Toddler Talk

I'm sure you'll find these as amusing as I do

Peanut has a reoccurring conversation about her and her cousin and daddy, that goes like this; "Marie says can I try that and my daddy says oops she already put it in her mouth" then Peanut laughs hysterically. We have no idea where it came from. 

SP crying to get my attention while I'm cleaning up P

Peanut: it's ok SP I'll read to you in a little bit

Sweet Pea: keeps crying

P: it's ookay child! (said like a true southern woman - even though we don't live in the south)

At a friends house on Labor Day, Peanut & I walk into the bathroom

P: oh look there's a bathtub in here, how did that get here?

Me: we're going to the apple orchard

P: yeah! the apple porch

Later she called it - the apple porchard

SP: baulkie baulkie (aka blankie) and made a song of it in the car one day

Peanut : how do you make....?

House, eye, tree, sun, buckle, etc

Hope you enjoyed

No recipe, no problem

I have a confession, I don't have a recipe for tonight's dinner. Oh I'm sure their is probably a recipe out there somewhere in Pinterest land. Most likely with 20+ ingredients. And we all know to well I do with making sure I have all my ingredients. It's safe to say that the shorter the list of ingredients-the more likely I am to make the recipe. 

So here we are...

Warm up pre-cooked chicken (I used southwestern chicken from Oscar) with diced onion. (In hindsight, red onion would be tastier). And your favorite BBQ sauce & seasonings

I suppose you could also sautée your chicken, onions & BBQ - but I'm a big fan of semi-homemade philosophy by Sandra Lee - whatever makes my life easier. 

Next you butter one side of sourdough slices, then double stacked them

Layer...

BBQ

Cheese (cheddar would be better, but I use what I got)

Bacon

Add to you panini press, or in my case, a grill pan that doubles as a panini maker with an heavy metal plate that sits on top.  I Much prefer double duty appliances as it takes up less square footage 

Don't forget to add mayo on the dry top slice (as I almost did), it's like the glue that holds it together.

Flip (if needed)

Enjoy!

Then take your post dinner walk through the neighborhood to work off those calories. Peanut said it was bright but mostly kept her sunglasses on the top of her forehead-much like her daddy. 

😘 The Housewife

Family Prayer WHAT!

I am excited to share this new book, "The Little Oratory" by David Clayton & Leila Lawler.  It is one of Amazons best sellers. This weekend I had the great opportunity to listen to Leila speak at our local Catholic Church. She was so delightful!  She also blogs over at Like Mother, Like Daughter http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org

And she inspired me that even in the mess of my life via 2 toddlers, 1dog, work and being a wife, I can add more prayer and devotions into our family without it making it feel dreadful or boring. Instead it can be something meaningful and (gasp!) also what we look forward to. 

Want to know how to add prayer table into your home?

Want to know how start praying the Liturgy of Hours?

How to start praying/teaching the rosary to your children?

How to add sacred art to your house?

And above all, PRACTICAL advice to add prayer life and devotions to your home, with children and your workplace!

This is the How To Book

(It even comes with 8 full page color icons that you can frame)

You can get information about the book here http://www.sophiainstitute.com/landing/little-oratory/

Perfect timing, because...Couple months back we got new den furniture and I decided we needed a new end table that I wanted to double as our prayer table. This is also the place I sit when Peanut and I start her homeschool

But I wasn't sure if it was right, (and possibly doesn't need the tube of butt paste either!). As you can see we have our rosaries, bible, some devotion books, & Holy Water. I am excited to read the book and find what more we can do to make this table what it needs to be, along with othe prayers and devotions we can add to our daily prayer.  Don't worry , I plan on sharing how it all goes down. 

(This is not paid advertisement, my opinions are my own)

Onward...

Here is this weeks menu

I'm totally bummed that's grocer didn't have cilantro, so I'm sub Italian parsley-can it work???  We'll find out

😘 The Housewife 

Home Preschool

Today was Peanut's First Day of home Preschool!  She was so excited and I was excited for her. Technically her official preschool learning is done at her daycare on Thursday and Friday, as it is an accredited early education school. But DH and I felt she could use more than 2 days. Therefore our home preschool idea was born. 

I'm a nurse not a teacher - where on earth do I begin to create a lesson plan/curriculum?  Insert Lacy from Catholic Icing blog http://www.catholicicing.com/catholic-preschool-curriculum/

I love her blog - she offers practical crafts and catholic teaching advice to average catholic mom like myself. She also has "Catholic ABC's - hands on preschool curriculum" - brilliant!  

