Great Midwest Balloon Fest

Whee! With Eric out of town, I decided to load up the kids for a Fabulous Fun Friday Adventure! A friend had posted the Great Midwest Balloon Fest on FB (thanks Jaime!) so off we went.

It was a bit comical loading all our stuff on the stroller through the parking lot (i.e. field) and down the huge hill to the viewing area. But our little camp was just right.


We arrived early, around 4:30 p.m. and enjoyed walking around all the fun things like jumping in the bouncy-deal, foot-long corndogs, smoothies and sno-cones! Because of the high winds, the mass launch didn't start until about 6:30, but it was soooo coool!




Later, we went down the field a bit to be close enough to see the baskets and burners.


At nightfall the Glo started! The ballooners were back to the field from the earlier launch and this time were tied down and would light their burners turning the balloons into giant beautiful light bulbs! The crowd would count-down 5-4-3-2-1-GLO! Really fun! We also enjoyed the live bands for awhile...then it was time to head on home.

We were grubby and tired, but our glo necklaces kept everyone entertained as we made the long trek back to the van...this time UP the giant hill with the loaded stroller. HA! Two guys saw me stuck at half-way, hollering for Elena and Kai to come help push and they came to lift us up the rest of the way...shew! It was a blast...so head over there tonight or tomorrow if you get a chance...here's the link for times and info: Great Midwest Balloon Fest.

Meal Planning Simplified

In the spirit of occasional overwhelment (hmmm, I've used that word a lot...but I still claim it to be occasional), I starting thinking about what I spend the most time doing. Laundry? School? Cooking? Playing? Shopping? The winner?...It's all about the food. Planning, purchasing, preparing, experimenting and cleaning up.

So my next step was to figure out how to do all of the above in a more efficient manner, short of hiring a cook, which of course would be my preference! For some reason meal planning and execution is one of my most dreaded tasks of homemaking. Maybe because it is so constant...three meals and two, sometimes three snacks a day for the five of us plus Eric doesn't like to go out (what is wrong with that man?).

Over the years I have tried different methods like once-a-month-cooking, online planning services like e-mealz (Dave Ramsey recommends that one), my own two-week or monthly plans, and various other ideas from other bloggers or mommas. A few weeks ago I got hooked on Erica's blog over at Confessions of a Homeschooler and she makes a fantastic monthly plan with many of her recipes linked to a printable menu. I had never considered planning for more than just dinner and side dishes and really feel like a dunce for never writing down different meals to try for breakfast, lunch and snacks.

So here's my wish list:

• Customizable & printable menu for 1 week up to 1 month or more
• Aisle-ordered grocery list auto generated from menu
• Ability to add/import recipes from the web or text files
• Mac-compatible program/service, an OLD Mac at that.
• Pleasing user interface...I'm going to be doing this a lot and don't want to feel like I'm working on the guts of my computer sorting files or something!

That doesn't sound too hard does it? I was going to do it myself by creating some sort of calendar/database/worksheet system but I knew there had to be something out there right up my alley. Enter the obsessive researching side of my personality...even dreamed about it for a couple nights. Here are the results:

Shop'NCook Menu
All good except the interface...too plain jane for me and the demo I downloaded seemed a little bogged down...dragging and dropping recipes to the correct menu was confusing and sometimes took multiple tries.
MacGourmet Meal Plan
This I really like! But being on my old Mac (for just a few more months...we're upgrading soon) I could only download an older version that didn't allow demo-ing of the meal plan add-on. Looks good on all other accounts from the site description though it might be too nuts and bolts for me.
Kitchen Monki
Hot dog, this one is free! And is everything I was looking for! Ahhh...but again the older puter is going to bite me in the butt...scripts on the pages keep me from using it seamlessly. Pages taking a while to load. Maybe a little too recipe-sharing focused. Can even sign-in through Facebook. I think this would be a good fit for a lot of people.
Plan To Eat
And the best is saved for last. The user interface is the first thing that grabbed me...clean, neat and pretty! I started my free 30-day trial, uploaded a couple recipes and used some of their samples to make a pretend 2-week menu and printed out a custom grocery list all in a few minutes. You can even make multiple lists for separate stores!!! The list also combined same ingreds from recipes A & B (i.e. 11 chicken breasts [A][B]) with a separate printed list with a recipe key. I can drag and drop the recipes onto the calendar which has 4 meal slots per day...multiple recipes can go in each slot. Oh, and when I finally catch up with the times and get a smart phone, I can send my list to my phone. To be fair, I believe all of the above programs will do that.

