What's Cookin' Wednesday

The Pot Roast meets Spaghetti! That's what this dish reminds me of. It was very, very, very simple, and very, very, very yummy. So yummy in fact that I forgot to take a picture of it before it was devoured. Today's pictures is courtesy of Parents Magazine (January 2011 issue) as is the recipe.

Chuck-Wagon Pot Roast

What you'll need:
Nonstick cooking spray
2.5 lbs beef chuck roast
26oz jar of pasta sauce
1 cup water
2 cups mini wagon-wheel pasta
1 cup baby carrots
1 cup green beans

What you'll do:
1. Coat a 4 quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Place beef in slow cooker and add sauce and water. Cook on low for 8 hours or on high for 4 hours.
2. 45 minutes before you'd like to eat, add pasta, carrots, and green beans (make sure they are stirred into the liquid). Turn to high heat setting (if it's not already).
3. Enjoy!!



**Big Spenders**
M&M had gotten $10 each for Easter from Grandma and Grandpa Smith. There was a note written in the card that they were to take the money and choose something at the store to buy. I usually put their money in their college fund, but since there was a specific note this time, I figured I better follow directions. They each chose to buy 9 packs of Tinkerbell Collectible Stickers and the Sticker Book that you collect them in. They paid all by themselves. It was adorable. I'm sure the Target cashier thought I was some crazy mom taking pictures, but oh well :)


After they had chosen the stickers and book, Maysen had found a butterfly that she wanted to buy to put in a flower pot. It cost $4 so she could put 4 packs of stickers back and get the butterfly. She thought that was an ok deal....however, we found out that the butterfly had a broken wing and wasn't really worth her money. Sure is a fun way to have them learn about money and that they have to make choices as to what they can buy, what they can afford, and sacrifces they are willing make :)

Busy Week

We are almost half way through our busiest week of the summer! Bible School started yesterday, and not only do I have to get Myah and Maysen up, dressed, and out the door by 8:30, but I also have to scoot myself out because I volunteered to organize the snack for each day. I wanted to be involved in planning and helping with Bible School, but I couldn't commit to 3 hours each day since I'm still nursing Mylie. The theme is year is "Shake It Up Cafe" so it has a cooking theme and talks about the Bible being a recipe for how to live our lives. Here's what I came up with for snacks:
Monday: Vegetable Pizza Faces (pita bread, ranch dressing, vegetables, shredded cheese)
Tuesday: Snack mix (raisins, cheerios, golden grahams, mms, oyster crackers, wheat chex)
Wednesday: Fruit Kabobs (strawberries, canteloupe, grapes, cheese cubes, mini marshmallows)
Thursday: Cookies
Friday: Flavored yogurt and banana halves

Here's a picture of the vegetable pizza faces and Myah and Maysen's preschool group enjoying their snack.


From Bible School, we scurried to gymnastics. Tuesdays at 11:05 for the next 6 weeks, the girls are going to give gymnastics a try. When I asked them what their favorite part of gymnastics were today, Maysen said 'I liked eveything we did!' They loved it. I have a feeling we'll be doing both dance and gymnastics this fall instead of choosing between the two :)

They tried the balance beam:



Sommersaults on the wedge mat:



Learning straight and straddle jumpes to do on the vault:


They also got to try the bars.

To round out the day, the girls had swimming lessons. These started last week and we go twice a week for the month of June. I was a little hesitant about the lessons and hoped that the girls weren't going to be bored since we do go swimming a lot. I am very pleased they are in a class of only 4 kids and they spend most of the time working on back and front floats and glides, which are critical skills (I am a WSI you know!!). They are doing great and love going to lessons!



Are you worn out from our busy schedule?? We sure were today and the girls were begging to go to bed tonight! Of course, we wouldn't be able to do all of these things if this girl wasn't such a trooper!!

She's such a good girl and so easy going that we just haul her along. She loves being part of the action and is on a pretty good eating schedule so I know if I'll have to nurse her while we're out or not.

We're trying a new crock pot recipe tomorrow so be sure to check back soon!!

