My Family Of Nine » Uncategorized

Try This for Fun!

Diane — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:19:04 +0000

This is a fun thing you can try with your blog! At Wordle.net you just put in any website url or random words and it automatically generates a graphic of the words most often used on the site. You can customize it, print it out, put it on your blog, or even put it on a t-shirt if you so desire! I just entered words that meant something to me and then customized the colors!

I hope you try it! Diane

Whole Wheat Pancakes

Diane — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:52:07 +0000

I have to admit that I shy away from making breakfast and usually opt for cereal, but in an effort to save money and work on building up the nutritional level, I’ve been making a hot breakfast a few times a week. Here’s my whole wheat pancakes:

First, I assembled the ingredients. (Note the fabulous Vermont maple syrup!)

Then I made buttermilk since I NEVER have any! You just pour a bit of lemon juice into the bottom of your measuring cup and add milk to the proper amount. Then let it sit for a few minutes until it gets lumpyish! Cheap and easy.

Next, cook on your preheated griddle. I bought the biggest griddle I could find. As you can see I can do 12 pancakes at one time! Also notice the chocolate chips!

Finally, serve them to your family who will show their appreciation for all your hard work by looking at picture books and reading the newspaper!!

Well regardless of whether they appreciated it or not, no one needed a morning snack because they were totally full!! They should have been since I made 54 pancakes and only had 12 left.

Recipe: Whole Wheat Pancakes

Summary: Really nice recipe for whole wheat pancakes the whole family will love!

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 T honey or sugar
1/2 T oil 1 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs

Instructions

It’s important when making pancakes to mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then put together.
For this recipe, mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the wet in another.
Then pour the wet into the dry and mix gently.
This batter is a bit thicker than normal pancake batter, but it is fabulous!

Quick Notes

I added some chocolate chips for fun!

Cooking time (duration): 5

Diet (other): Reduced fat

Meal type: breakfast

Culinary tradition: USA (General)

My rating: 5 stars: ★★★★★

It’s Not Only For Girls

Diane — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:03:43 +0000

I thought this was too funny when both of my littlest boys woke up with really bad hair. I always assumed that bad hair was only for girls but apparently not. Here’s the smallest one.

And here’s his bigger brother!

This is why girls rarely go to sleep with damp hair. The morning result isn’t pretty.

This is also what happens when you tell little guys to smile! It’s not always a pretty picture is it? Just now our nine year old can smile without looking totally strange. Diane

Senior Clarinet Recital

Diane — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:28:50 +0000

Our oldest daughter had a lovely senior clarinet recital this year. As her teacher for the past six years it was so rewarding to see how she has blossomed into such an amazing musician. She plays with a lot of passion and feeling, and her technique is really good. She has worked hard and practiced for hours and hours a day!

When it came close to recital day, we all realized that she didn’t have an appropriate dress to wear. She didn’t want to wear her black orchestra gown, and didn’t have anything else that wasn’t strapless. We decided against strapless due to the fact it was in a church. So she and John headed off to David’s Bridal where she found a really beautiful gown on clearance for only $49.99! We just cut up the wrap that came with the dress, and turned in into sleeves.

She and her sister played a duet, as did she and I. It was so much fun to turn the whole recital into a family affair. Even the oldest boy got involved, as he and G. played their duet to give her a few minutes to rest before the final piece.

She played very well, and had about 40 people in attendance. We hosted a reception afterwards, and everyone seemed to enjoy the food. We had handmade cake balls, homemade mints, cranberry punch and nuts. It was a wonderful, wonderful day, and we were all very proud of her.

Summer Is Fun

Diane — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:31:00 +0000

We love summer! I just wish it lasted all year, but then maybe I wouldn’t appreciate it so much. On July 4th we used our little fire pit in the back yard to pop poppers, and make s’mores. One of the little boys only wanted to eat the marshmallows, and one of the older children only wanted to eat the chocolate – so it all worked out quite well.

For the rest of the summer we will be doing much of the same – nothing. We’ve been keeping up with our summer reading, swimming a lot, and relaxing.

I’ve been busy working on my Fit to the Finish book, and it is almost done. We are doing the 3rd edit, and I think I’m finally ready to start making it look good. I need to get it done before school starts, because then I’ll be busy teaching the younger children to read and write, and I won’t have a lot of free time!

