Organization and Meal Planning

I am the worst at planning out my meals ahead of time. Unless I throw something in the crock-pot at noon, I'm usually scrounging up ingredients to try and make something tasty for supper. Our Hamilton Beach has been a lifesaver -- it's comparable to a George Foreman grill -- you know, the type with the clam shell. Just throw some meat on there with a few seasonings and then let it go for 10 minutes or less. It's wonderful, but I've been getting bored with the same old stuff. I want to be better at creating a list and just being organized in general.

So -- I found a cool article in my Good Housekeeping magazine. It gave some hints on how to create a Household Binder. I've been organizing school calendars, phone numbers, fun stuff to do in the area, etc to put in this binder so it's nice and handy and easy to find all the information without having to run to the computer to check on library hours for the twentieth time or scramble to find the emergency closing phone numbers for school. I even decided to throw in a chart with my menu for the week along with the recipes right away. The menu chart has a section for listing groceries by category too! It's exactly what I need.

Along the same lines with menus, recipes, and grocery lists..... I found an amazing site that has helped me kick it in gear. http://eatathomecooks.com. While I might not use the weekly lists all the time, it gave me a few great recipes and just ideas on how to plan for the week. So far, I've tried the Crockpot Teriyaki Chicken and the Chicken Enchiladas. My favorite part is that they don't require many ingredients so I'm not overwhelmed by the recipe. The two chicken recipes were really delicious and simple. I'd definitely recommend using them. Tonight, we'll try the Baked Spaghetti and tomorrow will be Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole with leftovers on Wednesday night. If you're interested in those specific recipes, I got them from here: http://eatathomecooks.com/2009/08/menu-complete-grocery-list-recipes-week-5.html (Just click on the download menu link on that page).

I'm hoping to keep up with the meal planning because it seriously leaves me less stressed during the day just to know exactly what I'm going to make for dinner. Our church likes to make meals for people that have just had babies, experienced a loss, or had surgery. While I think it's great to serve those people and my heart really wants to do something, I've always been so overwhelmed by just trying to figure out what I could make for a meal. Maybe this will help me in that area of service as well so I can be a more willing volunteer.

Well, I'm getting long winded again. Hopefully some of these ideas are helpful to other people. Adios for now

2012 and Resolutions....

Gosh... I'm so bad at writing personal stuff here. I tend to let all of that settle in my head and never make it to "paper." I think part of me just doesn't want this to be a place where I end up venting or complaining. I read in a devotional that if you have something negative to say about someone, you should tell them in person instead of in writing because once it's written down, it's so easy to read over and over again. In that same way, I don't want my negative thoughts to follow me around. I desperately want to be positive and see the best in everyone and everything. I want to forgive easily -- especially if I'm in need of forgiving myself so I can move on.

My life isn't all lollipops and rainbows even though the family blog may show all the fun times we have together. I love to remember the happy times! :-)

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Everyone seems to want a fresh start at the beginning of a new year. Resolutions dance through my head. What do I really want to do? I remember making a list of things a few months ago. I'm almost afraid to look at it and see how few of those items I can actually check off. I'd rather start over and make a new list. It's easier somehow. There are so many organizational things I want to get done -- that's probably on everyone's list, right? But, that's not my main focus for goals this year. Instead, I've shortened my list to the top three most important "goals" that I'd like to accomplish.

2012 Resolution:
1) Spend more time with my kids and family. There are too many times when they're in the same room as I am, but I'm not interacting with them. Instead, I'm reading a book or typing on the computer. Right now, everyone else is upstairs reading books. I wish I felt better about dropping everything to just be silly with Sonya during the day and spend more than a few minutes here and there playing with her or reading her books or take the time to do fun activities and wrestle with Caleb. *sigh* I'd just like to be a better mom in general.

2) Spend more time with God. For some reason, I fell off the God train. I don't feel as close as I did to him at the beginning of the school year when we started teaching Sunday school. I'm not as diligent in reading the Bible every day. I feel guilty when I remember that I haven't spent time in the Word -- but I push those feelings aside and pretend that I didn't hear that little voice in my head. I deliberately ignore God. How awful is that? So I'm striving to make God the #1 priority in my life. He's at the top of my "To Do" list right now. Hopefully I can pick myself back up and restore that relationship again.