So Plan To Eat it is! I'm really excited to utilize it and hoping after the initial loading of my recipes it's going to save loads of time. My idea is to plan at least a month in advance, but to break up the shopping into weekly short trips. Their program allows you to print the grocery lists for just a day up to whatever. Combining all this with the planning of ALL our food may make me the best kitchen manager I've ever been! Oh, and a year subscription is only $39 or you can pay $4.95/month...the time saving capabilities should make it pay for itself. If I convince enough of my friends to use it I can get my subscription free...that'd be sweet...so link to them through my blog peeps! And Happy Homemaking to ya...

Slidin' through Omaha

Well, like any good plan, sometimes better things come along to change it all up! The plan was to start school last Monday, and instead we took a vacation!! So last Tuesday it was off to Omaha, Nebraska on a rainy morning. God seemed to smile on our little adventure with a beautiful rainbow arched over downtown Kansas City...


It wasn't long before the kiddos hit the ground running at the Omaha Children's Museum. Such a neat place!! Elena was convinced it was all going to be "for 2-year-olds"...that conviction lasted about 30 seconds as she promptly discovered the arts-and-crafts room. Even Zane baby had plenty to explore...


The amazing ball room was a favorite...I think we were in it for close to an hour...


Kai had a great time loading up and checking out some groceries...


Zane loves any type of vehicle with a steering wheel right now...so this giant car was right up his alley!


Eric and I were t.i.r.e.d. so we went straight for our hotel that was on the edge of downtown, chosen especially for it's "just right-sized" water park. Perfect for our kiddos and we had it all to ourselves! These racing slides were super-fast and there were lots of giggles as we would all bounce along the landing pad...


We ate at an excellent brewhouse in the Old Market area, Upstream Brewery. Delicious food and wonderful service and atmosphere...mmmmm. The Old Market area is really well done...in fact, we were impressed with the entire downtown area. Murals and statues almost every block, clean parks, container after container of lush flowers...it was just a really nice place.

The next day we waited out the rain with another trip to the waterpark while Eric got wet playing some disc golf. Our afternoon was spent at the renown Omaha zoo. It was perfect weather and we all enjoyed the animals, the train and the interesting exhibits. Not to mention the rhino rides!


Gooooo Gorillas!!!!


After we checked out Thursday morning, we walked around the lake at a park. We saw HUGE, I mean HUGE fish with dorsal fins like a shark's swimming in the big pond...hmmmm. We need to figure out what they were...maybe carp? I just kept thinking my brothers would love to try and catch them! We asked a couple locals if they knew what they were and they didn't.


One of our last stops was also one of our first...the giant slides at the downtown park! We had had so much fun on them after supper the first night that we went back for more giggles. The kids especially liked them going down while sitting on some wax paper...Elena went airborn!


Our very last stop was at the pedestrian bridge that connects Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa over the Missouri River. We actually learned a lot from the historical markers about how settlers tamed the river to enable towns along it to grow and thrive without being washed away every spring. Of course, now "they" are trying to reverse some of the natural environment alterations that occurred because of the developments. Very interesting. Here all my sweeties have one foot in Nebraska and one foot in Iowa...


After some nice afternoon car naps for everyone but our driver, of course, we awoke to another rainy day in Kansas City and yet another beautiful rainbow....smile!


We were back in time for a trip to the movies before one last supper out and then back-to-school night at Discovery Homeschool Academy. What a great trip!

Entering the Land of Pet Food

Live pet food, that is. Crickets.

We went shopping for a class pet yesterday! After ruling out all rodents (Dad's rule...as who wouldn't love a cute fuzzy guinea pig?), turtles (too much maintenance), hermit crabs (too sandy...I am anti-sand-in-the-house), and collard lizards (4' tank required), we fully anticipated trying our hand, once again, at loving a betta fish. Well, the kids weren't that wowed at good ol' Petsmart's faded, sad looking and kinda pale fishies-in-a-cup, so we asked for suggestions.

What we ended up with is so cool! It's a Fire-bellied Toad (really a frog), species name Bombina Bombina, with a green/grey/brown spotted back and a red and black underbelly. His new home is a fire-belly landing with little steps up to where we laid some nice real moss on top of a bit of gravel. He has water to swim in and a container of live crickets waiting for him to devour. Oh, yes, and three very excited young owners! Which is, of course, the whole point of owning him!

A name will sure follow soon...and I'm already excited to find a bigger tank at a garage sale as I have a feeling the little plastic habitat isn't going to be safe enough with a 1 1/2 year old around!

And just like that....it's over.

I'm done. Done saying, "I can't have that" or "none of this today", done checking my little cards to see if certain foods are on my list of the day.

Last week I went to see a different doctor, and I am thoroughly convinced that if you go to enough doctors, you will eventually find the answer that you want to hear. At least in "food intolerance" cases like my own (obviously some medical problems are clear cut and diagnosis is diagnosis). I don't think this gal actually told me what I wanted to hear, but she did disagree with the allergist about the food problems causing all my skin & rash craziness. After much discussion between Eric and I (and Jodi since she was in town), I decided to scrap the elimination and rotation diet.

