's more wavy than curly at the current length. I'd been wanting to experiment with rollers, but never wanted to pay the price for a set. Now I can!

I found this adorable metal pot and pan set for H3. I'm really excited about this one! We have a plastic set, but it's getting pretty banged up after a couple years and this one is in perfect condition.

More stuff for H3. I was mostly excited about the little book for telling time and and puzzle in the middle. We got several other puzzles for H3 as well, all 10 cents each. H3 and I have been working on telling time right now, as well as months and days of the week, so I'm hoping this book will help out a little.

I found a shirt for me, barely used. Obviously this is for post-pregnancy!

One thing we've been needing for storage in our new house is a shoe rack, or rather a couple of them for both H1's shoes as well as mine. These three expand to twice the width shown. I'm looking forward to putting them to use!

Ok, I saved the best for last, or at least the one I'm most excited about (and H3). I have a sewing machine, but it's been put away for ages due to lack of space and I'm in no mood for trying to make fancy dress-up dresses at the moment. I'm also not in the mood to pay the $20 - $30 that Walmart and Target charge for them. Right now H3 has two that fit, both courtesy of Auntie Amber and her find at Big Lots. At the yard sale, a gal was selling an amazing amount of children's clothing and costumes. This one caught my eye immediately, and I have to confess paying $7 for it. I checked the dress over, no stains and it's a very highly quality sewing job. I inquired about it, and the lady told me that she paid $65 for the dress and her daughter only wore it once. Either way, I'm happy with my $7 purchase and H3 is thrilled beyond words!

In fact, H3 put the dress on as soon as we got home and has yet to take it off. It's fun seeing my daughter get so much enjoyment out of something simple!

 Well, that's the general scoop on the yard sale event. The youth group had a table set up where they were selling hot dogs and sodas to raise money for the summer missions trip. As I mentioned, I was helping with a children's ministry table. People donated items to our table and we sold them, with all proceeds going to our 11 and under classes. Specifically, a good portion will be going toward buying new Bibles for the 8-11 year-old class. That group of kids goes through a pretty in-depth Bible study and the Bibles we currently have in the classroom are pretty old with very small print and are hard for the kids to read. We're hoping to get something with a larger font and geared toward that age for study.

 Have a blessed Saturday afternoon! ~H2

New Dishwasher and Dinner Experiment

We closed on our home back in early March. The weekend we closed, the dishwasher in our new house flooded our kitchen floor. Ah, welcome home? Anyways, I put a call in to our home warranty company to get the ball rolling. I never thought that home warranty would be a big deal, so I didn't push for it. The gal who handled our mortgage really wanted us to get one though, and managed to write it in and have the sellers pay for it. It has taken almost 2 months to get this new one, but the benefit is that we got a top of the line model without paying anything for it. First they had to go through the motions of trying to fix the old one before finally ordering the new. The new one was put on back-order, but finally arrived last week. A couple days ago, it was finally installed!

I'm so thankful to have a new dishwasher. It might seem like a little thing, but it certainly saves a lot of time--and my hands! In honor of my new dishwasher, I experimented with a new fun dish that night. I made a regular cheese pizza for H3, but for H1 and I, I made 3-cheese and spinach calzones. They were sauce-less on the inside, so we dipped them in a marinara sauce. They turned out pretty good. When I make them again, I'm going to add feta, I think.

The best part about having a new dishwasher is the easy cleanup after all my projects! Yesterday, I made brownies for the men's group at church, and then H3 helped me make peanut butter cookies with little peanut butter chips pressed in the middle. So delicious! Praising God for the little things, ~H2

Look What We Found!!!!

In our area, most of the yard sales are either church yard sales or community yard sales, and the season for those is just beginning around here. Our church has one this next Saturday, actually, with 29 "vendors" signed up to sell their stuff. In the meantime, during the "off season", H1 and I frequently hunt on craigslist for things we need. Pretty much all of our furniture is either from craigslist or Ikea. This past week, H1 was browsing craigslist, keeping an eye out for a workbench for our garage. In our old house in Brookneal, H1 had an entire 1300 square foot, open concrete floor basement to himself for his tools and workshop. It was his "man space" and his project area. He loved it. Since we moved to this area four years ago, he hasn't had a space of his own. His tools have been shelved or boxed away for the most part, or stored at a friend's house. No longer! We have a garage, and it is his to enjoy. While he was looking on craigslist, he found one he really liked and sent the link to me. I took one look at the price and called the guy immediately to tell him we wanted it. Below is the picture that the guy had online.

This workbench is a 4' x 8' plywood construction, and the guy also built that custom hutch to go on top of it. He threw in a Craftsman Vise and another wood shelving unit (3' long x 7' high). Pretty much all of it was new in the last year or so, barely used. All this for $100. The estimate on the wood by itself to get at Lowes is more than that, and the vise would have been $65-75 to purchase separately. I'm so happy for H1, and happy that we were able to get this for him. He loves his work space and is so excited about reassembling this workbench and getting started on some new projects. ~H2

Saturday Morning Strawberry Jam

Yesterday, just after he got off work, my sweet H1 gave me a call and asked if he could run an errand on his way home and be a bit later than usual. I'm glad he called ahead of time so I didn't start dinner too early, and so of course I told him it was fine. He got home an hour and a half later and H3 ran out to greet him while I was washing dishes. She came back in with a massive strawberry in her hands, followed by H1 with two large gallon baskets of more strawberries! Surprise for me! He knew I'd been wanting to go get some at a local strawberry patch, but couldn't seem to work out a good time to go with Shannan. Knowing it would take too long for a family trip last night, he drove over to the patch and picked these two baskets for me. Here's what he brought home!

Doesn't that look yummy?

Well, when you already have two quart containers of strawberries in the fridge (from Walmart) plus two gallons of freshly picked strawberries from a local farm, what do you do with them? Make jam!

Half of the cans, cooling off on our kitchen table.

In all, H1 and I canned five 8-oz jars and six 12-oz jars of strawberry jam this morning, all before noon. It took a little over two hours. I'm so thankful H1 helped out. It's been at least 12 years since I was in the kitchen with my dad, helping out with strawberry jam, so my memory was pretty sketchy. I used my one of my favorite websites, wwww.pickyourown.org to help us out. It's taking me a lot longer to get around these days and I forget things (like dumping the bag of sugar into my sugar canister with my measuring cup still inside--had to fish it out). H1 has been so kind and gracious to help me get things done! Now, H1 is doing some yard work and H3 is playing, so I have time to get a few more things cleaned up before getting to my afternoon projects. Apple bran muffins on today's agenda as well! Have a happy Saturday! ~H2