So, here I was convinced that David’s Crabapple Tree would not survive after being planted only a few days before we had our first freeze and snow. We didn’t even water it except for when it was planted.
Yesterday we had our Easter Egg Hunt at church and the Easter bunny made an appearance there. As you can see Brooke was not too sure about sitting in the Easter bunny’s lap.
I just thought I’d let you know that I am currently posting a series, over at Mommy’s Idea Book, on learning to use coupons effectively.
David got another 100% report card this nine weeks and got a ribbon at his award’s ceremony today at school.
Brooke is obsessed with Princesses and pretends to be one at some point every day. Tonight she got all decked out in a pretty little dress her Aunt Janna and Uncle Richard got her for Christmas.
I meant to post this yesterday but forgot to do it. As I walked past our back door last night, I was in awe of the colorful sky and I wanted to share it wth you. Isn’t it beautiful? David described it as “a rainbow of colors.”
I’m once again reminded of our awesome God and the beauty of His creation.
Whew!! I’m tired from my second and final day of baking. Nevertheless, here’s what I managed to get done today.
Initially, I thought these tortillas were not going to be good because they felt too stiff. However, as I cooked them, I placed them under a warm cloth and by the time I was done with all of them, they were nice and soft. They taste really good too. I will definitely be making these again!
I really wanted to make some Fried Apple Pies with this same dough recipe, but I ran out of flour. Oh well, maybe I can try those another day. It’s not like we really need any more sweets right now anyway. 
Baked Spaghetti
We’re having one of these for dinner tonight and the other one is going in the freezer for later. It looks and smells so good. I wish it was time for dinner now.
Happy Baking!!
After being inspired by a few other bloggers out in the blogosphere, I finally decided to have my own baking days this week.
Technically, I didn’t do a whole lot of baking, but rather prepared items for the freezer that will make it easy to bake them on days my time is limited.
Here are the fruits of my labor from today.
Breakfast Casserole
I’m leaving one of these in the refrigerator to bake Saturday morning for breakfast and the other is going into the freezer for another day. I’ve never tried freezing one of these before, so I hope it does okay. I guess time will tell.
I ended up with three dozen Oatmeal Cookies and four dozen Chocolate Chip Cookies. All I did on these was mixed up the dough, dropped tablespoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer for a few minutes to slightly harden the dough so that I could drop them in freezer bags without the dough balls sticking together.
Now when I need a few cookies I can get them out of the freezer, a dozen at the time, and bake them.
Honey Oatmeal Wheat Bread
I made three loaves of this bread. The plan is to eat one now and slice and freeze the other two for later. Homemade bread is just so tasty and David thinks there is nothing like it.
Tomorrow I start again. I’m going to try my hand at homemade tortillas and hot pockets. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Every now and then, we end up eating a bowl of cereal for supper. Well, tonight was one of those nights. I took out all the cereal and placed them on the counter for the kids to choose which ones they wanted to eat.
Upon David’s inspection of each cereal, he advised me that he didn’t want those Frosted Flakes because it isn’t a good cereal. I proceeded to tell him that not only is it good cereal but it’s a kid’s cereal because it has Tony the Tiger on the box.
David’s response was simply that he didn’t want it because it has a tiger on the cover and the box is Auburn colors.
What else needs to be said here?
Okay, so I intended on doing this little project before Thanksgiving but I just didn’t get it all together to it then. It’s a collage of photos of things in our lives we are thankful for. I decided it was still a good craft to do even after Thanksgiving because we should be thankful all year round not just on a day designated as a day of thanksgiving.
While David was at school I cut a bunch of pictures out of my old magazines of things I thought the kids would like. Of course, I couldn’t find two of all the same pictures so I decided, in order to minimize arguing over who got which picture, to let them take turns choosing pictures. Being the youngest, Brooke got to go first. It worked out beautifully. No arguing! Can you believe that?
I snapped a photo while they were working away, and then since David wouldn’t cooperate by holding his picture up for me to take a picture, I propped their papers on the couch and took a photo of the results. I thought they came out really good.
At the very least, the kids had a lot of fun picking out pictures of things they enjoy.
Yes. This morning we woke up to find snow outside. The kids were adamant about getting out there to play in it. I can’t imagine why, but nevertheless they were very excited.
This was Brooke’s first time getting to play in snow. The last time it snowed she was too young to get out there. Bless her heart, she doesn’t have any gloves of her own so she had to use mine and needless to say, they were slightly large on her little hands. However, I’m fairly certain that Santa has been informed and will be helping her out in this area. 
Anyway, I suppose you want to see pictures of the kids so I’ve added them below.
I also wanted to add this sweet message that Chuck left for the kids this morning before leaving to go to a meeting at church.
David just had Christmas pictures at school so I thought I’d put a sample out here for you to see. As you can see, he had recently lost several teeth, three to be exact. I guess we know what he wants to Christmas…his two front teeth.
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I’d help my mom do some of the cooking this year. Since my parents are baking a ham, I decided to come up with the side dishes and dessert to go along with it.
As for the Chicken & Dumplings, I’ve seen them made two ways. One method is blobs (that’s what I call it) of dough dropped into boiling broth and cooked, and the other is thinly cut strips of dough dropped into boiling broth and cooked. The latter is the method I grew up on and am accustomed to preparing.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Now, I can’t wait to get to eat all this yummy food. Oh, how I hope I don’t overeat too much, especially on those brownies!!
Photo Credit: Allan Chatto
As I was going through David’s backpack yesterday, I found a tree. Yes, a REAL little tree. Along with the tree came instructions for planting the Crabapple tree.
Really…when did they start sending trees home with students?!? I don’t remember getting one when I was in school.
Anyway, since the tree needed to be planted soon, we (or should I say, Chuck, David and Brooke) got to plant it in the front yard today.
It looks a little pitiful, so I’m not sure if it’ll make it, but I sure hope it does. I think it would be a nice addition to the yard. In addition, we might eventually get some apples for jelly or pies. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Here is David giving the tree a drink of water.
Even Brooke got to get in on the action by helping compact the soil around the tree.
David’s Award Ceremony
Last Thursday, we went to David’s award’s ceremony at school. We didn’t know for sure if he would be getting an award or not, but I thought he probably would since he got 100% on his report card. I took some pictures, unfortunately the lighting was not very good so the pictures are not as clear as I’d like.
In this photo, you can find David on the far left side of the group of kids lined up across the front. He has on a green jacket.
This is a picture of the ribbon he got. Just in case you can’t read it, it says, “Roaring with 100%…Vinemont Elementary School.”
We are so proud of our little man.