School Year, grade 4

Jaydon's teacher, who has a special services dog, Didi who comes to school most days, drinks from the drinking fountain (?) & is even in the class picture!

And here's Jyson's nice teacher after the bonding took place...oh, wait...she isn't, we met the wrong teacher, but at least now we have a nice picture of a lovely lady!

Here's the 'real' one & she seems like a great teacher.

I've been really impressed already with the new school situation thus far. The teachers seem fabulous & the bus driver CALLED me on the 2nd day of school to verify a few things & ask about the boys (I wrote him a note because of some rather serious bullying we had happen last year on the 10 min bus ride home--I take them to school). 3 cheers for the new school!

For the love of Murphy...

Thanks to our amazingly generous friends (yes Ginny, that's you guys alright) who watched Ari overnight from moving day to the next morning they THEN saved us from a long trip to Indy because he was going already there & was able to pick the boys up from the airport for us!!! After an intense packing/moving week I was so very grateful I didn't have to pack up the kiddos & drive, go wait & drive back from Indy (2 1/2 hrs each way). We are all so happy to have the boys home. Ari woke the boys up the next morning with her laughing & 'hi's.' She was SO excited to see them & vice versa. One unnamed son was combing her lovely locks to get her ready for church the next morning while she was in my lap & in the one minute I looked away he 'curled' her hair around the comb & that is where it stayed. Very stuck. Ironically (& gratefully), I had just read about Heather's daughter's exact same incident & her husband was the one who decided he'd laboriously untangle it (seriously, I would have had no hope without this story...it looked impossible!). So, Tony decided he'd take the challenge on thanks to Jimmy's example! I held her head, the boys distracted her in various entertaining ways, Tony cancelled his elder's quorum meeting (imagine getting that message on your machine...uh, sorry, can't make it...crisis with a comb...) & after much patience we all cheered as her hair all stayed on her head & we paid tribute to the comb who gave its life for that cause (we cut it to bitlets, one piece at a time). Nothing like a little drama to welcome the boys home & unify the fam once again!

Under construction

I was able to take load after millionth load the 15 minutes from home A to home B in the van (the boys weren't there so I took out the back two seats & fit TONS more that way). So, when the 'movers' arrived (my friend's husband & then a few precious souls from the ward who haven't helped in one of the TWO previous moves in the 2 years we've been here in Indiana) they only had the stuff from the storage unit & the furniture. It still took awhile since we had to then go to the new place to unload it, but luckily U-haul made a mistake & I firmly (but kindly) insisted they follow through with the $50 guarantee they have on their wall & in addition we got a big enough truck to take it all in one load. So...I have a bunch of 'before' pictures that are waiting for the 'after' to come. Stay tuned for the finished products of all the de-gumming, cleaning, weeding, hedging, round-upping, painting, organizing, puttying, de-rustifying (that'll be a good one), decorating, refinishing & MORE of all we are doing here at this little neglected, but wonderfully wonderful house. We feel so blessed!

While we spent the day (roughly 14 hours of it anyway) painting the week before the move-in date, we had our lovely ward friend come play with Ari in exchange for a few dollars, frozen pizza for dinner & a waffle cone from our 'new' ice-cream joint in town. They spent some time in our latest garage sale acquisition (The inflatable Jolly Roger complete with sword, shield & hook...the boys hadn't even seen it yet, they were due to arrive the next weekend).

Smiley Rhett

Our sleeping motor mouth...

My 'Foodie' Post :)

Recently food has been a battle far too frequently for this family. In particular, breakfast for the boys, lunch for Ari & desserts for the parentals. So, I set about to whip up some new awesomeness.

Buckwheat groats. You can sprout them to get the full nutritional content, & it is one that soaks water up the fastest (only 20-60 min & then after that they won't sprout). So, I soaked them (far too long however), then dehydrated them on a couple of cookies sheets outside for several hours! I was worried because of the incredibly high humidity (80% or higher most days) here, but they dried just great. I went out to stir them every couple of hours & brought them in when they were all crunchy sounding. The next morning I put bananas with them & almond milk & it was yum (not sweet at all, so definitely a sweeter fruit to mix in is a good idea)! I think it would be a fabulous food for little gums because it's really soft. The hubby liked it, now to try it out on the boys next week when they get home (I'm in the process of coming up with more variety on the menu so hopefully we have a little less dragging of the spoons around the breakfast bowls...)

Don't these look great (I'm no photographer, but the food speaks for itself!)? Now for the shocker--none of them have sugar (only agave)! Tony is on the no-sugar-for-a-year & I committed to doing it for a month (& then I'm going to try limiting my sugar to once a week *sigh*). Well, I just can't live without my yummies (I know, agave isn't totally perfect, but so much better than the alternatives). So...I went to one of my new favorite websites "Chocolate Covered Katie" (link under 'favorites' on my sidebar) & made her Chocolate Raspberry-Fudge Cake (it tastes like the DeBrand's Dark Chocolate Raspberry chocolate--the high class, highly amazing chocolatier here :) & also the chocolate banana version, both found HERE (btw, most of her recipes are for ONE decent serving, so adjust as needed). I used coconut oil instead of coconut butter (*note, it's very important to melt the coconut oil completely before adding the other ingredients or it will have a grainy consistency, not so appealing--to do that just put the oil in a glass container then fill a bigger container with hot water & put the smaller one into it. It melts faster if you refill the hot water once it cools down a bit).

Since those were both 110% successful & sooo delicious I decided to try her 'Cheesecake Mousse." The result? Weelll, let's just say I don't agree that tofu & vegan cream cheese create a decent version of the real deal. The next try I opted to go with organic cream cheese (big bonus--no hydrogenation in the one I bought), & heavy whipping cream sweetened with agave (whip & sweeten the cream before mixing in the cream cheese), topped with berries. I'll be honest, it's not 100% the exact same taste as 'regular' cheesecake using agave, but actually my taste buds now prefer the stuff over white death (a.k.a. granulated sugar :) It has such a light, refreshing taste that lets me notice & enjoy all the other flavors & textures more. I'm going to make some dark chocolate agave syrup tonight to drizzle over round 2 of this treat, wanna join us?