Some Recipes

Okay, here are a couple recipes that I am loving right now for my crock pot. These are both from Kev's A. Carla's cookbook and I changed them a little bit-- tweak them to fit the ingredients that you have on hand and what your family likes.

Sunshine Chicken

8 chicken breasts place chicken in slow cooker. combine other ingredients and
2 c. BBQ sauce pour over chicken. cook on low for 8 hours. we had this with
1 c. apple cider or o.j. rice the first night and then shredded the leftovers and froze it
1/2 c. water for sandwiches the next week.
1/4 c. honey

So this one surprised me-- I was pretty skeptical about spaghetti in the crock pot but we really liked it!

Spaghetti
1lb ground beef- browned 1 28 oz can tomato sauce
1 lb ground sausage- browned 1 (47 oz) can tomato juice
2TBSP dry minced onion pepper to taste and some ground red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt 16 oz dry spaghetti
1 tsp garlic powder broken into 4-5 in pieces
oregano
thyme
1 TBSP brown sugar

Mix everything in crock pot except spaghetti. Stir well. Cook on low 6-8 hours (or high 3.5 hrs). Turn to high last hour and stir in dry spaghetti.
Serve with fresh grated Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy ~and I would love to get some of YOUR favorite crazy week night recipes! Let me know if you are posting some! Thanks!

Five Favorites

My friend Jenny suggested posting five favorites and I love the idea! http://www.blogger.com/profile/03658729125513363988

For the most part I only get around to posting updates on Taye but I do have a little bit of a life outside of the kids (not much though). :)
So - here are a few things I'm loving right now-

1. My new French Press! Whoa-- this coffee is so good. Fresh ground Gobena in it is great!

2. Reading in bed-- down pillows, down mattress cover, and down comforter! I just finished Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Patton-- great read. Thanks for the suggestion Betsy!

3. Clean windows-- We have lived in our house for 4 years; because it is so tall and the windows are huge, cleaning the outside is a daunting, somewhat unsafe job. I saw someone doing an awesome job on the windows at Chick- fil-a the other day and asked him to do ours. A friend that was with me there laughed, BUT when they came to clean them the other day-- she happened to be here and they are going to her house soon. It inspired me to clean the inside really well and I love it! Especially with the awesome fall colors outside!

4. Honeycrisp Apples from MI-- the best-- practically dessert! The fact that they come from just down the road from one of our favorite places (the lakehouse) makes them that much better!

5. My Slow Cooker a.k.a. crock pot. Having minimal food prep to do b/twn 4 and 6 pm is a sanity saver! I have found some really good recipes lately and probably use it at least once a week.

So, what are your 5 favorites right now?

Taye's "ears"

We got Taye's hearing aids (ears) last Wednesday! I tried to get a picture with them but they are really hard to see. He loves wearing them and pretty much leaves them in except for when he's is sleeping- which is great! He is so persistent that if he didn't want them it would be a full time job to make him wear them! We have already noticed him making some new sounds and responding to loud sounds! He is also much quieter - really nice!! ;)
It is so cool how well they stay in-- he wears them when wrestling with Breck, to gymnastics, jumping in the trampoline and they are usually fine!

At this point we are not increasing the number of days of speech/ listening therapy, just trying to increasing the intensity of the therapy and obviously us working with him as much as possible. Hence, the delayed post-- it is intense sometimes! I feel like he has missed so much and want to try fill every extra minute with giving him as much as possible-- he is such a little sponge! What fun to see new little pieces of his personality unfold! My current favorite is-- he will hold his pointer finger up as to say-- just a minute, then he will start to walk away to get something and after a few steps turn, hold his finger up again and nod at me like-- keep waiting, he runs to get what he wanted and then runs back-- totally excited that he told me what to do!

New Sister; New Nephew

Little Clive Denver Riley. Born in Doha, Qatar on September 26th to Ryan and Betsy. I love this picture because he looks a lot like our girls in it. So precious!

Ashley- my new sister, married my little brother Harold on Sept. 26th. She is so great and it was a very memorable day! :)

Bella and my niece Emrie-- sweet flower girls waiting with their daddies

Brecken and Cade-- they look innocent here but watch out!

Taye looked so handsome! He loved all the excitement!

overnight stay

Some girl time at the American Girl Store

Some boy time at the Lego Store

Taye had some Grandma and Grandpa time this weekend.

The first time that we left him overnight! He did great. We missed him so much but it was good to have some focused time with the older kids for 24 hours. I posted the "store" pictures but the time together was so much more than that-- getting eye to eye with each of them and being able to give them our full attention was great. Leaving your children after adoption seems like a controversial topic with a lot of strong opinions. Our social worker had suggested that it would be wise to occasionally leave Taye with another family member. Especially if the plans were not conducive to taking a two year old with you. For our family right now, this was a good suggestion, We had a lot of fun but were so glad to all be back together-- there was no doubt that someone was missing with out that little sweetie!

btw- I think Taye had a great time. He is sitting here looking at the picture with a huge smile doing the sign for grandma and waving excitedly! Thanks Mom G!!!

Firsts--

Taye's first time at a birthday party-- a really great one too-- complete with a bounce around, a ride around town on the Boilermaker Special waving at complete strangers (one of his favorite things), and cupcakes with a ridiculous amount of frosting. His shirt is actually white again thanks to bleach!



Bella started ballet-- a long awaited event! She LOVES it! I LOVE it! :)

Taye watching the girls dance(siblings are not allowed in the dance studio). I love his shirt, even if Kevin thinks it is a little too 80's. $4.50 at TCP

Just some of the fun things going on here this week.

Of course there are some not so fun things like a 2 year old who wants to constantly test you to see if no still means no. Or maybe, kids that come for dinner COVERED in dirt while wearing brand new school clothes and on the day that the bath tub was cleaned and floors were mopped of course. They act offended that I was annoyed with them-- "well moooom, we were having so much fun throwing dirt and then it is ruined because we got in trouble." Too bad, at least change your clothes next time.:) It is all good now-- Daddy put them to bed and tomorrow is a new day!

It's Official!

Yesterday was a huge day! I feel like that is the only time I have been posting lately-- hopefully I can get back to some regular stuff.

Taye had molds made for his first set of hearing aids. We should have them by the end of the month. He did great and of course totally charmed the audiologist and student we were working with, as well as several other people on campus. He waves and smiles at everyone and loves to "talk" to people. We don't have high hopes that the aids will help enough but of course we will be thrilled if they do! In the mean time-- his personality, signs, and vocalizations make him quite good at getting his point across and making friends. That afternoon we went to the court house to complete our re adoption and officially change his name! The judge was really nice and the kids loved being part of it. Our lawyer was great!!!-- Thanks Stu! I actually got tears in my eyes as the judge was making his comments and then finalizing the adoption. It felt like the end of a long and life changing process, but the start of this new journey we would have never guessed!

After we were finished at the courthouse, the kids decided that the afternoon was much to special to go back to school, unfortunately Kevin did have to go back to the office. We had a great time at a little zoo and playing at the park! This goat looks really nice-- until it started to eat my red skirt-- seriously! Then, it started to eat Kait's blue dress and Bella started to get really freaked out! We quickly moved on to the animals that are enclosed!

They were so tired! They managed to get the energy to walk to the ice cream store for drinks and cones and then it was home for baths. We actually got them to bed at 7:45 that night -- which never happens but was so nice!!!! (I think I might try for that again tonight)