Ham and potato casserole - write down what you did

My mom has this thing where she makes lots of recipes with little alterations or completely from her imagination and if it turns out well we laugh and say "You should write down what you did!" but we don't usually get it written down and the next time it doesn't turn out quite the same.

So last night I made a casserole that the family all liked. Only problem, I used a recipe from a cookbook as a guideline and threw in substitutes where I didn't have the right ingredients and then threw in a few things from the back of the refrigerator just to use them up.

So it went something like this:

7 medium potatoes, peeled, diced, boiled for abt. 25 min or until tender
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cup (approx.) left over frozen hash browns maybe a tiny bit freezer burnt, thawed out
1/2 cup mayonnaise because I was out of sour cream
1 Tblsp of the Costco dried onion flakes because raw onion always makes me feel ill when I'm pregnant
2 big handfuls of grated cheese, I'm guessing that makes a cup and a half to two cups or so? with my kids the more cheesy the better
2 cups (approx.) of diced ham left from Sunday dinner so only slightly aged

I put everything but the boiling potatoes into a bowl and stirred until well blended, then I drained the potatoes and put them in a 9x12 baking dish then poured the mixture on top and kind of mashed/stirred it together. I looked for the potato chips or corn flakes to sprinkle on top but since the kids had finished off both of them I gave up and put the pan in the oven just like that for 25 minutes at 350.

Everyone said it was really good. Andrew ate it with both hands (he eats everything that way though so I'm not sure it's a good indicator).

Jared asked how I grated all that potato into it, I rolled my eyes over that one. I'm not sure if he knew we had hash browns or they would probably have been eaten already.

Andrew's summer haircut

I helped Jared give Andrew a haircut just before we put him to bed this evening. So far we have just been trimming his hair here and there. My sister Lois has done the most trimming for us because she has a steady hand an a pretty good eye. This time Jared and I decided we would go for the full buzz all over type cut and try to shorten and even the whole mess up. Andrew has sort of wispy hair still but it's filling in enough that it looks shaggy if it gets too long.

We got out the clippers, trapped Andrew on the counter, and went to work. Poor Andrew did not enjoy the experience at all. Jared did a pretty good job under the circumstances and I held Andrew's hands so he couldn't slap at the clippers and hurt himself. We used the 1 inch attachment to stay way on the safe side and the clippers don't make too much noise, just a kind of soft buzz, but something about the thing being run over his head set Andrew off big time. He was so mad and upset by the time we were done. I intended to take pictures but I had my hands too full of angry, crying, squirming toddler.

He looks pretty good, a lot different, but good. With practice I'm sure Jared and I will do okay with the occasional cut and we'll send him to the barber with dad when he's a little bigger.

More spring in my yard

The lilac bush is blooming!

It may seem like a small thing but it makes me happy even if I am allergic to the bush. I like the way it looks but between the kids and the dogs next door this bush tends to struggle. It rarely blooms like this and I'm not sure what the magic combination of sunlight, water, and attention/leaving it along really should be. I was just thrilled it bloomed like this so Kylie and I took pictures while we worked on the yard yesterday. The other kids took a load of stuff to the green waste dump with Jared.

The tulips look pretty good again this year. Here's an open one to update the pictures from a few days ago of the ones that hadn't opened yet. We just have red ones. I would kind of like to have a few other colors eventually. I like the pale purple ones but they would clash a bit with the red maybe? So yellow and white or whatever I can find in the next few years.

Kylie helping me weed the tulip beds. She found a few bugs and that made her nervous and then Jared came out with the weed whacker and between the creepy crawlies and the noise she fled the scene.

Spring in my yard

The daffodil that's the new corner picture is one of the few that came up this year. I used to have a lot more of them but I think maybe the bulbs have given out. I don't know how long they are supposed to last or if they reproduce somehow and these are actually new ones.

Even though I'm going to have to pull these before they start spreading seeds, the dandelions are kind of a favorite of mine because they're the ones the kids bring to me. They're so very cheerful even if they do sort of make a nuisance of themselves.

I get just a couple of hyacinths among the tullips. April is particularly excited about the "blue flowers" and wanted to make sure we got a picture of one of them posted here. Now she's wandered off to watch Clifford.

These are blossoms on my pear tree. The tree produces amazing tasty pears and I bottle some every other year or so because one tree makes so much fruit we don't eat it fast enough to put up that many jars every year. We end up giving away fruit to friends and neighbors. Good stuff.

Here are some of the tulips. We've got quite a few, all of them are red. They are just getting ready to open. The brown stick things around them are the ornamental grape vine that we have been trying to kill for a couple of years now. No matter how much we chop off, cover up, dig out, or just think really mean thoughts at, it comes back huge every year. It's got roots that go under the fence and into the neighbors yard (they don't think much of the vines either) and so taking out the fence is the only way to get to them. Cost prohibitive, sigh.

We also found a hollow egg. I don't know what kind. Small and rather oblong. My camera needs to charge before I get a shot of the egg so I'll just leave it at this for now.

Play Ball!

