This is what childhood is all about...

What's For Dinner?

OK....I thought I would publish "What's For Dinner, Wednesday" a little early today in case you want to try something new for dinner tonight! Just for kicks I took a few pictures of the cooking process, so as to give a tutorial...because I'm a huge nerd like that. This is a Rachael Ray recipe that is gaining popularity at our house. It's simple, tasty & an easy weeknight meal. Enjoy!

Paprika Chicken with Egg Noodles.

Ingredients

• Salt
• 1 pound egg noodles
• 2 tablespoons EVOO – Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 pounds mixed boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs, cut into bite-sized chunks
• Ground black pepper
• 1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 2 red bell peppers, seeded, quartered and thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or grated
• 2 tablespoons ground sweet paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
• 2 tablespoons parsley

Preparation:

Place a large pot of water over high heat to cook the pasta. When the water boils, salt it well and drop the pasta in. Cook to al dente according to package directions. Drain the cooked pasta and reserve.

While the pasta is cooking, place a large skillet over medium-high heat with 2 turns of the pan of EVOO, about 2 tablespoons. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, and sear until golden brown, about 5 minutes per side. Remove from the pan and reserve.                                                                  

             

Add the onion, bell peppers and garlic to the pan, and cook until the veggies have softened, 7-8 minutes.   

Season with salt and pepper, and return the chicken to the pan.

Add the paprika, allspice and stock to the pan and bring up to a bubble. Simmer until the chicken has cooked through, about 10 minutes more.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sour cream. Reserve.

Toss the cooked noodles with the butter, dill, chives and parsley. Serve the chicken over the noodles

Enjoy!

*I have tried to edit this post for the last hour & no matter what I do blogger WILL NOT let me rearrange anything. So, if you are wondering why the words next to the pictures are all "smooshed" & oddly centered it's because I can not edit anything! In fact, all of my posts have pictures spread about a mile apart because of this same problem. If you want to just post pictures it's not a problem with blogger. However, if you want to post pictures and put text next to them... it's a HUGE problem! I'll work on this, but this is as good as it gets for now :-(.

This is what happens...

...when your formerly potty trained three year old decides "today I don't think I feel like being potty trained". Yes....Miss Maya is going to be the end of me! After not one, but TWO accidents (before 10:00 am) on the living room carpet on Friday I said "screw it.....I'm gonna steam clean the whole dang living room". And, that's just what I did!
Ah, the OCD side of me feels completely satisfied now! My husband thought I was losing my mind when he came home to find all the living room furniture shoved into the dining room and hallway, but he is getting used to these sort of shenanigans in our home. 

*It's settled now....we will send Judah off to potty training boot camp when the time comes. I don't think I signed up for this sort of ridiculousness when I agreed to become a mom. NONE of my kids have been easy to potty train. It would appear that while I am very good at some aspects of mothering, this whole "put your pee & poo  in the toilet" thing is one area where I am sorely lacking. I've all but given up on Maya, and I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to start with Judah. Maybe I'll just wait until he trains himself...oh, wait....I forgot we are sending him off to boot camp! :-0!

"What's For Dinner?" - Wednesday Edition

In an effort to do something "just for fun" on my blog, I'm introducing "What's for dinner Wednesday's". I hope I help some of you come up with fun new recipes for dinner & maybe even give myself some extra motivation to cook something new every once and a while. I LOVE to cook, but I don't get to do it as often as I'd like. However, with a family of 6 to feed now I spend enough time in the kitchen to share a recipe or two with you guys :-).

So, here goes nothing........

Here we have grilled salmon & Asian orange salad.

We grilled several meats tonight. There was hot dogs for the kids, and I had Jon throw some smoked chicken and apple sausages on the grill as well.

This is a multi-grain batard I buy fresh from the bakery.

That's a grilled pineapple salsa on the left, and the Asian orange salad on the right.

Asian Salad-

-Spring Mix salad
-mandarin oranges
-red pepper
-canned garbanzo beans
-cooked edamame beans
-sliced almonds
-Wish Bone Light Asian with Sesame and Ginger Vinaigrette.

