Thank You!

I thought I finally found the time to write out my Thank You cards for all the meals/gifts we received when Bucket was born only to discover someone was being thoughtful and decided to help me by writing the thank you's for me.

So if you brought us a meal or gift, it'll be awhile before you get your card in the mail.  I have to go buy some new cards.

:~)

Precious!

I love her!

Bucket is a month old!

This little girl has stolen our hearts! She is definitely one of us, her eyebrows are raised even while sleeping! 

 She's been a bit of a stinker, eating lazily just like her big Sis did, so I am having to pay special attention to nursing her to get some weight on her.  I said when I was pregnant that I had a feeling she was going to take some of Sis's features because Butter seems to favor Guys and it just has to be even.  I think Bucket misunderstood, I meant Sis's looks and not her personality.  :~) She won't even sleep but for a few moments unless someone is holding her, just like Sis when she was a newborn!  That is just fine by us, we love holding her and we are sure blessed by Sis, picky eating and all.

Watching the Padres

2 more yummy meals

Here are two more meals we had this week.  They were really good, so I though I'd share.

I made this for breakfast yesterday.  It's green apples, lemon, oats, pecans, some brown sugar and some cinnamon.  I peeled about 6 green apples and cooked them in a small amount of water and the juice of one lemon in my skillet.  When they were pretty soft I added some cinnamon and scooted them over to half the skillet.  In the other half I melted some butter, added the pecans, oats, and brown sugar and just kept stirring until it looked good.  Mix it all together right before you serve. 

This one I can't claim as my own, I adapted it from $5 Dinner Mom's recipe HERE.  I used a red jalapeno from our garden for the avocado stuffed tomato, and I used feta cheese and kalamata olives because that's what I had on hand, instead of the provencal cheese and black olives for the cheese and olive tomato. I also skipped the grilling part since I changed the cheese.  I only made one of each because I thought my kids wouldn't like it.  Big mistake.  Pops ate about half of the avocado tomato, even though it was full of jalapenos and onions.  He has never even liked tomatoes before.  Sis and Butter ate half of the cheese tomato and Dad said they were so good we had to come up with some super cool names for them.  Guac-a-mato and Greek Stuff or something like that.

I am really having fun coming up with delicious meal ideas and I am finally discovering cheaper ways to do it.  Do you know any great, healthy, cheap blogs or recipes?  Please share them!

Yummy meals

Sweet potatoes just might be my new favorite veggie. I have never liked them, not even a little. My mom always made me taste them every Thanksgiving and the outcome was always the same. "Yuck!"

Well, my good friend Mom-a-lot has changed that for me. Her sweet potatoes are so good I actually bought a 25 pound bag of sweet potatoes off the side of the road yesterday. No, they weren't just sitting on the side of the road... I'm in the south and the local farmers sell stuff on the side of the roads here. Don't ya know?
Anyway, Sweet potatoes roasted with olive oil, onions, and green peppers is my new favorite dish. Makes my mouth water! I have adapted Mom-a-lot's recipe a bit for my skillet, I just cut them into cubes and sauté them in a little olive oil with onion, green pepper, garlic, and Celtic salt. We really like them that way and have had that dish quite a few times the last couple of weeks. Since I never like to follow a recipe, I've been experimenting with them. So far I've made them with the onion and green peppers and added regular potatoes too, yum. I added squash another time, super yum. Green beans, yum again. Today we had them with some regular potatoes and eggs, bacon, and tomatoes, really yum. I still have to try them baked and then see what other foods with which I can whip them up .

Another new family favorite is zucchini boats. First I browned ground turkey and added lots of seasonings to make it like sausage (you could just use ground sausage but I think sausage is gross). Then I cut a bunch of zucchinis in half length wise and scooped out the insides. I sauteed the zucchini boats for a bit and then I stuffed them with havarti cheese and the meat mixture (and some left over rice, but you could leave that out) and cooked a few minutes more. I'm supposing you could just bake them, but I don't have an oven ;-) It''s so good that all my kids ate all their zucchini, score!

I'll add pictures later.

Encouragement for Mothers

The Puritan Thomas Manton, in the introduction to the Westminster Confession of Faith, tells of the importance of women in family worship and management:

"Especially women should be careful of this duty; because as they are most about their children, and have early and frequent opportunities to instruct them, so this is the principal service they can do to God in this world...  And doubtless many an excellent magistrate hath been sent into the Common-wealth, and many an excellent pastor into the Church, and many a precious saint to heaven, through the happy preparataions of a holy education, perhaps by a woman that thought herself useless and unserviceable to the Church.  Would parents but... labor to affect the hearts of their children with the great matters of everlasting life, and to acquant them with the substance of the doctrine of Christ, and, when they find in them the knowledge and love of Christ, would bring them then to the pastors of the Church to be tried, confirmed, and admitted to the further privileges of the Church, what happy, well-ordered Churches might we have!"

Pink eye Fun?!

Black tea bags to soothe pink eye...

The flight Dr. gave Mr. Pilot a whole week off for his pink eyes.  Well, he didn't actually give him a week off, he just said "I don't want you anywhere near the squadron until that clears up, it will be at least a week." He really doesn't want the other pilots to get it too...  So, we will count it as a blessing, we got to have Dad home with us for another week!

