MENU: 4/30/15 - 5/6/15

I have a few new recipes for you before we tackle our upcoming meals.

* chewy brown sugar cookies - All 6 Ws and the couple we shared some of these with thought they were delicious.

* spicy cilantro peanut slaw - I was looking for a new way to use cabbage and found this recipe, which I loved.

* pear butter - We were given a bunch of pears and we were out of jam, so I made a spontaneous batch of this. We've enjoyed it on pb&j sandwiches, mixed in oats (with or without peanut butter), and spread on toasted English muffins.

ADVANCED COOKING (These aren't always planned, so they'll often be things I did the previous week.)
* I'll make a batch of cashew cream and freeze it in an ice cube tray.
* I'll make peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like I do once or twice every week.

BREAKFASTS
* egg & potato scramble
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix as optional toppings x5

DINNERS
* green salad with do-it-all chicken (raw in marinade from the freezer, crockpot)/whole wheat biscuits
* sweet potato chipotle nachos (sweet potato base from the freezer)
* kale & feta casserole/rice
* lentils & rice  
* potato & cabbage soup/honey oatmeal wheat bread
* tacos - seasoned meat from the freezer, crockpot beans, and some other toppings served in a tortilla or bowl, as a salad over a pile of greens, or with mound of rice

* leftovers 

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* pumpkin chocolate chip cookies
* pumpkin muffins
* produce
* Crunchy Flax cereal (We've scored a few cases of 12 for $4.99 at a local discount store over the last few months, so we've been using it as a snack. We either eat it with milk as a cold cereal, over yogurt with fruit, or mixed into homemade granola.)

* popcorn with seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post. )

** This post contains affiliate links and we're grateful when people use them. ** 

4/30/15 - THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful that our home doesn't have a dirt floor.

What's something that you're thankful for?

THE WINCO STORY

I posted the following on Facebook the other day.

Today a stranger came to my door and asked if the little girl outside was mine. Deja vu. She wasn't and I'm the one who called the police. The story had a happy (and familiar) ending, so I guess the WinCo story has come full circle. In fact, when I told Tim and the bigs about it this evening, the first thing Silas asked, with a smirk on his face, was if she was going to WinCo. 

While many people know the story and it still gets brought up by one person or another every few months, there were some people who weren't familiar with it. So, here it is. 

********

Once upon a time ....

Tim was at work. Naomi was three or four weeks old and I was nursing her. Silas and Devon were five and three years old and were playing in our fenced back yard. I had checked on them about five minutes earlier, just before feeding Naomi, when there was a knock at the door. 

Our living room had one wall that was a huge window facing our driveway, but it was about a gazillion degrees that day and the sun was beating down on that side of the house ... so I had the blinds closed and the living room was pretty dark. 

I owned plenty of clothes, but my post-partum self could only fit into a couple pairs of regular pants and I saved them for days I needed to leave the house ... so I was still in jammies mid-day. 

I had a happy newborn, but she wasn't thrilled with being set down in the middle of nursing for me to answer the knock ... so she was screaming bloody murder when I opened the door.

In other words, I looked like a slob mom with a neglected baby in a cave of a house.

A woman I'd never seen before was standing on my steps. "Are these your boys?" She glances to her right, but there are no boys there. Perplexed, I tell her my boys are in our back yard. In fact, I hear my boys come in the back door right then. Over the sound of a screaming baby, of course.

Silas and Devon walk into the living room and the woman says they are the boys she's talking about.

Time out. 

I didn't mention that while I was talking to her I noticed another woman parked behind her in front of our yard, watching us and talking on her phone. And I didn't mention that we lived on a corner and the guy across the side street, who never hangs out in his yard, was watching us and talking on his phone. Seemed odd.

Ok, back to the story. She says my boys are the boys she was asking about. Then she says they were way down the street. I tell her again, politely, that they were in the back yard. And I go pick up Naomi, who is still quite unhappy. Then I turn to the boys and ask them if they were in the back yard so that this stranger will see that I'm telling the truth. 

"No." 

No?!

"Where were you?"

"We walked to WinCo."

What?! WinCo is about a quarter mile away and across a busy street, a store I walk to with all the kids on a regular basis.

I explain to the lady, who is both courteous and obviously concerned, that I'd just checked on them a few minutes earlier. She tells me that they were quite far from the house and that I need to keep a better eye on them. She's not rude about it. And she's right. Obviously, because my kids were way down the road and I had no clue.

I thank her for making sure they got home safely and assure her that we will be dealing with the situation. She leaves. 

