Recent Stuff

We are certainly enjoying the start of our summer vacation, a little too much perhaps. The girls and I have all been sleeping in a little extra and without all of the places we have to go during the week it's been nice to relax a little.

August just finished her quilting project. She and Kiley took quilting in 4H this year. She made a wall hanging with hexagons. She worked very hard on it, even staying up late at night to get it all done. She did a great job. Tomorrow we are dropping it off at the county fair grounds. She is hoping to win a ribbon, I think she has a good chance.

I received a wonderful housewarming gift in the mail this week. My sweet Mammy bought the KitchenAid Mixer I wanted. I really wanted the mixer in Ice color. It's gorgeous, cheery and sort of retro looking. I can't wait to try it out. Doesn't it look lovely?

In other news, I joined the gym with my Mama. We went down there last Sunday afternoon and signed up for a membership. It's only $10 a month and right around the corner from my house. We also got some personal training sessions, of which we've already done 2. The trainer, a very nice woman, was certainly sweet and easy our first session. By the second session she was tough and pushed us further than we thought we could go. It was wonderful and I'm feeling better. I am working on getting rid of about 35 lbs. It's been hanging around too long and it's starting to scare me. We have a history of heart related problems in my family and I need to get my body fat percentage down.

I also am in the middle of doing the Cabbage Soup Diet, where you make a cabbage soup, more like a veggie stew with cabbage. You can eat as much of it as you want for 7 days. Each day has another item you can eat along with the soup. It's meant to be a jump start type of program that helps to get rid of cravings for sugar and bad carbs, with the promise of some weight loss after. I'm hoping it will help gear me toward better healthier food choices and habits. I'm hoping with the gym and eating better that I can get rid of my extra 35 in the next year. So far I'm down 3.5 lbs.

Tomorrow the 10th is our 5th wedding anniversary. Our kids are all going to my Dad and Step-Mom's house for the night. We are planning on going out for sushi. It's been so long since we've had sushi, I am really looking forward to it, and some time alone.

Potato Soup

 

Potato was one of my favorite dishes as a child. My mom made it so well. The ingredients are simple and it's easy and quick to make. I make it often because not only is it good, it's cheap and filling and lasts a couple of days. I can usually get 2 dinners and a lunch out of 1 batch.

The directions are for a Gessler family size double batch. You may have to adjust based on your family size.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes (I use 12)
• Chicken bullion cubes (I use 8)
• Leek (I use 1)
• Yellow Onion (I use 1)
• Heavy Whipping Cream (I use 1 qt)
• Salt and pepper
• Chervil

Directions:

Fill pot on stove top with water on high to warm up (I fill my large stock pot a little more than half way).
Add bullion cubes.
Peel and wash and cut potatoes into chunks add to water.
Bring water to a boil.
Chop leek and onion and saute in a pan, then add to boiling water.
Boil until potatoes are very soft (about 20 minutes).
Turn heat down and add whipping cream.
Use a potato masher to start to break up the potatoes (not too much, its not mashed potatoes) My husband likes chunky potato soup so I leave some chunks.
Add about a palm full of Chervil and stir up.
Serve with french bread or something similar.

It's very good, and very easy.

Wait....Where did November go?

My nephews and 2 of my daughters on Thanksgiving

November just flew right on by. I haven't even had time to sit down and write a proper blog post.

We've had so many things going on........

My oldest twins celebrated their 12th birthdays earlier in the month. It's amazing to me how much different they are than I was at 12. I don't really tell them much about those years but of the few things I have said, they told me I sounded mean and needed a spanking. They are right. I told them I was such a brat I made sure they were not. They have completely different personalities than I did though. They really desire to never do the wrong thing. They would rather just avoid it all together then have to deal with a punishment. I on the other hand, was the queen of sneaking and hoping I wouldn't get caught. I am grateful to God for his grace in the children he has given me. They are such wonderful sweet girls and I surely don't deserve them.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my In-laws house. This is our usual tradition. They don't live too far but we like to spend a few days there and enjoy the family and the out of towners. Thanksgiving was wonderful as always. I love large family gatherings. I also love my husbands family. Adam spent most of the day outside frying 3 turkeys. They sure were good. We usually fry a couple and cut them up and freeze them. It's great lunch meat.