Andrew and the girls play a game where they throw a squishy ball up the stairs and watch it bounce back to them. Andrew thinks this game is very funny and will play with anyone who will toss the ball.
He's been kind of like a golden retriever with balls and a few other objects since he got himself mobile. One of his first words was ball and now he's added catch, kick, and run-run-run to his vocab.
So anyway, we were playing ball today and the ball made it all the way to the top of the stairs and rolled out of sight. Andrew turns to me and pointing commandingly says "Get it!".
First two word sentence and dang funny. Usually it would be his job to fetch a ball that went out of bounds but I did indeed go get it for him; although I'm going to have to make a point of retrieval being his responsibility in the future.

Playing With Photoshop

I had so much fun doing the mossy rock thing for the top of this page that I started playing with other pictures. I emphasize the word "playing"; my sister can put the ears back on someone cropped out of a picture and make it look real, I can barely match the edges on two pictures that are exactly the same.

Anyway, I downloaded the recent picture of my brother-in-law and his family and somewhere during the download it turned kind of overly red so I thought I would tinker with it.

Original is on the left, the one I messed with is over on the right. I think I helped the composition but may have done bad things to the color settings... I tried black and white but then the windows were a huge focus. I could not find the sepia button that the computer assures me is under one of the tabs called profile. I would love to take a class on this kind of thing one day.

One day being that imaginary time in the future when I get to decide what I do with my own time, as opposed to present day when I have a one year old with a terrible odor tugging on the back of my shirt. Gotta go change a diaper.

I need a new tent.

Kylie, April, & Andrew are playing under the air hockey table with a sheet draped over it.

April crawls out and comes to talk to me:

April- I need a new tent.

Me - Why?

April - This one too small.

Me - What kind of tent do you need?

April - Giant big, big and big. (she does hand motions like exploding stars in front of her then crawls back into the existing tent)

El Azteca make me feel better.

When Krista was little she had this funny thing she would say when she had hurt herself or was sad about something, "treat make me feel better", she would say it in this plaintive kind of voice and it was so cute and pathetic that it won me over most of the time.
So this afternoon, when I was feeling a bit discouraged about a number of things, including the weight gain measured at the doctor appointment today, I had a "El Azteca make me feel better" moment and went and bought myself lunch.
Yeah, I know, making myself feel better with food is not so much a good idea when I'm gaining weight this fast with this pregnancy but I've got to be realistic about it, the only way to control the nausea is by constant small snacks and there is just nothing I can do to "diet" until some time in October after my 6 week post-baby appointment. Besides, with this kid I crave protein. I'm not a big red meat eater and I don't like fish usually but right now I'm all about a nicely cooked steak or some hamburger or a shredded beef taco... whatever I can get my hands on. So a chicken enchilada, a beef taco, and the combination of beans and rice that form a perfect protein did indeed make me feel better. They also seem to have pleased the "tummy baby" who is doing happy little wriggles now. I resisted the impulse to buy a churro to go with lunch.
I've added El Azteca to the pages I am a fan of on my facebook.

Girl!

Since I haven't been posting very regularly I thought I should get this in here now.

Baby Stone #5 (as far as the ultrasound could tell) is going to be another girl.

Yes, I'm happy about this. Andrew is a one-of-a-kind little boy and I'm not going to test my luck on getting another one quite like him. It would have been kind of nice for him to have a brother close to his age but with four sisters he will never be bored.

As for names... Jared says he really likes Jessica. I would like to go with another girl named after a grandma and do Beth or Anne or Anna maybe so we're still playing with names and ideas. Kylie told me we should go with Chrysanthemum (I don't know if I can even spell that correctly) because of the Kevin Henkes book we just read. The girls also like Tia from the Princess and The Frog or there was another one from a movie but I can't think of it...

My parents always have outlandish suggestions from the family pedigree...

I really don't know very many Jessicas so it doesn't have a gut reaction attached. I tried to find out why Jared likes the name but he's pretty vague so I'm going with the belief that he had a crush on a Jessica in the 4th grade, LOL.

Milk, Eggs, Bread, Cheese, Donuts...

April turned 3 last week. Lots of fun. She's a busy cute little kid with a tendency to do what she wants even if mommy sort of said not to.

We kept asking her what she wanted for her birthday and it was pretty easy to see she really wasn't getting the concept. She told us more than once that she wanted milk, eggs, bread, cheese, donuts, and other grocery items. Her big sisters thought this was very funny and had lots of suggestions on what we could get her instead.

On her birthday I thought, 'why not?' and went with her to Toys R Us to the aisle where they keep the pretend kitchen stuff. We found a great set of food and a nice toaster to go with it. Now she has an incredibly well stocked play kitchen that had a pile of tea party set stuff before we got the new food.

Bunny Cake for Easter

Because I got a kick out of these I thought you might as well. The kids and my sister decorated the traditional cake this year. It's easy to make. Two 9 inch circles and you cut one of them so you get the ears and the bow-tie out of it. Freeze it, frost it, use random candy and frosting to create a unique-every-year look. Eat rabbit on Easter :o) .

This year we found that the bunny had nicely mobile eyebrows that made him a very expressive little guy. Got a couple of pix of the "faces of the bunny".

This last one is my favorite!