Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Does it bother you to throw things away instead of using them? I came across this tip a few years ago and I love it. You know the plastic tabs that close your bag of bread, potatoes or onions? We save them in our house. I use them to scrape off dishes that has food stuck to it.

For instance, this here pot, my mom tried using the scrub brush for, but she couldn't get it clean. My handy dandy tab did the job in just a few short minutes.


I used to use my fingernails a lot, but that can hurt! Let me know if you have any other methods of getting stuck on food off of your dishes.

To see other tips, visit Tammy's Recipes. She is a faithful sister in the Lord.

First Day of School- Tabitha

Tabitha has been waiting for this day all summer. Sure, she enjoyed our sporadic outings, but she missed being in school all day every day. She's a social girl, what can I say?

Today, she was totally ready to enter 2nd grade. She was dressed within 5 minutes of waking up and begging to leave right away. I had to convince her to eat something, anything to fill her little belly. When she was fed, she begged to leave again, but it was still too early.

The power of packed lunch. She got upset, because something in her lunch leaked. Every year something ruins her lunch bag early on. Hopefully this year she can hang onto this for the whole year.

This is the best pic I could get of all four kids together. They rarely ever cooperate for group shots. Seth makes sure that he looks upset in all group pictures, but he really is happy. Just another of his attention getting techniques, I suppose. (He gets to start school in two days, so you'll see another set of pics then, Lord willing.)

This is the view from our front door. As you can see, we don't have far to go.

Tabitha wasted NO TIME. She rushed ahead of me, I barely had time to take the camera out of the bag to capture this shot. :)

When she finally got in her class room, she was suddenly quiet and nervous. By the end she had a great day and made some new friends as well as connected with the old ones.

Menu Plan Monday

In October, Enoch and I will have our 8th wedding anniversary. Time sure does fly! Well, for about the last month I've been making weekly menus. I'm not sure what's taken me so long to finally do it, but it has helped me tremendously.

Not only do I now make menus, but now I get to share them with you. Isn't that exciting???!!! :)

Breakfasts: muffins, smoothies and toast, pancakes, cereal, dosai with sambar, and yogurt parfaits.

Lunches: PB & J, egg salad, leftovers, lunch meat sandwiches, pot pies, quesadillas, grill cheese sandwiches and leftovers.

Dinners: Chicken drumsticks with carrots and potatoes.

Mexican shepard's pie

Sausage in spaghetti sauce with rotini and coleslaw

Hotdogs with chili sauce, chips and veggies

picadillo

kabobs

leftovers night.

With menu planning I end up having more than enough food for the week. Whatever meals we don't end up cooking, make the follow week that much more easy.

For more menu ideas hop over to I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Splashing fun?

Is this a face only a mother could love? Yes, it is... if you knew where he had just been. I will start off by saying that he is our first child who has repeatedly gone to this place for fun. I don't know how long he was there, but he was found at the toilet getting soaked. I'm sure you're just as disgusted as I get each time I find him in that area of the house.

I don't have any action shots, thankfully. This picture was taken after I scrubbed him down and put clean clothes on him.

What kind of yucky situations have you found your kids in?

Afternoon Amusement

Yesterday we bought this puzzle at Target in their dollar spot section. It's a 100 piece good quality puzzle.

Tabitha enjoyed spending her time making it. I like it. On the box they tell you what planets are what. Anything to quietly occupy children and teach them something at the same time sounds like a good deal to me.

Here's the coolest thing about the puzzle, though. You can imagine how much the kids liked the glow in the dark part:

Have you found any great $1 finds lately?

Side trip to Oregon

During our visit to Seattle we took a couple days to drive down the Oregon coast. Welcome to Oregon!!!

From this picture one would think that our kids really enjoyed the ride. Everything we saw was breathtaking, but the kids mostly complained about being in the car.

I guess in this case the kids were glad to be "out of" the car. :) Here they are with their abba.

This is from a 415 year old tree. Posing with the grands.

A cool piece of driftwood.

It wouldn't be complete without a climb, now would it?

The beaches are beautiful, although a little too chilly to go into.

"Be careful Patricia!" :)

My seagull friend.

Look! A picture with just Enoch and I together. Haven't seen one of those in a while.

This is what we went on the drive for- to see all these beauties. Too bad the kids couldn't understand that this is what its all about.

I loved the rocky cliff thingies.

I really think we should have gone on a nice hike. That really would have completed the trip, but it just wasn't in the agenda. Next time, right?

Abba and Jeji themselves.

I think these are cows, but I kind of forget.

The man, abba, himself, just a few short weeks after his heart procedure. Already braving an adventure with 4 rambunctious kids.

Just lovely.

Beach in the morning.

We looked for sand dollars, but we couldn't find any.

Ian and Jeji.

We stopped by a family friend's house on our way back to Seattle. Lovely visit for lunch.

Goodbye Oregon. See you next time!

Farewell Summer!

We've had a fun summer and at times it was difficult. Already school will be starting within a few days! We had lots of fun adventures. Our summer started off with a two week trip to Seattle, WA. We did lots of fun things, but most of our enjoyment came from spending quality time with my in-laws.

I won't use many words, I'll just show a few pics from our time.

The kids loved playing at the playground near their grandparents house. Tabitha learned how to do the monkey bars finally! She is very excited about that.

Enoch taught everyone, including Sam, a bit about basketball. (I can't seem to figure out the new picture ways of Blogger!)

One day we went on a safari adventure. Here are some moose (I think).

Enoch carrying around Seth.


This pond was covered in a green moss thing.


Ian with Seattle's backdrop.


A big leaf we found from a tree.


We had almost daily trips to DQ. There burgers aren't as good as they look in their pics.


Everyone out there has beautiful gardens with many different types of flowers.




This was my favorite flower:


Our most lasting memories come from the bonsai collection we saw.


The bonsai forests were pretty amazing to think about.



Next up: our drive down the Oregon coast!