Grandma has arrived! She is settling in very well and we are enjoying her company! Joshua and Austen have been sharing a room, that has been going GREAT!! Last night they both went down with out a beep. Yesterday, I got to go to a Matinee with Grandma which was a great treat! But, I can see I am going to have my hands full so blogging and responding to all the bloggers blogs I read is NOT going to be on my list of priorities in the next week or two.
I will miss you all!!

Amazing Meatloaf!

I have NEVER been a meatloaf fan...so before you shrug, you must at least try! Last year a friend of mine gave me her meatloaf recipe, Thanks Rachel! I made that recipe a few times and it is good. Which got me thinking...meatloaf isn't as bad as I thought. But, I have been wanting to work on finding more vegetables to hide in it. I am happy to report I have found an amazing meatloaf! I have taken ingredient's from two different recipes to come up with this. I served this with mashed potatoes. The wonderful thing about this meatloaf recipe is you can almost always find the ingredients in your pantry. Well, mine you can.

Meatloaf:
FYI-Not all my measurements where exact.
2lbs of ground beef (I didn't have quite 2lbs)
1 green pepper, chopped
almost 1 small onion, chopped
3/4 cup bread crumbs- Italian or plain
1 egg (which I totally forgot last night and thought I ruined the entire dish!)
1/4 tsp pepper1 tsp salt
1 clove of garlic (I used powder)
1/2 tsp dried mustard
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp dried basil
1 1/2 tsp dried sage
1/4 cup of ketchup
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese (More would probably work well too)
1/2 cup of carrot puree
Sauce:
1 cup tomato sauce (I used a homemade sauce that had various spices, pureed zucinni, carrots, mushrooms ect)
2 tbsp of brown sugar
2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp of dried mustard
1 small can of mushrooms, drained (which I forgot last night but it was in my tomato sauce)
Mix loaf ingredients. Spray baking dish. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour. Drain fat. Spread sauce mixture over loaf and bake for i more hour.

Mashed potatoes: recipe from the Dceptively Delicious cookbook (which I have been LOVING, stronlgy recommend it)
1 pound baking potatoes
1 tsp of salt
1/2 cup cauliflower puree
2 tbsp of butter
1/2 cup of buttermilk
I sort of eyeballed these ingredients

Enjoy, I would love to hear how your loafs turn out!!! FYI- I do not tell the rest of the family these recipe had pureed vegtables in them. One more thing to add....the other night I made lasagne and used my homemade tomatoes sauce and it was yummy, yummy. The best part of all is that know one knows what's hidden in the food they are eating!!!

Morning times

I'm awake with my cup of coffee, monkey bread is in the oven and the boys are still sleeping...I love these morning!!

Yesterday, we spent no money. We would have if I would have gotten the times right of our costco visit....this happens more than I would like to admit!

It's Friday!! Joshua is up now and I want to give him a good morning snuggle.

We found a Doctor!

I took the boys to the Doctor's today. We were all so hungry afterwards plus I told Joshua if he was a good boy that we could get Burgerville...which he thought was cool. We are new to Kasier (still figuring out how they do things) and in the last month I have made more calls to the advice nurse then ever before...plus a visit. Our first visit did not go well the nurse and the Doctor were not firendly and seemed very annoyed I had come in but today's visit was GREAT!!! I think we found our facility as well as our Doctor. Joshua normally hates going to the Doctor and I don't blame him. But, he didn't fuss ONCE, not once!!
So, after our visit we went to Burgerville! We don't eat fast food very often and the last time we ate Burgerville they messed up our order. Once we got home I realized they had messed up our order again..they gave us bacon cheese burgers instead of tillamook cheese burgers...no wonder I thought we were paying to much! I called and now our name is put on a list for the next time we come in, what does that mean??? John and I have been experiencing a lot of "mess ups" lately with everything. Why is that?? Has any one else been experiencing the same??

Our spending was $19.23 at Burgerville...now that was not worth $20.

