Eons and eons ago when I was in the fabulous Mom Masterminds program, I met a lady named Christine Steendahl who had a very interesting niche. She helps you plan your dinner. All of them. I was intrigued, but, being the Queen of Procrastination – I never subscribed to her program. Well, today I was looking around her site and I found some freebie menus and grocery lists and DUDE! I am so getting a subscription! Her recipes, seriously, look easy and simple enough even for me to follow! And so I wanted to share the recipes with you here:

Simple Recipes Your Family Will Love
———————————————–
Looking for simple and easy to prepare recipes that not only taste awesome but give the perception that you spent a lot of thought and effort creating the dish? Here are numouers dishes that are very easy, but extremely delicious.

Oriental Stir Fry
One of the simplest recipes that are incredibly satisfying is Oriental stir fry. You can make an Oriental stir fry with chicken, pork, beef or without any meat. Using one simple frying pan or wok, a variety of vegetables (fresh, canned or frozen), some stir fry sauces and a side of rice- you’ve got a great supper.

Oriental Chicken Stir Fry
Ingredients:
1 pound of chicken breast (cut into cubes or strips)
2 cans of oriental style vegetables (usually includes water chestnuts, green beans, broccoli, baby corn, carrots, etc)
4 to 8 ounces of stir fry sauce (sweet or salty your choice)
4 servings of rice
Olive Oil

Directions:
Cook boil in bag rice on the side as directed. In an oiled frying pan or wok add cut chicken, cook moderately and then mix in vegetables. Stir frequently with a wooden spoon adding a few spoonfuls of sauce every few minutes. Stir fry for about 10 minutes or until cooked completely through. Serve on a bed of rice.

Maple Ham Steak
Ham steak is incredibly easy to make and for many families an awesome meal. You can buy individually cut ham steaks sold in many grocery stores. Or if you prefer, you can buy a big ham and slice it into ½ to ¾ inch thick steaks.

Ingredients:
4 Ham Steaks
4 ounces of brown sugar
8 ounces of maple syrup
4 Yams (sweet potatoes (fresh or canned)

Directions:
Rub 1 ounce of brown sugar into the ham and set it in an oven for about 25 to 30 minutes at 400 to 425 degrees F. (or as directed). A few minutes before the ham steak is complete, you can drizzle some maple syrup on top of the ham steak or cautiously warm the syrup in a microwave and serve as desired. Ham steaks go great with yams (sweet potatoes). You can cook them in an oven with your ham steak, starting them about 15 minutes before you begin cooking the ham.

BLT Sandwich
One of my family favorites is the BLT sandwich. While bacon is perhaps not the healthiest food available, you can choose to swap good old fashioned bacon with turkey bacon or even chicken bacon. These products aren’t as bad as they sound and actually quite flavorful.

Since the BLT sandwich is very easy and only includes bacon, lettuce, tomato, bread and mayo, make sure you buy only top quality ingredients including nice thick bread and fresh lettuce and tomatoes.

Ingredients:
1 Loaf of White or Rye Bread
1 head of lettuce
4 beefsteak tomatoes
1 pound of bacon

Directions:
On a griddle cook one pound of bacon. Pat dry removing any excess grease. Now add mayo to two pieces of bread and then top with a sliced tomato and some lettuce. Garnish with a pickle, some olives and some pretzels or chips.

Christine Steendahl Is The Founder Of Dine Without Whine – A Family Friendly Weekly Menu Planner. Eliminate Your Dinner Hour Stress And Re-Discover The Pleasure Of The Dinner Hour!

———————————————–

I absolutely can’t wait to start getting my menus – this is going to be awesome!!! (I hope!) We have had such a struggle here in our house lately over dinner. Two of the biggest stumbling blocks are ….dun dun dun …Lisa and Shawn! We are both such picky eaters! We really are a pain in the butt. I hope this can help us out. I will report back to you and let you know how it’s going when we’ve been using it for a few weeks!

P.S. Remember I told you I got some freebie menus and grocery list? You can get that, too! Just click here ==> Sample Menu Plan

My sons had a birthday on Tuesday. They share their birthday – they just love it! Let me tell you – it warms their hearts! Ok, maybe I’m lying. Just a little bit. They were born on September 22 – one year apart!

Funny thing is, I think I’m still in shock about the whole thing (the fact that they are so old) because, I really don’t even know what to say in this post. Crazy. I’m usually Mrs. Blabbermouth, right?