(Not So) Extreme Couponing

You all know that I love a coupon. What I didn't love was my organization of them (I just had all of them in a manilla folder). It was frustrating when B was going to run to the gas station for a gallon of milk and I knew I had a coupon for Land-o-Lakes milk, but had to sort through the whole bunch to find it. Or like today, when we decided to run errands and go out for lunch since it was raining, and we had to look through all types of coupons to find the restaurant ones. I knew there had to be a better answer!
Problem solved! At Target, we picked up one of these accordian files (found in the office and storage section).

Once we were at home, I began the sort!


I ended up with 8 categories (and of course, they are alphabetized):
Baby: diapers, wipes, baby food
Food: edible grocery coupons
Health/Beauty: deodorant, shampoo, vitamins, soap
Household: detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, batteries
Misc: oil changes, photography specials
Pizza: all pizza places
Restaurants: all other types of restaurants
Target: all coupons that are only accepted at Target, though they could fall into another category as well.

I'm sure this system will be revamped in time, but for now I'm pleased.

What's Cooking Wednesday, Family Birthday Party and 3 Months Old!!

I've been on the look for some good crockpot meals that are easy 'One-Pot Wonders.' I've found a few that I'm going to try in the coming weeks. I tried the first one last night. It ended up being very adapted from a recipe int he January 2011 Parents Magazine. They called it Simple Paella. Paella is a Valencian Rice dish (I had to look that up).

What you'll need:
Nonstick cooking spray
3/4 cup chopped sweet peppers (I used about 3/4 each of a red and green pepper)
1/2 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup uncooked regular brown rice (by regular, they mean not the kind that cooks in 5 minutes)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
24 oz diced chicken breast meat
1 cup frozen peas

**So I told you this was adapted....the original recipe also calls for 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (I just didn't have any), 1/4 tsp ground turmeric (I googled this and it said it had a bitter taste and I didn't really want to buy any), 12 oz fresh or frozen shrimp and 12 oz tilapia (I like chicken better and knew my family would eat it better than with the seafood).

What you'll do:
1. Coat a 4-quart slow cooker with cooking spray; add peppers, onion and garlic.


2. In a large microwave-safe bowl, combine broth, rice, thyme (and other spices if you choose to use them). Microwave on high for 4 minutes, or until just boiling. Pour over vegetables in cooker.


3. Cover; cook on low-heat setting for 3 hours. About an hour before you'd like to eat, stir in chicken (or seafood) and peas. Cover and cook for another 45 minutes. Enjoy!



Last weekend, M1 and M2 had their family birthday party (and their final birthday party for this year!).
We ordered a 6-foot party sub from Subway. It was enormous and plenty of food for our crowd, but something fun and different that we hadn't done before. We still have a bowl full of mayo and mustard packets if anyone is in need of those things!!


The girls chose a Tinkerbell theme and we ordered the most adorable cake from HyVee. The fairies are stampers on the bottom (they don't work that great, but they are cute).


For gifts, the girls got a lot of adorable new clothes, new jammies, books, and a Wii.



If any of you follow snappy casual, you'll recognize these cardigans...Kelsey wears (one of) hers very often. I'm going to order my second one this weekend. They are so wonderful and versatile. My girls have already worn theirs out for breakfast, to the pool, and over their jammies in the evening and morning.



M3 is now 3 months old! The time has flown and she's getting so big! Eric took some pictures of her last weekend so hopefully I'll be able to share those on here soon! She's found her hands (and sucking on them is a sure sign of hunger!). She absolutely adores her older sisters and is sure to smile at the first sight of them. They enjoy singing to her and telling her stories.

What's Cookin'...Thursday??

We were invited to a Gender Reveal party for H&R Wednesday night so I didn't cook....though I did bring a free Cheese Pizza to the party! I know you want to know what they're having as badly as I did, but you may have to wait until she posts it on her blog!!
I did cook Thursday night, though. Remember that chicken breasts are a staple around here....yep, they're back again this week! I can't even claim the recipe (not that I usually can)....I stole it straight from the French's Fried Onions can.


French's Crunchy Onion Chicken

What you'll need:
4 large Chicken Breasts
1 can French's Fried Onions
2 tbsp Flour
1 Egg

What you'll do:
1. Crush up fried onions and flour in a Ziploc baggie.