Grilled Pineapple Salsa-

-One whole pineapple

-1/2 a cucumber

-1/2 red pepper

*Peel, core and slice pineapple. In a cast iron skillet brown sides of sliced pineapple spears for about 2 minutes per side. Remove skillet from heat and let pineapple cool. Dice red pepper, and cucumber (very small). When pineapple is cooled finely dice it and add it to the red pepper and cucumber. Serve with corn chips!

*The Salmon and Smoked Chicken & Apple sausages I just bought at Sam's Club ;-)

That's what's for dinner at our house!

Mmmmm, Rice Cereal!

Judah is almost 7 months old, so I guess it's about time he got his first taste of solid food. I'm not a fan of feeding tons of solids to small babies, but he was acting eager to try something new, so I thought we would give the ol' rice cereal a try. What transpired was nothing short of hilarious, as he was WAY more interested in the bowl and spoon than the food. He just kinda put up with the cereal... I don't think he was crazy about it at all. The spoon and bowl on the other hand, they are now his new favorite toys!

*Oh, and please...PLEASE notice that I put his "Wednesday" bib on him today, because I'm such a nerd like that.

So  hungry!!

Oh....what's this round, blue thing....I want it...give it here!

What.....what's this mushy stuff you are putting in my mouth? I still think I want this blue thing you are calling a "bowl".

OK....this mushy stuff is GROSS....but I really like this bowl.

Just give me the bowl now.

Hands OFF my bowl!!

Fine...then the spoon is MINE!

I think I like this bowl and spoon thing...what...what's that? You were hoping I liked the mushy stuff. Are you crazy? 

            

You're funny, Mom!

Easter Pictures

Knowing Better...

There is this famous phrase "you do better when you know better", and what I'm going to write about tonight is my journey to knowing better.

Last year Jonathan and I went through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University & that marked the beginning of us knowing better when it came to financial decisions. We learned a wealth of knowledge about how money works, how to save, spend, invest, and give. We learned a new phrase "Live like no one else...So you can LIVE like no one else". By the end of the course we were changed people equipped with the knowledge and know how to "do better". So, now when I feel tempted to go and do something stupid with my money I just can't, because I know better! It's a blessing that I know better, but sometimes it feels like a curse when I want to be blissfully ignorant and have my own way. As foolish as that sounds, and even though I know better, I still fall prey to wanting what I know I can't have!

We live in a "have it your way society" and when every body's doing it... it's hard to be the odd man out. However, God made me one of the most hard-headed, stubborn individuals to ever walk this earth & most of the time I'm thick-skinned enough to withstand the opinions (ehm...) of others. However, the problem with being this stubborn & knowing better is that I CAN'T have it my way! I have to wait. I have to be patient. I have to walk outside the lines when everyone else seems to be walking inside of them. I know that what I'm doing is the right thing for me and my family, but nobody ever wants to talk about how isolating that can feel.

When I start feeling like this the temptation is always to say "woe is me"...but that's pretty pointless and pathetic. To pull myself out this funk I choose to go back and review why it is we are doing what we are doing. For instance, we are digging our way out of debt so that we can change our family tree! Jonathan and I BOTH came from families that didn't know diddly-squat about money & we have purposed to do better than that for our children. We will suffer for this short while so that our children will not have to carry this heavy burden later on. See, when I look at it that way it's so much easier to carry on! Besides, we won't always be living in the "struggle" phase of our lives. One day (very soon) we will be on the other side of our stupidity (because debt is dumb!) & walking in the glorious field of freedom! THAT'S what I have to think about when the road seems long and trying (like right now!). That's the kind of "hope" I can believe in ;-).

Another area where we have decided to change our life dramatically is in our decision to walk away from "institutional church". I'll share more on what that means in future posts, but suffice it to say we are definitely walking "outside the lines" on this one. However, after years, no...a LIFETIME , of pain and suffering within the four walls of organized religion we made the decision to follow our hearts and make a change. This decision was not one we took lightly, nor hastily. It has been a very long process full of ups and downs that has finally lead us to the place we are today. It hasn't been easy, but once again....when you know better, you do better.