I had taken some pictures on Tuesday morning, so that I’d have pics of the actual day (I’m sure there will be party pics) and so that I could post them to the blog, but, for the absolute freakin’ bloody life of me – I can’t find the camera cord! It’s driving me crazy! I just had it on Friday, when I uploaded some ‘before’ pics I’d taken of myself, since I’m in Scott’s workout program. (Which I can’t wait to tell you about – I know I keep saying that. I’m getting there – I swear! There’s just so much to blog about right now!) And then on Tuesday morning, I couldn’t find it! What the heck happened from Friday to Tuesday? The only room I upload pictures in is the office. It can’t have left this office.

And therein lies the problem – this office. Pig. sty. Whoa – my mother would freak! (Sorry, Momma! I’ll get it cleaned up, I promise!)

Patrick is working on getting his drivers license. He has his permit, he’s taken the class, he’s taken the written test – and now he just needs to get in some more driving time with Mark and myself.

And Shawn is constantly hassling me to start his driving lessons.



Life has just been hectic – for both of them to accomplish their wishes. We have band stuff all the time and Granny has been sick. We almost lost her last week. She is back home now, but, not in the best shape.

It almost didn’t even seem like their birthday on Tuesday, and one of them remarks to such at the end of the day Tuesday. And all I could do was agree with him.

Uncle Jimmy has been in town, though, since Granny is sick and so the other night he and Grandma Janice bought the boys’ birthday cakes and had us over for cake:

I’m feeling really detached about their birthday today and I guess that is why this post is feeling so weird to me. And I even told Patrick that it was a good thing I didn’t get a chance to blog about his birthday on the day, because, I probably would have lost it while I was trying to type. He laughed at me and said I’ll be crying anyway! I figured he was probably right, but, I am strangely detached ….weird…

That morning, though, it was so funny – when I went to hit my knees and say ‘Good morning’ to God – I knelt down like a runner in a sprint does – ready to spring back up into action! I knew that if I stayed there too long, I would totally and completely lose it! Ha! So it was like, *semi kneel* “Dear God, I love you, thank you so much for my boys, I love them so much. Amen!” And OUTTA THERE!!! Super quick like! I was laughing at myself as I was walking out the bedroom door.

The kids wanted me to drive them to school, though, and I just didn’t have time for some crazy sappy Momma bawling fit! And let me tell you, just with that itty bitty short prayer – I felt it coming on! So the foresight was good on my part. LOL

Hopefully I will one fine day find my camera cord and post their pics here for you! Wish me luck!

Image by Јerry via Flickr

My mom is the uber coolest ever! I got an email the other day from USPS that there was a package coming and I knew it had to be gifties for my munchkin monsters for Valentines Day from my sweet Momma!

The box of Valentines goodness arrived on Friday, so on Friday after school I let the kids dig in! I just couldn’t wait until Saturday, the actual Valentines Day! These kids are so lucky they have a mom with a big need for immediate gratification! Ha! I was so glad it didn’t come until Friday, because, if it got here on Wednesday or Thursday – I would’ve had to have waited and that would’ve been way too hard! LOL!

For all the trouble she goes to sending these Valentines, I figured she ought to at least get to see them open it!! So here ya, go, Momma:

We love you, Grandma!!!!

Judi with an ‘I’ is my Momma! And she LIGHTS UP MY LIFE – and I just wanted to let her know that! Just like I did in the fourth grade when I sang that song to her. You see, in the fourth grade, we had a special Mother’s Day ‘thing’ – we had all our moms come into school, and I think we had drawn their pictures or something, and then we all sang ‘You Light Up My Life’ to them. And the whole freaking classroom FLOODED with tears!!! And ever since, that is mine and Momma’s song!

(And yes, that is me –> in the fourth grade! Aren’t I cute? I loved that shirt! It had one of those cute little wiggle worms on it! It was one of my favorites!)

I thought it would be really cool if I could sing it to her on video this year for Mother’s Day and post it on YouTube, and consequently, here on the blog. Wouldn’t that be cool?


“No, Lisa! Nooooo! Don’t do it!”

Who in the hell said that?! Hahaha! Some level-headed creature that lives in my brain, that’s who. So then I thought, well, I could get Sammie to sing it and film her! And she’s almost the same age, so that would be cool, and she has a brand new, fancy-schmancy Karaoke machine, too! Sammie somehow wasn’t game with the whole thing. What’s her deal? Hrmph! But we don’t need her – we’ve got all kinds of people already singing their hearts out on YouTube! So let’s get this party started! We’ll start with ‘the original’!!

Debby Boone
This song was a HIT for her in 1977, spending ten weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and winning her a Grammy the following year.

