taking it slow

i have developed an unnatural connection with my slow cooker. it's like we were twins separated at birth and found each other again later in life. yeah, that kind of connection.

it has been so incredibly hot lately and i've had zero interest in using the stove or oven to cook anything because it instantly raises the temperature in the house by 10 degrees. besides the heat, the boys have at least one activity every weekday afternoon, so I don't have much time to cook. with the slow cooker, i just dump everything in before lunch and by the time we all get home for dinner, it's hot and ready, waiting to be devoured by my hungry family.

my friend recently introduced me to the blog of stephanie o'dea, the author of make it fast, cook it slow. she committed to using only her slow cooker for cooking meals for an entire year and her blog lists all of the recipes she used. i've been using some of her recipes, and also a few family favorites, and have been using only my slow cooker for two weeks now. except for when i bake cookies, because you can't slow cook cookies...and we NEED cookies in this house.

one of her first recipes i tried was for broccoli beef. broccoli is pretty much the only green thing the boys will eat, beside mint and chip ice cream, so they've always loved broccoli beef. and i love that i can cook it at home and know exactly what's going into our food.

i have to scale up when i cook recipes from books/online, so the ingredients and amounts are what i used.
ingredients:

• 2 lb thin beef (i used top round steaks and sliced them thin)
• 1/2 cup of soy sauce
• 4T white wine
• 4T apple cider vinegar
• 2T brown sugar
• 4t sesame oil
• 2T of chopped garlic
• 1t red pepper flakes
• 1 lb of fresh broccoli florets (add later)

Add all the liquids, garlic and spices to the crock pot. Toss the beef slices in the sauce until thoroughly coated. Cook on high for 4 hours, add the fresh broccoli and continue to cook on high for another 30 minutes. Stir to coat the broccoli with sauce and serve over rice.

Everyone loved this recipe. It tasted great and the kids happily ate it. I think Mikey even had a second helping of broccoli. This is definitely going onto the list of usual suspects for dinner.

friends as family

i love our little town that we live in. but even though we're only a short 60 miles away from our families, it still not close enough for us to visit them as often as i'd like. and with four kids with completely different school and activity schedules, i don't even have to time to leave town for anything on most days. it's really easy to feel like i'm in trapped in a bubble with no way out.

this is why i'm so thankful to have met some great friends that live here in town. we've lived here for two-and-a-half years now and have formed some great friendships with other families. and the friendships are so special and thrive in every sense on the word "family". we love their kids and they all love ours. we've got their backs and they've got ours. and most importantly, if my margarita is low in my cup, they're always there to top me off.

our friends hosted a family get-together last friday night. ohana {family} was welcome and so they had 18 kids knocking at their door that night. i bet they couldn't believe what they got themselves into. hahaha we even had a special guest appearance from a police officer, but it wasn't like show and tell for the kids. one of the neighbors called the police because one of our kids {i'm almost positive it was my isaiah!} threw a rock over the fence and {allegedly} almost broke their window. after a little chat between the officer and the party host, all was right again in the world. and the kids even got some stickers from the officer.

cheers! gotta love the mister in the back there...baby in one hand, tequila shot in the other! classy, i know. at least the baby's face isn't exposed, so there's no substantial evidence. bwahahahah.

you think college parties get crazy? you have no idea how our gang of 4-7-year-olds party!

i'm also thankful for my girlfriends. there is a group of four of us who go out for a dinner date once a month.

this is something that we plan ahead of time, the husbands expect it every month, and we sit and eat, drink and chat for hours and hours. between the four of us, we have 11 children. so we always look forward to our dates and embrace the time that we spend with each other..even though most of our conversations are about our kids! sigh...i guess there's really no getting away.

but no matter the conversation, this is always a welcome view. 

we sat and watched kids play and scream in the courtyard and giggled to ourselves about how glad we were that those kids weren't ours!

and i'll leave you with this delicious photo. mmmm....baklava a la mode.

puzzle mania

liam is a maniac. a puzzle maniac. and a really, really cute maniac.

from early on, he always loved puzzles. first, they were simple peg puzzles. now, they are getting more and more complex. he has a few 36-piece puzzles that i recently bought him, and he's whizzing right through all of them. 

this is the perpetual state of my dining room table. it's like the puzzle monster threw up and refuses to clean up after himself. and i'm ok with it. who wouldn't be ok with all this curly-haired cuteness?

before there was liam, i hated puzzles because i hated cleaning them up. after liam, i have bought at least a dozen and love to watch him complete them. but i still hate cleaning them up. that hasn't changed.

