Another week in our little household.  A week of bubble baths, bumped heads, red-nosed children running around in the cold, cozy fire burning, what shall we have for dinner?, entire cities made out of wooden blocks, is it bedtime yet?, and goodnight kisses.

1. Baking in our p.j.s

2. Making our favorite lemon cookie recipe for special dinner guests.

3. Building block towers whilst wearing a tutu (whilst is a fun word to say, don’t you think?)

4. Our special guests!  A lovely evening with yummy food (thanks to Justin) and excellent company!

5. Trying something new

6.  The sewing room, piled with Christmas projects.  I don’t like to have my desk so cluttered but from now until January it will most likely stay that way.

7.  Our new wall hangings

8.  Fabric sorting day!!

9. Snacking and listening to The Boxcar Children audio recording

10.  My little artist hard at work

11.  Animal cookies and milk after playing on the trampoline for over an hour

12.  Thanksgiving morning, all of our clothes ironed and ready

13.  My “quick let’s get a picture while they’re all clean and in one place!” moment

14.  My loves and I with my “happy but tired” face.

My thought for the week:  Enjoy your babies.  I know that sounds trite, but it’s so easy to fret away those first months.  Worrying about spoiling them, starting “bad habits”, all the “you should never…” type of advice people are so prone to give.  Just enjoy them.  The day is coming when you will have to worry about spoiling and disciplining and habit-breaking, but those first precious months are for loving, singing, rocking, walking the floors, and letting their little heads fall asleep on your chest.

Happy Thanksgiving my friends!

I hope my “Week that Was” posts are not getting too tedious for you.  I am enjoying them so they will probably stick around for a little while.  It’s easy to get swept away in the daily ebb and flow of life.  These weekly entries help me pay attention, they help me to slow things down a bit and document these precious days.

So here they are in all their everyday-glory: pictures from our week with captions.

1. Momma attempts to bake something other than drop cookies with three eager and “helpful” children under foot.

2.  We gather around the communion table.  We remember.  We celebrate.

3. Brothers and Matchbox cars

3.  I’m addicted to her smiles.  Honestly, they’re like a tractor-beam of adorableness that pulls me in every time.

4. Homework.  I love it and I loath it.  I love that it slows my busy pace; makes me stop and spend time with my sweet second-born son, but oh.my.word it tests my patience like few things do.

5. Speaking of sweet second-born sons… he proudly sat down and read a whole stack of books one evening.  That’s a sight I never get tired of seeing.

6.  Rainboots and haircuts

7. Post haircut puddle jumping in her Easter dress

8.  Rainy day sewing with the friend who knows me best. Who for some reason laughs at my silly jokes.

9.  Making Thanksgiving treats for school friends.

My thought for the week:  Loving someone doesn’t mean you have the right to show them less courtesy and kindness than you do the sales-clerk at Target.  Manners aren’t just for the people we brush into in town.  The ones we are closest to deserve our best but so often they are the ones get the dregs, the leftovers, the curtness, the careless remark.  If we cannot show Christ’s love to our own spouses and children, then we cannot show it to our community.

Pictures from our week with captions

1.  The sweet ache of love

2. Hello Monday morning

3. In G’s world bunk-beds become bunkers, stuffed animals are barricades, rolled-up car mats are transformed into cannons, and yellow bike helmets are actually military issue camo. army helmets.  G lives in a fun world.

4. Christmas present planning

5. Before school snuggles

6. Oh.  You have a report and diorama due tomorrow?!

7.  Dad makes coffee. supervises breakfast. mom sleeps in.

8.  The sock basket (a.k.a the bane of my existence)

9.  Miss E finds the camera

10. Christmas sewing (sshhh, don’t tell the kids)

11.  The sign Miss E made and posted on her bedroom door:

Translation provided by Miss E: “E wants to be left alone but not cause she’s bein’ naughty or sneekin’. The end.”.

My thought for the week:  You can love your life without loving every minute of it.  That’s okay.  That’s normal, and don’t believe anyone who tells you differently.

She fills my days.  Her impish smile.  Her infectious laugh.  The way she leaps and twirls about my kitchen.  The tutus, over-sized butterfly wings, dollies, and tiny plastic animals scattered about the living room.  Everywhere I look, reminders of her.  My little shadow.  Oh the wonderful pictures she draws!  Her brothers would always say “I don’t know how to draw that!”.  It would never cross her mind to say such a thing.  If she can imagine it she can draw it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all games and giggles with her.  She has a fire in her belly that sometimes baffles her laid-back momma.  She is so unlike me.  We’re good for each other.   Her wild, fearless, and independent ways make me smile, and see the world as a place of exciting and endless possibilities.  My relaxed and even temperament help to ground her and smooth off some of the rough edges.  On our good days we are like two happy, snug puzzle pieces, different but right for each other.  On our hard days we bump and scrape against each other.  I frustrate her. She wears me out.

But at the end of the day when I tuck her in bed and she wraps her little arms around my neck, and I kiss her on the nose, all the dustiness of the day washes away.  She presses her forehead against mine and grins.

