Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Eli's 7th birthday

Hard to believe one of the few other posts I've made on this blog was about our middle son's 5th birthday, and here we are already two years later.  It was such a great day for him from beginning to end...
Started with his bounding down the stairs like it was Christmas morning, but eyes still half closed...

Then we moved right in to his favorite meal of the day - breakfast :)





Then the part he's been looking forward to for WEEKS, celebrating with his buds at Chuck E. Cheese!  NO parents look forward to this.  This is just one of those many sacrifices we make for the sake of our children.  Ugh.  It literally gets more annoying each time we go there...which is once in a blue moon.








 



Monday, March 25, 2013

That late March day in 2013 that we'll always talk about getting almost 2' of snow...

I gotta' admit, I love it. I know one day will come when I don't have much of a use for a good dumping of snow, but for now it's a beautiful thing. The boys can jump in to their snow pants, rotate out reserve pairs of gloves as they get soaked, and sled until they can sled no more. We love how our back yard has just enough of a hill to get their kicks, but not enough to cause any injuries. Their friends lug their sleds over on snow days and they just come in and out to warm up, drink some hot chocolate, and head back out again for another round. Today was one of those days, and it was just as much fun today as the first big snow was over Christmas break.

We also had a super simple lunch, biscuit pizzas. Great thing to have on hand when the kiddos are wanting something different than the standard pb&j. If you get the biscuits when they're on sale, you can get them for less than .75/can. Then whatever toppings your family likes on theirs. You can keep cheese, sausage, pepperoni all in the freezer for when you need them. I also make a big batch of homemade sauce (just a cheap can of tomato sauce, two big spoonfuls of tomato paste, tsp of onion powder, tsp of garlic powder, 1/2tsp of oregano, and tsp of basil.) and keep it in the freezer for when I need it. Best way to prepare it for storage is to fill an ice cube tray with individual portions and thaw out as many as you need.
Let the kiddos smoosh down the preformed biscuits and add the toppings! Simple meal and they can dip them in to the extra sauce.















Friday, March 22, 2013

Oh, plastic wrap...

Alright, time to talk about it...
   ...and by "it", of course I mean plastic wrap.  Dreaded, full of mockery, plastic wrap.  Yes, we all know it as "Saran wrap", just like we call tissues "Kleenex", but that's another topic.
    Back on track.  
    Ok, we all grew up with it a part of our everyday lives.  But you know what?  No one ever really talks about it.  They teach us all the basic life skills we need for survival; like cooking, some minimal money management, how to do your laundry, etc. Why in THE world does no one ever teach you what the stinkin' secret is to actually getting SARAN wrap to work?!  You suffer through many a tangled messes, aimlessly wrapping it around stuff as it just lays there not keeping a single molecule of air out.  Doing the same thing time and time again thinking, "THIS time I'll get it right.  THIS time it will stick just like it's supposed to."
     But no.  The smooth, taught plastic surfaces are exclusive to commercials...professional chefs...and other people's houses.  At least I assume so, since no one ever talks about it!  Clearly everyone else must have it figure out.  Is there a support group for this stuff?  There at least has to be a hidden camera somewhere capturing the many hope-filled moments each time we pull the box out of the drawer hoping for a miracle. 
     Oh, and then there's Pinterest to make you feel even more stupid.  Have you seen the one where some kind soul finally shares with the world that ALL along there's been a little piece of cardboard you can push in on the end of the box to hold the roll in place?!  You know, the roll that falls out of the box, each. and. every. time. you go to use it, causing the frustrated grunt heard across the the country as yet another piece of plastic wrap gets wadded up and thrown in to the trash can, and we cut ourselves on the JAGGED edge of the box?  Oh yeah, there's a trick to keeping that roll in there, but no one ever intended to tell anyone about it.
    Every once in a while, a warm dish filled with leftovers emitting enough steam to change fate and align the stars somehow allows the plastic wrap to simply do it's job.  Grab hold and stay put.  Or if you're rich and have the storage space of a professional kitchen, you can get that King Kong sized dispenser of plastic wrap and just wrap the crap out of whatever you need to preserve giving it absolutely no hope of going bad.  You win with that stuff EVERY time.  But then why taunt us by even selling the smaller boxes if you know we're going to end with the useless wads of plastic 99.9% of the time?  You...youuuuuuu...
    Ok, there is a strong chance I am the only one.  But if there is even 1 more out there that gets what I'm talking about...if there is even one frustrated, shamed, sous chef that I can give a voice to over this topic, then mission accomplished.  Chest cleared.  Soap box, off of.

G'night.  Gotta go put dinner in the fridge.
~Nikki