Your Body Is Beautiful!!

While driving home today I heard on the radio that Kim Kardashian didnt want to be seen in public until she weighed 115lbs. I was confused by this, who cares what she looks like she just gave birth to a baby, what her weight number is should be the last thing on her or the publics mind.
Later today I was told by someone who hasn't seen me in 2 years that I got fat, at first I was upset. Then I thought what my body has been through, in the last 5 years I have carried and given birth to 4 amazing children, I have dealt with the death of my brother, made it through a deployment and many TDY's away from my husband. Of course I would like to loose a little bit of weight but for now my body is the way it is, and I have no problem with that.
I grew up in a home where my mom struggled with how she looked constantly. Even though my dad, brothers and myself think my mom is beautiful she struggles herself to see it. I think she forgets what her body has been through, carrying 3 children, adding another member to our family along the way, countless mishaps & struggles, the death of her son, moved my family over 7 times, been a teacher for over 30 years, opened her house & heart to many people.With everything that my mom has been through she has taught me beauty is not about the outside but whats inside.
I think about my two daughters who are 4 years and 9 months. My 4 year old just recently started asking me if people will make fun of her because her tummy sticks out. Tears fill my eyes everytime I tell her no you are beautiful inside and out no matter what anyone says. I pray my daughters can grow up and learn that it doesn't matter what beauty you have on the outside what really matters is what you carry on the inside.
To the moms who struggle to see their new beautiful body, take a look around and see what you've accomplished.
To the moms who have figured out how to balance everything and look the way that makes you happy Good for you!
To the woman who look down on people who look the way they do, shame on you, you have no idea what road they have walked.

The choas of our family just got more choatic!!!!

As many of you know my husband is in the air force. In March of 2012 we found out we had orders to move to England. I was beyond scared but also excited. The year went by quick and on December 2 my family boarded an airplane and took an 8 hour flight to London. We live a couple hours north of London now and absolutely love it. Our adventure here has been anything but easy but we've made it and we will continue to make it.
A1, A2, A3, & A4 have all adjusted well but man that first week we were here was hard. Where we live now is about 5 hours ahead of what we are used to. We were up at all sorts of the night and slept at the oddest times. The thing that made us finally switch to normal times was enrolling A1 in school. A couple days after we arrived here we went house hunting. Talk about an awesome experience. We looked at 10 houses. Some were WAY to small for us, some were shaped so funny, some were too much money and then there was the perfect house for us. It was a 4 bedroom with a study plus an extra "spare" room off the sunroom. We put an offer on the house to rent it and the landlord accepted it. See here in England they negotiate the rent so we were able to talk him down to what we could afford. It wasn't an easy ride moving into the house but we moved in on December 20. We spent 3 nights in the house living on air mattresses and having little to no things. On December 23 all of our stuff arrived, it was one of the best days of my life!!! I never thought I would be so happy to see my bed. Christmas and new years came and went, I think we both missed being back in Abilene with our "family" it was the first year in 3 years we hadn't done a new years party with our friends.
After Christmas break which was just last week I enrolled A2 into a British school, so car she loves it. She goes everyday and always comes home with a huge smile. A3 is old enough to go to nursery here for 15 hours free. We send him 3 days a week so its a good break for him and gives me to spend time with A4. I also have the opportunity to help out in classrooms now. Ive never been able to do that until now and I am so excited I'm able to be apart of that part of the kids life.
On Friday morning of this week R left to go help guard a helicopter crash that happened. We have no idea how long he will be gone. I was very upset at first but its the life of the military. I'm still getting used to living in a new country and now I get to take is head on. Ive met some very kind woman who have offered to help me get used to it around here. I'm hoping I pick it up quickly and I can start shopping locally to start back to making our own stuff!!! I defiantly miss being in the kitchen!
This move to a new country has been anything but easy. We have survived and we will continue to push through anything that is thrown at us. I'm hoping to start blogging more on our adventures that we take and the new things that we learn here :)

Homemade Goldfish! No Way!!!!!

This whole I'm turning into a Betty home maker thing took a turn for the good tonight! We made homemade goldfish tonight! The kids ate them up and said they were their "Cookies" which in turn made me happy :)

Anyways the ingredients in them are simple:
8 oz Sharp Cheese
4 Tbl butter
1 C. Flour
1 Tbl salt
3 Tbl cold water

Mix the first 4 ingredients together on pule in your mixer (I have an awesome Ninja mixer that I wouldn't trade for the world!) pulse them until it makes like a dough substance. Once its all mixed together add the 3 TBL of cold water, mix it until it forms into a ball. I had to pull the blade out and make it into a ball myself.

