Busy Day Porch Chops...Day 1 of recipe fun!

It's gonna be a crazy busy week for us over here, so I decided that this week, despite the busyness, I will make time to blog!  Even if I only have a couple of minutes, I'll be posting tidbits of my day and sharing the progress being made on moving, that sort of thing!  I miss being in the blogging loop when I'm away, so I'm determined I'm gonna make it happen!

Today is the first day of three days this week that Alyssa will be having a t-ball game!  We usually only have two games a week plus a couple of practices, but they've added on some additional games to the schedule to make up for some games we missed a while back due to rain.

One thing I've been learning with this new t-ball schedule is that I have to be even better about planning ahead, especially for dinners and things like that.  We're usually out in the late afternoon and by the time we make it back, it IS dinnertime. I decided this week, it would be a great time to try out some of the new recipes I got at the recipe exchange we had at MOPS the other day.  I also thought it would be fun to share those recipes on here this week too!

So...this morning I set out to make dinner and decided to make the recipe my MOPS leader Wren shared!  I made sure to ask her if I could share her recipe on here and she was sweet enough to say yes! It was super easy and I know the family is gonna love them! Here are the details:

Busy Day Pork Chops

Ingredients:

*pork chops (I used the package of five, thicker cut, boneless pork chops)

*1 cup ketchup

*1/2 cup water

*3/4 cup brown sugar

*1/4 cup lemon juice

Instructions:

Place pork chops in large baking dish.

*I also added some salt, pepper and garlic blend seasoning to the pork chops before pouring on the sauce.

 Mix together rest of ingredients and pour over pork chops.

*I didn't have enough ketchup so I just used what I had.  I think it was close to 3/4 cup instead of the whole cup called for in the recipe. 

Bake at 250 degrees for 2 1/2 to 3 hrs ( I cooked mine for 3 hrs) and this is what mine looked like after baking...

I sampled a little bite and they were good! :)

To  complete the meal, serve with rice and veggies and that's it!  I already made my rice and veggies so now all we have to do is warm everything up when we come back home!  Super easy!!!

Well, I'm off to our game!  Thanks so much Wren, for letting me share the recipe and I'll be back tomorrow with the next recipe! This should be fun! :)

Just Like Old Times (only now I'm married with three kids)!

I have so much to share about what we've been up to lately so I'm thinking today I'll start with something fun we got to do last Friday and then work my way through the past weekend in the next few posts!

On Friday I had the fun chance to get together with a sweet friend from high school.  We reconnected through Facebook last year and have been talking a lot on there but hadn't actually seen each other in person in 13 years!  The funniest thing about it...we live in the same town! She actually moved away and then came back and well me...I've been here the whole time.  I'm so boring! :)

Nightingale loves photography and asked me a while back if I'd be interested in letting her come over to photograph us to capture what a typical day looks like.  After several months of talking about scheduling a meet-up, we were able to finally able to make it happen! The girls and I had such great time visiting with "Miss Nightingale" and they felt completely comfortable with her, which was so great :)  Visiting Nightingale was like old times and we agreed at the end of our visit that we are pretty much both the same people we were back in high school...only this time around, we're both married and I have THREE kids! We laughed together when she said to me that she still couldn't believe that I have three!

What's so cool to me is that Nightingale, or "Nightie" as we always used to call her, is also a blogger!    After our day together, she wrote up a really neat post on her observations of the day and it was cool seeing what she captured and reading about what our life looks like from the "outside.  You can go HERE to read it! It would mean so much to me if you went over to her blog and checked it out! While you're there, please try to ignore my yucky hair!  There was no time to style it that day, and I am way over due for a haircut so I've pretty much gone into lazy mode with styling it!

Well, I'm really looking forward to more chances to hang out with Nightingale and maybe even get to meet with both her and her Hubby together!

P.S.  When you hop over to Nightingale's blog, you'll see the mommy shirt I'm wearing.  I've been meaning to blog about it for ages but just hadn't done that.  Jodi made it for me and I love it!

What am I doing today?

I really shouldn't be on the computer today but being the addict I am (LOL), I decided to hop on quickly to say hi!

