cooking

It is no surprise that I have still not mastered the art/love of cooking. I don't really get excited about most recipes and dread spending any large amount of time in the kitchen preparing dinner. But because of my desire to feed my family healthy and nutritious food, I do actually spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen. Just not preparing dinner most of the time. My favorite way to cook is to get a healthy recipe and make it my own. Case in point. My mom has been making homemade granola for years. She still makes it for my sister and I when we are pregnant. So until recently, I had never had to make it on my own. Since I have been making it, I have been slightly changing it. My mom is the same way when she cooks. I don't think we ever ate the same thing twice! She always added or took out something just to make it different. I have begun to really enjoy making foods like granola, nut butter (a mixture of many healthy nuts in the form of peanut butter,) pureed beans, peas, legumes, and veggies. When I am making Canon's purees, I just make more and then use them in our food. Simple Creative.
The only problem is that most of these things my husband doesn't like to eat. Can someone give me some ideas of healthy, easy things to prepare ahead of time, freeze extra for later, that a man would like? :)

Here is the finished product. Granola in 3 big baggies. 2 for the freezer, one for the fridge!

Baking the granola...

My kitchen on most nights....I never dry anything.

Nut Butter. Again, I don't usually make anything up on my own. I have to copy it. This applies to most areas of my life. I need a basic idea, and then I can add/change it from there. This was from McKmama's Nut Butter blog, and I tweeked it just a little.

Canon loves to walk when you are holding his hands

He is beginning to pull up on furniture. His favorite piece of furniture right now is the girl's potty chair! I found him yesterday standing, holding onto it, and wet toilet paper thrown out...disgusting!


The other day before church I wanted to document the flower in my hair, and the fixed mohawk Canon gets before church most weeks.

lately in pictures

ZOO

Hippos

Hippos

Hippos swimming right by us - the girls keep talking about how the Hippos liked them at the zoo.

Canon watching too

Hanging out on the front porch

Playing "train"

New haircut! Stacked in the back


And here is my handsome little boy: 10 months old today!

Bye Bye Paci

It's been a long time coming...
We realized a while back that it was time to give up the pacis...but with our hectic summer the girls have literally reverted and been wanting their pacis every waking moment of the day. Even my attempts to use them only for sleeping, were draining and with all the whining I would just give in. So we took the drastic route...and threw them away! Phillip and I had talked with the girls a few days earlier about how they are big girls now, and don't need paci's any more. We were going to throw them away and then watch the trash man take them. On Monday it hit me...I want Phillip home to help with our first bed time after no pacis and I knew he would be home on Monday and Tuesday night of this week, so all of the sudden the day was here and the girls did GREAT!

They took their last nap with their paci's and them put them in their kitchen pots and marched into the big kitchen to throw them away. Don't mind Atley's swim suite...we were NOT swimming that day, but she wanted to wear it, so hey, why not!

Smiling with their paci's one last time!

Throwing them into the trash can. They kept saying "trash man take them."

Later that night Phillip actually dug back into the trash and pulled them back out...for just in case, you know:) They are hiding in the garage now...
The girls have done a great job without their pacis and truly understand what they did. I think it helps that we watched the trash man take the trash away the next morning. They know the paci's are gone, and they can't get them back. They have been talking, singing, crying, playing a little more when it is time to sleep, but overall we are really pleased. Whenever they ask for their paci, the catch themselves and then say, "trash man take them...but I have my lamby now." Even since the paci's have been gone, their lamby has been staying in their bed most of the day and they are making other milestones with potty training as well!
Today they both only wore a diaper for nap and bedtime, and had NO accidents all day long. We even went to the ZOE house, where Avery peed on the potty 2x, and played at the playground. I was very proud of them! This is not so new for Avery, but for Atley to be using the potty now without major resistance is a BIG deal! They both even learned how to climb up on the big potty all by themselves tonight. I'm never going to "start" any kind of new transition at the beginning of summer...our summers are so crazy and it is too hard to be consistent.

School started on Tuesday here... and for Atley and Avery school starts in September! Homeschool TOT school that is....more on that to come!

Of course I couldn't leave out my sweet little snuggle boy who now has FOUR teeth, 3 of which all came in in 10 days! He is getting faster and faster with army crawling, and just began pulling up on me the other day. I am glad he is not on his knees crawling around really fast yet...I know it will come and it will be hard to keep up with three fast movers!

And finally...
Hot Summer Nites at ZOE was incredible. It was such a blessing to have Generate, Gateway's Youth Band, lead the worship! They are so intentional about inviting the presence of the Lord into worship, and it was exciting to see the kids so passionate about worshipping the Lord. Kari Jobe came in on Wednesday and I ended up picking her up from the airport all by myself! It was fine once I met her, she is so real and quite/soft spoken too. I just talked talked talked, and by the time she left on Friday I was texting her and taking her to the airport again. She was in love with Canon and kept calling him her "boyfriend". She did an awesome job of leading worship on Thursday night and a few people even gave their lives to the Lord. We got to hang out with the band, and Kari quite a bit. It was great for me to have my mom here that week because she would stay at the house with the kids, or help me when we all went out, and since she was staying here, I could stay out late at night with everyone! I haven't done that in over THREE years! So fun for me...I was even doing back flips at Skyzone one day. Thank you for praying for Hot Summer Nites! The enemy really didn't want it to happen the first night, and after much prayer and techinal difficulties, the Lord won!!

for now

for now it's only pictures, more about Hot Summer Nites later...so great!!!

HSN

Hot Summer Nites this year is going to be amazing! If you live in the St. Louis area you should really come and check it out! The Generate Band from Gateway Church, in Southlake TX will be leading the worship and on the 4th night Kari Jobe will be in concert! It is THIS WEEK, M-Th. at West County Community Church. If you want more info you can go to the ZOE website at www.zoeland.com. If you know any middle-high schoolers who want to come, each night starts at 7pm. I am really excited about all that the Lord is going to do in so many kids lives this year. This is ZOE's biggest event of the year and Phillip has been working so hard to create such a fun atmosphere where kids can really be blow away by Jesus! If you can't come, please at least be praying for these next four nights. Thank you!
Jesus Plus Nothing!