Free Range Family

This weekend we had a guest over for dinner. It was Lon's best friend Shaun, who also owns the gym that Lon works at. We had invited him over last month for his birthday dinner but he was too busy to make plans until this month. I was very excited to have company over, we picked out a movie to watch and I planned out the dinner. I figured we would do some sort of pork chops with potatoes, rolls, green beans and some rice. We could even have wine, if I planned out my pumping and nursing schedule around it. Excitedly, I started looking through my cookbook. And there was nothing that looked good. Oven baked pork chops, thai orange pork chop skillet. Yuck! Okay, so let me disclaimer this before you think that I am a big weirdo. I do not usually like pork or ham, or really any part of a pig for that matter. I was a dedicated vegetarian in high school and even though I eat meat now, I have a very limited palette that I will choose from. Like... chicken, beef and any wild game. That...

Happy Hump Day everyone! No WILW post today, I will already have two posts today anyways and I am a little busy with the kids and packing. Not too much is going on again today but it is my cousin Anthony's 24th birthday. He lives in Colorado, so unfortunately we will not be doing too much for him. I wrote on his Facebook and will be giving him a call hopefully later today. Happy birthday Anthony, we al love you so much here! Otherwise today we are still just packing and cleaning. I have hiphop class tonight and we are learning some more freezes and working on our six step. I think next week I will teach them top rocking. :) For obvious reasons, since I had Anna we have been pretty homebound. Lon works two jobs and is gone weekdays from 9 in the morning until 11 at night. We only have one vehicle right now and it usually goes with him. We also try to only go to the grocery store once every week and a half, if not two weeks. When we run out of things, like milk, we have to get crea...

Chili is one of those foods that everyone has their own way of making it. Some people believe chili has beans in it, others think its only made with different meats. Me, I like my chili a specific way and that's my way lol. :) With beans, but with meat and veggies too so that you get a full meal in one serving. That way my kid eats it lol! Mmm, as I type this I am finishing up the pot of chili I made the other night. It is so good, sometimes even better the next day! Yum! Here is "my way" to make three bean chili! I encourage you to try it out, it only has five steps and takes a half an hour to cook! Three Bean Chili 1 pound of ground hamburger (we also use deer meat sometimes, you could probably use turkey) 1 pound of kidney beans (dark or light, sometimes we do both) 1 pound of black beans 1 pound of pinto beans (if you don't like pinto, use another kind of beans) 2 tomatoes 1/2 an Onion (or a whole, my family just doesn't like onion that much) Ta...

For Alan's birthday, we made him cupcakes. We were originally going to make him a cake but my cake pan had seen better days and so I decided to put it to rest rather than use it one last time. I was going to borrow my mother's but forgot until that day so we were out of luck. Alan was convinced that he did not want cupcakes but that was about all we had, except for a square brownie pan that he was not going for either. To convince him to use the cupcake tins we had, I decided to be creative and bake them without papers and call them mini cakes. Alan just loved the idea so we used it. Here is how to make mini cupcakes, step by step (with Alan as our Vana White): Step one: Mix ingredients Step two: Pam the cupcake tin (Not shown because Mama did this) Step three: Play game with adorable birthday boy while cakes bake Step four: Mix cool frosting Step five: Frost mini cakes Step six: Sprinkles!!!!! Step seven: Clean frosting spoon appropriately S...

This is my second installment of Point of View Posts, this time from my other good WTE friend Jen. Her blog is usually about recipes and her love for cooking, so her post is about spaghetti. I love that there is another family who loves spaghetti as much as this one does! :D I hope you enjoy. Here is this week's POV Posts! Spaghetti. This single world evokes nothing but pure delight for me. It is simply the perfect meal. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s cheap and it’s freaking delicious. Plus I like to pretend I’m Italian so I like to make it and announce that we are having “macaroni and red gravy” while prancing around with a glass of wine. Yep, I’m fancy like that. Spaghetti is a family favorite here. And with a two year old and a one year old (I’m fancy and crazy) eating spaghetti is an event. But it’s the one meal I know everyone will eat. The girls get stripped down to their under-roo’s and dive in! It always makes me laugh! The oldest slurps it noodle by noodle and the y...

Sometimes when people ask me how many kids I have, I go with the cliche joke of most wives (MY MOM) and say, "I have two- my son and my husband." I often do feel like my husband is just another kid in the house- I have to drag him out of bed in the morning and yell at him to go to sleep at night, I have to remind him to do his "chores" around the house, I have to schedule all his appointments and remind him to go to them, I have to make sure he takes his medicine, and one of the most difficult I've found: I have to make sure he gets in his daily nutrients. This is particularly difficult because I have one of the most pickiest eaters ever! He doesn't like vegetables, most fruit, only really likes beef or chicken or pork, won't eat any leftovers (he thinks they're gross), and wants to survive only off of candy, pop and chips, etc. So I am always trying to find ways to slip in the nutrients he needs. For example, last night I made vegetable and meat spa...