I've been keeping busy cleaning away and getting ready for family to come this weekend from out of town for a big Fiesta birthday celebration tomorrow night.  I laughed earlier when I had just finished up washing dishes and went to wipe the counter and realized I had just about every cleaner out.  Of couse I rearranged them to look nice for the picture here, but you can tell I've been doing it all today.  I know the Hubs will be happy to see a clean house when he comes home from work today!

Can you tell I don't enjoy washing dishes?  This pile was sitting here waiting for me for at least a couple of days....

I was also on the quest this morning to find a missing phone.  We have three cordless phones and I only have one we're using right now. One of them fell behind the stove and we're too lazy to go back there and get it and the third one is missing completely.  I even went looking under the couch cushions today and wouldn't you know it, no phone.  Just an assortment of miscellaneous items...

Thankfully I did find the memory card you see in the picture above that I'd lost a while back.  I was so bummed when I lost it because it has the pictures on it from when Livvie was born.  The under the cushion search was totally worth it.  Woo hoo!

I've been asked to make the cupcakes for the party tomorrow night and I'm excited to see what I can come up with.  If I can get all my chores done today, I may also try to tackle some sugar cookies too!  We'll see what happens.

I was also super excited to find this huge tip I had mentioned I wanted the other day.  Of all places, I found it at a restaurant supply warehouse here in town that I'd never been to before.  I can't wait to see how the cupcakes turn out!

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend! I'm really looking forward to getting to visit family we haven't seen in a long time! 

What are your plans for the weekend?

P.S.  Tonight our big girls get to have their very first ever sleepover at my mom's house.  Woo hoo!

Seriously?

The big girls aren't feeling too well today so we've just been bumming around the house in our jammies.  I put everyone {sounds like I've got a whole crew when I say "everyone," huh?} down for nap and I didn't even get a fight, which is a miracle.

This morning, Audrey decided it would be fun to get her hands on Alyssa's container of beads up on the counter here and you can already imagine where this one goes...

You can tell my girl was not feeling well here :(

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{Try to ignore the stain on my carpet.  We are long overdo for a shampoo over here...!}

I was right there when it happened, and all I could think was just "seriously?"  It was so NOT fun picking up all one hundred billion little beads but on the bright side it gave me something to blog about today! :)

I'm hoping these girls will get better soon already.  We need to get out and get some exercise.  I've been struggling in the eating good department and after this past weekend's festivities, I have some work to do!!!

This mommy of three thing's a piece of cake...today, anyway!

Today I took the leap.  Our cupboards were down to almost nothing and I decided it was time for me to brave the world with all three girls and head to the grocery store.  Just me and them and no other adult to help me...

And guess what?  We made it through alive!  The girls did really good despite the fact that we made it out so close to lunchtime.  I ended up having to crack open the fresh loaf of french bread that was meant to go with dinner, but no big deal.  We made it through without any tantrums and without me even having to break a sweat!

While we were out, I got to use my new homemade Moby Wrap that Stephanie made and sent to me!  If you remember, a while back I had posted about being excited that my friend Amanda was sending me an extra Moby Wrap she had.  Well, as it turns out, the package got lost in the mail and never found its way to me. :(  Both of us were super bummed but, I was so excited to find that Amanda and Stephanie got together to with a plan to make sure I got a carrier for Livvie!  They actually live close by each other (in Wisconsin) and met through their blogs, which I think is so cool!  Anyhow...I was excited to get the package from Stephanie over the weekend and have spent some time over the past couple of days practicing how to put the wrap on.  I know I've got lots more practicing to do, and probably even wore it wrong today, but it sure came in handy today during our little outing!  I know I probably looked like a nerd, but I decided to put the wrap on before leaving the house so that I could just be ready to wear the baby as soon as I got to the store.  Has anybody else who's worn the Moby done that?  Just wondering!

Here was my little papoose lovin' being so close to mommy...

Well, that's my excitement for the the day!  Who knew that going to the grocery store would make me so happy!  Only three weeks in and I think I can finally say I'm getting the hang of this mommy of three thing!  Go me!

P.S.  Sorry I didn't get any good pics of my big girls today.  I took a couple of them but they weren't really in the posing for the camera kinda mood.  Maybe it was because they were wondering why I was taking pictures of them in the parking lot of the grocery store!  I am a nerd, aren't I?  The things I'll do just for the blog...