Annie

Mikey's favorite movie is Annie. We've only watched it probably a total of 6 or 7 times. Its not my absolute favorite, but he LOVES it. This is just the opening credits and I heard him singing in the livingroom. TOO CUTE! I had to get my camera out. Dont mind the messy livingroom. Thats just part of life. The good moments never happen when you can video in a clean room. Daddy was a little surprised that Mikey knew most of the words already. And we were both snickering quite a bit when he sang that last note. Love that little boy!

Texas Snow

Lately I've been sleeping on the couch, cause thats the ONLY place I can get comfortable. I woke up about 7:30 this morning and the curtains in our front room were slightly open...then I saw it. SNOW! not just snowing...but SNOW...ON THE GROUND! I couldnt believe it! I had to run into my bedroom and wake up my hubby, who had JUST gone to bed 2 hours earlier, and tell him the news. "Yeah," he said, "I Know." My mom had told me over the phone the night before that Dallas was supposed to get snow, but I didnt want to get my hopes up. we've lived here for a year, and Snow just doesnt stick. But stick it did, and this morning our lawn was almost totally white.

The kids woke up, and were starting to have a cranky morning...until I pointed outside. "WOW," Gavin said, "SNOW!" said Xander, then Mikey...of course said, "We NEED to go outside and make a snowman!" But of course, we had to wait till Daddy woke up. Then at long last, 12:30 rolled around, and the boys were DIEING to get outside..and Daddy finally woke up.



Luckily we had kept our winter coats from living in MO. Haven't really had a need for them yet in tx. But we kept them for the trips back to visit family in Missouri. boy am I glad. We still didnt have quite the preferable snowgear, but the kids were totally happy just to be out in the snow with mom and dad. We put 2 pairs of socks on each of them and then tied plastic bags to their feet, then put their shoes on. Good thing too. Their shoes were SOAKED by the time we went inside. We didnt have any gloves, so we put plastic bags on their hands and socks over the bags. That seamed to work fairly well.


Mikey was the snowball champion. He got REALLY good at throwing snowballs at mom and dad. And he was laughing so hard the entire time. He even took a snowball to the face and was STILL loving it. Gavin mostly just stood around the whole time, or was just being held by mom. He didnt start having fun until he figured out you could eat the snow. I took a bit of the clean snow off the car and gave him a little. After that it was all over. All I heard from him the rest of the time was, "bite? Peese, Bite." He loved it.


When Xander figured out you could eat the snow, he took some off the ground...and it had leafs and grass in it. He took a bite and said, "mom, I dont like the grass." He didnt quite get why gavin liked it so much. to him it kinda tasted like dirt LOL! Then I showed him where to get clean snow and he liked that MUCH better. Then while Mikey and Daddy made the snowman body, Xander and Gavin spent their time feeding eachother clean snowballs. Well actually Xander would have a snowball and when gavin asked, "bite?" he'd give him one. It was so stinkin cute.










Daddy had a bit of a hard time getting the body onto the snowman, and when he did try and lift the second snowball, he droped it and it broke apart, so we just packed it on top and made it sorta ball shaped. Then Mikey just kept packing snow on the snowman while daddy rolled out the head. Pretty soon we got our snowman all finished, daddy went into the backyard for sticks for the arms, and mommy improviesed the face with some lids from the kitchen and a crazy straw mouth. These boys were SSOO happy the entire time we were out. Gavin was ready to go in when the snowman was done, so we took a picture (hurray for tripods and timers on cameras), and headed inside. We ended up making hot waffels for lunch. boy was that good. And then the boys started falling asleep on the couch watching chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I think They'll be talking about today for a long time. I LOVE family moments like this.

Say Cheese!

First off, when you first open your powdered cheese, dont be too shocked when it's not a full can. After things get packed they settel, there was probaby a good 2 inches of empty space when I first opened the can. Well, to get the full effect of our powdered cheese, I wanted to really taste it. What better way to use a cheese sauce than with Mac & Cheese! This is everything cooking, simple. Noodles in the pot, and 4 parts water 1 part powdered cheese for the sauce. I started off with 3 parts water, and after I had it stirred pretty well it still had lumps, but if you put all your lumps together and poor your 4th part of water (boiling/really hot) over them, and whisk it, most of them disappear. Differences between boxed mac & cheese, and doing it this way: 1)you have to make the sauce separately, you dont mix it with the noodles until the sauce is complete, 2)no milk or butter required, 3) you can make as much or as little as you want so you dont have wasted leftovers.

We didnt have any macaroni noodles, but I did have a huge bucket of whole wheat pasta that we used. Gavin was VERY interested in the noodles, he tried to eat them uncooked, but then decided that they were better as places to stick your fingers.











Me with the finished product. I had already tried it at this point. All it needed was a little salt. It didnt taste quite like boxed mac & cheese, but thats because we didnt use regular macaroni noodles. Whole wheet noodles have a different texture and take a little bit longer to cook. But in this house, we happen to like the whole wheat noodles, so we were totally ok with it. The sauce was EXACTLY like out of the box. We did add a little bit of salt to ours, but the sauce would have tasted just fine on broccoli (which we may do today), or you could add some salsa to it and dip taco chips in it. I've already got TONS of ideas for this stuff.




After I had tried it, I gave a bowl to the real critics. They were EX-STATIC! Lately we've been having either germaid or oatmeal for breakfast. The other day, Gavin wouldnt eat it by himself. He was hungry, but it made him sad to have to eat the SAME stuff again. In order to get him to eat, I had to force feed him. He didnt spit it out, cause he was hungry, but he cried the entire time I fed him. He really didnt want to have oatmeal AGAIN. When I place this bowl in front of him, he lit up like it was christmas. Gavin ended up eating 3 little kid servings of pasta.




