Heidi’s Sweet and Sour Chicken

First start your rice….just make as much as your family wants.

Getting the Chicken Ready:

In a plastic baggie, put 1 cup flour, dash of salt and pepper, and 1 teaspoon of paprika.
Once you dice your chicken into cubes place in baggie, shake to coat each piece of chicken. Again dice up as much chicken as your family will eat. We usually use 3 large chicken breasts cut up into small cubes.

Once your chicken is done, heat up 3 Tablespoons of oil in a large skillet. Place chicken in hot oil and fry until it is all cooked.
Remove chicken from pan once done and place on a plate.

Cooking the Veggies:
Then in the remaining oil fry 1 onion finely chopped, 1/2 green bell pepper, 4 carrots finely chopped, 1/2 red bell pepper finely chopped. Fry until tender, and then place on top of your chicken, that is on the plate. If you need to add more oil for the frying, just add as much as you think you need.

Cooking the Sauce:
In the same pan, add 1- 10 ounce can of pineapple tidbits (including the juice), 3/4 cup brown sugar, 4 tablespoons of corn starch, 1 cup of water, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar. Once you see that it is beginning to thicken add the plate of chicken and fried veggies. Let simmer for 5 minutes. Now it is all done.
Serve over cooked rice.

NOTE: if it is to sour due to the vinegar, add more brown sugar. I usually end up adding about 1 tablespoon extra. My kids like it more sweet then sour! This is a very easy recipe to make and the kids love it.

SECOND NOTE: If you don’t like chicken, you can just add meatballs to the sauce and veggies. My kids love that too. We go to Sam’s Club and get a bag of the precooked meatballs, and I just add as many as I want frozen. The rest of the recipe remains the same.

So on the way to the movie last night with the boys we found a baby blue jay in our drive way…the boys wanted to keep it and raise it.

As far as Wall-E goes….that was the dumbest movie ever. My little kids laughed a few times, but me and my oldest were so bored. And actually the little kids had a hard time focusing. It was not as good as I thought it would be. So it is not one that I am going to recommend to friends. There was no talking in the movie. This is just my opinion. I am sure someone else will say it is the best ever!

Be sure to stay on the look out for my oldest. He will be cooking dinner tonight with me and we are going to film it and put it up on my website! He is so excited. He says this is his break through to being famous!

Okay, we are off to the pool.

Dutch Babies

When we go to the Original Pancake House we always order Dutch Babies…oh so yummy. And then my brother (aka my brother in law Kyle) got a recipe to make them. Number 1 they are better than the pancake house, and Number 2 MUCH CHEAPER!

Dutch Babies Recipe:

1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
dash of nutmeg
dash of cinnamon

MIX very well.

While you are mixing your batter preheat your oven to 400 and put 2 Tablespoons of butter in a pie pan. Once the butter is melted put your batter in the pan and cook for 15 minutes. They should rise pretty big. Once you take them out of the oven sprinkle with powdered sugar and lemon juice. We also put strawberries and syrup on ours.

You can split the above batter into 2 pie pans, but we like ours a little thicker and taller so we use that recipe for just one pie pan.

I took the kids to see Kung Fu Panda yesterday. It was SO good. I highly recommend it. Lots of good lessons for kids to hear throughout the movie. And it was funny. I laughed quite a bit. Today I think we are going to go see Wall-E. We will see how our day goes.

My oldest came home from camp yesterday. He was so ready to be home. He was SOOOO tired. It made my heart happy to hear him talk about the alter calls and the time in prayer that they spent. It had a great impact on him. He came home with some things that make his mouth light up. I think I am going to have to try them out!

We still have not found a puppy yet that we want. But we are looking. We talked to a breeder at Tony’s work. I need to do some more research Australian Cattle Dogs. But they seem to be good dogs. Who knows what we will end up with.

Here is my Ben. Yesterday in the store we were holding hands and he said “mom do you know why I am so special?
, and I said no ben why are you so special, “because you are my mom” He could have asked for anything at that point. Totally melted my heart.

And this little girl. She always makes me smile. She always says thank you for things, and please, and I love you mommy. Seriously can it get any better than that! She is my little princess.

What a weekend

So we had a really crazy weekend, and now we are already half way through another week. The kids are doing better without Oreo. It is sad though because my middle child will go upstairs and call for him, and then remember that he is not coming back. Makes me so sad.

Today my oldest left for kids camp. I know he is going to have a BLAST! I cant wait to hear all about it. A friend just came back from the same camp that he is going too, and said the services at night were great. And all the kids were really seeking Jesus. Awesome stuff.

