Picture Challenge Day 2

Sam bought Nash this toy gun at Macey's last night.  It makes the gun noise & there's a guy screaming!  It also has flashing lights.  Caleb has pretty much confiscated it.  He continues to shoot ME, oh, and squirrels!

 A moment of sadness this morning when I took the gun away.

 Sister pulls this little face all the time.  I absolutely love it!  I just wish she'd open her mouth some so I could catch a picture of her teeth!

Sister has figured out how to open cabinets that don't have child lock on them.  Good thing she's in her walker so she can't actually get in there!  I think the extra shoelace will be reappearing soon!

I took this picture to show how chubby sister is getting.  Her belly is pink because Nash was blowing the face farts on her belly.

Nash was so cute with her this morning.  She totally loves and adores him.

His scary gun face!

Remember the picture I took of the boys in their one eyed monster hats?  Well, here are a few more hats.  No, they aren't Sam's.  I had the same lady make them for my cousins for their birthdays.  We sent the hats off today so I had to get a picture of them first!

Cousins Jack & Jade got to come play today.  My kids have been in heaven!

While Sam was at the birthday party, I went to JoAnn's.  I know, I know.  I haven't been there in what feels like ages.  I found this book & got some yarn & new hooks.  I'm hoping to get some of these done to sell for Relay Fundraisers.  Plus, it was a New Year's Resolution to crochet at least 3 things this year.

Was feeding sister this afternoon & she nose dived into her dinner.  Had to get a cute mush face picture of the girl!

Crock Pot Cooking...What I learned

Well, I made it through the entire month of January cooking all new crock pot recipes.  I did a total of 17 recipes.  There are 7 recipes I haven't made yet that I put on the calendar.  I only ordered pizza once & didn't have any major catastrophes that warranted going out to dinner.  I only had 1 recipe I thought was terrible & wouldn't make again (never did post that).  I had 1 recipe that Trav didn't care for but I think would have been better if I would have stayed true to the recipe amounts.  I also had 1 recipe that was ok, but again would have been much better if I had stayed true to the recipe.

The month of February will be all recipes from a cookbook my mom got me about 2 Christmases ago called What's for Dinner?  30 weeks of menus with easy, practical recipes by: Jana Schofield.  I'm just starting today, so I'll be a little off, but, oh well.  What I really like about this cookbook is that it gives you recipes for an entire week at a time & it will tell you on which days to do what ahead of time.  The other thing I really like about this cookbook is that it doesn't just give you the main dishes.  Nope, it gives you all the sides, all the desserts & all the recipes to the sides & the desserts.  I've decided I really lack when it comes to figuring out what side dishes to do.  I'm hoping this cookbook will help me remedy that!  First up in this cook book is Malibu Chicken.

What I learned about cooking in my crock pot for an entire month:

1. I found that I really should have scheduled left overs for twice a week instead of once.  This was mostly a result of the fact that Travis is only here every 3rd week, so we ended up with lots of left overs.

2. It would be really nice to have more than 1 crock pot and to have different sizes.  The book I used the most (Fix It & Forget It Big Cookbook) tells you the ideal cooker size at the beginning of each recipe.

3.  I wish I actually knew what size my crock pot was!

4. It's ok to adapt the recipe.  Sometimes it turns out & sometimes it won't, but at least you tried!

5. You had better know if your crock pot is a super cooker like mine before you put a dish in & leave it on the setting in the recipe.  You might come back in six hours to find your dinner extra, extra crispy!

6. I'd like to find some recipes for desserts to do in my crock pot.

I'm still going to try & make the recipes I have on my calendar that I didn't get to.  It might not be until March, but, I'd still like to try them!