Happy Birthday William!!

Today William, my little baby, turned 2 years old! Where has the time gone? He's such a big boy now. He is learning his numbers, colors, and letters. He sings all sorts of songs with me and he loves sports (especially football, baseball, basketball, hockey and mixed martial arts). He has such a wonderful, loving personality and is always willing to help. He loves his little sister and always knows how to make her laugh. I am so thankful for this little guy that the Lord put in my life 2 years ago!

He loved helping me make his ice cream cake. First we mushed vanilla ice cream in a pan. Then we crushed oreos and mixed shell ice cream syrup in with the crushed cookies and poured that over the vanilla ice cream. Then we spread chocolate ice cream over that. Then we mixed cool whip with vanilla ice cream for our topping. Everyone loved it and said it was just like dairy queen!

William and his friend Jett helped me decorate the cake

A messy picture but it's all I had of the inside of the cake

Merry Christmas

I know it's a little early, but I wanted to share some of the Christmas photos I took last week. Merry Christmas everyone!!

Flour-less Peanut Butter Cookies

My intentions were to make a 12 days of Christmas cookies list to post on here. I LOVE Christmas baking and actually started a couple weeks ago. I was going to post my top 12 Christmas cookies after I made them all. But chances are I won't have time to do that until after Christmas so I thought I will just post them as I go. We will see how far we get...

So for my first Christmas cookie I would like to share a recipe that makes me think of my sister, Lizzie, every time I make it. I do not remember how or where we discovered this recipe. What I remember is that we were about 15 or 16 and we made them almost every day for like a month because we were so in love with these things. Incredibly easy to make and hardly any mess. It's the cookie to bake when you don't have much time but want something sweet. Sooooo without further ado (I just googled that and I spelled it right first try!) anyway....without any further ado......

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

                1cup peanut butter (or any peanut butter substitute, I use pea butter)

                1 cup sugar

                1 tsp vanilla 

                1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Mix all ingredients until combined.

3. Bake for 10-13 minutes.

I made half of mine with chocolate chips and I preferred them over the regular ones. Also mine took closer to 20 minutes to bake but that might be because I have a gas oven and you can never really tell when it's fully preheated.

Enjoy and please let me know if you tried them and what you think!

Some Firsts....

Our first first is Jennifer's first time trying solids. She LOVES rice cereal and is even more in love if you put in some mashed apples. Our little girl is growing up!

Our next first is William's first hot chocolate. He was so excited to come in an have a hot chocolate after playing in the snow. He was delighted to put in as many marshmallows as he wanted. He takes after his mom :-)

Our last first is my first time making a Chinese supper by myself. MMMmmmmm it was so good. You don't have to be a fan of Chinese food to enjoy this supper, either. It is so simple (and cheap!) to make and it tastes so good! I will post the recipe below. It can also be found here. This recipe is too good not to try!!!

After I took a photo of Shane's plate William wanted me to take a photo of his plate, too.

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts

salt + pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbs ketchup

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt

       Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs.  Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.  

Happy November

The kids and I are celebrating November 1st by making some homemade apple sauce. It's a first for me and I am excited to see how it turns out! I let the kids add the sugar and the cinnamon (boy do they like dumping the cinnamon!). It's cooking now, can't wait to try it with lunch!

Last night we had our church harvest party. We do it as an alternative to halloween. We had several kids make the decision on their own to come to church instead of trick or treating. That was great to see. Very encouraging! We had a carnival theme with carnival games and carnival snacks. Then Shane gave a great message on avoiding the appearance of evil. It was a great night.

Here are a couple photos for you!

Sorry!

Did anyone try the recipe for the oatmeal cookies in the post below? Well, I did. I didn't cook them before I made the post but here are a couple reviews on the cookies:

Shane- "Maybe you could find another recipe?"
Tyra (my 6 year old niece)- "They aren't that gross." LOL

So, although my process of freezing cookies is still good, that recipe is not! Tyra told me that her cousin makes a really good egg free oatmeal cookie so I will get the recipe from her. In the mean time, don't make those cookies! Lol, but feel free to google for recipes that don't require eggs.

In the past few weeks I have made a couple discoveries: 1) Cookie dough can be frozen in balls to bake as needed and 2) you don't need to use eggs to make cookies! These were very exciting things to learn! Shane likes to have cookies at night and he usually asks for them after the kids are in bed. However, William's room is right next to the kitchen and because I am afraid my mixer will wake him up I can't make cookies that late at night. But my problem is solved! I now cook 3-4 batches at one time in the morning. I freeze them into balls then put them in a ziploc bag once they are already frozen! On the bag I write the baking instructions for the cookies. Now I just pull out however many cookies Shane wants and bake them. No mess everytime we want cookies! So exciting! In addition to this, I have been googling and reading reviews on egg free recipes for just about everything. Eggs are too expensive to use for baking all the time!

So far, I have only tried banana cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal cookies. All the recipes are egg free and freeze well. I will post the oatmeal cookies recipe below and if I can find the source for the chocolate chip recipe I will do that, too.

Here are my cookies freezing. The one in the middle is gluten free and it is missing some cookies because I ate them :-) Because it is an egg free recipe they are safe to eat raw! Yum!

My cookies in the bag with instructions already on it

And here is the oatmeal cookies recipe found at food.com. I made a double batch and did not use the pecans. Instead I put chocolate chips in half and raisins in the other half of the dough.

