NEW Year Pictures

 

Since I successfully posted the family picture on the header, I'm going to post a few more from our session. The awesome photographer took nearly 900 pictures and I came home with 100. We also got all new individual pictures to update the kids photos over the stairs for the first time in 3-4 years. It's a lot of work to coordinate and photograph 16 people, but it was worth it.

 

The little family in the big family -

The four big girls -

Mimi and Granddad with Nathan -

The boys -

Candid Moriah - 

 

 

Bulk Cooking

 I am going to master the bulk cooking way of life, because there is nothing more unpleasant than walking in the house at 6:00, have two or more hours of homework ahead of us, a group of hungry children and no idea what anyone is going to eat. So far, I have done three batches of cooking. Day one, back when everyone was still sick, I made a big batch of chicken noodle soup, which barely lasted until the next day, two crock-pots of sausage kale soup, which lasted a few days, and a triple batch of chili. We ate one portion of the chili and I froze the other two for future meals. Making three meals in one day didn't seem bad and it yielded five dinners.

I soaked four pounds of kidney beans and two pounds of black beans for the chili

 My second day was super simple. I made two double sized lasagnas. Normally one would go in the freezer, but I sent it with James and Ben to my friend's house to feed everyone the night I was in DC; my sister and the kids at home consumed half the other and we were able to heat the remainder for lunch after church. 

Yesterday, I tried another approach. I printed a freezer meal plan - the shopping list, prep list and menus. I left for the grocery store about 10:00 and did not finish the meals until about 6:00. That did include grocery shopping, putting food away, prepping and preparing the meals. I made spinach quiche for last night's supper, corn beef and cabbage in two crock-pots for tonight's dinner and then five other meals for the freezer. While that may sound impressive, I did little yesterday but make meals and they are only going to last a week. Beyond that, James and Ben chopped almost all the meat and veggies for me; without them, I would have had to work all night! So, it doesn't seem reasonable to me to spend 1/7th of each week cooking and still have to do  breakfast, lunches and some Moriah vegetarian meals.

So, I think I'm going to go back to my first (or second) plan, which is to double or triple everything I make. One for dinner and at least one more for the freezer. It shouldn't take too much longer to double what I already make and it should cut my evenings cooking in half.

James cut up three roasts and countless chicken breasts

  
These are the veggies I bought yesterday for the recipes, beyond the ones I already had in the fridge.   

  
I made two different beef stew recipes for the freezer. When I have to plan on each meal feeding at least 16, they are large batches!

This is how I froze them; most required two bags. I then just wrote on the bags the cooking instructions and any last minute needed add ins. 

I am going to work on a January/February menu that repeats for each month. I may be able to just repeat it for March as well depending on the weather - we eat a lot of soups and stews in the winter and then switch to warmer weather meals. 

Food and More

 I feel like food and more sums up my life - making three meals a day takes an enormous amount of my time. Saturday I took Tori and Julia grocery shopping and then enlisted help to make several items. Selah and Bella helped with the bread, cinnamon rolls and cookies. 

Grinding wheat

More wheat

Cookies

 Once the baking was done, I moved on to dinner for Saturday night and quiche for Sunday lunch.   

In the middle of that, I had to get the cucumbers pickled. The Saturday bunch was very fast using a speedy mix from Walmart.

Sunday and Monday I did a slow lime batch. It will be interesting to compare the difference. 

Beyond food, we are trying to control the chickens and keep them out of the garden and tame the kittens. I am thrilled to say that Tiger, the sweetest one, has a home at my friend's house. Beyond that, the next two are taming well. This picture is Olaf, who was the wildest of the first three and is now meowing for attention.

Olaf

 As a sneak peak for a future post - check out the screened in porch's ceiling. Isn't it pretty?

Weekend Celebration

So, in my current trend of doing things when we are able to do them - we celebrated our traditional Easter this weekend. Since we went to family camp over Easter weekend, and ate Easter dinner at a Mexican restaurant, we booked an at home celebration the first weekend that Aunt Deb and all the kids (except for Gabriel and Alayna) were able to be home. This was the first opportunity. 
 

Moriah and Dad

Julia and Moriah

I let the kids dye eggs -

And the big kids hid them for the little guys -

We then had our traditional ham dinner.  Gabriel happened to Face time right when we sat down.

