Hello HOTness

OH. My. GOODNESS! It has been sooo hot here the past two days, hot and dry. Our poor little swap cooler has barely been able to keep up. Usually we operate with two, but one bit the dust...err that is, rust. Its completely rusted through. Thanks be to my sister in law who has a very large window cooler she is allowing us to commandeer so we can again have two! Cory finally broke down and hooked up the portable ac unit in our bedroom, since he has to sleep days he needs it to stay very cool in the bedroom. I took the kids to the pool yesterday and we spent three hours frolicking in the water. I am the ONLY one who ended up sunburned, which is a good thing. I know I promised the kids swimming lessons, but after seeing how well they are doing on their own, I am starting to second guess it. Today to beat the heat we staged a water war with squirt guns and water balloons, good times my friends! We obliviated each other, and will reward ourselfs with popsicles and some netflix for the evening. We are hoping to go spend some extended time with my parents, where its about 10 degrees cooler...hoping, hoping, hoping.

Flexibility

When you have family members who work on shift rotations you learn to be very flexible about the workings of your family life. Lucky for us, we have been doing it our whole marriage(almost 14 years!)so we understand how it works and are (usually) able to compensate for not having normal schedules. Today is the perfect example. We won't be able to sit down to dinner together since Cory checks on for duty at 4pm so we had a nice sit down lunch...err, that is we all sat down, but our lunch food was bacon, eggs and toast...I happen to have about 6 dz eggs in my fridge right now. My ladies have been laying fantastically and we just haven't been using very many eggs lately. And the sit down lunch was very welcome because I was playing slave driver with the children. My house isn't perfectly clean but it looks soooo much better, and hopefully by the end of the next month the kids will have a better handle on exactly what is expected when they clean their assigned area each day. Cory spent his morning hooking up the ac unit in our room. Since he is working nights and sleeping days he needs it to be cool in the bedroom, which isn't possible unless the door is open, and then its too light and a bit noisy. We are expected to hit 100+ later this week so the bedroom ac will be welcome! Heck, I may just camp out in there with him :)

Chicken and dumplings

This happens to be a family favorite around here. I've made it for my parents and brother as well and the next day my dad and brother fought over the left overs! My dad is a finicky leftover eater...it has to be darn good for him to eat the left overs. Here it is June and I'm making this, but like I said, its a favorite around here...we just have to deal with the summer heat from using the stove to cook it ;-) This recipe is like many, it came to me from someone else and then I modified it to suit my families needs/taste. Oh, and keep in mind that when I make this for my family I have to double it. 1 chicken stewed and removed from bone(I'll be honest, I rarely do this with a whole chicken, I usually use 4-6 chicken breasts and cook them in the crockpot and then chunk them up in bite size pieces) broth or water 4 carrots-sliced 4 stalks celercy-sliced/diced 1 onion chopped/diced Poultry seasoning(this is my secret ingredient) salt and pepper to taste add chopped veggies and chicken to pot and cover with water/broth. simmer until tender. skim 2 cups of liquid from the pot and whisk in about 3/4-1 cup of flour and then incorporate back into the pot with all the good stuff. bring back to a boil and cook until slightly thickened. Now to make the dumplings! In a bowl: 3 TBS butter, 1 cup flour, 1 TBS parsley flakes, 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt, 1 cup of milk. I have never found a good way to mix this except with my fingers. I use cold butter and really smoosh(ya like that?) it with my fingers to fully incorporate. I find that if I use soft butter my dumplings are too runny. Drop by spoonfuls into the hot chicken liquid and cook uncovered for 10 mins. Then cover and cook at least 10 more mins, your dumplings will be done with they feel firm on top. I hope you enjoy this as much as we do.

RDO's

Cory decided that it was high time and long overdue to make Miss Em V her quilt that we had been promising for two years...yup apparently thats the kind of parents we are :/ So thats just what we did Thursday night and all day Friday. What a way to spend my husbands two days off for the week. I have many pictures of them, but none handy to upload...you can always check out my FB page for them though. It was tons of fun, with a few headaches and teaching/talking time abounded. Can this little girl of mine really be heading into Jr. high this August? On a another note, while at my grandparents tonight some of us were flipping through old photo albums and we came across the pictures of my wedding and later my reception. Oh the teasing and jeering I endured. Yes, I ran away from home at age 17 and tried to elope in Vegas, not realizing that I had to been 18 or have parental consent...SOOOO we came back and had a civil wedding and a month later we had a reception in our honor...and both sets of parents were beyond angry. I mean, sure, we had been dating for 3 weeks and were engaged all of 10 days. But when you know, you KNOW. We are coming up on our 14th anniversary, and I still KNOW that marrying Cory was the most correct choice I have ever made. I could have gone about the whole marriage thing differently, but I didn't...and it might not have been as memorable if I had.

