food

"Can I have more?"
"No, you already had seconds"
"Oh... what's for dessert?"

For real?... for REAL? We have dessert like once a month (and it's usually a piece of fruit.. this is NOT the day

Weed Week - Stuffed Garlic Mustard Leaves

Stuffed Garlic Mustard Leaves

Cooked rice
Browned sausage
Medium onion (fried in sausage grease)
Chopped garlic mustard leaves
Cumin
Whole garlic mustard leaves

Mix together the first 5 ingredients. Form into small balls. Wrap with whole leaves. Use a toothpick to hold them together. Ryan even ate several of these.




Dessert! Cranberry Apple Swirl bread lightly toasted, topped with cream cheese and a strawberry. Yum!

"Nap" redefined

Ah yes, "Go lay down" now means "climb your brother's bed so you can look out the window"

Weed Week - Garlic Mustard Pesto Sauce

Randy and Ihave been talking off and on about trying some garlic mustard recipes. It's a good way to get rid of some invasive plants, and have a cheap meal! Yesterday after Ryan was home from school, we walked to the woods across the street and started pulling. We only pulled for about 10 minutes and had 2 full walmart bags of garlic mustard. There's still so much over there that needs to be pulled. We (okay, I) decided that we should try having weed week and eat a different food made with weeds every day for a week. So here I will evaluate each weed food.

Monday - Garlic Mustard Pesto Sauce

Finely chopped garlic mustard leaves
ground walnuts
garlic
olive oil
parmisean cheese
salt

We like pesto, but we've never made it ourselves. WOW. This was great. I freezed what we didn't use and plan to make more as soon as I get more cheese and oil. I didn't measure anythinw ith cups and spoons.. just by taste, that's how I cook. Ryan liked it on garlic bread with cheese on top. Manasseh spit it out. Randy and I had it on garlic bread, and on pasta. Great stuff. Dad recommended trying it on pitas or on chips.

compliments

Have you ever stopped and thought about the compliments you give? Manasseh is 21 months old now, almost 2... and I try to compliment him a lot on things... I just finished saying to him "you're a good nose blower" How ridiculous is that?

oh poop!

Manasseh's starting to potty train a little bit - not consistently, just kind of a friendly introduction. Yesterday was "underwear day", or in his words "dadada day".. hey, at least he got one of the words.

Shortly after Manasseh got his underwear he pooped, it seems like that's how it goes. I saw that he was pooping so I quickly grabbed him and RAN to the bathroom. Too late. It didn't matter, I put him on the potty anyway.

There was a little poop on his bottom an it got on the front of his potty seat. He was horrified! He pointed at it and tried to scoot away from it, pushing back with his legs... and ended up just moving the whole seat a few times. Pretty funny stuff.

Teeth

Our fun conversation of the morning...

Me: did you brush your teeth?
Child: Yes!
Me: if I smell your breath, will it smell like toothpaste?
Child: No
Me: Oh, why not?
Child: Because I didn't brush my teeth.
Me: I thought you said you had.
Child: I did... in the past

Huh?

"Your meds are not outside."
huh?
"Your meds are not outside."
huh?
"What did I say?"
Your meds are not outside.
"Why did you say "huh"?"
For a moment I thought I heard you correctly.

Oi

"Does your hair smell like shampoo?"

"Actually, I just used lotion"

Names

Our little neighbor girl was over today helping us plant seeds. She was asking about the little boy's names. I told her Manasseh's name and she said, "it's a girl?". We explained that Manasseh is a boy's name.

I told her Cassius' name and she said, "What's his name going to be when he grows up?"

Uhh...

"What do you mean?"

"When he gets older, what's his name going to be?"

Uhhh...

"What was your name when you were a baby?"

"My mom called me Snug-a-bug or bug..."

OHHH, wow.. what a funny conversation.

oops

So I spent all day yesterday getting ready for our weekend. I packed and cleaned and tore beds apart...

We got to church for Maundy Thursday service and I realized I didn't pack the camera. Randy ran home after church and got it. We headed to Fort Wayne and as we pulled into the driveway I realized I had left the house keys in the window at the house in Goshen. Thankfully Randy did have one of his and it happened to be for the door with matching locks.

Come thou fount

So, I knew something was wrong when Manasseh wouldn't eat ANYTHING at McDonalds... then when he laid down at the foot of the play tunnel.. and just laid there... but when we were on our way out the door and he stopped and spewed a massive fountain.. I really knew he was sick!

I wrote a song about it, to the tune of "come thou fount"
Come thou found of Nasa's vomit
all over McDonald's floor
glad it was here and not at home
please don't do it anymore!

The Clown

Okay, so truth be known, the clown at my house is Manasseh.

This morning he got up and decided to feed himself - EL fudge cookies and butterscotch chips.

Then I had to say to him "get your head out of the toilet" as he was playin with his potty chair (which he will not potty in)

Forgive and Forget

We had a pretty good group discussion at church last night about what it means to forgive and why we shouldn't "forgive and forget". I read an article a couple of weeks ago about how harmful it is for people who hear again and again that they should forgive and forget. There are tons of people, young and old, who have been hurt in some pretty serious ways and are stuck with some pretty vivid memories and trauma that eats at their lives for years. Frequently when they have trouble "getting past it" other people will say to them "you should just forgive and forget". That is crazy. See, we need to figure out how to deal with the pains, that part is true. We can't keep holding hot anger about things or it will make us ill. But when do we need to forgive? When people ask us to forgive. Forgiveness doesn't mean I'm not upset about what happened. As one of my girls said so brilliantly last night, it means acknowledging that the other person is sorry for their actions. Wow, how insightful. As for forgetting - that is so dangerous! Imagine someone has sexually offended on you again and again and again. If you choose to "forgive and forget".. you're going to keep letting them do it. That means that you continue to let them offend on you. Why would you let them repeatedly hurt you? I know that isn't what Christ was saying when he said to forgive them 70x7!

Sad news

Because of some poor choices, Brandon is no longer living in our house.