Oatmeal cookies

1 cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup flour

1/4 cup boiling water

3 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup pecans

1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1

Preheat oven to 375F.

2

Mix first six ingredients thoroughly.

3

Stir in nuts and chips.

4

Drop by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheet.

5

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

My Jennifer

Due to recent request, here are a few photos of my baby girl. She is sooo sweet and I am so in love with her. When I found out I was pregnant a year ago I thought to myself  "how can I ever love some one the way  I love William?" It is pretty easy to find more love to give to another child. Jennifer brings so much happiness to our days with her little smiles and giggling. 

I made her this pumpkin hat for her first Thanksgiving (which was yesterday)

BBQ Caribou Pizza Cups

Last month Shane's brother gave us a caribou. There is sooo much meat it fills both our regular freezer and the deep freezer. Because of this, we don't plan on buying any other meat for a while. So I have been trying to think of new ways to use the caribou so we don't just have fried caribou and rice every night. Tonight I made BBQ Caribou Pizza Cups. It's sort of a combination of a couple recipes we have tried in the past year or so.

First, I cut up some caribou into small cube-like pieces and started frying that. When it was fully cooked I added some BBQ sauce into it. I used Tony Roma's because that's what Shane likes.

Then I started mixing together the pizza dough (recipe posted below). Lately I have been making everything from scratch. It's way cheaper and usually tastes a lot better. And for those of you who may be wondering, this is not a gluten free recipe but could easily be made gluten free by just using gluten free flour. Anyway, back to the recipe...William loves helping me mix the dough. We like to use our hands...it's more fun and it mixes things up better.

Once the dough was nice and stretchy (somewhat but hardly sticky) I broke it in half. Then broke each half in half. Then broke each half of the half into thirds...got that? That will give you 12 pieces of dough all the same size. I rolled them into balls then patted them flat and put them in the muffin pan.

Then I filled my pizza cups with the yummy BBQ caribou and topped with some shredded cheese. I only had cheddar but I bet mozzarella would have tasted really good, too.

Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes (give or take depending on your oven).

I didn't taste them because they are gluten but Shane and William liked them. Let me know if you try them and if you like it!!!

Pizza dough recipe found at Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

Directions

1. Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Mix in oil and warm water. Spread out on a large pizza pan. Top as desired.
2. Bake at 375 degrees C (190 degrees C) for 20 to 25 minutes.

Sorry it's been so long!

I know, I need to post more often. This past month has been very busy. I am now babysitting 4 kids plus my own. Jennifer is the youngest and the oldest is 2 1/2. This makes for very very busy days! I am really enjoying it, though. William likes it, too. He just loves waking up to friends in the living room playing!

I saw snowflakes this morning! Just a few, but it is still a sign that winter is almost here! I am so glad for that. I like summer and I like fall but I don't care for the transition from fall to winter. Cold and wet. I will be glad when it is cold and snowy. That is so much cleaner :-)

My Sunday school class quoted then sang John 3:16 as a special in church last night. I had no idea what a blessing that would be to me and to everyone else! It was so awesome to see those kids up there (some from unsaved homes) quoting Scripture and doing a really good job. On top of that, some of the kids' parents came to church...parents who don't come to church normally. That was an extra blessing! William and his friend, Jolena, are practicing to sing their first special in a couple weeks. They will sing and sign "Jesus Loves Me". They know the signs better than the words to the song but that's ok.. They just need a little more practice. I will try to remember to record that so I can share it with you all. It is so special and such a blessing to see little ones serving the Lord through song.

Alright, I will end this post with a few pictures from the past few weeks. If anyone has something they would like me to update more on please let me know. It is hard for me to think of things that readers would want to hear about. SO please feel free to comment with suggestions!!!

We are in the process of potty training William

Enjoying the nice fall weather last week

William, Jolena, Bianca, and Jennifer

Decorating Will's Room

We never gave Will's room a theme. I guess we were sort of waiting to see what kind of things he liked. A week or so ago I decided to start decorating his room in planes since he loves them all of the sudden. I am attempting to do this 100% with materials we already own. I want to decorate his room for free :-) So here are some photos of my first idea for decorating:

I started out with some scrapbook paper that was given to me a while ago

Then drew what I figured would make good pieces to a plane

Then cut out those pieces

 Then pieced them together

Then I super glued (with the glue gun and glue sticks that were given to me) the wings in place

Then did the tail

And then I punches holes in the planes. I did the holes in different spots on each plane so that some would point up, some down, and some going straight.

Then I tied string (white thread that was given to me) and hung them up!

Cool, huh?! And it was all free! William loves it and so do I!!

How's your August been?

Is it just me or has August flown by? I can't believe we are heading into it's last week! The days are starting to get cooler (about 60 or so) and the evenings are getting darker. I think the sun starts to set around midnight or 1 am and when I wake up at feed Jennifer at 4 it is completely dark. It won't be long until we will have the normal daylight hours.

The kids have been doing great. It is such a relief now that they are both dual citizens! The Lord really worked it out. It's amazing to look back and see all the things He did to make it happen. On top of that He gave us safety as we drove to Calgary and back. It was such a long trip...just about 4 days to drive there and 4 days to drive back. We were so excited to be able to see so much wildlife: 1 beaver, 3 black bears, a grizzly bear, ptarmigan, bunnies, sphinx, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, bison, horses and cows. It was pretty neat.

I wish I had more time to post, but I don't. So, I will add a couple pictures from our trip. have a good weekend!