this is the perpetual state of  my living room floor. this, too, i hate having to clean up. but it is definitely a joyful mess. 

i went to my favorite thrift store yesterday and scored these awesome melissa & doug floor puzzles for $1.49 each! they were actually priced at $1.98 but they were also on sale for 25% off. who knew thrift stores had sales? stuff in there is cheap enough as it is. 

mama is the princess

so, many of you are probably aware that we have four children...all boys. i love them all to moon and back but there are some moments where i still feel like a piece of my heart - a piece of our family - is missing. a piece of my heart that should belong to our baby girl. i imagine things in life that i wouldn't be able to experience because i don't have a daughter; dance classes, father/daughter recitals, shopping for a prom dress, planning a wedding, watching shawn walk his little girl down the aisle on her wedding day. thoughts like this are what make me long for a little girl in our family. and although shawn and i know that we are done making babies, we still sometimes find ourselves thinking, "what if?"

we went to a party at our friends home last night and brought all of our kids with us. there, i met a woman for the first time - a complete stranger - who made me come to such an important realization during the course of our ten minute conversation. the realization that i need to stop thinking about what could be, and realize how blessed i am for everything that i already have been given.




she saw that all of my children were boys and she said to me, "i am envious. i'm envious of you that you have all boys. you are always going to be your husband's princess; the apple of his eye. and you will always be the princess in the eyes of all of your boys." she went on to tell me about how when her daughter was born, it was like she was replaced. her daughter became the apple of her husband's eye. now, her daughter chooses what's for dinner or what movie they are going to watch.



when she said these things to me, it was like a scene from a movie where someone walked into a bar, the music screeched to a stop and the people all turn around to see who walked in. the music playing at the party stopped in my head and i found myself remembering moments when i knew i was the princess. shawn always tells the boys, "ask mama what she wants for dinner and that's what we're having." or "see what movie mama wants to watch and that's what we'll rent." in our house, mama is the princess. hmmm...now that i think about it, i kinda like it this way!

it's all about perspective. and i guess sometimes seeing the perspective of an absolute stranger is what it takes to make me realize what i'm taking for granted. shawn and i have been incredibly blessed to know love within each other and with four beautiful, healthy human beings. there is really nothing more that we can ask for. and while the void in my heart will probably never feel filled, it is certainly much easier to accept. i'll love on my boys a little bit more now, giving them the extra love in my heart that i've been saving for our baby girl.

i love your smile

from the first two-and-a-half years of liam's life, i probably have less than a dozen photos of him looking directly at the camera, let alone smiling. he just never wanted anything to do with or be around a camera. ever. it often invoked a long, dramatic tantrum of some sort, so we would just avoid any photo situations altogether.

but something changed for him recently and he has turned into a total ham. he sees a camera and he, literally, pops up out of bed to strike a pose. then, he grabs the camera and wants to look at the picture. 

i've snapped all of these pictures within the last three weeks. this is more than i have from the rest of his life...in just three weeks.  

i love your smile, baby boy, and i can't wait for more.

 

hysterical.

he's perfecting his "deer in the headlights" look.

the light in those eyes brings me so much joy.

 smiling for the camera, even right after face-planting.

your smile is my sunshine, little liam, and you are my joy.

camping

this is a {mostly} picture post from our camping trip last weekend. the last time we went camping was when i was preggers with liam, who is now two-and-a-half, so it's been quite a while. we forgot what a great time it is! lots of dirt, bugs, bumps and bruises, s'mores, stick fighting...and surely lots of F-U-N!

even little wyatt had a great time watching the big kids run amok.

the only little girl in the group and she had no problems with getting down and dirty with the boys.

the boys made their own see-saw with gathered wood.

mmm...s'mores.

mmm....cookies.

night fires are the best...hands down.

because one marshmallow is just not enough

looks delish...no?

good morning, sunshine!

liam was obviously a happy camper. he took his pajamas off and slept naked, just like he does at home.

wyatt loved the comfy sleeping bags, too. 

{i wish this picture focused properly. but his face is too cute to not share!}

the biker boyz exploring the campground.

lots of peeing in the trees.

lots of bug collecting.

lots of fun times with friends.

lots of playing with matches.

lots of dirty, grubby, baby feet.

lots of marshmallows for breakfast.

lots of lounging around.

lots of dirty laundry.

lots of bumps and bruises.

liam took a good fall on the last day. it's all healed up now, though.

lots of poison oak.

lots of bike-riding in their pajamas!

lots of dirty little boys.