Product rave!

I was in the grocery store today and came across these Rubbermaid Take Alongs. They are PERFECT for bento making! The container is divided and has plenty of room for lunch and a snack. Just tie it up with a pretty dish towel or large linen napkin, and you're ready to go!
Contents of bento: Chicken Caesar wrap with spinach tortilla, grapes and a banana!

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

There is a beautiful little country church about 25 minutes away in East Bernard. The interior is stunning and it smells like incense and old wood.

Outside, they have a life sized grotto with Our Lady of Lourdes:

Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes:
Oh ever immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday: Baked Slow Cooker Chicken Monday is a work day for me so it's definately a slow cooker meal for us! I alter this recipe by placing onions inside the chicken cavity and use lots of rosemary and garlic. I'll also have Doug put in potatoes and carrots halfway through cooking.
Tuesday: Texas Black Bean Soup Another work day for me, so I will mix all of this in the crock before heading off to work and Doug can put it on to cook by early afternoon. Serving over tortilla strips and shredded jack cheese.
Wednesday: Tacos. We have taco night EVERY week! Served with refried beans and taco fixins.
Thursday: Homemade heart shaped pizzas. Will make a double batch of dough so everyone can make their own individual pizza-heart shaped for Valentine's day.
Friday: Artichoke Spinach Lasagne Our dear parish priest is coming for dinner and I thought I'd make a spinach lasagne, minestrone soup, salad and homemade bread.
Saturday: Soup and Sammies. I'm sure we'll have some bean soup or minestrone left over from the week and will serve those with some grilled sammies (sandwiches)
Sunday: Take out. Sunday is a super busy day for us! We'll have Mass and then we'll go to the convention center to set up for Doug's first bridal show! We'll all be helping in shifts and sure to be tired by the end of the day, so seems like a little Chinese take out might be in order! Not very budget friendly, but sometimes you just need to make life easy!

Heard at our house this morning...

While looking at our Lenten calendar, I had asked John Paul to cross off today - the first Sunday of Lent. He asked what all the pictures were at the bottom. I said, "Good Friday is when Jesus was crucified and died. Holy Saturday is when we mourn him in the tomb. Easter Sunday is when..." I was cut off by John Paul saying, "I know that one! Easter Sunday is when Jesus rose from the bread!"
Needless to say we are REALLY focusing on our catechism this week for JP!

What I'm currently reading...

That's right, not expanding my mind with great works of literature, but spending my weekends and evenings pouring over my seed catalogs! With every page I turn, my garden plans get bigger and bigger. God bless Doug whenever he decides to get out and till up the soil, he has no idea of the monster garden I am planning....guess I'll add some BenGay and Aleve to my shopping list this week!

Tea Time

We went to Houston today to run a few errands and I ended up getting a great little tea set! Go to World Market and get one for yourself ($4.99 plus tax!) The set comes with a tea cup, loose tea strainer and steeping lid:

Place the strainer inside the cup and add your loose tea leaves or herbs:

Pour in your hot water and put the lid on to steep:

The cup is nice and heavy and retains the heat a long time. It was the perfect cup of tea for watching a spectacular sunset!


Edited to add:
For some AWESOME bulk herb teas, check out: Mountain Rose Herbs

Lenten preparations

We spent the day preparing our home for Lent. The boys made a salt dough crown of thorns. The "thorns" are actually toothpics and for every act of charity or self sacrifice, they will be able to remove one of these thorns to ease Jesus' suffering.

Little Danny making sure that his brothers get a few extra good deeds in!


I got busy to work on our family Stations of the Cross. I copied very small pictures of the Stations and glued them to votives. We'll light all of the candles and as each Station is visited, we'll blow out that candle. As the death of Christ draws near, it will get darker and darker, until the last candle is blown out and we are left in total darkness to contemplate Christ's sacrifice:


We then got to work on a Lenten calendar. Just a simple poster board with the forty days marked off. We have our prayer intentions listed as well as our Lenten spiritual goals. Saint feast days and days for Mass and abstinence are also listed:


Finally, we prepared our family altar by changing the cloth to our purple one and placing the Crown of Thorns in the center:

Bake my day!

I spent yesterday baking King Cakes for Fat Tuesday. I wanted to only make two, but *somebody* didn't read the recipe correctly and ended up with four (each recipe was for two cakes!) It worked out great because now each of our neighbors can have a cake and we'll can even take one to our parish priest! They are complete with the Christ Child babies inside (of which I learned that you hide them in the cakes AFTER they are baked!)
As they say in LA, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Little Danny was so excited to eat the cakes! While they were cooling on the kitchen table, he climbed up on a chair and kept sticking his finger into one of them. Guess that one will be our cake for the day!

Menu Planning Monday

In an attempt to keep our budget in order and make life a little more simpler, I am going to post my menu plans for the week. This makes me more accountable to provide our family with nutritious meals as well as keeps us from making frivolous trips to the store (we all know that a trip to the supermarket for milk can easily turn into a fifty dollar shopping spree!) To find other great menu plans, check out www.orgjunkie.com


Monday: Chicken pot pie
Tuesday: Red beans and rice with andouille sausage and a king cake for desert. All this to pay homage to Fat Tuesday!
Wednesday: Lentil soup with homemade bread. I am working that day so the soup will go in the crock pot. I'll be baking our bread on Tuesday.
Thursday: Pulled pork sandwiches and corn on the cob. It's another work day for me! The pork roast will go in the crock before I leave so that all Doug has to do is shred it and pour the sauce on it. He and Ryan have CAP that night so it will be an easy dinner for him to serve!
Friday: Homemade mac & cheese with a salad.
Saturday: Tacos and pinto beans.
Sunday: Roasted chicken with vegetables.

Sunday night

I thought things would be a little more lively around here tonight with the big game, but the boys (Doug included!) settled down quietly to watch the game. I heard a lot of giggles during the commercials, but other than that it was pretty tame. We had burgers and the fixins for dinner despite the boy's protests for pizza and hot wings!
The littles and I stayed in the den and kept entertained with drawing, sewing and playing on the computer. You'll be happy to know that John Paul used his time to name all the fingers on his left hand!

Beautiful Baby

My good friend from work, Lisa, and her husband Adam came over yesterday for photos of their one month old little girl, Isabella. This is one of my favorite photos from the shoot. Daddy's hands are so big strong and Isabella is so small and delicate:

Doug got a serious case of baby envy with little Isabella...Danny did, too! He didn't like her invading his "turf" and certainly didn't like it when mommy and daddy held the little one!

Go to your room!

The other day, John Paul was sent to his room for his impish behavior. I had become engrossed in schooling the bigger boys and cleaning the kitchen and TOTALLY forgot that I had banished him! When I finally realized that things were just a little too quiet in the house, I went to go check on him. This is what I found...

His formerly clean room was now trashed beyond recognition! The two hours of quiet I got earned me the same amount of time battling JP to clean his room until I finally gave in and cleaned the whole dang thing myself!
Now tell me, who was really punished that day?

What's for dinner...

Much to the disgust of the children, I've harvested some beautiful bountiful bundles of brussels! Can't wait to steam these up with a little garlic butter! This will be our last harvest until our spring garden comes in. Time to turn everything under and get ready for planting again!

Scrapbooking

While waiting for my hundredth load of laundry to dry, I put together a few scrapbook pages. I'm off from work this weekend and it is one of my goals to get everything from Thanksgiving til now creatively documented and scrapped (we'll see how THAT goes!) Check back in a couple of days for more!

Hiding in my pantry...

I found this when I opened up my pantry door this morning:

Not sure if the intention was to hide the toy monster from another sibling or to scare me! It made my morning, though!