Once its in a ball put in a zip lock bag and store in the fridge for 20-40 minutes (I did 30 minutes) Preheat your oven to 350 now.
Once its done in the fridge take it out and roll it into a 1/4 inch think "sheet" then cut out your shapes. I don't have a small cookie cutter so we made a medium size star and heart :)
On a lined baking sheet lay them out but not too close because they will rise. Back for 15-20 minutes. For the stars I did about 13 minutes because they weren't as thick as the hearts and the hearts I did for 17 minutes.

This batch made 3 pans of "cookies"  We let them cool for about 10 minutes before we ate them! They tasted more like Cheese-its to R and I but  A1, A2, and A3 all loved them....I have a feeling these will be added to the weekly "treats" that mommy makes!!!

Pizza & A Movie Night!

One of my favorite things to do with my family is make homemade pizza and have a movie night. We had a mini version of one on Sunday night and I loved it. I say a mini version because I pulled the pizza dough out of the freezer (thanks to my awesome mom!) I wish I could tell you how to make this homemade pizza dough because it is wonderful but alas I text my mom almost every time we make it for the ingredients. I'm not quit sure what I am going to do when we move to England (Yes we are moving across the ocean!) and I'm not able to text my mom at a moments notice for help. I will at some point figure out this recipe and write it down so I don't have to text her every time we have a pizza & movie night. Anyways R & my favorite pizza is BLT, people from Texas have no idea what a BLT pizza is well let me tell you its delicious! You cook your bacon and put it on your dough put that in your 500* oven for 10 minutes then pull out and top with cheddar cheese (Shredded) and cook for another 10 minutes. After its done cooking take it out and top with mayonnaise, chopped lettuce, and tomatoes. The kids like their own type of pizza A1 would prefer pineapple on his, A2 just likes cheese and A3 will eat just about anything on his pizza :) For the kids pizza all you have to do is put the sauce on the dough cook for 10 minutes and then add the toppings and cook an additional 10 minutes.
Now my kids are ranch FREAKS (they take after their mom!!) Of course we make our own ranch but I cheat and just use the hidden valley buttermilk ranch packets, I love the taste of it and we always have the ingredients on hand so it isn't a problem when we run out :)

Of course you have to have a snack after dinner and what wouldn't be better than our homemade granola bars....these are to dye for!!! I make 3 batches of these for 1 week in our house. The kids and R eat them up!
Here's how we make them......
What you need
2 cups of rice krispies
2 cups of quick oatmeal
1/2 cup of Karo syrup
1/2 brown sugar
1/2 peanut butter
vanilla (I just do a splash)
Mix in treats ;)

Mix together the rice krispies & oatmeal, set aside in a bowl. In a sauce pan heat the syrup & brown sugar together until smooth. Once it is smooth add your peanut butter and vanilla. Once all of that is mixed together add to your cereal/oatmeal mixture. I use my hands for 2 of the batches I make. Its very messy but pretty easy. Now is when you can add treats if you would like R likes me to add cranberries to his, A2 has me add mini M&M's or chocolate chips. Now A1 thinks I make him special chocolate granola bars, all I do is put the cereal/oatmeal mixture with the peanut butter mixture in my Ninja (which I LOVE by the way!) and blend it together with chocolate chips. The blender chops up the chips and makes them look like they are just chocolate.
Once everything is mixed together press it into a 9X13 pan, I let them cool for about 10 minutes before we cut them up to eat them. I used to put them in a zip lock bag for the week but I found they hardened a lot faster (If they made it a whole week) the batch I made on Sunday have been sitting in the 9X13 pan still and they are as soft as when I made them.
Be careful when you start to eat these because I guarantee you wont be able to eat one!

The Deliciousness of Homemade Yogurt!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would make homemade yogurt! Well I did and we LOVE it!!! At first I was very leery of the fact that you could make yogurt in your home but I've been making a lot of other things at home so I figured I would give this a try too! In the last 3 weeks we have gone through 7 quarts of it, the best part is you can add anything you like into it and make it your own yogurt!

The first thing you will need is your equipment!
* A large stock pot - big enough to hold your milk.
*glass quart size jars with lids and rims- I found quart canning jars great for this (make sure they are sterilized)
*Milk- any kind from skim to whole. I use 2 % mainly because that's always what we have in the house and on hand when I need to make more yogurt. I make a gallon at a time which converts into 4 quarts which will normally last our house almost 2 weeks!
*Thermometer
*Cooler big that will fit your quart jars
*One 6-8oz good yogurt for starter - I'll explain more later.

Now lets get started!!!
Start to warm your milk, I started to heat mine around medium heat or a '6' on my stove. I stirred it often while it warmed with a whisk. You want to heat it slowly to 190* and when I say slowly it took me almost an hour to heat the milk to this temp. While I was waiting for the milk I made our homemade granola bars (I'll blog about that later!) Anyways heating the milk like this is called scalding the milk, you don't want to boil it though so make sure you keep an eye on it. Once you reach 190* turn down the heat on the stove. You want to maintain cooking the 190* milk for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, it's time to cool the milk back down.

