Chicken and Dumplings...

Okay, I made the best dish for dinner last night.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=1173

It was so yummy, with the sweet potatoes and carrots. I just did two chicken breasts and boiled them in vegetable stock and then used the remainder to make the rest, and I skipped the Swiss chard. There was no oil or butter in this recipe! It didn't take too long, and I had lots left over for lunch today. I should have put a little more milk in the dumplings but they were still very tastey!

I have triathlon training tonight. We are going to bike and run. Lord help me. I went to go swim this morning and they pool was closed for lightening! Whatever, in all my years on the high school swim team, never once did Kevin ever say, "There's lightening in the area, we better call it a day!" I have to decide if I am going to do trekking tomorrow or if I want to go swim to get ready for the Moore War 5K on Saturday. Decisions, decisions.

I started a new knitting project last night. I am officially doing a shape other than a square or rectangle. We'll see how this hat turns out, but I think it's gonna be good.

Farmer's Market...

So we finally made it to the Cleveland County Farmer's Market on Saturday. It was awesome! We bought red potatoes, mushrooms, a tomato, watermelon, okra, red onions. And for much cheaper than at the grocery store.

I made an especially yummy recipe last night that I found on the Whole Foods website. Nice and easy and a great summer dish. I have leftovers with me for lunch today with a salad.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=1924

I bought a bike this weekend! I am officially going to be doing the triathlon now. It hasn't seemed real until now. Is it possible to be nervous for an entire month? I think I am on my way!

Slumber Party! Part 2...

So we survived. But just barely. We had ten girls between the ages of 7 and 10 at our house on Saturday night and let me just say that little girls scream alot!

We made tie dye t-shirts to start off the night. After everyone signed all the shirts, we put rubber bands around them and took the girls into the garage to work with the dye. Let me just say that if you give girls this young tie dye paint, you should give them rubber gloves to wear. Secondly, my garage floor will never be the same! They were covered in dye! After a momentary freak out, what were their parents going to think? I googled dye removal and we ended up running a sink full of warm water, adding a little bleach and having them all soak for a bit. It worked like a charm.

The biggest area of conflict was the trampoline. We told them only four girls at a time, and we had lots of "I just got on", "They've been on forever", and even a couple "You said we could stay on until the pizza got here". We only had three girls say that they wanted to go home, including Paige, my niece, and oldest kid at the party. She turned out to be the first to fall asleep.

I finally turned the tv off at about 3am, and all the girls were asleep at 3:30, but then up again by about 7:30. I was worn out.

Brunch went well, I got rave reviews about my enchiladas from my dad, and not much feed back from anyone else. We got the house back to normal, got the girls new bedding on their beds and did a little rearranging in their bedroom. Rocky was especially worn out by the weekend.

So now after today I'll be off for two days getting everything ready to back to school. Where did the summer go?

Slumber Party!

So my babies are nine now and for their party this year we are going for the slumber party. It's been a long time since we hosted a big one so it should be interesting.

Tomorrow night at 6pm, we've got 8 girls R.S.V.P.'d to come. From my count only four of them have alpha female type personalities. We are hoping they can each have at least one kids to boss around and everyone will get along splendidly. I asked the girls what they want for snacks, Oreos, marshmallows, cheese puffs, and cheese and crackers. I will be making a whole bunch of cup cakes tomorrow. The two of them can't decide on one flavor, so we will have to do a box of chocolate and one of vanilla. They did both decide on chocolate icing for all of them, so that's good.

I feel like I have so much left to do! Josh and the girls are going to run to the store today to get the food items, and I will make a run to Hobby Lobby after work. We are supposed to take them to dinner for their birthday, but again they can't decide on one place. I told them that I'd take one and Josh could take the other and we'd go to different places but that didn't go over well with both of them. Again with the not agreeing!

I am going to go to the running group at the Y in the morning at 7, that should be interesting. I guess they run about five miles so we'll see how far I can go. After that it's party planning and brunch preparation for Sunday when my family comes to celebrate with the girls.

I think I have a good menu planned, breakfast enchiladas (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sunny-anderson/breakfast-enchiladas-with-red-sauce-recipe/index.html), Josh's fried potatoes, bacon (for Cars), and I thought I'd do a fruit salad and maybe some banana bread. A little something for everyone, I hope.

Mexican Food...

So I tried a new recipe on Monday night, and it was awesome. I found it on the Whole Foods website, it was for Sweet Potato and Black Bean Enchiladas, and they were super yummy. I was a little skeptical at first but even Josh loved them.

Check out the recipe here:
href="http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/budgetrecipechallenge/recipe2.php">

I used canned green chili sauce (because I'm a little lazy sometimes) and I boiled the sweet potatoes for about 20 minutes. I also mixed everything in the filling together before I filled my corn tortillas.

Tuesday...

So my babies turned nine yesterday. NINE! Where have these last nine years gone that they could possibly be that old? Crazy. Cars woke up and the first thing she said yesterday was, I'm a nine-year-old girl today! Gotta love that that is what can make a kid so happy. They were very excited about the Simply Shabby Chic blankets we got them from Target. They are so soft.

So I finished my biggest knitting project to date on Sunday night. It's a baby blanket and it's really snuggly! I can't wait to give it away! Now I'm working on a scarf for Jana, it seems so small in comparison!

So I am back on the workout train. I swam yesterday morning and had my lunch-time yoga that was awesome. Today it was boot camp and my arms are like jello today. I think I'm gonna be hurting tomorrow.

Back to the Real World...

So we got home from West Virginia on Wednesday afternoon, and man am I worn out still. We had a great time and the RV was a really good idea. Leah's wedding in the little country church was very nice, too bad there was no air conditioning during the service! The potluck reception was fun, the kids danced for a long time and there was minimal fighting! We had a bonfire at Julia's and Chuck's that night, Jen made a pitcher of Colorado Bulldogs, and Patrick was only slightly burned by the fire. Drunk Josh made an appearance, luckily I missed it.

The trip back to Linda's was fun, with eight kids in the RV. We made a stop off at the Summersville Lake to let the kids do a little swimming. Would have been nice if we hadn't forgotten the girls' bathing suits for the trip, but Hannah was definitely not happy about swimming in her clothes. She did eventually break down and swim and she had fun. The kids rode horses at Linda's on Monday and I am the only one that got stepped on. Jen got stung on the boob by a crazy bee.

Overall, it was an awesome trip and my kids seemed to really have alot of fun, I am glad to be home and out of that RV. It was back to bootcamp yesterday, and I am hurting today.