Working and Not Getting Paid

Going to clinic full time really feels like I'm working for free.  It's a great experience, but it's tough!  I get up at 5:45am Mon-Fri and don't get home until 6:15pm.  It takes about an hour and 10 minutes to get to Le Roy, where my clinic is located.  I'm beat when I get home, which is why I haven't posted any blogs lately.  I've also been majorly slacking on the healthy cooking.  Vince makes the girls scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast every morning and Logan has sausage and whole wheat toast with raspberry jam.  Today, the girls had oatmeal, but Aimee puked some up throughout the morning.  Not sure why, but she was fine in the afternoon.

We had a family get together today with my extended family on my mom's side.  It's always a good time and today was no exception.  Before we got together my mom collected info on everyone and then made a game where we had to match the description with the person.  Mom made mine up because I forgot to do it and it was 'mirror mirror' because I'm the only one in the family with twins.  I learned lots about my family and it was great fun.  My older brother even showcased his talent of reciting all the Presidents of the United States forward and backward.  We ended the day with a rousing game of catch phrase.  My aunt even gave me and awesome belated wedding present which is gracing our doorstep at this very moment.  I love it!!

In other news, the girls are growing too much and Logan will be 4 years old in a week.  Where has the time gone?  The party planning is underway and I just hope I have the energy come next Saturday for a good party.  I'm exhausted by the end of the week because of clinic.  Logan's presents came in the mail two days ago from Amazon.  We were able to get them at a decent price and free shipping on top of it.  From us, he is getting a Spongebob Lego set, a Spongebob music cd and a Lego game.  Legos and Spongebob are his two favorite things at the moment.  He can't build the Legos yet, but he loves playing with them.

It Begins

Today we started our new way of eating.  The girls usually have sausage every morning, but I always buy the pre-cooked, just heat in the microwave stuff.  No more.  I bought some ground pork and spices and mixed up my own sausage.  I found a recipe online and decided to give it a go.  Mixing it was the easy part.

My bowl of mixed up pork and spices.

I made some fat little patties and cooked them on the stove top.  However, after the first batch, I realized that I shouldn't have made them so fat because it was burning the outside and leaving the inside pink.

Cooking up my sausage patties

I tried making them a little thinner and went at it again.  Same result, burnt outside and pink inside.  Vince told me I need to cook them at a really low temperature and let them cook for awhile.  I don't have time for that what with homework and three little kids running around.  So instead, I made some really flat strips of sausage and cooked them that way.  They got down much faster and weren't burnt.  Horray!!

The burnt sausage

 The strips of sausage that turned out

And this whole process took me all of about 2 1/2 hours.  I didn't think it would take so long and I had test today that I should have studied for last night.  Never got to it, so I studied some this morning.

Aimee had an appointment at the ENT this morning, so I got her up early and made her a lovely breakfast, or that's what I thought.  This is a typical breakfast for the girls.  Scrambled eggs, fruit, sausage and almond milk.  We use almond milk because it has more calcium than regular milk and the girls love the vanilla flavor.  Logan drinks the dark chocolate almond milk or his Pediasure.  

Aimee didn't eat much and I just figured it was because it was early in the morning and she just didn't feel like eating.  When I got home after the appointment, I asked Vince if he had fed Anna and he did.  She threw the sausage on the floor.  This is what she does when she doesn't like something.  Apparently it's too chewy.  So I guess I will be eating the sausage.  All that work for nothing.  Live and learn.  For lunch the kids and I had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with natural peanut butter and some fruit.  Logan, Anna and Aimee also had a cheese stick.  I put dinner in the crock pot and then it was off to school for me.  Test completed, and it was terrible but it's over.   Dinner was Pepper Steak with brown rice.  I didn't cook the rice long enough and it ended up being somewhat chewy.  And we all know what the girls think of chewy food.  They played around with it for awhile and ate some of it.  It actually tasted pretty good.  You can find the recipe here:  Pepper Steak

I'm working on some blueberry muffins for breakfast right now and I'll have to see how those turn out.  Hopefully better than the sausage.

 While I was busy making the sausage, the girls were keeping me company just lounging around on the kitchen floor.  Don't mind the drinks everywhere, sometimes it can take me a few days to put all the groceries away.

Healthy is Expensive

All the kids took a late nap today so we went grocery shopping late tonight.  I got my list all made up for a weeks worth of dinners, some lunches and breakfasts.  I realize now that I did forget a couple of things.  Don't you hate it when you do that?  It took at least an hour to get everything off my list and I still didn't manage to find it all.  Have you ever heard of coconut flour?  I couldn't find it anywhere.  I think I'll have to make a trip to an actual health food store.  Vince of course had to get some of his own food because he won't eat what I make.  After it was all said and done our bill was just over $240, and that's just for a week!  Thank goodness for our EBT, otherwise we couldn't afford to eat like this.  It's easy to see why a majority of the people who live in poverty are overweight.  The food that isn't good for you is cheap and the healthy food is expensive.  If you're trying to feed a family of 5 and you don't have much money of course you are going to go for the cheaper stuff.  Something has got to change.