For the last 11 years I've been one of those crazy early morning Black Friday shoppers, but for some reason this year I just wasn't feeling it. My friend and I have gone together every year and usually we have a big plan and shop till we drop and then have breakfast and go home to sleep. Maybe it was the lack of money for gifts this year since we are buying a house, but none of the sales seemed very exciting. We did however go to Toys R Us at 10pm on Thanksgiving night. My 3 older girls all wanted to buy something with their money they have been saving. My mom and my usual Black Friday shopping friend also came. It was very cold waiting in line outside, and the inside of the store was complete madness. Of all the years I've gone shopping I think this was by far the worst I've seen. I've never seen the chaos that they report on the news about fights and tramplings, though I believe it. As we were waiting in line in the store (for nearly 2 hours) there were people arguing about who was in line first and how long they had already been waiting. Those behind us were complaining about how crowded and slow it was. This is annoying...It's not a regular shopping trip, and part of getting that item so cheap is waiting for hours to pay for it in the crowded hot store. The girls each got what they were wanting so that made it worth it.

My mom had a birthday right after Thanksgiving. She came out to our house and spent the day being lazy with us. We lounged around and watched a couple old movies, Anne Frank and I can't remember the other. I made dinner and Adam snuck out to get her a cake. It was a nice day. I made her an case for her flat iron so she can travel with it without wrapping it in a towel. I used this website for the instructions. It came out cute. I don't have a picture. =( sorry.

A few days before Thanksgiving we found out that we  had an offer accepted on a house. After putting in 6 or so offers we were getting discouraged. Actually, the house we got had 5 offers already on it when we put ours in. Basically the realtor told our realtor that they could show it but, it really wasn't necessary since they already had 4 cash and 1 conventional offer. We wanted to see it anyway. Of course we really liked it. It had everything we were looking for. We went ahead and submitted an offer despite the other agents comments. Lo and behold, they called us the next day and said they liked our offer. Yay! I couldn't believe it. Then again I kept telling Adam, when the right house came along it wouldn't matter about how many offers there were. All in Gods timing, not ours. It's now set to close right before Christmas. We will have to do a little work to it before we move in so we will be here in the little mobile home for about 6 to 8 more weeks. The kids are elated that they are getting a back yard. My husband is elated about his new garage and I'm just glad it's bigger than 900sq ft. Actually the kitchen has been remodeled and there are nice new cabinets and counters and I'm very excited that it's large enough to have more than 2 people in it.

Yesterday Adam got my tiny Christmas tree out of a box so I could decorate for Christmas. We are keeping all of our decor packed this year. The little tree looks so cute. I got a pack of ornaments at the dollar store it took very little time to decorate but it looks nice.

I also attempted my 2nd year to make turkey soup from the left over carcass, legs and wings. Last  years was a total flop. It was really not good. This year I  used this recipe and it was REALLY REALLY GOOD. I actually can't believe how yummy it was.

My brother in law who has been in Afghanistan is now on his way back home safely. Thank God! He and my sister are expecting their first baby in early April. I can't imagine how stressful it must be to be pregnant and have your husband over seas.

That's all for now. Have a fantastic week.

October Updates

We have had a lot going on and I have been away from blogging. I'm always coming up with blogs to write in my head but when I get ready to write them down I forget what it was I wanted to say. Here are some quick updates about what we have been and are doing. Now that I am not on Facebook, I'm hoping my family will find it easy enough to pop on over here to see what's going on.

House/Moving: We have moved into our temporary home. We had to move out of our other house because it sold. Everyone had a really hard time saying goodbye. We spent the last 6 1/2 years of our lives calling that little place home. For the little girls, that has been there only home. They took moving the hardest. It was unreal the day we moved all of our stuff out. It didn't seem like it was really happening. I know God has another plan for us, but saying goodbye to the home that held so many memories was difficult. It was a nice place to live, the neighbors were all wonderful. The kids were able to play outside with a bunch of other kids anytime without worry. Still, we really had a hard time living in such cramped quarters.

Our new temporary place is  a small place that belongs to a family at our church.  They were gracious enough to allow us to move in and "house sit" for a very little monthly.  They are planning on selling it right away, but offered it to us for as long as it takes us to find and buy a new home. It is SUCH a blessing. We are still able to save money while we are staying here. If we were renting a house we wouldn't be able to save. Renting here right now is more expensive than the mortgage payment on home.  We did lose a bedroom, but gained a bathroom. We only had 1 bathroom before and now there are two. This has been like a dream. It's funny though the kids still line up outside the bathroom door and wait. They have to be reminded there is another bathroom, they're not used to it yet. We have managed to make it very cozy, and comfy. We continue to go out every week and search for a home to buy. We did put an offer in on one house, but it was not accepted. That was a bummer for sure. Last night we saw a couple we liked, and hopefully will get a chance to see some more this week.

