Peanut Butter Energy

One day when Emma was playing over at the Smith's (Ellensburg neighbors). It happened that she stayed through lunch and they had peanut butter and jam sandwiches. The only hang up? They like crunchy and Emma was used to creamy. She ate it and told me all about it when I came back to get her. Rachel told her, and I confirmed it, that the crunchy peanut butter would give her energy and make her run really fast. She has not forgotten that. We've referenced that energy many times, and Emma is usually the one who brings it up. Rachel didn't know she had such powerful peanut butter.

Well, just recently Paul picked up on it too. The other day he said, "Mommy, me got peanut butter energy." At first I wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say. And then I just laughed when it dawned on me. Thanks Rachel for peanut butter energy.

Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

Filling:

1/2 cup chopped onion
6Tbsp butter
1/2 cup flour
3 cups chicken broth
3 cups cooked chicken, cubed
1 (10 oz) pkg frozen peas and carrots or
1 to 2 cans mixed vegetables
1 two crust pie (recipe below or use your own)

Saute onion in butter. Add broth and flour. Increase heat, stirring constantly until broth thickens. Reduce heat and add chicken and vegetables, heat through. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 for about 40 min or until golden.

Pie crust:

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp Crisco
5 Tbsp water

Use a bowl that has a lid. Stir salt into flour, add Crisco. Use a fork to cut shortening into flour until Crisco is coated and in fine pieces. Sprinkle in water. Place lid on bowl and toss ingredients in a circular fashion. (It may sound funny, I know, but it works. Keep a firm hold on the bowl and you can use some force as you toss the ingredients.) When you're done, the ingredients should come together in a ball. Then divide the dough into two balls and roll them out to fit your pie dish.

My signature

I sat down on Monday and made up my menus again. It has been so nice having things planned out and I know just how much time in advance I need to start dinner for it to be ready at our 5:00 dinner time. We all get cranky if we don't eat close to 5:00.

Monday night we had chicken pot pie. I thought of my mom the whole time because she used to make it when I was growing up.

The exciting part was how I cut the top of the pie to allow it to vent while it cooked. I remember my mom telling me that when you bake a pie you cut it your own special way. She has a certain way that she always does it. Today I cut a heart into my pie. I loved it! That will be my special trademark, my signature. I may even right a column about it. That's one of the two jokes about me - my ideas either end up in vinyl or in writing in my column.

Doesn't this pie look great!

Cruisin' Ophello

I was told recently, in a not so friendly manner :), that I need to update my blog. And I do. So here goes.

We have been busy doing a lot of things. I am always thinking of things I will post about, but it just wasn't making it to the keyboard.

Pictures aren't working tonight - I'll have to add those later.

1. We got a dishwasher! It's one that has to be hooked up to the sink, but it sure beats standing at the sink for a very long time trying to do all the dishes. It rolls on wheels and the cords slip down inside the back of the machine - so no messy cords hanging out. Awesome!

2. I am enjoying writing for the paper. It is still so fun to see the paper come out on Wednesdays, look for my article(s), and read through them. What fun! The South County Sun website is now up and running if you want to check out my column.

3. Emma can ride a two-wheeler! She wanted her training wheels off, but we didn't really help her learn to ride right away. Finally we went up to the park to the fenced in hockey rink and let her ride around in the big, open space. It was so nice. The other kids were contained, and she could ride and learn.

4. Jason is now on day shift. Yippee! He works 7am-3pm Monday through Friday and has Saturday and Sunday off. It's so nice to have him at church with me - awake! When he was on nights it was all he could do to keep his eyes open sitting there with me in the pew. I have to say that I do miss nights though. I got a lot done in the evening when he wasn't here. Now he wants me to go to bed with him at 10:00. I'm thinking, I've still got a few good hours of things to do yet. :)

5.We went on vacation...to Tri-Cities. Jason had five days off when he switched from nights to days. We were thinking of places we could go and things we could see, but we didn't plan far enough in advance. We finally decided that we'd go stay with Jason's parents, save on gas and hotel fees, and have fun around there. We had a blast!