Boy and Sis are pink eye free, theirs only lasted a couple days.  Guys and Dad are still a little pink, but much improved.  They should be all clear by tomorrow.  Yay!

Bucket is almost 3 weeks old.  Time is flying.  It makes me sad how fast time flies!

Who do you think she looks like???

on the mend!

Sis's fever is gone, and her pink eye too.  Boy is feeling much better from his fever yesterday, and his pink eye is also gone.  Guys and Dad's eyes are still pink, and Dad is at the doc right now since you can't fly with pink eye.  Because of the flood and the pink eye, Dad has had almost an extra week home with us, and that is always nice.  I am not sure he'd prefer having pink eye over flying, but I'm looking at the bright side here!  Anyway, seems like we are getting better and I am so thankful!

We are kind of a mess over here.

Not even a week after Bucket was born we got a sickness in the house. Pops came down with a super high fever while we were on a trip to Florida (yes, we were on a trip, it was a special event). It ended up being a sad trip. We went to see Daddy Culburrito get his wings and to say good-bye to our BFTKC'S because orders to move far away came with the wings. With a sick Pops, we spent most of our time hiding in a hotel so as not to get a pregnant Mama Culburrito or her brood sick and didn't really get to spend time with anyone...
We returned home from the exhausting weekend and were welcomed by a flooded house! Someone closed the gray water tank and someone else left the water on a trickle for the cats. That tiny little trickle flooded the gray tank and the bathtub and left an inch of water on the floor. We had to empty out much of the house into the 105 degree sunshine. What a long, hot day! Thankfully we have a family in Christ here. Our Pastor and another man came with shop vacs and fans to suck up and dry out the trailer. We stayed with another family for two days while the house dried out. This was actually a wonderful time, we made some new friends and they even helped us celebrate Sis's 6th Birthday. What a generous body ! The only damage is the carpet is now swirled with discoloration, and several books and a few other things were ruined.
After being back home for just 2 days, Sis was knocked down with the fever. This morning Dad, Guys, and Boy all woke up with pink eye. Uhg! I am trying to keep the germs off Bucket, take care of the sic-kies, get enough sleep, and stay sane.
So if you don't mind, say a little prayer for us.
This too, shall pass!

Announcing!

Wonderful Healthcare Alternative

I can't even begin to explain how wonderful it is to see Christians stepping up and offering viable alternatives to the myriad of cultural, state mandated, and biblical hypocrisies bombarding our society. It becomes readily apparent that we have serious problems when our government comes up with "solutions" that look like this:

All I can say is, "Yikes!"

No problem...Bloomberg columnist Kevin Hasset summarizes:

The new law creates 68 grant programs, 47 bureaucratic entities, 29 demonstration or pilot programs, six regulatory systems, six compliance standards and two entitlements.

Okay, maybe a big problem. But again then there's Chrisitan's stepping up and creating ministries like Samaritan. You can see a video about such a ministry here. I hope you get a chance to take a look at this and be inspired and encouraged to know that there are many more ways in which we can overcome because as Christ says,

"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Baby Bucket

Bucket has arrived~she's almost two weeks old, actually.

Her birth was everything I prayed for, praise God! I started having contractions Thursday night so we went to our good friends the Mom-a-lot's house since they were planning on watching our other children. We decided to stay the night and I slept until about 2am when I was having a lot of back pain. I realized baby was sunny side up so I got on my hands and knees for a while and I can't be sure but I swear I felt her turn around. I went back to bed. At 4:30 I couldn't sleep anymore. I woke dad up and told him it was time to go. He woke Guys because we decided she was going to come with us. We woke Mom-a-lot and let her know we were leaving. We got to the hospital at 5:15am and to my glad surprise I was 8 cm. With each contraction the baby's heart rate dropped and the nurse was nervous and kept messing with me but my midwife was totally calm and kept her in line. The Dr. on duty wanted to put in a pressure monitor but my midwife kept delaying, saying we were going to push any minute. She rushed me along a bit, to keep the Dr. at bay, so I started pushing before I was ready. It was totally awesome though, because it worked and Bucket was born just a few minutes later. 6:34 am, just the right amount of time to be at the hospital. I got to hold her immediately and when they tried to take her the midwife whispered for me to start nursing her. I got to hold her for about an hour when they insisted they had to take her to the nursery.

Dad and Guys went with, and with a little patience and a tiny bit of arguing, the found a nurse that would bring her back and do all of the checking and stuff in the room with me. After that, the staff was great, they didn't even bat an eye when we said no vaccines. They let Guys give Bucket her first bath, what a special experience to have her there for the birth of her sister!

Dad, Guys, and I spent the day taking turns holding baby...

...and finishing up our traditional gift from the new baby to her brothers and sisters.

Dad brought the kids to see their new baby sister.

They were so excited, each taking two turns of holding her and looking at her toes and belly and hair and ears and every little new part they could uncover!

They were very sad to leave, and I really hate that they couldn't stay!  Luckily we got to go home the next morning.  Everyone is so excited and blessed to have our newest family member finally here with us!