Our Crowded houseful

Everyone minus my brother (who is getting married in a few months!) in this picture lives together for the time being. Its actually been a lot of fun- and we've all been keeping busy!


Its hard to believe we leave for North Carolina for training at JAARS in less than two weeks!

Menu Plan for the week of Feb. 8th, 2010

Last week was some week! Some very good things happened, for one we finished moving out and got our house rented out! Now we're just praying it goes well while our renters are there this next year:). Another is that we've been able to be involved in my parents' home church and have been encouraged by some of the things happening at the church amidst the difficulties of losing their pastor and half the congregation recently.

But last week was also filled with hardship for our extended families with my dad losing his job as a VP market manager for the bank he's worked for the past 16 years. The bank is restructuring and eliminating two of the market manager positions althogether so its not about him but it was a crazy shock to the family. We also have a serious health scare that we will find out more about with extended family soon. But God has been good and we've seen His hand in the timing of our coming over here at this time so clearly.

Breakfasts:
cold cereal, pancakes, scrambled eggs (I got 6 dozen on mark down for $0.09 at Safeway this weekend!!!) bacon

Lunches:Leftovers

Dinners:

Monday: Leftover Seven Layer Bean Dip, chips, carrot sticks & dip

Tuesday: Baked Potato Soup and Beefy Vegetable Soup for my parents' Bible study group (we'll eat leftover super bowl foods of some sort:)

Wednesday: Peanut butter noodles (didn't get to this last week), frozen broccoli

Thursday: BBQ meatballs (make extra plain ones for Sunday) over brown rice, broccoli

Friday: Easy Homemade pizza or frozen pizza

Saturday: Meatloaf from freezer, mac n cheese, peas (another we didn't get to)

Sunday: Spagetti with meatballs (from Thurs.), garlic bread, green salad

Visit Orgjunkie for more plans!

Donuts mmmmmmm....

I made these homemade donuts this morning. YUM! Not good for the waistline by any means but I've been waiting for an occasion to make these for awhile:)

No, mine weren't the prettiest in the world
But M sure seemed to enjoy hers:) They were dark chocolate glazed, yum

My sweet birthday balloon and flower from my parents

Daniel and I are going to see the Blind Side while my parents watch the girls and then to Red Robin all together with a free birthday burger and gift card-fun day!

Family Pancake House

Last time my parents were visiting us *snif* at our former home we went out to eat at Family Pancake house. We heard a joke about IHOP once that went something like this "why do they call it I HOP- you never see anyone hopping out of that place after eating there, after all that white flour and sugar and fat rolling or crawling is more likely:)" well family pancake house is kinda like that. Doesn't quite put a spring in your step when you eat there, but it sure is tasty:)
The fam

The girls

I might mail her to Kalamazoo...

I will share more tomorrow but we had a wild day of suprises (not the good kind) today. But a funny story (now that I have some time behind us!): my sweet little handful of toddler girl was watching a video on the laptop in the bedroom while I tried to console a cranky baby and finish cleaning up our dinner mess.

I came back to check on her and noticed something funny...she was covered in blue marker! Not only was she covered by I noticed my laptop was too! Patience Lord--I need more!

Menu Plan for First week of Feb, 2010!

I will be cooking for 4 adults and one toddler for the next three weeks-I love it! I brought a ton of canned/dry goods over with me to offset the increased costs of living with my folks for the next bit and I plan to do most of our eating from the pantry.

My dad loves red meat so I have to have some of that in most meals so I am looking for deals there. Yesterday my dad and I swung by Safeway and found ground beef marked down for $1.50 for 3 lbs! $0.50/lb is amazing! So we bought two and left a dozen others for someone else (but those were marked $2.50 each for 3 lbs-still an amazing deal!)

Breakfasts:
cold cereal, pancakes, scrambled eggs with mix-ins, french toast, homemade donuts on Friday (for my birthday-anyone have a fool-proof homemade recipe?)

Lunches:Leftovers

Dinners:

Monday: Roast, acorn squash, carrots in the crockpot, bread & leftover salad

Tuesday: Leftovers, soup (parents at Bible study tonight)

Wednesday: Thai Peanut noodles with leftover roast on the side for dad, frozen broccoli

Thursday: Chili and Cornbread

Friday: Red Robin for my birthday (free birthday burger-yay!)

Saturday: Meatloaf from freezer, mac n cheese, peas

Sunday: Enchiladas, green beans

Visit Orgjunkie for more plans!

Home Renovation part 5: the living room

And the end! When you have a 586 square foot house, the tour is rather short:) So this is where it ends, the living room. I already miss this room because it was so pretty when we had it all set up and finished and we only were able to enjoy it this way for a couple days really.

Ah well, I am learning a lot about not holding onto treasures on earth these days:)

Before:


After:


You can see the whole series if you look under the label "home renovation".