Ya know what the first thing I did was? Went to Culver's of course! Chocolate Heath Bar was the flavor of the day. Woot, woot! And as soon as I make it back to Wichita...a Squeak's cinnamon roll is on the menu! (Thanks for having one in my honor Jo).

Five days later now, and I really feel like a new woman. At least mentally. Every moment of the four weeks I was following that regimen my brain was constantly reeling, trying to figure out how to keep my body going on a limited range of foods...frequently failing as I stood in the kitchen at 7 p.m. starving and saying bleary-eyed to my family that I was going to the store to buy something, anything, to eat before I passed out. Unfairly, I know, I'm sorry gals...I was also continuing to lose weight...not such a good thing to be 15-20 pounds off the "healthy" range for my height.

So now I must say thank you to all of you who encouraged me in that adventure! So many people helped me find recipes, asked questions, brought me cookbooks, referred me to websites and just listened to my attempts at following that path. I genuinely felt so loved and cared for and I truly thank you for taking the time to help me try to figure it all out. I'm not sure what the "right" answer is for my total health...but for now having one less thing to worry my little head about is the right answer for me and my family. I need to focus on them, on getting ready for school, and getting our lives back in order. Hopefully I will be staying well and won't be wearing turtlenecks through a warm October like I did through April!

Baptism Day!

Our church, Vox Dei Community, gathered at a neighborhood pool this morning for our annual baptism service. We have been talking a lot about baptism with Elena and Kai over the last couple months and they (and we) both decided they wanted to do it this year as an act of obedience to God and demonstration of their heart commitment to Him. It was exciting!

The heat finally broke last night, seemingly just in time for setting a beautiful scene as six people were baptized this morning! Below are our two...I love how Elena is praying.

Eric and Rustin, our pastor, with Elena:


And then with Kai:


And then, after the picnic began....wheeee!



Thanks for the great pictures Kristi! I'll upload my own sometime and then will have the group shot of our whole family as Eric's parents all came down to be there. Praise God for a good day, one my kiddos will remember!

A Good Day!

I don't think I've ever dreaded my birthday...so I'm not going to start now! Last night I followed Elena's instructions and said "good-bye to 34" and this morning "hello 35"! It does seem a little surreal that I'm now at THAT number in life...ya know, reflecting on where I am and what I've done so far vs. expectations set when I was "young". But God is gracious and I truly can say that each year he refines me in character and cultivation of a quiet and gentle spirit tossed with a smidgen more wisdom than the year before. If that keeps up for the rest of my life, I think I will rest well in my old age.

My last post about the gradual adaptation of my crazy elimination/rotation diet? WRONG information! Dang! I consulted with another (evidently more informed) nurse this week at the doctor's office and it seems that I indeed did NOT misunderstand the doctor's first advice of cutting all my "intolerance" items cold turkey. Gobble-gobble. So I'm back to sticking to my meager list and trying to maintain the weight I'm at AND keep my brain balanced by eating the right combo of weird foods. For lunch today: Amaranth hot cereal with cherries and almonds, baked sweet potato, plain. Mmmmm....actually it's not to bad compared with some of the concoctions I've come up with.

Anyway, I think and talk about all that enough to drive me crazy so onto topics of more enjoyment! Last weekend we took a mini-vacation (which turned into a day trip) down to Springfield for Eric to play in another disc golf tournament. The kids and I stayed out of the heat as much as possible by going to fun places like the Bass Pro Shop and a bowling alley. Eric won his division (woot-woot!) and then we used the discount passes that came with his players pack to Fantastic Caverns to go on the little tour they offer.

It was perfect for our family since it was relatively short and you ride in their little tram thingeys. Zane wore his monkey leash (ha...I've never used one of those for my kids before but it's great!) and actually stayed relatively calm the whole tour.

The plan was to camp after going out to dinner, but night was falling fast and it ended up being the hottest day of the year thus far...once we got on the road this was the look of our eager campers, so scratch that idea:

This weekend promises more fun times...tonight we are going out to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday dinner, my mom is coming to visit tomorrow, we take the kids to Eric's parents tomorrow afternoon, then we have two OTHER people's parties to go to followed by friends meeting us out on the Plaza and Sunday a birthday lunch at Eric's mom's when we go pick up the munchkins...whew! Aren't I glad the maid came yesterday as a special treat?!

So color me impressed if you made it through all these ramblings today...I guess it's my birthday so I can write a totally unrelated mish-mash of a post, right? Have a blessed day yourself, dear reader! ~Resa