It's all spelled out for me and I can change some things as I see fit. She does help support her blog and Family with the profits from her book, therefore I will not be posting exact information from her book. However anything she does post on her blog you can view at no cost. Please be a gem and hop on over to her blog and check her out. 

First day went better than I thought, way better. I really just need to work on my flow, so that she doesn't get bored and then I loose her altogether. Such as - I had to make copies of some coloring pages so I had her work on tracing. Then I heard her fall off the kitchen chair - I'm not sure how this happened, but I think I'll make sure all my copies are made the day before; least I have another mommy failure to file away.  This is a post fall pic

Here she is working on her craft (from the website)

And the final project - which will be her home school bag

Here she is working on her coloring pages & counting - which also doubled as her snack 

Pray for us as we go down the home school journey. I will sure to keep you in the loop on how it all goes down

😘 The Housewife

LLR - large local reaction

That's the reaction I'm having from a bee sting. I'm mid-30's and I've never been sting by a bee. I was pulling weeds Sunday afternoon (my first problem) when I came across a nest. Apparently they liked the weeds and got mad I was removing them. 

Itching didn't really start until Monday and then I woke up this morning and it sorta doubled in size. 

I consulted my fellow nurses and we have concluded that if not better by tomorrow I may be looking at infection. 

Since I'm so busy tomorrow, I don't have time to wait. So visited a urgent case to have it looked at.

No surprise that while I was waited to be seen, it started to look better. Oh well I still waited it out and found that it was not a problem, take some Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream. 

Good thing, because I have no time to be sick - how about you?!

😘 The Housewife

Monday Funday!?

"Does someone have a case of the Mondays?"  This is the last day the DH is off from work, & my usual day off. I got some energy from -I don't know where -and vacuumed the upstairs along with pulling old clothes out of my closet to either 1.  Send to consignment or 2.  Donate to the Mission. Topping on the cake was the girls played nicely in Peanuts room. 

Later I got to go to the gym, grocery shopping and to target without little ones in tow - heavenly!

When I got home Peanut helped make dinner. I found two recipes in the recent Taste of Home - tonight it's the Chicken & Broccoli Casserole, with some changes like I added onion and dollop of sour cream.  (I even remembered to bring the recipe to the store).  I have to say I was a little nervous about this. She likes broccoli but I wasn't sure about the onion or the stuffing mix on top.  I was thinking if she helped make it, then she more likely will eat it - yes, no, maybe?

Here she is placing one by one the broccoli I diced up

Here she is eating the broccoli

Here she is eating the cheese. 

Everytime I added an ingredient she told me which ones she doesn't like - onion, butter, stuffing. I told that it would taste good all together, to which she replied "I'm just telling you"

Color me shocked! She ate it all!

Here is the rest of the weeks menu...

The beef enchiladas is the second recipe from the magazine. 

I started this a couple of months ago. And although I'm not very good at doing this every week - it's very helpful. DH often gets home before I do on my work days, when it's not obvious what's for dinner, he simply pulls out a frozen pizza. Not good. So this helps him at least get things started and I pick up when I get home. 

All went well for a Monday....I would even call it a Funday!

😘 The Houewife

Mini-Vaca Day 4

It's go home day 😢. But before we take off - we have a stack of pancakes to get through at Hotcakes Emporium off Ditch road in Indy

Delicious with a side of fast. I got the 2x2x2 - that's 2 eggs, 2 pancakes (or waffles) and 2 sausage (or bacon). 

The girls got pancakes with sausage. 

DH got biscuits & gravy with eggs & sausage

The best part was when our server asked if we wanted our coffees to go...and then topped off the cups with more coffee - Alleluia & Amen!

We then sped our way to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Museum. This was all for daddy!  He was so excited, he could hardly contain himself. (Gear-heads)

We started off taking a tour around the track then walking through the museum. 

I recommend going even if your not a racing fan like myself. You can truly appreciate what it's all about. 

(If I let him, DH would spend all day in our garage)

Peanut thought this looked like our double stroller at home - close, very close

Every winner of the Indy500 gets their name inscribed on this trophy along with a replica of their head - I found this very disturbing, no?

We made it home without incident. Then dropped off the kiddos at my parents house along with their cousins, so that we plus my brothers and their wives could all go out on a triple date.  My parents are saints and slightly crazing for suggesting caring for 5 very young children for the evening. Not that we gave them a chance to take back their offering!

😘 The Housewife