I tell Silas and Devon to sit on the couch while I get Naomi back to nursing, then ask them to explain what just happened. 

Evidently Devon decided he wanted gum. I can't remember now if they'd already asked and I'd said no or if they just assumed I wouldn't give them any. Either way, he figured he'd just get some of his own, shimmied up the fence, unlocked the gate, and started walking. Silas knew Devon was too young to walk on his own and didn't think there was time to tell me, so he just went with him. Safety in numbers, right? 

Eventually the woman who came to my door saw them, realized they were totally alone, and pulled over. She asked where their mom was and they said at home. She asked where home was and they pointed down the road behind them. She said they needed to get back to their mom and to start walking home. They obeyed and she followed them in her car. Brilliant, by the way, because it kept them safe from others without putting them in a position of being asked to get in a (totally safe) stranger's car. 

So, now there's a five and three year old walking down the road alone. There's a car following them. I'm sure that didn't look suspicious! I'm assuming the woman in the second car, who I never interacted with, saw that little parade, followed to make sure the first woman wasn't a creep, and called the police. I'm also assuming the guy across the street saw the now bigger parade and called the police.

I talk to the boys about never leaving our yard without permission. Barring unsafe people crossing their path, I actually think they could have made it to WinCo just fine because we walked there so often. The checkers knew us and it all would have worked out fine, but five and three year olds obviously shouldn't do that. 

I talk to them about shopping. They didn't have money with them, just hadn't thought that far ahead.  

I talk to them about always getting an adult when there's a problem, even if that means the other person may keep doing the wrong or unsafe thing for a little while.

I talk to them about being deceitful. That's the thing that hacked me off more than anything. To sneak something behind my back when they knew I hadn't or wouldn't have approved was a big problem. 

I'm equally upset with both of them, little partners in crime.

Naps came around and I sent everyone to bed, myself included. I had a baby who was still waking during the night to eat and I just wanted sleep. So I slept. Until someone started knocking on my front door, which was on the other side of my bedroom wall. Groggy, and knowing who it would be, I started coming to the door. Another knock, firmer and with something said, though I couldn't make out the words.

"Hello, officer." We lived in an unincorporated part of our town, so someone from the sheriff's department was at my door. My living room was still like a cave. I was still in jammies. No babies were screaming this time, but now I had bedhead.

"Do you know why I'm here?"  He's smiling, friendly. 

I tell him I'm assuming it's because my five and three year old went for a walk earlier in the day. He confirms that and we chat for a couple minutes about what happened and the importance of preventing it from happening again. I don't mind that he came. Judging from the audience out my door earlier in the day, it appears they got multiple calls about my boys and he's just doing his job. As he should, because five and three year olds shouldn't just wander around town without their parents' knowledge and sometimes the fact that they do is a sign of some major problems at home.

He leaves. 

And we all lived happily ever after. The end.

********

People ask me if I was scared, but I wasn't. If I had walked in the back yard and seen the open gate swaying in the breeze with no kids to be found, then my heart rate would have certainly gone up. As it was, I didn't know my kids were gone until they were back. 

The positive spin is that we've provided our friends with something to laugh at for over seven years now. They love making little comments about WinCo and/or gum ... as does our family. On Saturday the silver lining was that I was able to tell a mom who was distraught, who didn't know where her toddler was, that I've had kids take off without my knowledge. I got to tell her that it happens to lots of people, just like my friends did when it happened to me and they all shared their stories of little escapees in their families. 

SOME FRIENDLY COMPETITION

Tim and Devon had a little contest today and I got it on video.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: FIRST QUARTER

I posted a while back about how we were going to focus on one character trait each month during 2015 and I think I'm going to pop in every three months with an update on how it's going. It's obviously way past the end of the first quarter, but I'd originally planned on doing one big post at the end of the year and it didn't occur to me to do it this way until now.

I did a lengthy post near the end of January that explained the general plan of how we're doing this and showed pictures of some specifics of that particular month. We obviously talk about all these things, point them out when we see them displayed, and so on, but here are some of the other things we did.

