cooking marathon!! day one. beans.

okay, i'm in the midst of a cooking marathon! with our schedule getting fuller, i need some food that i can pull out of the freezer and just pop in the oven. last friday night, i made 3 meatloafs and 2 lbs of meatballs in just a little over an hour which inspired me to take on a bigger chunk of time to make more.

yesterday and today i have a long list of what i want to accomplish:

cut and freeze celery (from the produce co-op)

broccoli-some for now and some to freeze

cook beans-some to freeze for winter soups, some for refried beans

chicken pot pie

poppyseed chicken

brown-bag burritoes

chopped chicken

blueberry muffins (?)

lettuce prepped for week ahead

well, yesterday, i started on the beans. i have never made dry beans before. i was inspired by moneysavingmom who bought 6lbs of dried beans for a mere $6 at sam's. she showed that she had 5, 2 cup containers of beans. i was thinking that for all those beans, she sure didn't have alot. but i started working.

first, i soaked my beans. they kept expanding. i kept having to add more water and pull out more pots to put the beans in that were overflowing. by the time they were done soaking, i had 2 crockpots, 1 stock pot and my two largest cooking pots FULL of beans. i have not 10 cups of beans...oh no. i have 60 cups of beans. yes, 6. 0. sixty. good grief!! pretty hilarious. so, now i know about how to make beans. :) and now, i'm going to learn how to make refried beans. anybody need some beans??

(this is less than half of the beans that are cooked!)

today has already gotten off to a better start. i'll let you know how it all winds up.

thrifty thursday is BACK!

okay, i've got a great one for you!!! ted's montana grill is giving away certificates for free lunches. really, it's super easy. and you can get EIGHT! you take their little quiz (there is a new clue each tuesday and friday-and remember google is your friend!) and then they will e-mail you a certificate for a free $8 lunch off of their new lunch menu. i got my first certificate this week and it doesn't expire until 11/29. not too shabby. just look for the link to discover ted's 8 wonders and win.

anyone want to go to lunch?

for my aunt gene

when we went to prattville this summer, my aunt gene taught my girls this song...

julia first.

notice the intensity of concentration as abby sings and wants to get the motions just right.

and our MANY attempts of both of them together always resulted in madness. like this.

flooding in lilburn

it's been a very surreal day. if you aren't in atlanta, i'm sure you're hearing about all the flooding. and wow. it's flooding. like real genuine flooding....in my sweet little lilburn. surreal.

after being awake from 2:30-4am because of very intense thunder which of course woke up the girls, i finally caught a few hours of sleep only to wake up to jon telling me that my parents had an oak tree fall on their garage.

their cars were completely trapped under the tree and their was another tree blocking the end of their driveway. so off we went to help out where we could. we had to take the circuitous route to avoid flooded rivers (when do you get to every use "circuitous" in a sentence??). on the way home, more flooding. houses with three feet of standing water outside of them. longer route. and we arrived home to find out that our dear next door neighbors basement office flooded and they lost everything. heart breaking.

but i've just been reminded today that it is stuff. it is hassle. it is heart wrenching. and yet there are glimpses of glory. my sweet abby wanted to give her money to her nonnie and papa to help pay for their repairs. it was the first thing out of her mouth. amazing. i see people serving each other selflessly. my husband laboring in the pouring rain to put a tarp on his in-laws roof because he loves them. kindness.

makes me thankful for the things i so often take for granted. things that so many in this world don't have. a warm bed. a dry house. a house stocked full of food. and sweet friends and family to help in the hard seasons.

don't know where to start...

so, i've decided that i want to start blogging again, but it is hard to know where to start. facebook has become such an easy way for me to share my random thoughts lately that i had abandoned this old blog. but some things take more than a status update. like this--we've decided to move forward with adopting a child.

most of you already know this, but in case you don't, let me fill you in. jon and i have always had a heart for adoption. always knew it would be in our future, but assumed that it would just be somewhere out there--in the future. well, on the 4th of july, in the midst of some prayer time, i really sensed the Lord leading me that the time was now. i was rather blown away...i wasn't even talking or thinking about adoption. but there it was, and it was unavoidable. well, after praying and pondering, i went to jon. i fully expected him to say, NOT NOW!! instead, his response stunned me. he said, "that's interesting because the last few days, i feel like the Lord has been leading me in the exact same direction." now those kind of conversations might be the norm in your household, but they are not the norm in mine. when we talked, it became apparent that our hearts were both set on adopting from asia. and so we began to investigate agencies.

fast forward to now. after a few months of gathering info, we have moved forward with one agency only to realize they weren't the one for us (it would take them on average 2 weeks to respond to our basic questions!) so, now we are moving forward with a new agency out of matthews, north carolina. interesting that the agency we found just happens to be where 4 of my dear friends live. hmmm. coincidence, i think not. we should get the paperwork this week and begin the application process.

now let me just tell you, this is a HUGE faith journey for us. in so many ways. one of the biggest is the financial realm. so, i want to just share this journey with you--so that when we get to the end of it, we can all stand in absolute awe of the God who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ever think or imagine. i continually, daily remind myself that if he has called me to it, he will provide for it.

so there ya have it. how's that for diving back into blogging!?!

to blog or not to blog

so, is there anyone still out there that wants to know what's going on in our lives? i keep debating whether or not to start blogging again. it takes time (which is a precious commodity these days), but i like the scrapbook essence of it all. so, who is still out there?

one more bite

my girls are VERY motivated by music.  every night after baths, they dance to "baby, baby" by amy grant.  we are singing constantly.

well, we have found an interesting way to get them to eat foods they aren't thrilled about.  if i start making up some silly song, their interest grows.  they want to hear the rest of the song.  but i won't sing any more of it until someone eats a bite.  tonight, they both ate a ton.  and i got to create a very silly song about princess julia and princess abby.  ridiculous, i know.  but every once in awhile, it works!