One of the worst things that happens, when living off of food storage, is food complacency. You'd rather NOT eat, than eat the SAME THING over and over. Mac & cheese is a REALLY familiar food for almost every kid in America. We've still been living VERY cheaply and have been eating basic foods. So when we got mac & cheese, it was like we splurged for the kids. Every single one of them was happier. So one of my next goals for my IMPROVED food storage, is to have some "comfort food." Noodles are fairly cheep, especially when bought in bulk, and when stored properly...last FOREVER! we only ended up using about 1/2 a cup of cheese powder out of the whole number 10 can and it made a pot of mac & cheese large enough for our whole family. It takes 3 boxes of mac & cheese AT LEAST to feed all of us. So even if all we ever did with this powdered cheese was mac macaroni & cheese, it would be worth it. But the glorious thing is, it's SSSOO versatile. I will be putting this in soups to make them cheesier, poor it over chili, use it on baked potatoes, poured over veggies, shake the powder over popcorn, make nacho cheese, sauce on a cheese Pizza, and these are just the ideas that I have come up with to use it for. The list is endless.

As far as living off of food storage goes. Dont let your food be bland. Here in America we put cheese on EVERYTHING. And Cheese is something that is a little difficult to store. If you freeze it, it needs to be shredded, but then you MUST have the freezer space. Lots of homes, ours included, only have the small freezer on their fridge. The space in that freezer should be used for meats. If you dont have to freeze your cheese to store it for long periods of time, it frees up a LOT of space. When we were living entirely off our food storage, fresh cheese was one of the first things to go. If you have some powdered cheese, your family will not feel so deprived when you're down and out.

Marisa's Grade for Honeyville Powdered Cheese. A++!!
great price, great taste, smooth texture, extremely versatile, and a familiar food.

They're Finally Here!!

My Package came today! I LOVE IT! They look so inviting to use! Today we used the cheese. I was going to do a review...but it looks like the review will have to wait till after the kiddos go to bed. We did simple pasta and cheese (we didnt have macaroni noodles), so we could see what the actual flavor of the cheese tasted like. It turned out really yummy. So far so good. We'll try out the butter and the eggs tomorrow!

Waiting.....

Other than cooking and cleaning...my life right now is a bunch of WAITING. My most frequent wait...is for Mike to get home for dinner. He has about 5 minutes at home right around 9 that he can eat, kiss me, and head back to work. Hurray for night shift :S not.

Then there is always the constant...waiting to have the baby. No I'm not as large as other women are at this stage of the game, but I'm JUSt as uncomfortable. I dread going to bed every night cause it takes me at least a 1/2 hour to get comfortable, then it's gone in like 10 min and I have to spend another 1/2 hour re-situating. Then...I wake up with an aching body in the morning. WOO HOO.

Also...I can hardly wait for the mail to come each day. Usually I get a movie in the mail. We have blockbuster for the month. Yeah..free trial week....SO NOT WORTH IT! but it's paid for now and so we'll keep it till the month is over. So I do look forward to getting movies in the mail. But if anyone is considering getting blockbuster...DONT IT SUCKS! if you want to watch movies online..you have to RENT THEM. in addition to what you're paying alreayd RIP OFF! and if you exchange a movie in the store, the wont send you another movie in the mail until you bring the exchanged movie back to the store. LAME!

But thats besides the point. The main thing that I'm waiting for right now is an order I just made on friday. I'm WAY excited about it. Powdered food in #10 cans!!! Yeah ok I'm a nerd. But I've seriously never been so excited about groceries in my life! Honeyvillgrain is where I got it from. The stuff from the bishops store house is cheaper...but the bishops store house doesn't have everything that Honeyville does. I have looked High and low for powdered cheese. You know, the packets of cheese you get in mac and cheese boxes? Yeah that stuff is GREAT for soups, pastas, and all kinds of things. But I could never find it for a decent price. Until I found this website. Origionally I was needing more powdered eggs...and I was trying to find the cheepest place online that sold them. And Honevillegrain was the best place to do it. But then as I looked around their website, I found the powdered cheese. TOTALLY STOKED! and I also found something else I want to try. Powdered butter. WHAT?!?! How they make it...I have no clue. But I ended up ordering it. I want to try it out. We ALWAYS run out of butter when we get low on groceries. Sure you can use Crisco...but that doesnt give you the beautiful butter taste. So I'm very excited to see how this goes. You may think I'm crazy, but I already know I'm going to buy from this place again. My next purchase will be Freeze dried fruits. They have 6 #10 cans of 6 different types of fruit for $109ish. The cool thing about this place is no matter how much you order, they ship with UPS so it's $4.49 for your whole order as long as its in the US!!! WAY COOL! As long as you place your order by 11am they get it shipped out that day. If after 11 then they ship it by the next business day. I ordered my 3 cans friday morning around 9ish. SO hopefully they'll be here within the next few days. This is a MUCH anticipated package. I want to see if these powdered eggs are as good as the reviews I've read. If so I can use them for scrambled eggs instead of JUST for cooking with. Which, by the way, if you've never used powdered eggs before DO SO! They cook up great! and they save you the trouble of using up your real eggs and taste JUST as good in brownies, and cakes, and muffins and such. This particular can of eggs comes out to be about 80cents per dozen that I use. NOT BAD!

And I promise...there will be another post the MOMENT I get to cook with these new found foods. Anyone who has a lot of kids understands how important cooking is. And I'm hoping this will help make my job a little easier!