Here I Am!

Blogger finally let me upload pictures! Let's start with more unpacking....

The girls found their "cowboy bandannas" they got at graduation and had daddy tie them on:

And we discovered that banana boxes work as well (or better) for playing as they do for packing: But then, we already knew a box was a great toy.

Angel found herself a nice little cushion in the midst of the unpacking

We also did a large stock-piling grocery trip and worked on filling the freezer with meals. Most of the meals were from Fix, Freeze, Feast with a pizza recipe thrown in from Cook's Country (I wish they had more of their recipes on their site, but I promise the magazine is a worthwhile subscription!!) What I love about Fix, Freeze, Feast is all the recipes are based on "warehouse sizing"--one recipe will use the big 105oz can of tomato sauce, for instance--which saves money. Also, a lot of them require no or minimal cooking while you prepare, you just set up an assembly line and assemble all the ingredients and pop it in the freezer. When you're ready to have that particular meal, you thaw it out and either throw it in the oven, or for some things you have your meat marinated and veggies chopped, so you just pull out the package and spend a few quick minutes doing the actual cooking without any prep work. It's great! So, in this particular instance, I was looking to fill the freezer after the move. We don't have a Sam's Club here and I didn't want to buy a Costco membership (on the website it says they're $50!! I just didn't want to spend that much, plus Costco is an hour away...I wasn't sure it'd even be worth it), so all of my ingredients were purchased at regular grocery stores (which cost me a little extra). Also, some things I bought (parmesan, yeast, garlic, ketchup, vinegar, etc...) are pantry staples that I didn't completely use up in the recipes. I spent about $230 and made 41 meals. That's roughly $5.50 per meal (to feed all of us, sometimes with leftovers for lunch the next day). Not the best I've ever done, but you also have to factor in the convenience of a home cooked meal with no actual cooking involved on those days the kids are fussy and I'm tired. The only thing I managed to take a picture of was the veggie lasagna assembly (and yes, those are regular noodles, NOT oven ready, and you don't have to cook them--just put 'em in dry! The manicotti recipe is the same way and stuffing dry manicotti shells is a lot easier than stuffing cooked ones!). I ended up with 4 lasagnas, 8 bags of chili, 8 bags of mozzarella stuffed meatballs with sauce, 4 bags of chicken parmigiana, 4 bags of curry chicken, 2 garlic studded pork loins, 4 packets of raging garlic pork stir fry, 3 pans of cheesy chilada bake, and 4 cheese pizzas


Last, but not least, we recently visited the Bitterroot river for the first time:


And found the playground I'm sure we'll be pretty much living at this summer:





Oh, and Baby #3 is doing well. Flip-flopping like crazy at the moment, actually. I am hardly ever nauseous anymore, but still have a hard time eating much food in a sitting and I'm still losing weight. I've started eating a regular snack of cheese, raisins and almonds and my meals have been healthy, so I've added in a daily helping of fudge and drumsticks....If I'm gonna get in trouble for losing weight, I might as well enjoy myself, huh?