Our Family spending

Over the last few weeks John and I have been talking about trying to cut out or limit our extra spending on items that really aren't necessary. We have also been discussing how to teach are children they have a choose as to how to spend their money. That they are not slaves to it. Instead of saying, we can't afford that (weather it's true or not) we are trying to say things like, This month are family is choosing not to spend our money on that or we didn't budget for that this month. We would be happy to put this on the list of things to consider buying next month. (Maybe, if they have to wait for something they want they will either realize they don't want it or realize they do really want it). We really want are children to be Thankful for what they have and we don't want them to have the "deprived mentality" when they don't get what they want or feel they need. Somehow we have aloud ourselves to feel this way. There is far more to life then "stuff". We are going to start to have a small budget every month that John and I can use to bless other with when we see a need. We would also like the boys to do the same, this will allow are focus not to always remain on ourselves and our needs but the needs of others as well.
To keep us accountable I am going to be posting our discretionary (food, clothing ect)spending every day. Being accountable to making a post daily will make me think twice about the unnecessary purchases. Example; Just this weekend we spent almost 10 dollars in one day on coffee and the funny thing is it was at 3 different coffee shops...I don't even remember going to 3 different coffee shops? Why is it when something becomes such apart of your life routine it's harder to change or to see that you need to make a change?
Here goes yesterday's spending:
Starbucks: $12.95 1 pound of ground coffee from (They have Christmas Blend now!!! Yummy.
OFC: $16.22 John has not been feeling well so I had to buy him some Tylenol PM which was about $7.00 dollars for the generic brand as well as some soup he could take to work for almost $3.00 but while I was there they had 10 for 10 deals on things I would normally buy so I bought a few things.

Our family's total spending for the day: $29.17
This is also going to help me balance our account on a daily basis...since I will already have the receipt's out! Wohoo! (I am good about doing this every few days but every day would be better so I don't miss anything)

Dessert

Last night I went out for Dessert with a friend. It was so fun to be out without children drinking my latte, eating yummy dessert and talking with a good friend. It has been awhile (since Sarah moved) and today I am feeling very refreshed....guess I need to do that more often!!

Grandma comes in a few more days, I am getting excited!!!

Jedi Moves

Jedi Moves, originally uploaded by johnandtana.

Like I said, I had a months worth of pictures on my camera that I just downloaded.
This picture captures all his favorites (at least at the time it was taken). Daddy's lego hat, Mr. binks (I am hoping this will become a thing of the past in the very near future), Jedi cape aka starwars blanket, lightsaber aka place mat and we can't forget the BOOTS!
Now if you could only hear him this is what he would say, "dark side"..... We were hoping he would choose the other side. But as Yoda says, do or do not, there is no try.

Great Grandma comes in a week!

This week we are getting ready for Grandma Deanne to come. Boy are we all excited and anxiously awaiting her arrival. We have beds to make, bathrooms to clean and goodies to bake. We haven't seen Grandma since she moved to L.A., almost a year ago. And Ever since we told Joshua she was coming he hasn't stopped talking about it...he misses her a lot and so do I!!!
We can't wait to see you GRANDMA!!!!

CUTE COUSINS!!!

CUTE COUSINS!!!, originally uploaded by johnandtana.

I am just now loading pictures from a month ago. I just love this picture of Joshua and his cousin. They are just too cute!!!

Waddling with the ducks

Waddling with ducks, originally uploaded by johnandtana.

While Joshua had class on Saturday we took Austen to feed the ducks. He loved it!!

Consignment

Today, I went to Spanky's to consign some of my winter clothes that no longer fit. Because they are TOO BIG!!! A glorious feeling. I found some super cute things for the boys. In the past I haven't been all that impressed with their selections...things always seemed too wore, not cute and priced higher than I wanted to pay for such things. But after today I will be back.

I have a large bin of very nice higher quality little boys winter clothing to sell but I am trying to decide if I should post it on craigslist or take it to spanky's. I'm thinking craigslist.