JANUARY: SELF-CONTROL
* dictionary definition - restraint of oneself or one's actions, feelings, etc.
* quotes and Bible verses
     - 2 Peter 1:5-6  For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith ... self-control.
     - Self-control is one mark of a mature person; it applies to control of language, physical treatment of others, and the appetites of the body. ~ Joseph b Wirthlin
     - A fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back. ~ Proverbs 29:11
     - One's greatest challenge is to control oneself. ~ Kazi Sham
* We read the following books.
     - Self-control: The 7 Character Traits of Highly Successful Students, written by Ramona Siddoway
     - Bright, Shiny Skylar, written by Valerie Tripp and illustrated by Joy Allen

FEBRUARY: COMPASSION
* dictionary definition - a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for someone struck by misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the suffering
* We shared some food with those in need of help.
* We read the following books.
     - Under the Lemon Moon, written by Edith Fine Moon and illustrated by Rene King Moreno
     - How to Heal a Broken Wing, written and illustrated by Bob Graham
     - The Can Man, written by Laura E. Williams and illustrated by Craig Orback
     - A Chair for My Mother, written and illustrated by Vera B. Williams

MARCH: SERVICE
* dictionary definition - an act of helpful activity; help; aid
* our own definition - intentionally doing something to help someone else without expecting anything in return
* We participated in a community clean-up day.

** This post contains affiliate links and we're grateful when people use them. ** 

MENU: 4/23/15 - 4/29/15

We had a few changes to last week's menu. Lentils & rice  got skipped because Tim and the bigs caught a salmon, which he cooked up and we served with some leftover pasta and broccoli. Rice, kale, & eggs got skipped because the bigs ate at a church event while Teebs, Tim, and I ate bargain Papa Murphy's on the front lawn. Those two missed dinners are getting bumped to this week.

I also busted out a couple spontaneous loaves of lemon bread, one for a group I was hosting and another for the fam, as they wouldn't have been happy if they'd had to smell the loaves baking and not had some for themselves. The bread and the lemon bars we'd already planned on having made my lemon-loving taste buds pretty happy for a few days!

Here are the two new recipes we tried and liked last week.

* restaurant-style prime rib roast - We were given some prime rib that we didn't know how to cook, so I hunted down a few recipes for ideas and had Tim take charge. He made this one and it was really good!

* apple & fig granola - There was a bit of a learning curve with the apples,which I mention in the notes after the recipe, but this tasted great plain or over a bowl of yogurt.

ADVANCED COOKING (These aren't always planned, so they'll often be things I did the previous week.)
* I'll make peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like I do once or twice every week.

BREAKFASTS
* yogurt with pears/English muffins
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix as optional toppings x5

DINNERS
* rice, kale, & eggs (chopped garden kale from the freezer)
* chicken & roasted veggie soup (from the freezer)/toast
* tropical salad/teriyaki chicken (raw in marinade from the freezer, crockpot)/rice
* lentils & rice  
* pasta with lemon tomato sauce and feta/new recipe
* tacos - seasoned meat from the freezer, crockpot beans, and some other toppings served in a tortilla or bowl, as a salad over a pile of greens, or with mound of rice

* leftovers 

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* new recipe
* produce
* Crunchy Flax cereal (We've scored a few cases of 12 for $4.99 at a local discount store over the last few months, so we've been using it as a snack. We either eat it with milk as a cold cereal, over yogurt with fruit, or mixed into homemade granola.)

* popcorn with seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post. )

** This post contains affiliate links and we're grateful when people use them. ** 

4/23/15 - THANKFUL THURSDAY

I am thankful for electricity.

What is something that you're thankful for?

4/21/15 - TEN ON TUESDAY

Dad - My dad came for a visit a few weeks ago and we took him with us to OMSI for several hours. He hadn't been there since they were located at the current Portland Children's Museum. He did a few blog posts about his visit, each with a bunch of pictures - an awesome surprise he gave us, dinner at Abby's, and a day at OMSI.

Fishing - Joel has taken Tim and the bigs out fishing a couple of times recently and they caught a salmon on Saturday. Half of it went in the freezer, but we've tweaked our menu for the week accordingly and will be scarfing some of it for dinner tonight.

Friends - Someone recently asked on our homeschooling group Facebook page if they could come without being judged. The following was my response.

As for being judged ... well, that's the first time I've ever been asked that.  I don't think any group of people see themselves as judgmental, but I've never heard anyone complain that we are. Of course, those types of complaints usually happen to other people, not actually to the ones who have hurt someone, so .... I don't know. 

What I *do* know is that we're all doing life and homeschooling a little differently from each other, but still have lots in common. We've gained insight into other perspectives as we've all shared our experiences, but we're fine with agreeing to disagree or to simply not understand. The introverts and extroverts are both comfortable, the newbies and the veterans get along, we help each other out when life is hard ... and we laugh a lot. 

Typing that out made me smile because I'm so thankful for our little group, both the individuals in it and the group as a whole.

Lids - Devon cleared up some shelf space for me by hanging these lids on the wall and door of the cabinet. The door one will need to be moved or get a different nail to hang from because it wasn't secure enough to handle having the door opened and closed multiple times a day, but I'm really enjoying having the lids off the shelf.

Mowing - This is a sight usually only seen when I'm eight months pregnant and simply can't mow the lawn anymore without painful repercussions, but Tim offered to take care of it the other day after replacing a spark plug on the lawnmower. He did the "lawning", as Teebs calls it, while I took care of a bunch of other stuff.

Recital - I completely forgot to post about this last month! Oops. Silas has been taking piano lessons for a little over a year and his teacher had a casual recital in her home in early March. It was a fun evening spent listening to her students play some songs and visiting with the other families once the kids were done.

Roses - First one of the year!

Science fair - The little Ws recently had an opportunity to participate in their first science fair. All three bigs enjoy science and are constantly doing various experiments, but I left participation up to them. Naomi opted out, Devon decided about five minutes before we walked out the door to do a quick demonstration, and Silas spent a few days preparing for a presentation on the nervous system, often getting Teebs involved in the work. Silas had taught a class on body systems a month earlier and hadn't had enough time to cover the nervous system, so the science fair ended up being an extension of the class he'd taught. We all enjoyed eating soup and bread with the other families who were there, then listening as each of the eleven participants shared their contribution with the audience.

Weather - I love the mixture of weather we get this time of year. A week of sunshine and temps in the mid-high 70s with shorts, tank tops, hanging out at the park with friends, and doing school while sprawled on the lawn. A week of grey skies and rain in the 50s and 60s with hoodies, slippers, curling up in a blanket to watch a movie, lighting candles, and eating soup.

Yard - We love our home and yard, but there aren't many options for places to have a garden. The place with the best sun is a narrow walkway on one side of our house and the previous owners planted tomatoes there. It's not ideal, but we're copying them this year, along with doing another run of peas like we did last year.

We also moved things around on the other side of our house. The compost used to be along the fence to the left of the tree with the rails lined in front like a wall. I moved them to the other side of the corner, making two distinctly different piles, moved an azalea that needed more sun to the old compost area, and planted some bulbs. That side of the yard is a work in progress and looks pretty ugly right now, but I think we're finally figuring out how we want to use the space.

ILLUSTRATED SPELLING TESTS

This is from last year, a spelling test I saved because it represents most of the ones Devon has done over the years. I love it. 

MENU: 4/16/15 - 4/22/15

I have another menu up at Frugal Living NW this week. It's completely different from this one, so feel free to check it out. Those ladies want menus from their readers, so I encourage some of you to send one in. You can scroll through some of their past menus to get a feel for the variety of ways they and their readers feed their families.

I didn't have any new recipes on last week's menu, but I did end up making a few new things. One was planned, as it was an ingredient I needed it for an old recipe, but the rest were pretty spontaneous.

* egg & sweet potato scramble - We were out of russets, but did have a sweet potato, so we changed up our usual egg & potato scramble combo for breakfast one day. We added some garlic and onion powders, seasoned salt, and pepper to the mix and it was great!

* hummus - I love hummus and have tried several recipes to make my own, but none of them have been very good. I'd given up a long time ago, but Heidi recently posted something on Facebook about making her own. I tried the recipe she used and loved it. It's good as is, but easy to tweak if the mood strikes.

* Italian sausage mix - I knew I'd be making this because I had to turn the plain sausage in my freezer into Italian sausage for the upside-down pizza I had on the menu. It was tasty and I don't anticipate buying Italian sausage again.

* red lentil & veggie soup - This was a totally spontaneous creation that I came up with when I wanted something warm for lunch one day and raided the kitchen for various ingredients.

Now that the new stuff is out of the way, here is what we have planned for the next seven days.

ADVANCED COOKING (These aren't always planned, so they'll often be things I did the previous week.)
* I made a big batch of garbanzos in the crockpot last week, using two cups for the hummus recipe and freezing the rest in four cup portions in quart-sized freezer bags.
* I'll cook and freeze some bacon for a future meal.
* I'll make peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like I do once or twice every week.