I am working on a Moving blog post, about my new moving system. It proved to be such a help and made it a lot easier. I'm so excited to share. I'm hoping to have that up later this week.

 Julia and Emily: Julia was the most excited to move at first so I was surprised when she had the hardest time. On the Monday after we moved, she was very upset and had a breakdown when Adam tried to leave for work that morning. He made arrangements to take the day off and he stayed home with her. I had a lot of running around to do with the older girls that day, so he was able to spend a lot of alone time with her. It was exactly what she needed. The next day she was back to her normal self and was okay when Adam left for work. The sweet little baby girl needed her Daddy. Whoever says kids don't need full time dads are doing serious injustice to their children. Everyday I see my children needing their daddy. Each day when he gets home he has a bunch of happy jumping screaming little girls to greet him at the door. Julia is very sensitive to attention from her dad. She wants  it and she needs it. He is so amazing with them, he loves giving his girls attention. He always tells them that he's going to love them so much that they wont need to run out looking for some stupid boy to love them. They will be protected and loved and able to wait for the man God has for them. It makes my heart melt to see him love them so much.

Emily has surprised us a lot with how well she is recognizing words and facts. I have not yet taught them to read. Most of it is intimidation on my part. They are very sharp little girls and I'm sure can pick it up quickly. So far I have an Abeka phonics book that I picked up at a rummage sale and we are working on short vowels. We are also doing sight words. Emily is a firecracker. She is a riot. She thinks she knows so much and likes to try to argue with me about things which she doesn't know. She LOVES learning and is very good at memorizing. When she needs to be taught about something she did wrong, I show her in the Bible what she did and what it says about it. She can retain the scriptures amazingly well. She also enjoys helping me cook and sew. I am embroidering some flour sack kitchen towels and she is right there next to me pulling the needle up and learning how to do stitches. She's very patient and eager to learn.

August and Kiley: They will be turning 12 next month, where does the time go? They are such wonderful young ladies. So sweet and loving. They have big hearts for God and are such a blessing to Adam and me. They are now in the 3rd month of 7th grade and doing very well. We are settling into homeschooling and loving every minute of it. We pulled out of public school last year to homeschool and haven't looked back since. For two weeks following my surgery and the moving, we didn't get much school work done. I was pretty stressed about it. We meet with an Education Specialist at our Charter School ever 20 days. They check the work, and ask if we need anything. They purchase supplies and text books if we need it. During our meeting with her last week I was worried she thought we did too little. The opposite was true actually. She was impressed with the quality of their work and how thorough they were. She said that she was surprised they do so much. I was so relieved. They do take a lot of different classes. In the 4H alone they are taking 11 different projects, along with the normal school subjects, and music lessons.

They are both in their 5th year of playing soccer. I was a soccer player as a kid and so I just automatically signed them up. They enjoy playing the sport. This year Kiley has been the goalie, while this is heart wrenching for me to watch those girls kick balls hard and fast at my child, she is really good at it. She is a phenomenal goalie. August has been the teams center halfback. This is a tiring position, but since she is very skilled and VERY fast she does well at this position. I don't know if I've seen too many children run as fast as she can, she almost like a bolt of lightning. When she was in public school she was the 2nd fastest in the whole school. Only 1 boy was faster than her. The soccer keeps them busier. It is only for a few months a year and then we don't play any more sports.

I am nearly 4 weeks (tomorrow) post surgery. At first the recovery seemed horrible but it has gotten a lot better. I still am not feeling 100% but each day it gets better. They give 4-6 weeks for recovery  so I'm still within that time frame. We did our move during the 2nd week of recovery. This was good and bad. The good was that I didn't have to lift any boxes or move one thing. I was able to sit on my little bar stool and direct traffic. The bad was I wasn't able to lift any boxes or move anything. This sort of made it difficult to unpack. The older girls were a big help though and we are pretty much all unpacked. We are not unpacking everything since we will be moving again in the next few months.