God has really been teaching me to love more. And to give of myself more to others. That is hard to do when you know you can be hurt in the process. But that is how the Lord loves us. Even though we hurt him with the different decisions we make. He still loves us. I think of how I feel when I love and then get hurt. How does he feel when he loves us…so many of us, and we reject him or sin against him, how His heart must hurt, but he keeps on loving. Wow what a lesson. And what gets me every time. He is ALWAYS there for us, even though he knows we will probably fail again. Now do we do the same for others? No we usually close them off and say well I wont be doing that again. Just a thought.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the past few days…enjoy

He has just told me “mom do we have to do pictures” Yes now smile!!!!

Oreo Evans 8/12/06 to 6/20/08

So today has been a very emotional day in our house. Our dog Oreo was hit by a car and killed this morning. It was very traumatic, and ALL the kids have been crying off and on all day long. So have I. I am sure the gentleman that stopped to help me thought I was crazy as I cried like a baby for our dog. And then when I called Tony he thought something happened to one of the kids because I was crying so hard and just flat not making much sense. Yes we really loved our dog. He would either sleep with my oldest or in my room. Anyways, I told the kids that I would post some pictures of Oreo tonight on the website.

1st set of Pottery

I saw that I forgot to put up my pictures of my pottery. I still have not had time to rebreak my pottery, but I plan on doing it this weekend.

Before I broke anything:

The pieces:

Trying to put it together from all different sides!:

Wow, is all I have to say about this photo:

I have been thinking about this every day since I did it. It has made me ponder on so much. And I am anxious to start again to see what happens. I would have done it today, but I woke up around 5 am with a migraine that lasted till about 4. Not the best way to spend your day…in bed and nauseous. But at least it is gone.

My middle child is at his first kids camp. It was hard to let him go, but I know he is having a blast. I cant wait to hear about all his stories. I remember going to camp and I have fond memories of it.

Last weekend we hung curtains in our room. It is so much darker,and I love it. When I wake up in the AM it is not super bright. Of course it makes it that much easier to hit my snooze button! Curtains really change the whole look of a room. It is amazing.

“Show me your ways, O Lord, Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are my God my savior, and my hope is in you ALL day long.” Psalms 25:4-5 This was the passage from devotions this afternoon. He said, “my hope is in you ALL day long”. How many times have I lost hope during the day over certain circumstances. Or become weary. Our hope should be in HIM all day long. And it is so a matter of choice. We have to choose to have our hope in HIM all day long. Not just when we are reading our Bible, or not just when everything is going great, but ALL day long through all of life’s circumstances. We do serve an awesome God, and it has been said several times over the past few days by different people that I have talked to or listened to. That when we get saved God gives us everything we need to live Godly lives. He equips us. We don’t always use everything that he gives us or we are not disciplined enough to use everything that he gives us. Key word there: Disciplined enough. I am so preaching to myself. I need to be more disciplined. In so many ways. I am such a work in progress. We all are. We have to take it on ONE DAY AT A TIME!!!

The Pottery

So last night around 10 PM I took one of my favorite pieces of red pottery. It was pitcher. Before I threw it against the wall, I asked the Lord to talk to me and show me things about myself. Then SMASH. Wow…that felt good. Anyways, I swept up all the pieces. Brought them inside and laid them on some newspaper. I tried to get them all organized, the best I could. And then I began. After about 10 minutes, I said to Tony “please will you help me with this, it is to hard to figure out.” He said no, because then I would not learn what I was wanting to learn. I was very frustrated. I kept burning my hands with the glue gun. And poking my hands on the sharp pieces of glass. Tony did say about this time, you better start from the bottom and work your way up, it will be much easier. Needless to say I did not heed to that, and it paid in the end, because my jar would not go back together correctly. Of course it depends on how you looked at it, some angles it looked like it was all put back together, and then you turn the jar and you can see the big mistakes.

So when I began this I was not feeling God speaking to me at ALL. And then I thought, okay maybe this experience is for someone with recent loss or grief only. I kept putting some from the top together and then some from the bottom, and then some in between. And i was using LOTS of glue. Trying to just fill holes with glue instead of the piece that was broken off. By now, I was almost done, and then…God whispered to my heart. This is a good example of you Heidi. ME? Are you serious. This is a mess, it looks terrible, and I stink at pottery. And then it was very clearly spoken to my heart…this is you 10 years ago. And he showed me some things about my pottery. I was this vessel, that basically had it all together. And then because of life and life’s choices I broke…completely. My world fell apart. AND I tried to put it back together again. The best I could. But did you notice something…I…tried to put it back together again. Anytime that just YOU…alone…try to do something….it just does not work. God wants us to be completely reliant upon him. He created us like that. And he showed me the areas that I tried to put back together again…where I tried to just shove more glue to hold it together, or where I tried to shove more glue to cover up a hole, because maybe I could not find the piece or maybe it was to painful to deal with, so I just filled it with “stuff” or glue! I did that last night too, there where areas on my pitcher that I had the piece for, but it would have cut my hand or hurt me to put it in. And in the end there was this half done up vessel….that needed to be broken again. He reminded me when he broke me again and when He started the rebuilding process. It was about 8 years ago. And it has been a process ever since. I will always be in a process, of being put in the fire again. When he started rebuilding me, He started from the bottom and worked His way up. He made a good foundation, and then He worked on everything else.