3) Take care of myself and grow academically.  I've been letting myself go a little. I think I can still eat whatever I want and it's not going to affect me physically. Well, after Christmas, it really hit me. Those cookies and candies went straight to my hips. I just bought several pairs of jeans last year and they're kind of tight right now. I'm not going to lie. It makes me sad that I haven't been trying to take care of myself and exercise a little. So that's something I need to work on. I also need to find something that challenges me and work on it. It could be learning to sew better or writing in Spanish once a day to retain my vocabulary. I just need to do it for me.

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Those are the big ones. I figure if I listed everything, I wouldn't end up accomplishing half of my list. So yeah,  life is not all sunshine and roses, but if I didn't have something to work at, I wouldn't be "normal." Best wishes to all of you that have made resolutions this year.

An Eventful Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve morning, I got up and went downstairs. Papa Nikolai was wrestling with Sonya and I thought it'd be fun too. I was pretending that she was tackling me. The first time was just fine. It was the second time I did it that was not so good. As my head went down to the ground, I heard a "crunch" kind of sound coming from my neck. I sat up slowly and for the most part felt alright. It was almost just like a stiff neck after sleeping funny during the night.

I went to eat breakfast and tried spooning my cereal into my mouth, but all of a sudden, my neck just hurt worst for some reason. I couldn't stay sitting. Standing seemed to feel the best. Then I tried to do ice, but I realized my neck wouldn't allow me to lie down. It hurt so bad. I got back up pretty quick and just started pacing around because it hurt to sit, but I felt like I needed to rest. Then I must've tried turning my head to the left again and that's when I felt pain like no other. I asked for Tim to come by me so I could quietly discuss my need to probably see a doctor. As he and Tim's dad looked up the nearest clinics and hospitals, the room started spinning and I was so nauseous. I thought I was going to pass out. So I quickly went to the bathroom to hang out for a few minutes until the nausea passed.

Then we were ready to head to the clinic. Tim's dad drove us since they had a van. It was much easier than trying to lower myself into our car. I was so thankful that he took the turns slowly so as not to make my pain any worse. We got there a little after 9am when the clinic opened. There were a few people ahead of us. Luckily, I was able to figure out a way to keep ice on my neck and sit in the chairs of the waiting room. I kept trying to joke around and not think about the pain. Luckily I had taken some motrin right before we left the house so that was slowly kicking in.

I was slightly concerned that I might've broken something in my neck, but then I was thinking I might be paralyzed or something weird. The pain was shooting down through my shoulder almost to my elbow and it kind of felt numb when it did that. At least it wasn't constant pain -- more of just a throb in the lower left hand part of my head into my neck. If I moved, then I couldn't think of anything else, it just hurt.

The doctor was really nice and sent me to get X-rays down the hall. Nothing was broken. Thank goodness! I just sprained my neck real good. So he gave me instructions on how to take care of myself with resting my neck and applying heat and cold packs. I also got a prescription for Vicodin. I wasn't sure if I'd use it or not since the pain wasn't so great at that point. But, once I was up and moving around, then it hurt like heck again.

We were back at the house by lunchtime. I spent most of the day on the couch and only ended up using 1/2 of a Vicodin to start off with. Later that night though, my neck started spasming again. It felt like there was a seizure in my neck and it freaked me out. I made Tim get me a full Vicodin at that point. Let's just say that everything was a little funnier than normal. haha... It made for an interesting night when we played The Game of Things.

Christmas Day was good. I think I only took 1 Vicodin after lunch and slept all afternoon.

The sheets that I got for normal recovery said that it sometimes takes 2-3 weeks for swelling to go down and 3-4 weeks for full recovery. It's been 6 days and I'm still a little sore. I could maybe drive today if I had to, but I still don't trust my reaction time because if I move my neck just right, it still hurts pretty good, but not enough for me to use any pain relievers. I still can't believe I got beat up by an almost 2 year old. haha... I just had to document this so I could tell Sonya when she's older. I think I better go rest again. My poor neck and shoulders are tensing up again because I haven't been babying myself at all today.