Leann Rimes
Dare I say it? I absolutely love Leann’s version of this song, I love the quiet gusto she puts into songs – can’t get enough of it. She is one of my very favorite singers, though, so it’s kinda not fair. Ya’ll just don’t tell Debby, okay? Thanks.

Bianca Ryan
This young lady is a rockin’ young chick who just happens to have been born the same month that my sweet Shawn was – September 1994! And apparently, after winning America’s Got Talent in its debut season, is just taking the music world by storm! And I was really happy to find her singing this song, because, it’s the closest I can come to ‘fourth graders singing it’. Ok, she’s not exactly your typical singing youngster, like we were – but, she is a youngster – and that’s cool!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a Mother’s Day card I made for my mother oh-so-many long years ago! Was I crafty, or what? Here’s the front of the card:

That’s right, folks! That’s what my brother’s getting. Man, he always gets all the cool stuff! I guess, though, I should really be jealous of his wife. I mean, really, take an old married man (meaning:married for some number of years) and jazz him up on Valentines Day with extra heartbeats – heck! It’ll be like they just fell in love again!

Ok, serious, my brother has a heart that just ain’t acting quite right these days. They did some testing on him at home, decided he needed to come in for inpatient testing, and decided my super-young, was-just-a-teenager-the-other-day-I-swear brother needed a ….

Pacemaker?! What?! Are you kidding me?! Yikes. How in the holy hell did that happen? That’s like some old-people thing, you know? And Dave and I were just cruising with our friends in his oh-so-glorious bright-I-see-you-from-a-mile-away orange Mustang II just like the other day or something. Hanging out at that park off of Hillcrest and 635 – yeah, like ..ok, it might’ve been a couple years ago. Ok, maybe it was more than a couple. But I’m telling you – IT WASN’T THAT MANY YEARS AGO! REALLY!

I was a little freaked last night, but, then I remembered about my sweet friend, Freeman, whose had a bad heart for twenty years – and is still just fine – and I felt a whole lot better. And also, upon further investigation, these things, these pacemakers – are actually pretty damn cool little doohickeys!

I learned from the American Heart Association that the latest and the greatest are actually demand pacemakers, functioning very similarly to the thermostat in your home. They ‘kick on’ only when they’re needed. That’s pretty cool! And then I watched this cool media presentation that really helped me to see and understand how these little buggers work! And then I also found a very helpful and uber-necessary PDF that he will need to print out and fill out and keep in his wallet. It’s a Pacemaker Identification Card.

And the funny thing was that David, himself, actually described it to me like a stopwatch. So I told him when he gets out of there, we’re gonna have footraces with his chest! Now don’t be looking at me like that! You children of the 80′s know exactly what I’m talking about – you’d get the latest, greatest stopwatch for Christmas and you and your brothers and sisters would run right out of the house and race! I know you remember that!

So yeah, that’ll be funny – we’re both a little ‘fluffier’ nowadays! Ha! Of course, that might be just what we need!

Now ya’ll quit all this horseplay and funny stuff and say a prayer for my brother – got it? If that’s not your cup o’ tea, you’re more than welcome to think good thoughts – send good juju – whatever it is that you do!

Thanks!

My mom gets us these wonderful, personalized calendars every year for Christmas. It’s a wonderful tradition she’s started. She gets one for each of our families – so that is a lot of pictures to gather, because, each calendar has a different picture for every month.  I like to look at the pictures on Christmas day when we open it, and then I try not to look again until each month comes upon us. It makes for twelve sweet little surprises throughout the year. Last year’s calendar was a little hard to look at, as a lot of the pics were not only from Dallas, but, from the last few days before we actually moved 700+ miles away from home. Mom, Dad, Mic, Tracy, and DJ did a lot of stuff with the kids those last few days, squeezing in as much fun stuff as they could before we left. They had sleepovers and went to the zoo and all kinds of stuff.  One of the pictures was even of the moving truck. That one really tugged at my heart. It was so cute, though. All four kids – mine and DJ, my nephew – climbed up on the back of the truck when the big door was open, and I think DJ was even lying down ON the ramp, with his oh-so-precious pellow. (Not a misspelling, that is how his mom really says it. Cute, huh?) She’s from Illinois. I guess that is how they say ‘pillow’ in Illinois. Heh. That picture is so adorable – I’ll have to try to take a picture of it so I can show you!

What I can show you right now, though, is a picture of the January 2008 photo(s). It’s so cool, because, it matches so nicely with the walls in my kitchen. Whodathunkit?

And another thing that I think is really cool about this month’s picture(s) is that they were all taken at one of our three houses. Shawn is at Mic and Tracy’s house, Patrick is at Mom and Dad’s house, and Sammie is here at our house. I just really like that – kind of a symbolic ‘blending of the houses’, you know? The raising of my children has taken place in all three homes, and each home was/is very instrumental in their upbringing. Very cool.