  
It feels good to be settling back into normal life and there is SO MUCH to do outside. The grass was/is severely overgrown and JD spent a few days trying to get the riding mower to run. We have concluded that it is going to have to go in for repair so the boys and I took shifts mowing with the push mower yesterday while JD made the trip back to WV to pick up our Red vehicle that had broken down on the way home from the funeral.

My barn kitties that were dumped at the end of the driveway are going to be six this summer.

After the grass gets under control, we are going to wire the pasture fence for the goats and build a guinea proof chicken fence. 
 

Hoping that Leia is pregnant!

 We have also started the garden but unfortunately, I'm pretty behind planting this year. 

Chickens love yogurt and keifer by they way.

Continuing my do-it-when-you-can policy, we are having a serious overdue birthday party this weekend.

Saturday and Sunday

 I "let" JD go out of town for a men's retreat; my job at home wasn't too tough since Aunt Deb came and helped me the whole time. Good old Aunt Deb has filled in a gap that I have ignored for years - board games! She taught the kids how to play Yahtzee and Sorry. It can be a bit challenging with little "helpers." 

I wish I had thought to have someone video the excitement when I got out Selah and Bella's new church outfits. They squealed, clapped and jumped up and down. They are always super eager to get dressed and like to admire themselves in the mirror.

Check out the girl's heights. Tori is almost 8, Julia is 6.5, Selah is supposedly 5 or 5.5 and Bella is 2.5. I'm anxious to get a bone scan done on Selah to determine her age range.

When the camera comes out, Bella starts posing. Selah didn't want to be left out, so she gave it a go also. 

You got to wonder where they learned this!

We made our first trip to a store with the girls - Costco after church. They did great, but wouldn't touch the pizza.

When the 12 of us rolled up to the food court, there was only one table. Two different people offered us parts of their tables, which was so nice. Only one little girl asked if we were just one family.

You really can't miss us rolling through the store!

The good news is that we wore them out and the ride home was quieter than usual.

While the shopping went well, I'm not taking all of them without JD for a while!

Shots of Today

We are really enjoying the nice fall weather, so today I got my camera out to document it. First, however, I need to show one picture of Julia and Elijah with their severely over-due birthday cake. We lit five candles on one side and three on the other and they were quite happy.

Our table area has a transformation - the Amish benches that we ordered a few months ago came in. We have been through so many cheap chairs over the years that we thought these would last the years better. I already realize how much easier it will be to vacuum under the table because the vacuum fits under them. Moving 12 chairs out and back was always the worst part of vacuuming. 

These cheap NY mugs ($2.50 each) were the only souvenirs I bought my children when we went to NY city. I think it should be enough to take your children on a trip without having to buy them something from there; anyway, when I saw these, I knew it would help the winter go more smoothly. I was tired of making children hot chocolate and they would argue over which mug was theirs and that someone took a drink of theirs, (problems adults just don't seem to have.) So, everyone now has their own color mug and it's already decreased the hot chocolate confusion. 

Now out to the nice weather - we got this sturdy trike at the thrift store for $5; it is exactly like the ones that Elijah loved so much at the pumpkin farm. Two of the tires are not staying inflated, so I'm going to have to hunt them down, but I think he'll be able to ride it through the grass once he can reach the pedals well. 

The frost killed off my pumpkin plants, but my broccoli is still growing nicely. See those little heads starting to grow? I'm definitely planting a lot more of it next fall because it's been so easy to grow and it's so easy to freeze. 

Elijah and I followed the guineas around for a while and tried to get a picture of the two babies that the momma guinea hatched herself. They are so cute running behind here everywhere, but they bolt when I try to get close enough for a picture. 

Here's a picture of Lincoln dog. He is posing in front of an eye-sore in the side yard that I think needs to come down. It was a "house" that Moriah and Alyssa built years ago, complete with plastic kitchen, but has been abandoned for the last few years.

I'm including this picture to demonstrate how Elijah climbs everything - and I mean everything! We did an ER run about a week ago to x-ray his foot to make sure it wasn't  broken after he fell off the front flower bed,  but it really hasn't slowed him down much. 

The kids have been playing soccer everyday. I think two goals would be a great group Christmas present. 

I hope that you are enjoying the fall as much as we are; soccer ends this weekend and I'm hoping it stays nice enough for a while to do some outside activities.