Thursday, the 18th, we went to the Pasco train yard and drove around so the kids could see the trains, mostly Paul and Ben (yes, Benny is an avid train fan now). We went to Howard Amon Park in Richland and let the kids get wet in the river. They loved it! And so did we because they were having fun. We met up with my mom and went to the movie Up and then to Burger King for dinner.

Friday, we had donuts with breakfast - that was probably more for me than for the kids :). We went to Playground of Dreams with Grandma and Grandpa E. They spoiled our kids with snow cones and even toys from Big Lots. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa! Later in the evening Jason and I ran some errands without the kids - that was nice. Sigh.

Saturday, we borrowed Jason's brother-in-law's bike, used our own, and went for a ride down to Keywaden Park. Emma was a little pro. We got a bike trailer/ combo stroller off e-bay and it was nice to put Paul and the twins in there for the ride. My rear end was sure sore though. We let the kids play on the park toys for awhile and then headed back to Grandma's. In the afternoon, we took the kids and drove over to the Temple. It was so nice to walk around and see Emma's excitement at how beautiful it was. Paul fell asleep on the way there and snoozed on the seat while we walked around. That evening we met up with my mom and sisters for dinner at Taverna Tagaris. It was Shelly's Christmas present from us, we just weren't able to have it work out until now. It was fun to go there, but I don't know that we'd go back any time soon. Jason's steak alone was $29. yikes! It was one of those things you only do once and never regret not doing it again.

I don't know if we really saved any money. We may have spent more because we thought that by staying close we were saving all this money. Ha!

6. We have been going on a lot of bike rides since we purchased the bike stroller. It's so nice to get out with my kids and do something so fun like that. It beats sitting inside and getting grumpy or even trying to play in our hot backyard, we have no shade. On one of our trips Emma and I were going back and forth about how fun it was to ride and feel the wind and the sun. We said, "This is the life." Then Emma said, "We're cruisin' Ophello Mom," as if it was the greatest place on Earth. I laughed to myself.

7. We went to the pool today and that was absolute heaven. It's only $4 for me to get in and all my kids are free (5 years and under - anyone want to come visit?) I think we'll be going there a lot too.

8. We saw Raleigh and Jordan! He has graduated and has started his job in Connecticut. They were in Tri-Cities visiting family and so we were able to meet up at the park and then later at Shari's with some other friends for dinner and dessert. It was so much fun to see good friends again!

There's a little somethin'-somethin' of what we've been doing.

That's a Wrap

The Sheriff told Jason he could come up with a design for vinyl decals for the two new cars they'll be getting in this year. He was pumped at the possibility of designing, but also maybe being able to wrap a car with vinyl. He worked up several examples for under the price that they would normally have paid, and they liked them. They're going to buy our vinyl and let Jason put it on. He was so excited about it, he asked if he could put vinyl on his own car - his wouldn't normally have received new decals.

He replaced the decals on his car and worked out all the kinks for when he has to put the vinyl on the two new cars. It looks really good.

If you recall, this is before

Here's after

One afternoon, while he was working on his car in our driveway, the Othello Chief of Police drove by and saw Jason working on the vinyl. Several days later, he contacted Jason to see if he would like to put the vinyl decals on their new cars. Cool, huh? Jason has now done two Othello Police cars and will get the chance to do several more. They were very pleased with how well the cars turned out. Jason was surprised at how easy it was. It takes a lot of focus and methodical positioning, etc., but overall it went quite fast. I still need to get a before, but here is the after for the Othello Police Cars.

News Part II

So here is the second half of my exciting news about writing for the local newspaper, The Othello Independent. The owners recently bought the Mattawa/Royal paper, The South County Sun, and are putting in a column by ... me! Isn't that crazy?! It's an opinion column; kind of a slice of life take on things. I have really enjoyed coming up with ideas. The funny thing is that I've imagined myself writing just such a column and have, over the years, written different things for fun in that style.

