I think about you, my faithful readers, everyday. I thought about you last weekend when I was baking all day, and I thought about you all day long while I chased my kids back and forth across town to and from soccer games. There are so many things rattling around in my head that I want to write about, but I don't have time to load pictures, and I even if I just sit down to write, I rarely have time to complete a thought without interruption or total diversion. While I have a few minutes, I thought I'd unload some of my random thoughts.
I have a lot to do. Right now, at 10:19pm, the pressing thing is the kitchen floor. It's a mess. I mean, it's bad. The dishes are done, the groceries are put away, and the trash is out, but the floor: yikes. Instead of tending to the pressing things, you know what I do with my time? I cruise Facebook. Here is a lovely opportunity to catch up on all your long lost friends, look at their lives, see how they interact with their friends, see what they look like after all these years, who they married, how their lives turned out; it's all that and a bag of chips. But why is it so important to me to spend hours of my life just cruising? It's like back in high school when we would drive up and down the street just to see what else is going on. It blows my mind. There are so many things that I would much rather be doing, and so many more other things that I SHOULD be doing. But just like the old days, I'm waiting for the weekend to cruise! (this is our weekend because Dale's off.)
I've been cooking as much as I can from scratch lately. Maybe you remember I posted about the plan? Well, it's in full effect. I've baked bread, graham crackers, air-popped popcorn in the microwave, made sweetened condensed milk, cooked Cajun food, and used three bags of rice in the past week. I'm making good progess in the progression to whole and organic foods. It's so much fun.
Every time I figure out how to make something new, I want to write all about it. Like the other night when I was stirring the roux for my Cajun stew, I was thinking about how fun it would be to do a post about how to make it. While I was cooking, the neighborhood kids were all coming in and saying, "It sure smells good!" Most of them have gotten impromptu invitations to dinner via my children so I knew they were fishing. Unfortunately, when I cut up the chicken, (first time ever!) I pulled out the breasts because I thought I could use them for something else. I mean, I was using a whole chicken, why would I need all that meat? And then I decided I would add it later because I realized that I only had two legs, two thighs, and two wings to feed seven people. Well, while I was stirring the roux, I melted my spatula into the oil and had to start over. But I had already cooked the chicken, so I had to pull the rest of the bones, the neck and the back out of the fridge, (I was saving them to make stock), and fry them up so they would flavor the grease. Well, it takes twenty minutes to achieve a dark roux and by that time I had forgotten all about the boneless breasts I had set aside. Much to their dismay, I turned down all the requests for company for dinner because I realized the meat wasn't going to go far. Obviously, I have not used a whole chicken often enough to know that it's not really worth it's weight raw. One of our neighbor girls went home and no one was there, so she had to come back. I couldn't leave her in the living room while we all ate, so I gave up my spot at the table, picked as much of the meat off the backbone to split with Leila, and sat on the couch to feed the baby and wait for a seat to open up. The stew was really good; more like smothered chicken in gravy than what I would call stew, but really savory, nonetheless. It gave me a real sense of accomplishment when it was all said and done. Because it took so long to make and I managed to salvage it even after the spatula catastrophe, I felt like I had really done something remarkable. You can imagine the response when I had to tell the kids they could only have one piece, and Dale was getting the biggest piece- a leg. HAHA! Poor kids. Good thing Tre is picky and opted for salad instead of chicken.
Something else I think about a lot is how lucky I am. There's this song called "The Luckiest" that I feel like is my theme song. I didn't choose him, he chose me, which makes me even luckier. And we have these amazing kids. Today in the store this woman had been shopping in the same area we were in for several minutes without saying much more than "excuse me" to any of us. When we left, she checked out behind us and caught Kennedy and Jasmine while I was paying to say, "You have been a real pleasure to be around." It just melted my heart when they told me. I can't tell you how gratifying it is to have their good behavior lauded by complete strangers. They're not perfect, by any stretch. And we are hardly perfect parents, far from it actually, but we all love each other and at the end of the day we're all on the same team. I know these blessings come directly from the hand of God and have nothing to do with luck, but I feel so, so lucky.
Even if I'm not present here, you are on my mind in the day to day things that we do. Hopefully someday soon, I'll be present in real life instead of this virtual world, and you can watch our progress in real time rather than in fast forward!
My girls...
Look at this kid. Bless his pea-pickin heart. 
My camera shoots out an orange beam that always distracts her from smiling. Somehow we got past the beam, but her eyes still shot open on the first flast. Hahaha! She loves kisses!
Yikes. Kennedy is standing on the brink of being a teenager. She still carries a doll around the house and shops the baby clearance stuff every time we get close to it. 
It was our first day of school journal entry. For those that don't read phonetically, it says, "I love school because my mom rocks!" WOOHOO!
This is the little Cinderella cake the we bought at Albertson's to commemorate the occasion. She fell in love with this cake and Dale and I were trying to avoid a real cake, so I decided this was a good fit for the little princess. We all got a little sliver of the dress. It was so good (I love grocery store bakery frosting) that I was tempted with the giant cheeseburger cake that I saw there last night. Here I'm skimping on groceries, saving $.40 here and $.67 there, and I had to talk myself out of a five dollar indulgence. What can I say. I heart cake.
Leila loves the part when we all sing happy birthday to her. It's the best part of the whole day. She adores it. You can see it on her face.
Here she is with the tiara and earrings. So cute.
And this little necessity was added to her wardrobe just a few days later. She only takes it off to bathe and go to Wal-Mart- if I make her. Her little friend saw her prancing up and down the street and ran right in to get her dress on. They were bestest, bestest friends for the first hour they were twins, then Leila, after she brought her in the house to play, must've gotten tired of the pressure to perform as a princess because I heard her yelling, "Go home!" Sometimes she's really naughty.
The kids in our neighborhood all went back to school this week, so before that happened, I snapped a couple of pictures of their summertime activities for posterity's sake.
This little stinker, don't you just want to scoop her up? I do too! And I do every chance I get.
Trek and Tre were play fighting on the trampoline this morning and Trek clocked Tre in the nose; Tre came in with a bloody nose howling about how he was going to get Tre back. Micah came storming in shortly after snarling about how Trek better watch out because he was going to get it back. I reminded them of Jesus's forgiveness and told them that they needed to forgive Trek. After a couple of failed attempts, I let them know that if they didn't practice forgiveness, I was going to get them back. They're all best friends again.
Jasmine is such a mommy already, she always takes to the little ones immediately. This is a continuation of the tea party she hosted on our stoop the day before school started. She is such a jewel!
Of course you can't forget the hours we spent in front of the Wii... and all the neighborhood kids' joy along with us. 
