Random Happenings...

It's been a BEAUTIFUL week here! I am loving the break from the hot weather... although Thomas has gotten a little longer and so all of the pants I had set aside for him to wear this fall and winter are too short... so I'm hoping the warm weather stays around for just a little bit longer! :) 

Thomas started his first type of preschool this week. He's with me and my two year old class, so I count that as starting. He's enjoying it, but he definitely does not like sharing his momma! He's been a little congested this week, so that's made him a bit more attached. Thomas also took quite a spill the other day and face planted into the side of my (rock) house. I think he wanted to make sure he got plenty of sympathy from me! I'd show a picture, but it looks pretty rough. The side of his little nose is scraped, and he also managed to get a bump on each side of his face, scrape under his arm and his leg! It was so sad! Last night he was playing in our church nursery while Derek and I were in a class and he fell and his his cheek, so he has a big bruise there too! It's really pitiful! 

Thankfully, we decided to have a day at home, cleaning and baking some cake pops for a friend's first birthday! This morning Thomas and I took a nice long walk around our "neighborhood." 

Anna-Kate has had a great week too! She was home with us on Monday, for Labor Day and so we all 4 enjoyed a nice day at home getting things done. Monday night she got to go play with some friends, Shelby and Riley. She loved that! I love how close Anna-Kate and Kristen are, but I think it's good for her to make other friends too. Shelby will be 4 next month and she is hilarious! She is always saying the funniest things! One day, I watched her and she said "Thank you for having me over. I had a nice time." So cute! Anna-Kate got to go to Uncle Ryne's football game last night, which is always a favorite for her. She and Kristen each filled up water bottles with rocks. I think I have mentioned before how opinionated she is about clothes. It seems like there is something wrong every day. If I'd let her she would probably wear the craziest things and shoes that are about 5 sizes too big. I got an idea from my doctor to try and give her one or two days a week that she gets to pick out her outfit. So I gave Anna-Kate one day of her choice and told her that if it went well she could have another day. She chose Saturday (yes!!). That was going well until we had a huge fit over something I picked out and I took her day away. Now she's back to the same old routine of fighting with us about everything! Shoes she used to love, she hates. Her pants are too big or sag. She doesn't like t-shirts. Anyone have any suggestions on what worked for them, besides making her wear the same outfit every day? I'm probably going to re-introduce the one day of the week thing, but I still think she's going to fight me! Anyone want to take her when she hits 13?? You can give her back when she's over the teenage phase... :) 

Derek has had a pretty good week at work. He's just struggling with the motivation to keep going. His job is challenging Derek in ways he didn't expect. I am so proud of how hard he is working and I know that things will get better. He just has to keep fighting through! He does such a good job balancing family and work. I know it's draining on him but I am so grateful that he's always here when I need him.  

Okay, sorry for the randomness! I just felt like I've missed out on updating about us! I feel like I do too many link ups and I forget to share about what's really going on! I love the link ups though... so tomorrow I'll post my normal Friday link up! 

I've been a terrible photographer and have barely busted out my camera, but here are a few of Thomas lately! 

He cracks me up! 

Show Us Your Life- Your Church

I'm linking up with Kelly's Korner today to share our church! 

A month before our first anniversary and two months before Anna-Kate was due, Derek started preaching at his father's hometown church in Lepanto.

It was an hour and a half drive, every weekend but we agreed it was the right thing for our family. 

There were so many difficult things about being away every single weekend but it was a HUGE blessing! 

Derek and I grew so close to the families there. I know that Derek enjoyed getting to share such a special place with his own family. 

Just a few years before Derek started preaching, his grandfather passed away. His grandfather was an amazing leader in that church. For many reasons, being in that church every week was healing. I know that it was a challenge but I think Derek felt his grandfather with him when he was there. 

The Sunday after Christmas, Derek and I said our goodbyes. It was extremely difficult but the church needed a minister who could live in town and we were ready to stay put on the weekends. 

When we came back from Franklin, we stopped and I made some pictures of the church and the town. 

Our little Lepanto church

The parsonage. We spent a lot of weekends in this house. The first night that Anna-Kate slept all the way through was in this house.

This is one of the streets downtown. I love this town! :)

Another downtown shot... 

This is the last one. I just love it here.

(ps. Sorry to all you photogs- I like to play around with color in my pictures...)

In January we became "full-time" members of the church that Derek and I had been attending on Wednesday nights. It is conveniently located right across the street!

Derek and I visited several different churches before we started at Lepanto but we never found a "home." Lepanto taught me more about a loving church family and helped me to realize that our Searcy home was at Westside.

I'm so glad we made that choice. The friends that we have made there are wonderful. They have a pretty close-knit group of young marrieds, many of them have children near Anna-Kate and Thomas' age. We have enjoyed the lessons from the minister and it's been so nice to have Derek in the pew with me!

The classes for the little ones have been wonderful too. Anna-Kate is learning so much! She loves her teachers too. On Sunday nights, they have a special class for little ones called "Christian Soldiers." Anna-Kate loves going. She always asks during the week if it's time for Christian soldiers! haha.