Tomorrow will be my first printed column, but you can view it online here. The website for the South County Sun is currently under construction, as you will see if you go there. You can at least view the current issue.

So, my column will appear weekly. Please feel free to follow along. I do appreciate feedback. Let me know what you think.

double trouble...or just double

Early pictures...so I might have gotten a little carried away. I keep looking at these two and realizing that they aren't so little anymore. It's making me so sad.



Their favorite thing at Grandma Z's is to go out and see the cows. The moment we pull into the driveway and I get them down out of the car, they head over to look between the trees at the cows on the other side.

Claire with Grandma and Grandpa's dog - Shaurae

Ben loved it. Claire did not.

Ben got into the garbage and is chomping on a tomato he found. Yuck!

I have no idea who taught him that. I know I've probably done that in my time, but not lately so that he would have seen me do it. Silly guy!

Kickin back

Claire got a hold of a bag of chocolate chips and dumped them all over the floor. She proceeded to clean them up and was soon met with reinforcements.

Ben and Claire love to play with ( as if he were the toy) their little cousin Warren - roughly six months. They just love to have their hands all over him. I hope they'll be great playmates as they get older.

We love being outside.

It's the fastest way to eat cereal in the morning. I'm sure Claire is saying something like "Uh-oh." Even though she does it too.

I love it when they give hugs.

They have taken a liking to my pots and pans of late.

This one was funny. I threw a batch of cookies away one night because they were too brown for my liking - I forgot to set the timer. I gave the twins their bath and got their diapers on at least so I could round up pajamas and bed time paraphernalia. I come back into the kitchen to find Ben with his arms full of the cookies I had thrown in the garbage. I laughed as I searched for my camera. I tell you, that boy and the garbage...

I found them sitting together in the rocking chair as we watched a movie. So cute!

Benjamin dumped the bag of sugar on the carpet. Everyone came to play and lick up what they could. Apparently we like food off the ground.

Claire fed her baby some milk and then wiped her face with a towel when the milk dribbled a little.

Feed the Birds

We went with Grandma and Grandpa Erickson to feed the ducks at Columbia Park in Tri-Cities. The twins absolutely loved it. This was their first time. Emma and Paul had a fun time throwing their bread out over the water and watching the seagulls fly and dive after it. Claire and Ben ate more than they threw out.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!

Jason was taking pictures of me while I was on the phone with the publisher. That's why my mouth is all crazy. He was very supportive, staying up with me until I finished. He watched the office online with headphones on. Like that was so hard for him.

I got my first article published in The Othello Independent this week. (Click on the link and click at the bottom of the pages to turn to the Schools page. Mine is the McFarland article.) I'm covering the school board meetings here in Othello. It was a lot of fun. Kind of stressful to attend the meeting Monday night and write the article the same night so it could go in this week's paper. But it was a good stress I think. It reminded me of being in school. I liked school so it was a good feeling. I got the article done around 12:15 am and then dreamed about all the changes that it would need in the morning. Monday night is when they put the paper together so it can be sent to the printers and picked up Tuesday to go out in the mail on Wednesday. I even got to take the picture. Cool, Cool!

I'm grateful to the Independent for giving me the chance to write. This first article wasn't perfect, I know. But I'm grateful for the trust they're putting in me and the opportunity they're giving me. (And I know it's just because everyone else was so bored of covering the school board meetings. :) I'll take it though.) More to come!

Our own herd of eggimals

The Family Fun magazine had these easy little animals in this month's issue. Emma has been in dire need of something to do, and with mom. So today we declared a craft day and left the dishes in the sink. Luckily we had the supplies to make some cute animals of our own. (We substituted craft foam for the felt and it worked just great.)

Emma's pig, kitty, kangaroo, chicken,
mouse, skunk, and elephant

Paulie's skunk, dog, elephant, pig, owl, and frog
(he has a fly on his tongue - hard to see)

I ended up cutting and gluing because we were cutting such small pieces and using hot glue. But they were excited with each new creation. And I had a lot of fun making them. They now carry their eggimals around in two gallon sized zip lock bags. :0}