The fastest way to cool the milk is in a sink of cold water. I filled my kitchen sink up and set the pan in it. Check the water temp, once it' starts getting warm remove some and add more cold water. Look at all the pretty steam. When you set your hot pot into the water there is a lot of steam of course, but I found the temperature difference will create a thick layer of milk on the bottom of the pan. Don't worry after about a minute I stirred the milk and was able to remove the layer of milk in one big chunk. It took about 5 minutes to get the milk cooled down.You want it to cool to 120* before adding your starter yogurt.

Once we have the milk cooled to 120*, it's time to add the starter yogurt. The starter yogurt is important. This is something you do not want to buy cheap.You want a higher fat if possible plain or vanilla yogurt with LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES. This is what is going to turn your milk into yogurt.

I used 6 ounces of yogurt to my one gallon of milk. Dump it in and mix it around thoroughly. This is important, you want all the starter yogurt to spread well though the milk. The active cultures needs to mix with the milk to make the yogurt. Once you have made a successful batch of homemade yogurt, you can use that as your starter. Take 6oz out right away, place it in a container and toss it in the freezer. This way you will make sure you have enough to start a new batch. You can do this for a few batches of yogurt. I've read over time that it will lose some of it's potency, and you will have to buy a new starter, but this should make 4-6 more batches before having to buy another little 6oz container.

Now if you want vanilla yogurt, you want to add your ingredients to this step. I made vanilla yogurt since I started with a vanilla starter and the kids really like vanilla. Once my starter was mixed in I add 3/4 cup sugar (we used this for the 1st batch, the second batch we put 1 1/3 cup of sugar, it was better!) and 1.5 TBSP vanilla extract to the milk. You can adjust it to your taste here.

Once everything is mixed to how you want it, It's time to put it in the jars. I've read about people straining their yogurt before putting it into the jars but I never had any clumps in my yogurt so I have never done this. Oh the pouring, here's another tip I used, I poured my milk from the pot into a large measuring cup. This makes it SO much easier to pour into the jars then and less spilling all over the place.

Once you've filled up your jars, you might want to skim off the bubbles. This isn't necessary, but helps with the yogurt's texture. I just took a spoon and scooped them off (The second batch I didn't have any bubbles)

 

Place the lids and rings on them and they are ready to incubate. This is where your cooler comes into play.  Place the jars in there and now add water. This water should be about 120*.You want the water to cover the lids of the jars. Close the cooler and let it sit for 4 hours, I forgot about mine (Whoops!) and left it in there for 5 hours. I left my cooler right in the bath tub, it was one place I didn't think the kids would bother it. Also it made dumping the water out later a lot easier. Where you leave the cooler doesn't matter so much as long as it's a draft free place. So don't place it next to an open window or cold door.

 

Once your time is up you will want to take the yogurt out of the cooler. I seriously looked at the jar when I pulled it out of the cooler and thought. Man all I did was curdle milk! BUT I didn't give up, I took the yogurt straight from the cooler and placed it in the fridge all the way in the back. I let it sit over night to make sure it thickened up.

 

The next day we opened the yogurt up, I still thought I had messed this whole thing up but alas I mixed up the yogurt and it looked like store bought yogurt!!! First we tired just vanilla yogurt, then we started to mix stuff into it. The possibilities are up to you! A1's favorite is mixed with strawberry or blackberry jam. A2 doesn't really care for yogurt at all but I'm determined to have her like some type of yogurt! A3's favorite is having fresh blueberries in there :) R will eat it pretty much anyway and I like to put it in my morning smoothies!! When I make it this weekend I will be trying to make strawberry yogurt!

 

                                                             My Finished Yogurt!

 

 