Tomorrow we will dance our perfectly imperfect dance again, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I like to cook. I do.  I like trying new recipes and cooking for company.  But the task of cooking dinner for my family night after night, week after week, can be daunting.  I get stuck in recipe ruts, and nothing breaks me out of a rut like getting a recipe recommendation from a friend.  Even if it’s a common recipe.  A new try to and old way is sometimes just what my ho-hum weeknight cooking needs. The recipes I’m interested in are other moms’ tried-and-true recipes.  The workhorse recipe.

So, I thought I would do a little trading.  I’ll share one of mine with you, and (if you feel like it) you can share one with me!

This is my Perfectly Adequate Pot Roast recipe.  When you’re reading a recipe online do you ever get that “used car salesman” feel?  All these crazy words being thrown around like “Wold’s best!”, “Best Ever!”, “Most Addictive!!”, “It’s like crack!” (really? how is that appealing).

I will make no such claims.  It’s a pot roast, it’s easy, it tastes good.

This recipe is based on this pot roast recipe.  Over time I have changed it and tweaked it.  I start with a large pot roast in the 3 lb. range.  I use my dutch-oven to cook my roasts.  I know people love their slow cookers but I prefer my dutch-oven, hands down!  The meat can be browned and cooked all in the same pot.  When the roast comes out, it is falling apart and it has a lovely golden brown color.  When I cook a roast in the crock pot it’s always a little on the tough side, and tends to be an unappetizing gray color.

First, I put my beloved dutch-oven on the stove and turn the heat up to medium-high.  I add about 3 tablespoons of oil to the bottom of the pan and let the oil heat up.  Meanwhile I liberally coat the roast with salt.  Then I peel a handful of garlic cloves, and I roughly chop 1 yellow onion.  I rarely use herbs but in this case I had some leftover so I also added some rosemary and thyme sprigs (EDITORIAL NOTE: the rosemary turned out to be a bad idea. It was over-powering.  I won’t be including it again)

Once the oil is hot I brown the roast on all sides.

At this point I remove the roast from the pot.

Using a paper towel I wipe out any leftover oil.

Now I add my wet ingredients.  1 cup of Dr. Pepper, 1 1/2 cups of low sodium beef broth (this particular day I used chicken broth because it’s all I had in the house), and a few good sloshes of Worcestershire sauce.  If you’re worried about the roast tasting sweet, don’t be.  The Dr. Pepper adds great flavor but it doesn’t taste sweet.

As I’m adding the liquids I use my whisk to scrape up all those lovely brown bits in the bottom of the pot.

Next I throw in the roast, onion, garlic, and herbs into the pot.  (Note to self: next time put the herbs in a cheese-cloth so you won’t be fishing chewy herbs out of the broth).

Place the pot in the oven set for 200 degrees, and let it cook all day long.  Now you can go do the 7,439 things you need to do today, and let dinner take care of it’s self.  All day your house will be filled with that fantastic pot roast smell.

About 3 hours before you plan on serving your roast, gather up any root veggies you have lying about.  This time I happened to have carrots, russet potatoes, a few red potatoes, and some sweet potatoes.

Peel (or don’t), and chop.

You don’t have to have and adorable blue-eyed baby sitting on the counter, but it’s fun if you do.

At this point I take out my roast and remove the herbs and onions.  They served us well but it’s time to vacate and make room for the veggies.

Toss in your vegetables and return to the oven for another three hours.

Remove the roast, pull it apart, and heap the vegetable around it. Be sure to have a pitcher of that liquid gold sitting on the table. Serve to your adoring family who will spend the duration of the meal signing your praises.  Right? You mean your family doesn’t do that?  Mine either.  But I do get the occasional “good dinner mom!” and that’s pretty close in my book.

Okay, I shared mine; now your turn!

 

Perfectly Adequate Pot Roast

1 3-5 lb. pot roast

1 8 oz. can of Dr. Pepper

1 1/2 cups of low sodium beef broth

3 T of Worcestershire sauce

1 yellow onion roughly chopped

5 garlic cloves

Herbs (optional)

An assortment of root veggies chopped and peeled if you prefer.

Liberally coat roast with salt, brown on all sides in oil, remove roast and any leftover oil.  Add Dr. Pepper, beef broth, and Worcestershire sauce.  Place the roast back in the pot and add the onion, garlic, and herbs.  Three hours before serving, take out the roast out the oven, remove the onion and herbs, and add veggies.  Return to oven and finish cooking for the remaining three hours.  Total cooking time: about 8 hours (I’ve been known to stretch it to 9 hours with no ill affects).  Serves: a family of 6 plus leftovers for the next day.

 

 

Pictures from our week plus a few words to go with them~

-This week marked a first for our household.  We got the kiddos dressed up and we went Trick or Treating.  Actually Trunk or Treating at a local church.  They ate candy for breakfast the next morning.

-I gave my warmest smile to the rough-around-the-edges, older man standing in line behind us in Costco.  He rescued Miss P’s blanket from the ground.  Then he returned Pearl’s wide grin with a shy smile as he gentle tucked the blanket around her pink toes.

-I didn’t expect to be buying teething tablets quite so soon.  Hello teething; you have not been missed.

-G proudly picked out his school outfit on October 31st.  Anything that had orange was happily donned!  J even wanted to wear something special.  He let me sew a felt pumpkin face to his orange t-shirt.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  My firstborn, straight-laced son suddenly wanting to dress-up?!

-It’s November.  Wow.