Thanksgiving Eve and I've got something for you all...already!

If I could describe the way my house smells right now, I would.  But I can't.  The aroma is delish-ous and cozy.  It really is.  Thanksgiving smells like no other holiday I know.  Even Christmas can't compare.  For whatever reason, Thanksgiving is the King of all foodie holidays and I love it.  The list of food I'm making is truly the size of a small book.  I won't bore you with all of the deets (details) but I will share one recipe that is a definite hit.

Bacon Spinach Quiche

6 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups milk
Salt and Pepper
2 cups chopped fresh baby spinach, packed
1lb cooked bacon, crumbled
1 1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
One 9-inch refrigerated piecrust, fitted into a
9-inch glass pie plate

1.)  Preheat oven to 375 deg F

2.)  Combine the eggs, milk, and salt and pepper to taste in a food processor or blender.  Layer the spinach, bacon and cheese in the bottom of the piecrust, then our the egg mixture on top.

Tip:  I usually chop the bacon before I cook it so I don't have to get all mess with grease trying to crumble it.

3.) Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the egg mixture is set.  Cut into 8 wedges.

 Your little beauty should like the photo above. O. My.  Taste and see that the food is good!


Please enjoy this INSANELY easy recipe; it's a delish dish to add to your Thanksgiving feast.

A full 365 days...

Well, I don't know exactly how many days but I can tell you it's been one year since Romalise Kelbatyrov was born.  I still remember how cold it was.  It was FREEZING.  And due to hospital regulations, I was required to sit next to her in the back.  Unfortunately, the back seat of our truck was such that I ended up CLIMBING over the front seat to get to the back.  Yes, I climbed and it was only a mere 24 hours earlier that I had just had a baby.  Anyway, the whole point of this short anecdote being...Roma is ONE!!  One...unbelievable.  Recently, I peeked back into my blogging archives and read about my first 72 hours as a new mother.  Good lord.  I do not want to revisit that.  But I can tell you that her little birthday party was so heart warming and very rewarding.  My mom worked very hard to help me make this party everything I had envisioned it to be.  THANKS MOM!  She sewed and sewed and I directed.  Hahah.  We made a great team.  David, too.  He drew the templates for the flowers.  What would I do without my very creative husband?  As a rule, I'm not that creative.  Well, I take that back, I am, but not in the ways that are fully developed, have any rhyme or reason or are conventional.   Two words -- Watch Out

(What?  Who has ever heard of undeveloped creativity?  ...now you have)

So, I got this little tickle in my brain and I decided to go with it.  Felt!  Felt -- I want a felt party.  So, I started looking around and BAM saw a few great ideas that were WAYYY beyond my ability and budget.  So, this is where my undeveloped creativity kicked in.  Flowers and dolls.  Originally, I had wanted to make a felt house, have bird cages with pretty little decorative birds and big felt flowers hanging from the ceiling.  My wallet gave up even before I started on that idea and I ended up with flowers, one sparkly, felt crown and a doll.   I'm in love with the doll my mom made for our little Roma.

 

I really wanted her first birthday to be memorable and it definitely was.  From the birthday banner, which had pictures of her from one, three, six, nine and twelve months, to the felt cutouts of flowers even to the sprinkles on the cupcakes.  It was all special and unique.

By the end of the day,  I was exhausted and not at all interested in cleaning anything up.  My mom helped with that, too.  Where would I be without such love and help?

However, what really made this party special was my dad.  He was able to come and that made me really, really happy.  When Cylas turned one, he was unable to fly out to California, but since we are back East, now, he took the three hour trip to join us.  Very nice to have both of my parents here to share the moment.

And for all of our friends, who are actually considered family, we miss you all and wish that every one of you could have been here to help us celebrate. 

My day

You know, it varies. Some days I'm inside from dawn until dusk. Other days I'm out and about running errands with my two munchers. And then, my favorite days...the ones where I'm outside with my babies playing. Or, I'm inside with my babies building things. Today was one of my favorite days. I had a grand plan of cleaning, in preparation for Roma's birthday party this Saturday but only half of my plans were finished. Half? I'm being generous. I'd say a third. I started off around 6:30 this morning, my eyes were still sleeping but my body some how found itself in the kitchen conversing with my husband. Over oatmeal, eggs and toast I collected myself mentally.
I figured it would be best to start with the kitchen, but I got distracted and decided to throw in a load of laundry so there would be two things, that desperately needed to be done, going at once. Roma, in all her almost one year old cuteness, hopped into my basket of unfolded laundry. It made laundry time more interesting...


Then she got tired and I laid her down for a nap. But that was when Cylas came home from playing next door and begged me to go outside and play baseball with him. I obliged. How can you say no to such a creative little mind. I mean, who thinks of using a STRAINER as a baseball mitt?? Cylas does. And that's what was used during the world's shortest baseball game, ever. It lasted ten minutes. But that's only because he got distracted with rolling down the hill instead of hitting the ball.

Here are the tools we used. Notice that only one part of a whole tee-ball set is being used(later he found some of the other pieces)...I think we played more of a golf/baseball/lacrosse hybrid of games. Either way, it was jolly fun and I never heard such giggles in my life.

Then, after we went back in and I finished mopping the kitchen, we built forts. Really cool ones that only mommies and their babies can build. So, it took me all of three minutes but it brought them about an hour worth of fun and laughter. Roma got tired and for some strange reason Cylas decided that he was due for a bath!? Yeah, the kid has his own bathing schedule. But we have fun and boy did it feel good to smile today. I smiled and let the joy of motherhood seep into my bones.

Give me Thirty...