The nursery is wonderful too. I try really hard to keep Thomas in church for as long as possible, but he gets really stir crazy. It seems like he just wants to get down and play and talk. If the girls make a noise, he has to compete with them! Usually, we have to take him out because he is so restless.

Sunday mornings with little ones are tough! I'm always looking for quiet "pew activities" and ideas. (So if you have anything... please share!!) I usually pack a couple of books and a coloring book or notepad and crayons. I try to pack a few quiet toys for Thomas but most of them get thrown right in the floor... or he finds a way to make them noisy. Anna-Kate enjoys taking her baby doll to church too. I have a little magnetic dress up doll that she likes to take sometimes too. I try to let her pack a bag (with supervision) so that things kind of rotate in and out according to what she is interested in.

Wednesday nights Derek and I host a home Bible study. We decided to start doing that this fall so we could branch out and make some new friends. It has been so wonderful doing this! It's really easy for people with young children, since we are right across the street.

I'm standing in our yard. We have no trouble with finding a parking spot! :)

Sorry for the terrible picture!

I've enjoyed getting to link up with Kelly's Korner and share our churches with you! God has richly blessed us with two wonderful congregations and lots of loving family!

Link up and play along too! 

Saturday Cooking!

I thought it would be fun to share more about how we do our Saturday cooking! We have been doing this every other week, since we are a family of four and most recipes have about 8 servings. We are able to make 7 meals and divide them in two so we have 2 weeks of dinners and only one day with the messy kitchen. 

We have been spending about 3-4 hours on Saturdays cooking. Usually we time it during nap time, so we only spend the last hour or so cooking while the kids are up. This week only took us about 2 1/2 hours! 

We had two meals that will be made the days we need them. So we only had to do 5 meals, so that helps. 

When we got home with the groceries, I realized that I needed to come up with a game plan. Then I quickly realized that we chose more complex meals this week. 

I posted this yesterday, but here's the menu I came up with: 

Broccoli and Cheese Spuds

Santa Fe Chicken

Chicken Divan

Asian Chicken

Greek Turkey Meatballs

Spinach Manicotti 

Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breasts

I know I've said this, but just in case... all of these recipes (except the spuds) are off of a website called Skinny Taste and they all are pretty healthy so that is awesome! 

So back to the planning. I realized that it was going to be a bit overwhelming if I didn't just take it one recipe at a time. I decided that I would try to do more of the prep work and grabbing things, while Derek did a lot of the cooking and assembling part. It actually worked really well! We make such a great team. 

The first thing we did was sort through the groceries. I like to put away what we won't be needing right away and then sort of group the items by recipe.

Next we divided up the chicken and put what we needed for the Santa Fe chicken in the freezer. Then we boiled what we needed for the chicken divan. While that was boiling we started on the Asian chicken. 

I pulled the ingredients and chopped the onion while Derek browned the chicken and then added the ingredients for the sauce. He also "grated" the ginger for me too. (I'll get to the grated items in just a sec)

Once all of that was mixed in the pot, it needed to simmer for 20 minutes. So while that simmered we decided to get started on the Tzatziki sauce for the Greek turkey meatballs. 

On a side note- that tzatziki sauce is 0 weight watchers points. Yes you heard me... ZERO points! It's delicious, so how awesome is that?! 

The sauce is a little complicated to make, but it really didn't take long.

While we were cooking, I noticed that she used the term "grated" in a lot of her recipes. It did not take long for me to realize that she was probably using that to say minced. It kind of drives me crazy. I'm not sure why. Maybe things really are supposed to be grated... but we just ran them in the food processor and let them be finely chopped. 

So after the tzatziki (I'm really loving typing that word- even if spell check is not) sauce was made, Derek turned off the boiling chicken and stirred the Asian glazed chicken. Since we did not use drumsticks, the chicken did not take the full 20 minutes to cook. We also had a hard time getting the sauce to reduce down to a glaze, so he removed the chicken and did the glaze on it's own. 

Meanwhile, I was getting the turkey meatballs together.

After we finished the Asian glazed chicken and the meatballs we got started on the manicotti.

The recipe calls for crespelles. I had never heard of them but I learned that it's an italian thing and they use them in place of pasta. They are very similar to crepes. It's basically flour, milk and eggs. We put everything in a blender to mix it.  Derek made the crespelles since he has experience with crepes. While Derek made those, I got the rice started for my chicken divan. The recipe does not call for it but I thought it would be good.

I simplified the recipe by using a jar of marinara sauce. I poured a little of it in the bottom of the pan.

I got a crespelle and put the ricotta/ spinach mixture on top and then rolled it.

I laid each crespelle seam side down in my dish. I squeezed 8 in each dish.

I topped the manicotti with more marinara and mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

Yummy!! 

After the manicotti we just had two dishes left. I had already cooked the chicken and the rice for the chicken divan so all I needed to do was make the cream sauce and mix it together. 

I was a meanie and left Derek to do the spinach and feta stuffed chicken by himself. I know- he's great and I'm terrible for leaving! :)

Here's the mess when I left...

just keeping it real. :)

When I came home he had finished the stuffed chicken and cleaned the kitchen.