He knows what is best for me. I am the clay and HE is the potter. He knows all my pieces that are broken and he knows where they each belong. He created me in His image. He knew me when I was in my mother’s womb. He knows every hair on my head. He sees my tears, my struggles, my joys, my accomplishments, my failures, everything He knows! he knows when he needs to put me in the fire again.

When I finished completely, I was frustrated because it was such an awkward pitcher now. And then again very clearly, He whispered to my heart, break it again and start from the bottom. Well by this time it was midnight and I needed to get up really early today. So I put the extra pieces that I had left over on the counter and my awkward vessel up on the counter. And tonight, I will be taking it apart again and putting it back together. And we will see what He shares with me tonight.

Summer Madness

Yep tomorrow my summer is going to get really hectic. I start work again. I am working 3 days a week for 3 weeks. So the month of June is hogwash for me. Then we are at July and VBS. I will be happy when VBS is over with! I love planning but, I am ready to say okay…we accomplished this.

We got through our 3 birthdays in June. And now we are already talking about Chandler’s which is in August. He wants to go to the zoo….that will probably change 3-4 times before his birthday actually happens. I dont know walking around the zoo in the middle of August heat does not sound like “fun” to me. But it is his b-day so we will do whatever.

Tony had a good Father’s Day. I let him sleep in and then we all went and brought him cards and a basket full of goodies. Goodies= 4 new shirts, pants, shorts, new underwear, favorite gum, favorite magazine, and fresh cup of coffee made by me! After a yummy lunch with our friends Bruce and Ruth, I let him take a good afternoon nap. And then we put the kids to bed early and watched a movie. I hope he had a good day?!

Oh and speaking of our friends Bruce and Ruth…it was brought to my attention that I only thanked Ruth for folding our laundry….ahem…BRUCE and AMANDA and RUTH……THANK YOU…..THANK YOU… for folding my laundry. Now, I did not realize that when I said sure fold my laundry I dont care….well I did not realize how many pairs of my underwear were in that load. Oh well. At least they were clean underwear!

Tonight I am going to be working on a project and hope to put up pictures of it in the next day. I am going to be breaking one of my pieces of pottery that I love and putting it back together again. ARE YOU CONFUSED? Well you will just have to check back tomorrow to see the meaning behind all this madness!

SASSY and 30….Happy Birthday to ME!!!!!

So YES…today I am the BIG 30….I don’t know if I should cry or be happy. I am 30! That sounds so OLD! So here is birthday picture this morning! I am totally cheezy!!! This morning Tony went and got me Starbucks to help support my habit and he bought me one of my favorite magazines to read in bed along with 2 of my favorite chocolates to help support those HIPS! Thank you honey. I love you. You are my favorite person to celebrate my birthday with!

Medieval Times

To say that my oldest had a blast would be an understatement. HE HAD A WHOPPIN GOOD TIME! And so did I. I was totally into it. I think we were the loudest screaming for our knight. He even threw me a flower that he kissed. AAWWEEE…actually gag! My knight was sitting right next to me. Okay then and moving on to the pictures.

Here is the night we cheered for:

He is so handsome:

Me and my 10 year old:

Dad and my big boy:

We were laughing at ourselves so hard! We had a great time. I love being with him.

Here is the cake that we designed and made together:

So there ya go. We had lots of fun. And now I must hit the sack!

Thank You

Thank You,,,Thank You to all that commented on my oldest b-day. HE felt SOOO special and so popular. We read to him everything that was said during our birthday dinner. He also read them several times during the day. Me and him made his cake. He made the design and helped make the colors with food coloring. It was fun. Then him and his dad stayed up till 1 am watching a movie. I on the other hand was exhausted and hit the sack early. Wow a good nights rest makes all the difference. Tomorrow we are taking him and his friend to see Medieval Times. Should be lots of fun. Our friends Bruce and Ruth are being brave enough to come and watch the other 4 munchkins for us. It is good to have friends that will drive like 40 minutes to watch our kids. I will post a slew of pictures from his cake decorating and his time out with us tomorrow. But thank you again for helping to make his day so special!