I wonder if February will match the kitchen as well and be symbolically cool, too…hmm….

It’s Sunday night, and the kids go back to school on Tuesday, and we’re just having a nice, relaxing evening together. (And, well, I’m blogging it…uh, yeah…) It has been such a pretty day outside today, though, and this evening is more of the same. It’s been a perfectly moderate temperature, I think in the 60′s, and the gloomy clouds have left us for the time being. We have had some clouds, but, as Sammie described them, they are not the gray, icky, depressing clouds. They are the white, happy, fluffy, cozy clouds. Haha! Cute, huh?

Mark lit a fire in our firepit and the kids are swinging on the tree swing. We’ll have some grilled steaks in just a little while. And I’m blogging on the downstairs porch, listening to the kids singing, laughing, and playing on the swing. And Mark and I are relaxing on our new outdoor furniture. And Puppy is lying in the grass, sometimes getting up to bark at the injustices of the world.

Here are a couple of pics that I snapped:

In this one, you can see the kids a little bit, to the right there – and Brianna is pushing Patrick on the swing, and Patrick just happens to be upside down!

I lightened the pictures up as much as possible, that is why they are grainy.

Sammie just walked by and called me a ‘meanie’ – she’s mad at me for being on the computer.  This was just such a lovely evening, that I had to share it with ya’ll right quick!  It’s so nice out here at night.  When I walk out on the balcony at night, I love the way the sky looks out here.  It is definitely night time outdoors that makes me glad we are here.

In the morning, in the tepid shower, that’s another story.  Heh.

Now I must go spend time with my sweet girlie who thinks I’m a meanie.  Have a great night!

That’s right, folks! I’m free – free from the rotten, somber ickyness that is Seasonal Affective Disorder! And I have my sweet sister-in-law, Suzie, to thank for it! And she doesn’t even know it! She sent me some body spray from Bath and Body Works for Christmas and it is awesome! And – the scent lasts all day! Lasts all day? What? Are you crazy? No body spray scent lasts all day! Really – I swear, it does!

And would you like to guess what the magical, SAD-curing scent is?

It’s HONEYSUCKLE! Only one of my favorite things in the world! I love it when the honeysuckle blooms and I can go steal some of the yummy, delicious, sweet-smelling flowers and pull the doohickey out of the middle and suck the sweet nectar! I love it! Love it! It is summer, you know what I mean?

And now I have that scent – through the winter! Woohoo!

Thank you so much, Suzie – you completely ROCK!

My maternal grandmother was one of my dearest friends and one of my biggest fans. She was just the coolest. It was funny, because, we were so different, but, no matter what – she loved me fiercely. No matter what whacked out, goofy ideas I came up with – she loved me. Her acceptance of me was incredible. This is hard to write. I’ve been missing her like crazy lately. It’s not just that it’s been Christmas, because, every holiday season that she’s been gone hasn’t been like this. She did visit me in a dream lately and it was so intense. She was hugging me and she just would not let go. (There’s no crying in blogging, Lisa!) Yeah, ok – pulling myself together, really – I am. I’m cool.

369-6765 That was the first phone number I ever memorized, and the first phone number I ever called by myself. 369-6765 That number will be in my head (no crying!) forever.

I keep ‘pieces of Grandmamom’ all around me at all times, often even wearing her watch. Everywhere I look in my house, there is a part of Clare Mae. In my kitchen, I have her beautiful milk glass lamp. Isn’t it pretty? (I know, a lot of people really detest these – I don’t care.)

One of my favorite things of hers that I have is her train case. Such a lovely reminder of a different time, you know? It’s an American Tourister. Isn’t it so pretty?

And you know what’s super cool? I just discovered, that, apparently – train cases are coming back in fashion! A girlfriend and I went into a little boutique here in town, and they had the cutest modern, but old-fashioned, train cases! It was really cool – it was the perfect mix of old and new. And I absolutely love that they are coming back in style!

Gawd, I miss her, though! Sometimes it feels as if she died this morning, it hurts so bad. She passed away, though, on December 9, 1996. Three weeks after my daughter, Sammie Clare Mae, was born.

I just can’t wait to get to Heaven so I can hug her again. I love life, I love being alive, but, I am so looking forward to seeing her again!

(And I’m not crying! I swear! There’s no crying in blogging!)

Check out our Christmas morning and our awesome musical surprises for the kids! We’re going to be the coolest, hippest family on the block! Come on over for a jam session any time!

Part Two: