Cheapest gel ever!

Peach juice!

Must be applied liberly.

Crackers can be omitted in this particular hair style.

The days of infancy. If any of us sported this "do" we'd be carted off to the crazy house.

It's good to be a kid!

A creative Sunday endeavor

Preparing to launch in five, four, three, two, and......ONE.

Ah-ha!

Mission accomplished!

Who would have thought that a recycled ol' shoe box and milk carton lid could save the world?
Idea taken from here.

Feast of St. Andrew Kim and St. Paul Chong

Korean food in honor of Korean martyrs.

Father Andrew and layperson Paul both died at the hands of the Korean government in their attempt to squash Christianity in the year of 1846. These two men represent all the courageous Korean Catholics who stood firm in their faith. It is a reminder to us to thank God for the gift of religious freedom in our country and to continue to pray for other nations where Christians are being persecuted daily.

If you are a big fan of lettuce wraps, this is definitely a recipe you should try. First of all, I think I am losing my Chinese roots because I searched the entire kitchen and store room for sesame oil, rice vinegar, ginger, hoisin sauce, and rice (of all things). True to my new home, I found plenty of potatoes, okra, butter, flour, shortening, and squash. So, if you don't have typical oriental condiments lying around, this is the recipe for you.

Ingredients:

finely diced cooked chicken (I used leftovers from a chicken I boiled yesterday)

1 lg onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic

1 Tbsp. oil

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1/4 cup Hoisin sauce (I've included a recipe for this...it's necessary)

1 bunch of green onions

shredded carrots to garnish the top

Saute onion and garlic in oil. Mix together soy sauce, Hoisin sauce then add to skillet. Throw in the green onions and then add the chicken. Make sure all is thoroughly combined and heated through. I sprinkled some sesame seeds on top to take care of the guilt that I was out of sesame oil. Serve in fresh, crisp lettuce leaves and top with carrots. Hot sauce on top is supreme!

Necessary hoisin sauce....the white girl's way

4 Tbsp. soy sauce

2 Tbsp. peanut butter

1 Tbsp. honey

2 tsp. white wine vinegar

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

20 drops hot sauce

1/8 tsp. pepper

Bubbles said it reminded her of our time at Grandma's when we ate out all the time. Pei Wei's being a favorite spot. I'm pretty sure her memory fails her, but five lettuce wraps later, I was honored that she felt that way.

Hope you have the same success!

LITTLE Women was a BIG Success

I have just become the new leader of a GREAT girls program called Little Women from EcceHomoPress. Below is their description of the program.

The Little Women Hospitality Program, developed by Ann Milligan Callaghan, is a two-year, Catholic girls', ten-month program that aims to teach young ladies the various aspects of hospitality. Each month, the girls learn a new skill or "charm" as up-and-coming hostesses, young women, and Catholic mothers. The ten skills in Year I are as follows: cooking, cleaning, setting and clearing a table, manners and conversation, preparing a room for a guest, writing correspondence, bringing hospitality to others, sewing and dressing modestly, putting on a tea party, and running a book club.

The program is set up for bi-monthly meetings, but I had to tweak it in order to alleviate the stress of driving too far and too often. We will have a total of six girls and each girl has to travel about an hour to get here, with the exception of Bubbles and one other. My solution, as suggested by one creative mom, was a monthly retreat day.

We meet the third Saturday of every month. Each morning session is the lesson, games, and binder information. Everyone brings a packed lunch and we enjoy each other's company for lunch. The afternoon session is a field trip or service project. All the moms who have committed to the program are happy about this arrangement and I am LOVING it. It seems a whole day of interaction allows us to go deep into conversations and projects. Of course after everyone left, Bubbles commented that she wished it were every weekend! :)

The first session was cooking. The book had excellent ideas and recipes to try with the girls in order to get them familiar with the basics of cooking. Some of the suggestions included explaining how to level off measurements, how to separate eggs, and how to stiffen egg whites. I also wanted to include skills such as proofing yeast, zesting, kneading dough, folding egg whites, and creaming together butter and sugar. In my own cooking experience, it seems these few techniques can really improve your baking.

The girls were alternately adding milk and flour mixture to our creamed shortening and sugar.

Doesn't that look great? Well, it didn't taste too great. For one thing, I cooked it too long. Oops. The other thing I figured out the next morning when making biscuits. The girls had used two sticks of shortening which equals TWO CUPS of shortening instead of the one cup they needed. So, it was a bit on the heavy side. YIKES. It did have good crumb though. The recipe I opted to use was perfect because it called for creaming, zesting, stiffening egg whites, and folding them in! How perfect. The other recipe which I wanted to make, but didn't have all the ingredients for, was my mother-n-law's Italian Cream Cake. It also had all of these steps.
Now, because I'm an over planner and I also get uber excited to get it all in....I also had the girls making homemade pretzels. These taste about as good as the kind at the mall. In order to do this they had to proof yeast, knead dough, let it rise, punch it down, and portion it out.
Here they are rolling out the ropes to be twisted into pretzels. The recipe called for 3ft (36 INCHES) of rope, but we just did about two feet~~maybe a little less. So, the result is below.
Fat, little pretzels that tasted heavenly!
In between the cake cooking and dough rising, we took time to work on our information for our binders. Each of the girls is creating a binder to keep as a reminder as well as inspiration in what they will have accomplished this year. I had made a sheet with the cooking terms explained in case they need it for future reference. I also included a sheet with emergency substitutions, two empty recipe cards (which the girls had time to look through cookbooks and copy recipes they were intrigued to try) and a discussion sheet we used to talk about ways to use our cooking skill in the name of hospitality.
This was the last sheet I included. The LW manual suggests that the girls refer to Our Lady of the Eucharist as our Holy Inspiration on this skill. I love that! We can partake of physical food for our bodies, but only God can give us Himself as food. Naturally, Mary gave herself in order to be the mother of God and we give of ourselves when we take the time to cook for others. I drew this picture so they would have something to color/create and found some great Bible verse to compliment the theme. Hubby then put it all together for me in a PDF so I could print it off. I thought they turned out well.

After a beautiful lunch, outdoors in 80ish degree weather, we headed over to a local restaurant for our cooking field trip. I had spoken with the manager about our group and our day's lesson. She took it upon herself to instruct the girls further.
Here, Ms. Alice, one of the workers, explains to the girls how to garnish a plate and the UTMOST importance of keeping it clean. The girls also got to see how orders came in, got out, and little shortcuts to cooking fresh foods quickly. The cleanliness of the kitchen was impressive to all the girls. I loved how the owner stressed that if you clean while you cook, you won't be in the kitchen for hours afterwards. Since it is my kitchen that Bubbles is always using, I liked that extra push for cleaning. :)
In the end, we headed back to the house to create thank you cards, eat the remaining pretzels, and squeeze every last minute out of our time together.
Through all this day, Sweetness was entertaining a mom extraordinaire. For whatever reason, other than the obvious one that this mom is awesome, they became best friends that day!

So, next month is how to clean a room properly and I have strict orders from the manual to not dust or pick up much since the girls will be learning to do this properly. This has me super excited. I'm thinking the girls might need to make some fancy gloves just for cleaning....Hmm!

Confirmation photos at last!

Beautiful as ever!

The Vicar General since our Bishop was unavailable.

Bubbles and her sponsor. What a gift she is to our family.

The family. We couldn't be happier!

Bubbles and her closest friends. Having them at Mass meant the world to Bubbles.

Even more family~~and friends. Let it never be said that we can't party!

It's Official!

Sweetness is a clown!

She's also a nutcase.

Oh yes...she's walking!

With her first birthday only two weeks away, she got up and got going!

The Feast of St. John Chrysostom

This particular saint, born around the year 344, was a tremendous speaker. In fact, his name means "golden-mouthed." He was such a source of truth and inspiration and often times admonition that he made a wonderful bishop of Constantinople, no less. He fed the poor, took care of orphans, and preached sometimes twice a day. The empress of his time, who was chastised by Chrysostom, had him exiled and he suffered greatly. At the end of his time on earth, he yelled out, "Glory be to God." Upon his death, a terrible hailstorm fell upon his city. Four days later, the empress died. Her son honored the body of St. John to show remorse for how his mother had treated this great man.