2. Beat egg in a dish and coat each chicken breast.


3. Firmly coat each side of the chicken breast with crushed mixture.


4. Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes (the can said 20 minutes, but the breasts I used were large). Serve with desired side dishes and enjoy!


**Wanna know how I got a free cheese pizza? Our last order from Papa John's took about 15 minutes longer than what they had told us on the phone so they sent us a postcard for a free medium cheese pizza....they know how to keep their customers!

Birthday Girls--4 years old!!

Today, my M&Ms turned 4. They'd been waiting for this day to come.....I'd been waiting too. A different type of waiting, though. Their waiting was a 'OMGoodness I'm gonna be 4 and be so big' kind of way. Mine was 'OMGoodness they're gonna be 4 and not so little anymore' kind of way. You know, right?
We didn't really have any big and definite plans for the day. They'd already had their friend party, and their family party is on Saturday. However, it's really the first year that they know it's their birthday....like really know. I didn't want it to be boring, but I didn't want it to be so planned out for them that it wasn't what they wanted. This was hard since I'm a planner.
I didn't really have many gifts for them either. (I know, you're thinking...what a terrible mom). Hear me out.....my parents have already given them their 'Big Girl' bikes as you know, and we purchased the helmets to go along with them. Grandma Donna usually gives them more clothes than they can wear in a summer so I don't need to buy them clothes. We already have too many toys, several games, puzzles, etc, and I didn't have many other ideas for them. We bought them season passes to Arnold's Park over the weekend, so in a way, they had already gotten many of their presents.
So here's a recap of the big day...
7:15am Girls got up from bed (Brandon tended to them so I could get a little extra sleep) and had breakfast. Maysen chose toast with butter, Myah a blueberry waffle.
8:30am Girls got dressed (choosing their own clothes, of course....I'm up by now) and want to play outside with their spray bottles.
10:30am We load up in the van for a family trip to HyVee. I usually do the weekly grocery shopping on Monday -we were out of town-so it needed to get done today. The girls got to pick out their birthday balloons. Maysen chose Disney Princess
Myah chose Rocker Girl because it had a cool crown on it.
They also got to pick out a birthday cookie at the bakery since they will have a cake this weekend.

12:00pm The girls got to choose where they wanted to have lunch. They could go anywhere. They chose McDonald's. That's probably what I would have chosen when I was 4, too.
They each had a six piece nuggets and we shared a large fry amongst the 4 of us. They ate part of their cookies for dessert.
2:00pm Nap time (yes, I'm the mean mom that makes them take a nap on their birthday).
4:00pm M&M and mom head to the 'Big Bucket.' (See why we needed a nap...no one wants tired, crabby swimmers)
6:00pm We head home from the 'Big Bucket' and each freshly made chicken salad for supper along with watermelon and more cookie for dessert.
7:00pm Wound down the evening with a bike ride around the block with daddy.

7:30pm Invited William (backyard neighbor) over to help make Glow in the Dark chalk the girls had gotten at their friend party.
8:00pm Watched two DVR'd episodes of Go, Diego, Go! and headed to bed.

They asked if tomorrow would still be their birthday. We told them 'no,' but that they do get to have one more party on Saturday. I'm pretty sure they enjoyed their day.

***Over the weekend, we had done quite a bit of traveling. Here's some pics.
My dad spearheaded the Veteran's Memorial Park in Lake Mills. On Thursday, a group of volunteers put up 124 flags in honor of Memorial Day. Myah and Maysen were there to help.
The first flag to go up, and last to come down is that with Vernon Oakland's name on it. He was from Lake Mills and was killed in Vietnam.

M&M helped pick up the caps to the flag holders once the flags were in place.






The four walls are filled with names of citizens from the community who have been in the military. Clarence Christianson was my grandfather and Greg Christianson is my dad's brother.


The tank was restored (and welded shut!) a few years ago.


On Sunday, we made the first trip of the summer to Okoboji. We were only there a few hours and went to Arnold's Park with cousin Caden. His birthday is the day before M&M's so we got to do some celebrating together!
On the train.
Kiddie Coaster--by far the favorite for my girls!
Fish-a close second favorite!
Boats

Dragons--not quite the thrill they used to be.

The first Nutty Bar and Frozen Banana of the summer.