AND my freezer was neatly arranged!

If you're still here... you get a special award! haha.

That's basically how our cooking Saturdays go. We have a small kitchen, so it gets pretty interesting! It's always so much fun to spend the time doing something we enjoy though. It's so nice to know that most of our dishes are done for the week! 

Our Weekend- Lot's of Pictures...

Since I went on an unplanned blogging hiatus last week, I wanted to include the rest of the week's pictures, along with this weekend. So that made this post loaded down with pictures! Sorry! 

Last week, we did lots of playing! I realized how much Thomas loves to play outside and that even though Anna-Kate can sort of swing herself, she will not if someone is there to push her! Acceleration is just not something that a 3 1/2 year old understands... hmm...

Thomas enjoyed swinging with the girls and whoever else would get on this with him! 

When he is outside he just goes and goes... it's hard to keep up with him! I was trying to catch him before he fell out of Kristen's car, but I was too late and he fell and scraped his little cheek and nose! 

He's also getting to an age of boundary pushing! If only the two's could just hold off a few months... 

Wednesday we went to lunch with Derek's parent's. 

He's such a ham! 

The girls- goofy as always!

Wednesday after church, we did a little baking with her Easy Bake Oven! She was so into it! 

Wearing her apron and heels :) 

Baking with her is always interesting... she has to taste everything! haha. 

Turns out we had the wrong kind of light bulbs for her oven, so we wound up baking them. They were still good! 

Thursday, I decided to let her bake the pink cupcakes my mom got her for Christmas. She loved that idea! 

We mixed them and then they baked during her nap. I iced them and then let her "decorate them." 

And by decorate I mean dump the whole section of pink sugar on the cupcakes! ha! 

Friday and Saturday we had a yard sale with my friend Amanda! Anna-Kate was hardcore and woke up at 6:15 with me on Friday. She did great playing on her own. 

Anna-Kate picked these flowers and we decided they would look perfect in Maddie's hair! :) 

After the yard sale on Friday, we went to Chick-fil-a and did some shopping with Derek's grandmother. When we got back, Anna-Kate was so excited about Derek getting home that night, that I could not get her to take a nap. She was worn out though! 

After dinner, we went to Derek's parent's house and they watched the kids while I picked up Derek. 

When I pulled in their driveway, I looked back and Anna-Kate was OUT! haha. I took about 100 pictures... between her still holding the monopoly money and the balloon and her drool, I couldn't help myself! :) 

We had a great day Saturday. We are all so glad Derek is home! 

I'm trying to get a Sunday picture of Anna-Kate and Thomas (I just thought it would be fun). Here are today's.

After church, we had a picnic at the park. It was fun, but Thomas just wanted to roam everywhere! 

Sitting like such a big boy! 

Anna-Kate helped push Thomas! 

I just love them! :)

 Sorry for the picture overload! 

We are all looking forward to getting back into our routine this week! 

Menu Monday

I am really excited that we have been doing this and are still going! Sometimes those ideas we have that are just going to make things so much better don't stick. Thankfully this one has and it has made our life so much easier! I don't plan on doing this forever, but right now it has been exactly what we needed!

I've tried really hard at not repeating meals so far, but we are doing one again- two if you want to be technical. It is hard to keep coming up with new things (and to both agree on them). Derek has just as much say in the menu as I do. We sit down on Friday nights and plan out what we are going to make and write the grocery list. This week's menu was a little tricky, but we finally settled on one. I think it's going to be a good week!

You can just click on the picture or the item for a link to the recipe I used as a guideline!

Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Stuffed Shells (I didn't follow a recipe)

The Pioneer Woman's recipe is so good!  

Chicken Spaghetti

Hamburgers

Taco Soup  (I add a packet of ranch seasoning to mine!)

Shepherd's Pie 

Poppy Seed Chicken

Smothered Pork Chops

For the spinach and ricotta shells, we just made a tomato sauce similar to the one I made a few weeks ago. I just let tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, meat, garlic and herbs simmer in my crock pot. Then I made a ricotta mixture, similar to what you would make for lasagna but I added spinach and I filled cooked shells with the ricotta mixture. Then I poured the tomato sauce over it! Yum!

I included the link to the Kraft recipe for Shepherd's Pie that Derek and I used the first few times we made it. Now that I've made it so much, I really didn't use a recipe! Oh and my mashed potatoes were nowhere near that "fancy!" ha! I just mashed them with butter and milk! Oh and a few weeks ago when we made it, we used a recipe from Derek's favorite Irish place back home. That one had tomato sauce, so I am not counting it as a repeat! :)

Since this is working so well for us, I thought it would be fun to give it a catchy title (I stole this from my awesome friend Amanda) and then create a button that you can grab for your blog. You can see my button in the left hand column! Coming up with menu's for each week is hard! I thought it would be fun to see what others are cooking each week and maybe it will help give us ideas. I know that not everyone likes to freeze meals either, so don't worry if you don't do that!

What are you cooking this week? Link up and play along!