We wanted to get to know this saint and remember that he was "golden-mouthed". So, Prez's constant pestering to make caramel apples gave me the idea for this special snack.
We started with some golden delicious apples, at least that was the thought. These gala apples were so much cheaper and better looking that we went with them.
One package of Caramel Apple wrap! WOW. So much easier than unwrapping a bazillion caramels and melting them on the stove.
Wrapping the apple.
Or at least trying to wrap the apple.
Isn't that a terrific golden color?
Simply delicious. Don't you just desire fall to be here? I know this has gotten me in the mood for the State Fair.

We also talked about how to have golden mouths ourselves. The Bible is bulging with Scripture about guarding your mouth and we decided that we liked this one.

O Lord set a watch before my mouth, a guard at the door of my lips. Psalm 141:3

Well, that's one way to guard your mouth, although it was a very short moment of silence.
This is hopefully not the only way to have a golden mouth, but it sure was a sweet try.

O Lord, we know that you hate a lying tongue, a false witness, and he who sows discord among brothers, intercede for us, St. John, as we guard our words and try to make our speech pleasing to you, Jesus. Give us the courage to speak truth, but the love as well. Amen.

Simply Irresistible!

Look at those big, brown eyes!

Check out those cheeks!

Don't you just want to kiss those precious lips?

She's eating spaghetti, but I just want to eat her up!

With all these pictures, you'd think I was a first time mom!

It's a sad, sad day

Me: "Prez, your oatmeal is ready."

Prez: "I have to go to the bathroom."

Me: "You better hurry or else it's going to get cold."

Prez: "Can't you just leave it on the stove until I'm ready?"

Me: "Yes, but it won't stay warm forever."

Prez: "Why not?"

Me: "It just doesn't. That's why."

Prez: "Let me guess. It needs batteries."

First field trip of the new school year

Safety Town in Frisco!

I thought we'd get rolling on our field trips this semester.....that is, stop, drop, and roll! This amazing facility is open for classes five days a week with state of the art equipment. Our class session was supposed to be about severe weather, and it was, but as you'll see, it was a whole lot more!
Here is the fieldtrip gang. A ragtag bunch from East Texas (us), Denton, Prosper, St. Paul, and Wylie. We just got the word out and threw a bunch of kiddos together. Officer Pablo was great with the kids and really made the morning enjoyable.
After a big lesson on what is severe weather and how to protect yourself, we all went into the kitchen where the lesson continued. The kids were pretending to watch the morning show when a weather alert comes on. The weatherman is discussing the tornado that has touched down and advises everyone in Frisco to seek shelter. The officer talks to the kids about good places of protection and the picture above was an activity on Safety Backpacks.

Each group was given a chance to come to the middle where a large pile of miscellaneous items were dumped out. They were told to pick out things to put in their backpacks. Prez's group did a great job of getting the necessities.
Here we can see Prez is doing the talking for his group. The officer asked him what they had in his bag and he preceded to tell them..."we have emergency water, medicine, gloves, and a bra." Officer Pablo: "Yeah, okay, that's a mask."

As you can see in the picture, Prez's cousin has his hands over his mouth and he is dying from laughter. Actually, we all were and naturally the other moms wanted to know what was going on in our homeschool. Ugh!
This is just a cool picture because you can see in the background that there is a simulated tornado in the window. They also had the capability to sound the siren that the kids would hear and there was a safety shelter they could all pile into. The officer opted not to do that and scare the really little ones.
Those stinkers!
The next lesson was on fire safety. The kids were paraded up to the bedroom where the officer talked with them about feeling the doorknob, how to put out a fire on you, and what to do if you are on the second floor. The finale was the opportunity to climb out of the window! In this room, they have the capability of having "smoke" pour into the room and practice getting down on the floor and crawling to safety. Cool, right?
Bubbles trying to pretend that she's too cool for this, but let me remind her that nobody told her she had to do it. She could have walked out of the bedroom door. ;)
Last, but definitely not least, the kiddos went outside to the Safety Town. This is a little town, with two way roads, working stop lights, working toll booth, and plenty of shops and street signs. The officer taught the kids different arm signals for turning and stopping and attempted a crash quick course in road safety.

Everyone was then fitted with helmets and a bike. The rest was magical!
A little traffic on the road today. It must be quittin' time.
Green light...everybody's ready to go, but the one in front. Isn't that how it always is?
Prez stylin' and concentrating.
Bubbles, having a blast and this time, showing it!

All in all, it was a success, even with the two collisions. Uh-oh.