I have discovered a love for embroidery. I have been doing 30's style bonnet girls (like the one in the link) on the edge of flour sack cloths to use for dishtowels. Each of the girls picked out a girl for me to embroider so I also embroiders that girls name onto the towel. I'm trying to find a website who has a good bulk deal. I originally got them for the airplane to Tennessee and am really enjoying them. I'll take some pictures soon.

Me: My most recent change has been deactivating my Facebook account. I really have in the past enjoyed Facebook. I like being able to see photos and updates about loved ones who live far away, as well as old friends from school. I'm taking an indefinite break. I found myself constantly checking it from my phone and sitting down on the computer during the day. I would sit down to do something else on the computer and end  up on Facebook for an  hour. It has gotten out of hand. Sometimes it's best not to know as much about your family members. Facebook can get very personal. This was my only connection to some people and I hope they aren't offended by my hasty deletion of my account. Hopefully they will remember my blog and come here. This morning when I woke up I reached for my phone to check my FB, and I realized I had a problem. It's not okay when it's the first thing on your mind in the morning. So for now, I'm giving it up. I am not setting a time frame but as time passes I'm sure I will no longer have a desire to go on there. It has been such a time waster lately.

I'm getting ready to start gathering all of my handmade projects for Christmas. We are on a very tight budget this year, since we are buying a house so I am going to make a lot of the gifts for others. I wanted to make the book slings in the Family Fun magazine. I have also been wanting to make the little girls duvet covers out of vintage sheets or fabric, but I'm having such a hard time finding something I like. This will most likely wait until their 5th birthday. I was thinking of making all of the girls pillowcases with embroidery. So much to do so little time. I absolutely love vintage or Victorian style fabrics and linens. I wish I could decorate my whole house in a vintage style, but that would get pretty expensive.

I also just joined Swagbucks.com, and I'm still trying to figure it out. If anyone has any tips, I would love some help.

Adam: We finally have him back in the evenings now. For a couple of months he was building 2 bathrooms at our Pators house and he would be there all night after he finished at his regular job. It was hard not having him around most nights for dinner and the like. He was really missing the time with the family. A lot of the time he has side jobs after work and I know he is exhausted. He works so hard to take care of us. His birthday is this month and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to get him. I'm going to bake his favorite dessert and cook a yummy dinner for him. He doesn't really care too much about gifts so I think just the family being around will be nice. We celebrated with his family over the weekend, and that was nice.

His mom is from Germany and I have been meaning to ask her about German type traditions. I would like to incorporate that into the kids lives. I should try out some German dishes maybe? She had a very nice family gathering for Adam and his brothers birthdays. The dates are close together so we did them at once. His parents are such wonderful people. I lucked out in the in-law department. They were there all day the day we moved helping and moving and working. They come out every weekend to watch the kids sports. I love having family all around. I feel sad for those who don't have that.
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I'm hoping to be able to blog more now that I am not spending so much time doing time wasting things online. I'm hoping to be able to spend my morning alone time to blog a couple of days a week.

We made play dough

I made the girls homemade play dough today. I've never made it before. It was so very easy. Here is the recipe. (I had to substitute lemon juice because I didn't have any cream of tartar and it seems to be just fine.

Ingredients:

•1 cup flour

•½ cup salt

•2 tsps cream of tartar (you can substitue 1/4 tsp of lemon juice or white vinegar for each 1/8 tsp of cream of tartar. Be aware if you use vinegar, the play-doh will have a vinegar smell)

•1 cup water

•1 tbsp oil

•Food coloring
First, combine flour, salt and cream of tarter in a saucepan. Mix liquids and gradually stir them into the dry ingredients. When the mixture is smooth, cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until a ball forms. Remove from heat and knead until smooth. Store in a zip-loc bag.

Needs new Menu Ideas

I am looking for some new, healthy, fresh and cheap recipes for dinner. I try once a week to cook something "new" that we've never had before. I have several cook books, but I'd like to get some ideas from Moms (or SAHD's), who's husband's (wives) and children enjoy the food you make. My kids and husband are not picky. This makes cooking much easier. If I make it and it's on the table, they will eat it.

We love all sorts of veggies. I usually substitute starchy foods with extra veggies, but will cook it if the recipe calls for it.

PLEASE SEND ME YOUR YUMMY RECIPES. I will try them and let you know how the fam liked it.

I'm also planning on starting a new dinner menu cateogory on my blog where I can post our family favs so others can try them.