voss voyage

I stopped blogging when I got my new phone....an iphone5. I had no reason to load pictures on the computer anymore. I take now directly load them onto facebook and have completely stopped putting them on the computer. 500+ pics later and the camera on my perfect phone is blurry. Turns out its not so perfect. So I decided I needed to go back to old school and use my "old" camera. We'll see how that turns out. I also miss documenting the family happenings and what God is teaching me about my current vocation--motherhood. I've been learning a lot this fall and really want to get it in writing. So I'm back to blogging. You may not see as many pictures as before until I get the phone camera fixed, but hopefully I'll be writing again.

Twin love Can you tell who is my shopper? bathtime This happens more than I would like to admit :-) Someone recently told me that mom's are rarely in pictures with their kids Gorgeous PJ's from NH Jenna insists on eating by herself I love to watch them sleep

I'm so incredibly behind in blogging. I am blaming it on my new iphone5. Since getting it I almost never get on the real computer. I can easily check email and FB from my phone. And I don't bother uploading pictures either since I can post to FB or text them from my phone. I'm going to attempt to catch up with some short posts. I love the idea of being able to look back at my blog years from now and remembering how crazy these preschool years were! We attended the Annual Greek Festival this September. The girls enjoyed the dancing and we enjoyed Souvlaki and Baklava!

We had some great meals last month with our first attempt at cooking for a month. But I have to admit that I think this month is going to be even better. From the research we've done, the prepping should only take us one day....but with several small children underfoot (including TWO sets of twins) it took us two full days this month. We don't mind, though. We love to cook and we get to spend lots of time chatting and solving the world's problems :-) Things we learned.... *shop the sales. We did that this time and saved a boat load on meat *have the butcher prep the meat for us. GENIUS! This saved us so much time. We had him cut the sirloin "fajita style" for the stroganoff and it was perfect. We also had him run some of the chicken through the meat tenderizer to flatten it (no pounding)! *prep meat first *freeze flat so the meals are not in the shape of balls *freeze with cardboard between so there is no sticking Here is what we prepared this month with ...

I've attempted this a few times in the past without much success. THIS time, I'm committed to making it work. Two other friends also have this same commitment (I hope)! We planned twelve meals-- 3 per week. Some will yield leftovers and the other days we can fill in with the usual stuff. After prepping/cooking these meals we've decided that some just aren't worth it. We also want to get as healthy as possible and will try to work on that.  Trying to please the picky eaters in all three families was also a challenge, but we are hoping that the meals will be tolerable for most people.  I'm already excited to start planning next month. Step #1 Plan Meals This was harder than I thought because of food allergies and pickiness. You kinda get used to your own family and then adding the other families issues means a lot of stuff that gets cut out. Step #2 Shop With three large families and lots of babies, this kept getting put off. Plus, trying to shop cheap & hea...

Allison is not much of a breakfast eater, so when she asked if she could have a "special breakfast" on the first day of school, I was surprised. She requested pink pancakes. I happily obliged, reminding her that this wouldn't happen too often. Usually Patrick is the one to get up with the kids and I stagger out of bed an hour later. Yeah, that won't be happening anymore. Allison is the first stop on her bus route. She is also the first stop on the way home, so it works out good. But she gets on the bus at 6:45am. AH!!! I used to think the 9am preschool drop-off was early. I never knew how good I had it. When my alarm went off at 6am, my first thought was "omg, this is my new reality." But the twins are sleeping through the night (mostly) so I should be  able to adjust fine :-) Time will tell. My oldest child was beyond excited to go to school. We put her on the bus and then Patrick drove to Florence to meet her there and help her get to her classroom....