Father’s Day

Diane — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:50:38 +0000

We did a post for Mother’s Day, so here’s the Father’s Day post. John is such a great Dad, and we had such fun honoring him and celebrating all he does. His theme for Father’s Day was there’s more for your life at Sears. He had a lot of good experiences during his time at Sears, so we thought it was a fitting theme. The girls did a great job decorating the dining room!

The kids gave him some really nice presents, and Stephen and Christian tried to help him open all of them!

Here he is with all the kids!

Sad snow

Diane — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:37:00 +0000

Here we are with our sad excuse for snow here in West Tennessee. We keep hoping for more, but haven’t seen any yet. We would rather have snow than tornadoes though!

easter 2008

Diane — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:36:00 +0000

We had a nice Easter this year. Last year we went to North Carolina to visit Deanna and Way, but this year it was just us. We recently changed churches, from a small Presbyterian church to a larger non-denominatial church. The girls and I made dresses for them, and I smocked an outfit for baby Christian. The other boys all had newish shirts and pants and all looked really nice.

The Saturday before Easter we spent a few hours coloring eggs. We didn’t have any spilled dye this year like we did last year. Stephen was so cute. He just wanted to keep dipping those eggs. We dyed 36 eggs, and John said it went too fast. John likes to leave the eggs in the dye forever so they will be nice and dark, but most of the other kids just wanted to go as fast as possible.

Easter Sunday we went to ECC and enjoyed the service. Well, John and some of the kids enjoyed the service, as I was only there for about a half an hour. Then Christian got fussy so I took Christian, Stephen and Jacob home. John and other others stayed for the entire 1.5 hour service. They said it was good, but long.

We hunted for eggs inside the house which seems wrong. It was just too cold and wet here to hide them outside. The hunt was over very quickly, and John and I decided we had bought too much candy after all!

That evening we did a Christian Seder Service that I found on the internet. We’ve done it for the past 3 or 4 years. Usually we do it during Easter week, but this year we were so wrapped up in the house disaster that we put it off. The girls got all the china and silver out and decorated the table. It was a lot of fun. We put Christian and Stephen to bed after dinner and did the seder without them. At the end of the service we all held hands and danced around the table singing our version of a Jewish song. It was a neat way to celebrate Easter and to remember all that God has done for us.

house problems continue

Diane — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:02:00 +0000

Well, in the last post we had discovered that the previous sellers had covered up a rotten wall on the front of the garage. Now, we discovered that the other wall was rotten, partially due to rot and partially due to termites. As you can see from the pictures, the supporting 2×4’s were not even touching the ground due to the combination of water and termite damage. The header beams above the garage were rotten due to water damage and completely fell apart when we had the metal removed from around the doors. Our contractor said he wasn’t sure what was holding up the wall – paint? So we had the termites treated and then purchased a termite bond on the house. Another expense.

Then, we found out that we had hail damage on the roof from the Feb. 5th tornado. So, we got a check from the insurance company and had the roof replaced. We got rid of the ugly brown roof and put a charcoal roof on. We then had to change out the brown shutters and put up black ones. It reminded me of when you buy a new dress, all of a sudden you need new shoes, purse and maybe even a new hairstyle to go with the dress.

The house looks great now. We are thinking of selling the house because I’m not sure I have good feelings about it anymore. Our contractor thinks we shouldn’t sell because now we have fixed the problems!

So, after all that, we are finally done. It took 2 months and we got to know the contracting crew quite well. They all said they would be sad to leave because they liked working here! They were very nice, but we were glad to see them pack up their things and go. It’s good to know that the walls are fixed. Our contractor looked at other places on the house, but said all the rest looked good.

sellers who cover up house problems

Diane — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:06:00 +0000

When we bought our house we loved the inside, loved the property and thought the outside was just normal. Little did we know that the previous owners (two owners ago) had put vinyl siding over rotting masonite siding. We had only lived here a short time when the ceiling in the garage started leaking. We then found water on the floor. Once we investigated further, we found that the whole garage wall was rotten and that the windows were actually holding up the roof. Not good. So, many, many dollars later, we have now begun trying to fix yet another window in the garage area. This is what our nice house looks like today. It’s hard not to be angry with the previous owners because they certainly knew what was going on. The rot behind the wall was at least 15 years old.