Hope your Christmases were less eventful than mine!

Getting back on the horse...

For a few days there, I somehow got pulled into the darkness. It was scary. I cried for no reason and didn't even want to go to a friends' house when normally I'd be so excited to go see her and her kids. The thought of the effort it would take to get over there just overwhelmed me. That and I felt like the few chores I had to get done around the house were going to take over my brain. So I stayed in my pajamas for most of the day and attempted to clean the bathrooms and work on Sunday School preparation.

I was a little scared that I'd be stuck in this pit again. My passion for God seemed so far away and even when I tutored last week Thursday, I really had to force myself to have fun with it. On Friday, the worst of those days, I finally decided it was time to memorize a whole Bible passage so I started with a few verses in John 15. I love the analogies of being a vine with God as our gardener. Anyway, I repeated the first few verses over and over until they stuck in my head. As I did that, a huge weight just lifted off my heart. The veil of darkness was gone. I shed tears of happiness at the realization. Now I'm prepared for the next spiritual battle -- I just need to arm myself with the Word and God will do the rest. The next battles might not be so easy to overcome. I'm just thankful that this time was such a short spell. I don't ever want to get lost in that dark again.

Here's to memorizing more verses in John 15 -- I can't wait until I can say the whole thing by heart. :-)

Christmas Treats

I just love making Christmas goodies -- sweets are so much more fun to make than real food. :-) I baked two batches of cut-outs the other night and did two more today. Yesterday, I dipped my truffles. They turned out pretty good! Not only are they pretty, but they are pretty darn tasty!

The first couple batches of cut-outs

Caleb got to make letters out of leftover cookie dough

Making chocolate truffles

Pretty Truffles

From another angle

Christmas Goodies

I have no idea where to start this year. We'll be traveling around a lot.

• For some reason, I always feel like we should have cut-outs because they're tasty and fun to decorate with the kids. 
• I kind of want to try my hand at chocolate truffles this year. I found a recipe last year that looked like it'd be easy to make, but never got around to actually testing it out. 
• Tim likes mint chocolate pinwheel cookies, but I'm not sure I want to do those this year. 
• Maybe I'll do caramels again though. My mom got me a candy thermometer for Christmas last year so this time I'll know exactly the time to pull them off the stove so they're not too soft. 
• I'm definitely going to do white chocolate and regular or dark chocolate covered pretzels again though. That's the one thing I know for sure!

Once I figure out what I'm making and how much of it, then I can start my grocery list and find time to make it! Yum!

What are some of your favorites to make?

A Year of Thanksgiving

Today, I turned 28 years old. Another year has gone by. It hasn't even dawned on me yet that I'm a year older.  Am I any wiser than I was a year ago? I'd like to hope so.

This past year has been filled with so many blessings. I can't even count them all. The biggest ones of course are the easiest to remember -- like buying a house or Tim's new position at work. The small blessings are the ones that I'm most thankful for -- our health, a roof over our head, plenty of food to eat, comfort, opportunities to serve at church and in the community, love, family, laughter, joy, prayer, and more. It's truly been a year to be thankful for.

Now... if only I had some snow to go along with my birthday. You're probably wondering what in the world is she talking about?

Is she crazy? 

Yes, I am. I admit it, but if you already knew me well, you wouldn't have had to ask that question. haha...

Every year I pray for snow on my birthday. For some reason, I didn't think to do it this year. The past few birthdays have had more than just light flurries too! The ground was covered in a few inches with big, wet flakes falling out of the sky. The weather was almost like a blizzard. So it was always fun to stay inside and cuddle up with a good book and a mug of tea or hot chocolate. Today, it's very strange to celebrate another year of my life without having that beautiful, white wonderland outside. I'll survive though. I know there's more plenty more time for snow to come yet. There are so many more blessings yet to come!