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.

 

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.

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

Arriving in Kenya...

Ok, a couple of more weeks have passed by before I made myself make another blog entry.  There's just so much to process, I don't want to do it half-heartedly.  So, here we go...
After 2 LONG days of travel, we finally arrived in Kenya, and it was humbling...but I had no idea what was in store once we arrived to the slums of Nairobi.  First, I let the landscape heading away from the airport sink in...


                                                                  arriving in to Kenya

                                      the crew on the bus that picked us up from the airport

                                      


                                                               views from the bus...

the scenery changed drastically as we got closer to where we were staying...it seems as if it's one extreme or the other in Kenya.                                   

the beautiful picture that was hanging in the hallway right outside of our room at Gracia Gardens                                                     

After a couple of days of jet lag and letting the reality of what all went on in Africa settle in to my brain, I'm finally ready to start looking back over it through my pictures.  Here are some that I'd like to share with you, as I take you on a guided tour of our journey to Kenya together...

The morning of June 7th began with some idle time at the Indianapolis airport waiting to board our first flight in to Heathro.  Everyone's energy was pretty good - excited about what was to come... (Keeley, Cara, and Ashley)

 (Erika, Kristyn, Sierra, and Megan)

THEN!  This awesomely funny God thing happened - another missions group came up to greet us (our lime green neon shirts might have given us away that we were a team out to do something), and Ashley realized she knew one of the girls from Passion in Atlanta, GA earlier this year!  It was cool chatting with them and praying together for each other's journeys.

 Moss being Moss, and me being lucky enough to capture a moment of it.  She's hilarious.  We quickly nick-named her "the cheerleader". 

Cara, my niece, was the first honorary recipient of one of Corey's gratuitous "lean backs".  :)  Let's just say Corey isn't a ... morning person. :)  Brudder!

 The men of the other group prayed over our leader, my husband Todd, before parting ways. 

 It was definitely a cool beginning to what was going to be the trip of a lifetime...

The Facebook Fast

This past week I took a break from my favorite form of social media - my connection to the pseudo-outside world - that connects me with my sanity saving adult friends...my beloved Facebook. It was actually kind of a relief! I didn't realize how much I included the "needing to check FB" throughout my day. It gave me the permission to do other things that I had been putting off like, oh, ANYTHING else. I did feel really out of the loop, and missed hearing about everyone's days and how things are going. So many of you brighten my day with your anecdotes and helpful tips of things you figure out and save me the trouble of finding out on my own.

Here is just a little snap shot of a few of the things that happened last week...


We had a must needed trip to visit dear family in Knoxville, TN last weekend. Precious time spend with loved ones.



We took the boys to see Star Wars in 3D



I also spent quality time with my new BFF, ZUMBA baby!



kind of a low point, scratching off too much of my security code on my iTunes gift card :(



dinner and a movie with my Valentine ...



really important silly face making time with my littlest Valentine...



enormously rocky time getting ready for preschool, which resulted in no preschool that day...



snuggles with Snickerdoodle, my sister's beloved guinea pig



shock and AWE over my sister's latest birthday cake creation...



God's beauty. Loooovvvvve.


Hope your weeks were amazing!