Minutes and I'll give you a scrumptious dinner. I'll give you two loads of laundry folded and put away. I'll give you a quick-clean and a little sparkle around the house. And my. God. If I could just use those thirty minutes for mySELF, I could probably give myself a face lift, a pedicure, a deep conditioning for my hair, take a nap to rejuvenate, clean out my bottom drawer(don't ask) and maybe even snuggle down and read a good book. (I've been hankerin' to read the latest biography on Ayn Rand...). But those thirty minutes are vapors. Just like the kind the air freshener leaves when you spritz to cover up the damage...it's there and then it's gone. I can't seem to nail down those thirty minutes for myself. My thirty minutes are usually divied up between Cylas' appetite and Roma's poop. Yes, poop. She's healthy, what can I say? Or between reading books to Cy and crawling through tunnels with Roma. I've even spent my thirty minutes building a train track and in the next breath rocking my little girl to sleep. As I sit and type, however, I can tell you that I do, in fact, get my thirty minutes. For ten minutes in the morning I shower and quickly dress before the children get up, or if they are up, or before I find Roma inconveniently tied to the railing. My second set of ten minutes I find briefly during nap times. I will sit for a few and start creating a shopping list and menu plan for the coming weeks. My last set of minutes comes at the end of the day when I'm washing my face and getting ready for bed. Then I tuck my babies in, pray for them and kiss my sweet husband good night. These are all my thirty minutes. And I love them.

Distract-o Mom

(this is my multi-task face)

Am I the only one who suffers from a serious case of multi-task-ia? Gracious. I can't seem to take five straight minutes to finish one thing before I see another chore in the next room that needs to be taken care of. Just today, I was folding laundry and decided to just put the sheet back on Cy's bed instead of folding it. After fitting the sheet on to his bed, I decide to just make it(usually, he does), after I made it I noticed some books on the floor. I picked them up. That finished I decided to finish folding the laundry. The laundry done, it leaves me with some spare time to start working on Roma's invites for her party. A lot of my crafting stuff is upstairs so I head up there. By the time I make it back down, I'm fuming. Sky's room(my little brother) is a wreck and his bed isn't made. I storm back up the steps, invites long forgotten by this time, and shove every last piece of his belongings, that happened to be unfortunate enough to have been left on the floor, AND his rumpled bedding into a garbage bag. Garbage bag is set on the porch. And no, we don't have a garbage day out here. I'm not throwing his stuff away. That bag has just turned into something akin to money. It's very valuable and the only way he's getting that stuff back is by doing the dishes or some other chore. He can pick a couple of items out for each chore he does. With that said, I've got all the proverbial burners going at once. Invites, cleaning, getting the potatoes and meat out for dinner, starting another load of laundry and of course...blogging about it all before I forget. These types of days are important, you know. I want to remember this when I'm old and close to losing my memory. Be able to look back on what kind of life I led as a young mother of two adorable children. Oh, did I mention that Roma pooped during all of this, too?

Fresh

So excited! D went out to feed the chickens today and he came back with these:

Would you look at those brownies in the midst of all those white-es. That's kinda how I felt my whole childhood. The only brown grandchild, child...hahah. Anyway, I digress. It's been twelve long days since they moved here and finally their cluckers are cranking out the eggs. Can't wait until spring time when they will be giving us chicks, too. D is so creative. While driving by a neighboring farm, he notice that the corn bin dryers had piles that had built up on the ground beneath. So, later on that week he stopped by and scrapped all the ground corn waste into a five gallon bucket and that's what we feed our chickens. I don't know if that was the magic that made their egg shutes start up again but I'm happy, either way. I was starting to think that the wild bird seed we were giving them was making them constipated. Hmmm...MiraLax for chickens? Something to think about.

Speaking of brownies and white-es, my children are just a pile o' mess. They are such giggle buns. Recently, Roma has mastered the art of climbing onto Cy's bed. This is good and not so good all in one breath. It's good that she has mastered her motor skills but why does she want to practice them on all the dangerous spots like: stairs and beds? Not so good. And of course, Cy wants to 'help her' get down. I think I've had five heart attacks in the past week. I appreciate my little girl's desire to keep up with her big brother and likewise his effort to make SURE she keeps up, by dragging her around at times, but it's seriously adding unwanted years on to my life. She isn't walking quite yet, but she's almost there. And if Cylas had his way she would be running and riding tricycles with him. However, my dear, sweet Roma has her own ideas about life and how she wants to approach it. Her schedule is just as busy as her brother's but at a completely different pace. Odd. Perplexing. And to be quite honest, I'm a little nervous. I have one VERY particular little boy and one very methodical little girl. Uhm. Help? Anyone? Save me? Oh well. If I stop bloggin for a while, you'll know where I've gone. I've either gone crazy or my children found a way to get rid of me.

One of her favorite past times is to stand, clap and crouch. It's quite an amazingly cute skill. But don't try it. You'll look stupid.

Smiley things

(these two were taken with my little point and shoot. Nothing fancy, but they make me smile nonetheless.)

There are many things that make me smile. Photos make me smile. They make me squeal and giggle. If you have the occasion to come on a photo shoot with me, you'll see. I tend to lose my sense of maturity and fall off the edge into the overwhelming rush of creativity. Recently, I dusted my camera off and tried my skills out again. It was like getting on a bicycle after many, many years. There are just some things you never forget. At first, your balance is a little off and you wobble but once you get to going it's all squeals and exhilaration from there on out. My camera and I go way back. I mean WaaaY back. Like to 1997, way back. It was just a simple photo class at the local JC but it hooked me. Line AND sinker. For the past ten years or so, it's been a love/hate relationship. Right now I think I'm on the upswing with my memory-taker. I'm just going to post a few of my most recent...enjoy the photojournalism, the sentimental, the cute and sassy :)
Enjoy it all.