A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

Quite a few people know that Bryce has been struggling with digestive and bowel issues on and off for more than a year now. The last episode conviently occurred over Christmas break while we were in Colorado. Even after several doctor visits, including a pediatric specialist, and tests,  we still don't have any answers. The good news is that he's in a good phase right now.

Thursday evening I had Kari's parent- teacher conference,  and as I was waiting my turn I had a chance to flip through some of the class projects and publications.  I almost started crying right there out in the hallway.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the events of one child that we don't take time to stop to consider how it's affecting the other child.

It struck me as I read Kari's new year's resolution how sensitive she is and in tuned she is to what's going on with those around her. Without even asking her, it's quite clear her picture shows Bryce in bed and then multiple sheets of paper documenting Bryce's food diary.

Declarations of Love

In the age of Facebook, Twitter and other social media, I'm decidedly against most of it the majority of the time (although I won't deny I have accounts for both.)  The public gushing of anything and everything on one's mind is just not my cup of tea.  I promise you, no one cares what you ate for breakfast.

And just as I jump off my soap box, I'm going to publicly declare my love.  Again.  No, I'm not talking about laundry soap; this time I'm talking about my favorite winter vegetable: butternut squash.  I fell in love with the gourd back in my baby food making days- it has a wonderfully mild and sweet flavor and smooth, creamy texture.  As the kids grew out of baby food I continued to look for butternut squash recipes that we could all enjoy as a family.  Kevin and the kids are not nearly as enamored with the squash as I am, but they will tolerate it every once in a while.

As winter vegetable season quickly comes to a close, I cleaned out Kroger's supply this past weekend in preparation for making my favorite recipe, Coconut Chicken Curry, which conveniently also happens to be a freezer-to-crock pot meal.  I figured I'd make a big batch and then know I've got several meals ready to go on busy nights.  I'll admit I don't care for curry at all, but when I cut down the amount by about 75% I realize it suits my taste buds.  Martha's recipe is huge, I've discovered; so this time I actually turned a triple batch into six halved batches.  I checked my receipt and did the math- each batch cost $6.37!  Pretty good for feeding a family of four!

Upcycling

I'm about half way through the 2013 Freshmen Common Read for Purdue, No Impact Man.  It's been quite a good read so far.  I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not, but many of the everyday things the author attempts to do to reduce his carbon footprint, we already do as a family.  But, like the book is designed to do, it got me thinking about more ways we could attempt to reduce our trash output.

With two young kiddos in the house, we go through a lot of paper napkins.  I mean, A LOT.  However, whenever we're down at Gran and Beep Beep's for a meal we always use cloth napkins; I've got a dining room hutch full of cloth napkins, rarely used, so why not dig those bad boys out?  We started with those and the complaint department (me) did not field any calls.  However, I wanted to make the napkins a little more personalized and family friendly so I started digging through everyone's t-shirt piles to look for a little upcycling project.  Within only a few minutes, this

turned into this

(I wasn't quite ready to convert Bryce's Stanford shirt just yet.)  I'm yet to make Kevin's napkin yet, but both Kari and Bryce are so excited to have a napkin of their own and from a t-shirt they recognize.  My Purdue pride swells every time I look at Bryce's napkin.

So, it's only a little something, but I also see this as a great project for Kari to get some sewing experience on our next round of napkins.

Snow??? SNOW!!!!

I was beginning to think these kids were going to grow up not really knowing what a good snow looks like.  Well, we finally got it yesterday late afternoon.  It was the really wet kind, perfect for making a snowman.

And now as of about 30 minutes ago, school has been cancelled for the day.  Kari will be able to perfect her snowman and fort making skills.