The Laundry Fairy

I wish there was such a thing as the Laundry Fairy, I think I would bottler her up and keep her for myself forever. When R & I planned our family never did I think Oh well having 4 kids we will have this much laundry. But now that we have 4 kids I am starting to think I should have thought that way.
Any one who has a big family understands that laundry is a never ending job. I cant figure out how people have a laundry day...just a day to do all the laundry in the house, how do you have time for all of it? I tried to do this one week and well 1) we didn't have enough clothes to last the whole week and 2) it took me from the time I woke up until I went to bed to finish all the laundry in the house. I'm sorry but that wasn't for me. So we do 1-2 loads every day and it seems to fit into our schedule just fine. Then on Fridays I wash all the bedding in the house. Now when you do that much laundry you use a ton of soap. My little red headed monkey's have very sensitive skin. If I switched detergent they would break out, if I used the cheap soap they would break out, so we were buying Tide laundry soap and since we do so much laundry I was buying it from Sam's Club. That started to add up, we were spending anywhere from $80-$100 every 2 months on laundry soap alone!!! For a family on a budget that was ridiculous!!!!
I have always been Leary on the make your own stuff, I didn't think it was worth the money or my time to be honest with you. Boy was I wrong!!! I had a friend let me test out her laundry soap. I liked it but it wasn't the one for me so I didn't some looking around and found the perfect recipe for me! I figure I will make it once and compare  it price wise along with quality to see if it was worth us making our own soap.
I made a batch up in a matter of 10 minutes, when it was all said and done it filled half of a 5 gallon bucket. I saved the Purex crystals container and use that to store some on top of my washer. We then counted how many loads we got out of each purex crystals bottle. We got 20 loads out of 1 purex bottle. We filled the purex bottle 7 times out of the 5 gallon bucket. That 5 gallon bucket lasted us 2 months. I normally would have spent close to $100 on soap for those 2 months but instead I spent $35 to make my own. That is defiantly worth my time!!!
Now you ask how do I make this soap? Well here it is:
1 (3lb 7 oz) box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 (3lb) container of Oxyclean
2 (14.1 oz) bars of Zote Soap
1 (4 lb) box of Arm & Hammer baking soda (Might be in the cooking isle)
1-2 (55 oz) bottle of purex crystals fabric softener
bucket to store it in
cheese grater used just for the soap

 

 

The first thing you will want to do is grate down the bars of soap. I normally do this on the couch watching one of my shows. It will make about a big bowl of shredded soap. Then you will want to layer each ingredient, it will be easier to mix if you do this. Once everything is in the bucket stir it all together. Make sure the soap gets mixed in really well. I then pour some back into one of the purex bottles and keep that on top of my washer. I use the cap of the bottle as my measuring cup and only fill that about 3/4 of the way full and YES I use this in my HE Washer I just take out the liquid dispenser and pour it where that used to sit.

 

Now I will have to tell you, my 4 monkey's are some messy kids. I have always used Tide stain release tablets even when I used Tide laundry soap so I have continued to use those with my own laundry soap. I also noticed that I need to make sure all my clothes are turned the right side out so they can get clean.

 

 

I will say since we started making our own soap our clothes have smelled so much better, and for some odd reason I'm not so sour about doing laundry. I actually like to do laundry maybe its because I know what is cleaning my clothes and I know they are actually getting clean!

 

 

 

Becoming a family of 6!

We became a family of 6 on Novemeber 1st 2012. Our kids are very close in age and normally when we add another child everything just flows into place, I thought this would happen when we added A4 to the group. Boy was I wrong. Adding A4 has been the biggest challenge we have encountered. Not in the fact of how are we going to love her? Will we have time for her? In the fact that we now need to adjust all of our schedules, money is tighter now with 2 kids in diapers, and we are getting less sleep (HA!) I was on maternity leave for almost 8 weeks with the christmas holiday in there, in those 8 weeks my family hit rock bottom, we struggled a lot. I beileve in order for us to figure out how to be a family of 6 and function right we had to hit rock bottom. I have made it my mission since going back to work that we will never be in that position again, this means we need to BUDGET! We need to figure out how to cut down on costs whereever we can. Pintrest has become my bestfriend in this department. I am starting this blog to hopefully reach out to other families who are in a tight spot and need to figure out a way to build themselfs back up!

A little bit about my family.

J - I am the mom :) I currently work at a mothers day out program and the nursery for a church. I love my job and being able to take my kids with me is an extra bonus. I dont have something that defines me as a woman, I feel my kids are who define me. I want to be able to raise my own kids and have them remember their mom be there for  them whenever they need me.

R - He's the daddy :) He has been in the Airforce for over 7 years now, he works with lots of weapons and trains everyone how to shoot those weapons. We both orignally come from Michigan and would love to go back. We spent almost 4 years stationed in Minot, ND and are going on over 3 years in Abilene, TX.

A1 - He is our oldest (5), he started Pre-K this year and that made me so sad, I did not like sending him to school every day of the week but I know he needs it. Do you know what they have to know before they go into kindergarten now a days?

A2 - Our biggest princess (4), She wants to start school so bad that has been our biggest challange about having our kids so close in age. A2 wants to do everything that A1 is doing at the same time. She is definatly our little drama queen. I never thought I would have a girly girl but she has gone against all my attempts and loves dresses, makeup and purses!

A3 - Our little fireball (2) this little one will get into anything and everything he can. We have locks on almost every door in our house, we have gates to prevent him getting into the kitchen without an adult but somehow this little monkey will get around it all and end up on the kitchen counter trying to get into the cupboard.

A4 - Our baby girl (3 months) Our smallest monkey and I have no doubt she will be our toughest....it seems to be a pattern the more kids we have the more they test us! She is still too small now to figure out her standing in our family but im sure with time she will find her place :)