Its Summer, and where do we begin?

Only because I have children do I know that the title of my post is from a Phineas and Ferb song :) While it may be summer, and has been for quite some time, I am going through a slump in which I have ZERO desire to do anything productive or even FUN with my children. I went through this last summer too...its burnout from school. Last year it wasn't until around the middle of July that I even felt like doing ANYTHING fun or productive and this year I am determined to force myself out of the slump. Remember that closet project I started? Yeaaaaah, I will just barely be finishing it today, I am an unmotivated slacker. My kitchen also looks atrocious and that must be rectified immediately. I am doing summer schooling with Ethan as well and I've been doing the bare minimum to get by, which makes me feel like a crap mom. You know what though? The up-side to my kitchen being a disaster is that it got that way because I have actually been COOKING REAL FOOD!! Smoothies for snacks, and all sorts of fresh fruit and veggies things for dinners(finally found a recipe to use kale in that everyone likes!) So maybe I don't need to beat myself up too much for that one. Yesterday we had a friend of my parents stop by for a spare well pump that we had, theirs having gone kaput and a new one being $2800 that they don't have immediately on hand. Well, anyways I was ashamed to have them pull up to my house and have to walk around junk and trash and debris just to get to the front door, AND I noticed(finally) that we have dust coated spider webs all over the siding of the house...not appealing at all...I think I need to add some major curb appeal to my patios if for no one else than myself. I think perhaps I will entice my kiddos to help me with the patio clean up by arranging a water balloon war upon completion of what promises to be a hot and sweaty job. sound nice?

Deputy Stressed

My husband tells me he is stressed. This is not news to me, I've been seeing the s/s for awhile now. He says he needs a vacation(from work and not from his family), but with the way things are changing and whatnot at work its just not going to happen for quite some time. Then comes a huge blow yesterday with a few changes in command...Its hard to work with people that you do not trust, especially in the cop business. As far as the vacation goes, we took off this past week during Cory's RDO's and went to Luna to hang out with my parents. Two and a half days of getaway, yet it just isn't enough. What can I do to help with the stress situation? I could def. keep this house cleaner and by some miracle perhaps I could get the kids to argue less. I suggested to Cory that his next days off he should just pack up some camping gear and strike out on his own for 2 days and blow off some steam and that suggestion went over like a ton of bricks...I also suggested that he incorporate some exercise into his days/nights as I know for a fact that it will help keep the stress from boiling over, again, ton of bricks...he has to want to help himself first. For now I'll do what I can to ease the home stress but I cannot change the work stress except by keeping my mouth shut. And you all should know by now just how hard that is for me!

cleaning out the closets

I made the kale and bean soup last night, kids groaned at first upon seeing a bowl full of green. However they did agree, that once they started eating it they liked it alot. Today I have been cleaning out a particular closet in our house...its the closet that all the hand-me-downs get shoved into if I don't(and I haven't)have time to go through them. The plan is/was to sort them all out by size. Then in the size category by summer/winter. From there put them all neatly into containers with labels and put them back into the closet...I got as far as sorting them by size, I ran out of motivation and by the time I got that done it was lunch time, then the kids begging to go to the Grands house to swim and well, I just haven't gotten back to it yet. Cory about had heart failure when he got up and saw the living room literally covered in clothing, my bad I guess. The kids have been dying to have hot dogs and s'mores but with the fire restrictions in place we cannnot even have a campfire in our backyard. What is summer without campfires and cookouts I ask you! BORING!

Remember me?

Hello there! I quit blogging/journaling back when my semester started to get a little hairy scary. Not a whole lot of interesting things going on. Well, I am summer schooling Ethan b/c he did not make benchmark with his reading this past year...he still goes on to the next grade but is marked a a 'strategic' kiddo who will receive extra help from the very first day of class. Ethan had quite the battle this past year, which I am not going to rant about, but I have definitely learned that I must be a louder and better advocate for my children. The kids are already reading gobs of books, which makes me incredibly happy. Our garden was hit by a very hard, very late frost last weekend so we are kinda sorta starting over in some areas. I think my biggest project this summer is to CLEAN and DECLUTTER and *gasp* make the little people in this house be more productive parties with household chores. I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I will gnaw away on this until we/I succeed. I've got some decorating/craft projects lined up, starting with Father's Day, so I must get my bottom into gear pretty soon. Monday is def. going to be a baking day until it gets too hot, I have a bajillion smooshy bananas that are going to become bread and muffins, a smooshy pineapple and mango that are going to become fruit leather and I want to try my hand at french bread(I'm nervous) so that I have some super yummy bread to smear some roasted garlic on. Oh! And tomorrow I am going to try a bean and kale soup recipe. If it works well I will post it for you.