BREAKFASTS
* yogurt/new recipe
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix as optional toppings x5

DINNERS
* rice, kale, & eggs (chopped garden kale from the freezer)
* sweet potato & chipotle soup (from the freezer)/toast (We skipped this last week because we ate soup and bread at a science fair some little Ws took part in.)
* Jen's chicken (crockpot, raw in in marinade from the freezer/rice/roasted broccoli
* lentils & rice  
* new recipe/broccoli pesto (from the freezer) with pasta
* tacos - seasoned meat from the freezer, crockpot beans, and some other toppings served in a tortilla or bowl, as a salad over a pile of greens, or with mound of rice

* leftovers 

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* lemon bars
* produce
* Crunchy Flax cereal (We've scored a few cases of 12 for $4.99 at a local discount store over the last few months, so we've been using it as a snack. We either eat it with milk as a cold cereal, over yogurt with fruit, or mixed into homemade granola.)

* popcorn with seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post. )

** This post contains affiliate links and we're grateful when people use them. ** 

4/16/15 - THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful for blue skies and leisurely mornings.

What is something that you are thankful for?

4/13/15 - WORTH REPEATING

********


Life is too short and there are too many real tragedies in life to be offended by a friendly cliche from a stranger!

~ Mandi Ehman in Why, yes, we DO have our hands full! at Life Your Way


********


I don't pick my friends based on whether they do things like I do but whether I like them as actual people.

~ Hannah in Clean and Dirty at Praying With One Eye Open


********


I propose that pride and shame go hand in hand. If we do not let our children feel their failures in a personal way, if we continually shield them from it, then we keep them from feeling the personal responsibility they bear. How then will they recognize the personal responsibility they also have in their successes? How can they feel pride in what they have done, if there is no connection between actions and consequences? Give them the gift of personal responsibility, so that they will feel the exhilaration of making something of themselves, of self motivation, of living on this earth with a purpose and a goal.

~ Sammy Lackner


********



Our results will not change until our habits change.


~ The Mighty Macs


********


Rejection is a part of life, and the key is to honor his disappointment without overindulging it.

~ Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D in The Good Kid Project: Dealing with Rejection, Better Homes and Gardens - March 2015


********

** This post contains affiliate links and I'm grateful when people use them. **  

THE JOB HUNT CONTINUES

I've typed and deleted this post a few times in the last hour, wondering what details to share. I want to keep people in the loop, as we frequently get asked for updates and are so appreciative of people keeping their eyes and ears open for possibilities, but I don't want to share details that don't need to be up for public consumption. Here's the nutshell.

* We're coming up on the three year mark of Tim not having a job. The first year was insanely hard for a variety of reasons, the last two have been much better. 

* Tim works full-time, his calendar is filled with subbing jobs weeks in advance, and he has to turn down jobs all the time. I'm thankful that he's in a field where he can work full-time without actually having a job.

* We haven't wondered how the bills are going to get paid in a really, really long time. While we're not taking exotic vacations or anything, all of our needs are met and we actually have some breathing room in our monthly budget since we made our last school debt payment. We've never had one late or missed payment in the entire time he's been without a regular job.

* There have been a handful of opportunities that have presented themselves within the last year, all very different from each other and each with some major pros and cons, but none of them have worked out. Sometimes that was exactly what I was praying for, other times not. 

* People sometimes ask if he'd consider jobs out of the education field. There are pros and cons to a complete career change, but it's something we're open to and will probably give greater consideration to if he doesn't land a job for the 2015-16 school year. 

* None of us want to move. Tim and I are in agreement that Woodburn has been and continues to be a good place for our family. Sometimes it's hard to know whether or not to apply for jobs outside of the area, especially since we can live off of a subbing income and summer jobs here.

* I know exactly what kind of job I'd like Tim to get and where I'd like him to get it, but I also want to be content no matter how things play out. What if subbing is what Tim has to do for the rest of his life? What if our family has to be uprooted when none of us want to be? Will I be content with that or will I wallow in frustration and self-pity? I can't choose my circumstances, but I can choose my attitude. Sometimes that's way easier said than done, but I want to choose wisely.

* Hiring season is underway for next year. It's limbo, a time that triggers a range of emotions for me - excitement and apathy, discouragement and hope, resentment and contentment. I could use prayers on that front, as seemingly small things can send me into a tailspin of bad attitudes and behavior.

I guess that's a little bigger than a nutshell.  Oops. 

MENU: 4/9/15 - 4/15/15

Let's start things off with a few new recipes.

* roasted cabbage with garlic - We sometimes have roasted cabbage with lemon, but I liked this version too. I should probably try roasting some with both lemon and garlic at some point, like this roasted cauliflower. That would be tasty!