While we were our shopping I put a Stouffer's Mac N' Cheese with broccoli in the oven and the girls and I ate that when we got home.  Logan wanted nothing to do with it so Vince gave him some of his pulled pork sandwich.  However he didn't want to eat that either since it was messing and got on his hands.  He reminds me so much of my little brother when it comes to food, picky!  Maybe it will change.....  I decided to give the girls some spoons and work on them some more with utensils.  It is very difficult trying to teach two toddlers to eat with a spoon at the same time.  I usually feed them finger food for this reason.  I guess they'll have to learn how to eat with a spoon sometime.  Of course as soon as I let them eat on their own then they hold the spoon in one hand and grab the food with the other.

                                                                              Anna

  

Aimee

The New Bed

Logan's new bed has arrived!!  Vince and his friend Jonathon got home yesterday around 11:10pm.  The girls were in bed, but Logan and I waited up for them.  They left at 3:30pm, so it was a long evening for them, but it was so worth it.  Even after the gas money we ended up paying $200 less than we would have had we bought a new bed.  Plus, the one we were planning on buying was no where near this nice!

Logan was really excited about the bed, he was hoping it was stairs though and not a ladder, but I think he'll be ok.  We even went and picked out a Spongebob bed set and put it on the top bed.  He climbed up pretty good, but then he tried bouncing on the top and hit his head on the ceiling.  After that he wanted nothing more to do with the top bed.  He opted to sleep on the bottom trundle bed instead.  I checked on him later that night and he seemed to be ok.  The next morning the girls were all about his new bed.  They were climbing all over the bottom bed and just sitting there playing with toys and Logan's blankets.

                                                          The girls and Logan's new bed.

Vince, the girls and I went to my SIL baby shower today.  She is looking so cute and she is due on my birthday! :)  She got some great gifts and had some fun trivia questions mixed in.  For example: at what age should you remove a mobile from the crib?...... 5 months old.  Yeah, my girls are 15 months and they still have theirs, haha!  They do like to pull on the little animals though and sometimes it falls into the crib so maybe it's time to take them down.  Plus the batteries in both mobiles are dead and that gives me an excuse not to buy anymore.  The girls were pretty good at the shower for the most part and they really enjoyed the food.

Tomorrow our EBT gets refilled.  I don't like being on government assistance, but we have been living off of chicken nuggets, hot dogs and other junk for the past couple weeks.  I'm going to get my shopping list ready and we are going to start eating healthy.  I'm excited to start this new chapter in my life.  For me, this is a big deal.  I don't want the kids growing up eating junk.  We also are not going to allow soda in the house.  We haven't had soda in the house for the last three months at least and so far so good.  I miss it sometimes, but if we ever go out I do sometimes get a soda.  So let the good eating begin!!

A Change

I have neglected this blog for too long and I apologize.  I really don't have an excuse other than I had other things to do and this was just put to the way side.  Things are going to change.  Logan eats so unhealthy and it's because I got lazy when he was younger and just didn't feel like cooking meals after school and work.  So far, the girls are getting a balanced meal for most every meal.  They still like their fruit and some veggies.

I have decided that we are going to be healthy this year.  I am going to start making healthy meals for everyone.  Vince has already told me he won't eat anything with vegetables and that just means that he will have to make something for himself.  I hope to post every day as to how we are doing.  These are not recipes I have come up with myself.  I have been scouring the web and pinterest to find some good healthy food.  I don't think it will be easy, but this is something I feel I need to do and I'm hoping this blog will hold me accountable.  So here we go!!

The kids are all doing great!  Logan will be 4 yrs old this month.  I can't believe how fast the time flies.  We are doing a Spongebob themed birthday and we already have his presents picked out.  We just need to buy them now.  The girls are walking and getting all over the place.  At least once I day I find them in the bathroom playing in the toilet.  Logan is doing better putting the lid down, but Vince still can't seem to remember to do it.  Probably has something to do with the fact he has been leaving it up all his life and it's a hard habit to break.  They still haven't said any real words.  They may have their own chatter though.  When I get them out of bed after a nap or in the morning, if one of them is still asleep, the other will lean into her crib and start chattering to get her up.  It's very cute. 

Vince is heading to Chicago tonight to get Logan a new bed.  He was getting too big for his toddler bed so we made the decision to buy a new one.  We ventured out yesterday and looked at a few furniture stores and found some we really liked and then I decided to do a search on craigslist.  We found a bed in our price range in Chicago.  Since Logan's room is so small, we are getting him a loft bed.  He'll have to climb a ladder to get up to the top bed and underneath the bed is a dresser and spot for a tv and shelving.  There is also a trundle bed on the very bottom.  It's perfect for his little room.  I haven't seen it in person yet, but Vince should be home in the next few hours and we'll get it all set up.  Better get the girls to bed.