* creamy butternut pasta - I bought some butternut with the intention of finding a new way to use it and this is the recipe I chose. Pureed butternut, noodles, and a bunch of seasonings.

* blueberry oatmeal cakes - These were a fun twist to the regular oatmeal we have several times a week and were like hand-held servings of baked oatmeal.

ADVANCED COOKING (These aren't always planned, so they'll often be things I did the previous week.)
* I'll make peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like I do once or twice every week.

BREAKFASTS
* scrambled eggs/English muffins
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix as optional toppings x5

DINNERS
* sesame honey chicken (crockpot, raw in marinade from the freezer)/rice/peas & corn (This got skipped last week because Tim cooked up some salmon from a friend.)
* sweet potato & chipotle soup (from the freezer)/toast
* lentils & rice (This got skipped last week because we had an unplanned dinner with friends, though we have it about once a week anyway.)
* upside down pizza/mandarin salad
* egg salad sandwiches/apples
* tacos - seasoned meat from the freezer, crockpot beans, and some other toppings served in a tortilla or bowl, as a salad over a pile of greens, or with mound of rice

* leftovers 

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
* Crunchy Flax cereal (We've scored a few cases of 12 for $4.99 at a local discount store over the last few months, so we've been using it as a snack. We either eat it with milk as a cold cereal, over yogurt with fruit, or mixed into homemade granola.)
* produce 

* popcorn with seasoned salt (kernels from the Winco bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post. )

(This post contains affiliate links.)

4/9/15 - THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful for teamwork, whether within our family or among friends.

What's something that you're thankful for?

MOVIES I WATCHED: 12/1/14 - 4/7/15

When the Game Stands Tall, starring James Caviezel, Michael Chiklis, Alexander Ludwig, and Laura Dern
A good movie and a true story, this is about a coach who values character far more than winning and works hard to teach his players to do the same. As it turns out, they end up winning over 150 consecutive games before they all get a chance to see what really matters most to them when the rubber meets the road. I loved the life lessons packed into this movie, both for the adults and little Ws in this home.

Mary and Martha, starring Hillary Swank and Brenda Blethyn
Motherhood, malaria, and using one's grief and experiences to inspire others to make relatively minor sacrifices to bring about great change. That's this movie in a nutshell.

 

Annie, starring Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, and Quvenzhane Wallis and Annie, starring Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, and Aileen Quinn
We watched the newer version first, then I realized I'd never seen the older one, so we watched in next. Miss Hannigan is sleazy in both, so there's some sexual innuendo in each version.

Fireproof, starring Kirk Cameron and Erin Bethea 
We watched this with the big boys, though Tim and I had seen it before. A man whose marriage is falling apart agrees to complete The Love Dare, a 40 day challenge that his dad gives him, an unenthusiastic last ditch attempt to reconcile with his wife.

The Girl, starring Abbie Cornish and Will Patton
I watched this alone one night, just a random movie that was suggested to me by IMDb when I was looking at another film. It's the story of a young mom whose child has been placed in foster care and who decides to smuggle people over the border to earn the money she needs to get her child back. That plan backfires and she ends up maturing quite a bit as she tries to make things right.

The Mighty Macs, starring Carla Gugino, Marley Shelton, David Boreanaz, and Ellen Burstyn

The true story of a hopeless women's college basketball team who ended up winning the first ever national championship. The predictability of a story about an underdog beating the odds is certainly there, but I like true stories and we all enjoyed the movie.

Big Hero 6, starring Scott Adsit and Ryan Potter
Super heroes and techy stuff aren't my thing, so I didn't expect to like this movie. It was great, though! Loyalty, bravery, and humor. Can't beat that combo!

Courageous, starring Alex Kendrick, Ken Bevel, Kevin Downes, and Ben Davies
Tim and I had seen this before, but we watched it with the big boys. After tragedy strikes a police officer, he and three of his co-workers vow to be intentional about being people of integrity who take their roles as husbands, fathers, employees, and men very seriously

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MY FACEBOOK HERO IS ....

.... Kristal!!

Last week I asked for help creating profile and cover pictures for the new Facebook page I'm linking recipes at. This week I have those pictures!

Kristal came up with a profile picture that I love. If I had the skills to make one myself, then this is what it would have looked like. It's like she read my mind.

She also made a cover photo that coordinates and thought ahead to move the salad picture over to make more room for the profile picture. Smart lady!

Go check out For the Love of Grub's Facebook page, then visit the Facebook page for Kristal Davis Photography just for kicks (or if you're looking for a photographer in the Akron area).