The main reason we made this change was for our family. We simply could not continue down the road we were on, and we had to make a change before we ended up repeating the same mistakes over and over. We wanted to get this one right for our children, and for future generations. We longed, once again, to change our family tree and leave our children with a hope and a future that they could be proud of. We were also weary from the struggle that Sunday mornings had become, and we were ready for a change.

In the course of changing the way we viewed our finances we also found that some of the same thinking applied to our spiritual lives as well. If you have ever listened to Dave Ramsey you've heard him say "debt is normal....be weird". That saying makes a lot of sense, so why do we let the parallel stop with finances? Jonathan and I had spent our entire married life putting up with one failed Church experience after another until we finally said ENOUGH...NO MORE! That's when we began to ask ourselves "what is broken about the way we are doing Church?". Then, one day I heard someone pose the question "What happens when 'the Church' leaves the building"? That's when I knew we were getting close to some answers! Everywhere we looked we saw discontentment, pain, and suffering within the Church. It could be said that "Struggle" seemed to go hand and hand with the word "Church"...so we began to say "something has to change!".

Most people think of "the Church" as a building. We ask each other "where do you go to Church?". What we expect to hear is an answer that describes a location...a building...a place where we go to and park our cars as well as our butts. But...what if I said "I am the Church"? What if the word "Church" was used to describe a relationship rather than a building? In truth, the Bible never defines "the Church". Instead it uses various metaphors to describe it. Do you know what the chief metaphor for the Church is that dominates the New Testament? It's the family. WE are the body of Christ...not some building! When Jonathan and I began to grasp that fact we were filled with a new hope that things were going to change for our family. No more pain...no more suffering...we had finally landed on something rooted in truth!

What we found came straight from the word of God, which, by the way...NEVER returns void! What we found were verses from scripture that said: "Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition" (Matt 15:6) & "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men...You are experts at setting aside the commandments of God in order to keep your tradition" (Mark 7:8-9). What we had noticed throughout our years of pain and suffering in institutional Church was that the one thing that stopped the Word of God dead in it's tracks was...(da, dum, dum!!!!) TRADITIONS!

["In so many ways, religious tradition has shaped our minds. It's captured our hearts. It's framed our vocabulary. So much so that whenever we open our Bibles, we automatically read our current church practices back into the text."] -Frank Viola.

When we sought to change our thinking and our circumstances we discovered something beautiful. It's called "Simple Church", "Organic Church", or simply "House Church", and it has changed our lives! It has made us hunger for the Word of God in a whole new way & it has connected us with some amazing people that all have something wonderful they bring to the group. In short, the Simple Church is free of the ego-messaging models of hierarchical leadership that have turned the word "Church" into something so synonymous with "suffering". What we have found is that the Church is not a business...it's a family. When we followed our instincts and our desires to be part of a community what we found is that the passion for community is contagious!

["House Churches are revolutionary because they incarnate this radical teaching that all are gifted and all are ministers. They offer some hope for healing the body of Christ from some of its worst heresies: that some believers are more valuable than others, that only some Christians are ministers, and that the gifts of the Spirit are no longer to function in our age. These heresies cannot be healed in theory or in theology only. They must be healed in practice and relationship in the social form of the church"] -Reimagining Church/ Frank Viola

I'll be honest, the only part that's been tough about this transition is the reactions we sometimes get from other Christians. We've been accused of lacking Biblical wisdom and discernment, or following some "fad". We've even had people joke (at least I hope it was a joke!) that this sounds like some flaky fringe group or cult! All this because we are doing something different. However, let me be clear, this is not about being a rebel of some sort. It's not about being unwilling/unable to submit to authority either. This is about a desire to seek God in a pure and un-filtered way. This is about letting God be the head of the Church and putting our meetings back into the hands of the Holy Spirit rather than under the domain of strong personalities. It's about taking the performance aspect out of Church and allowing yourself the opportunity to experience God in a very real way. It's about realizing that being "different" is sometimes the best indicator that you are right on track for changing your life for the better! This is about doing better... because we know better!

The Flu Sucks!

The Omaha Zoo.

In an effort to offset the depressing tone of last night's post, I thought I'd post a few pictures from our little Spring Break trip to the Omaha Zoo. We took a little day trip there and back & while it was a whirlwind of a day, it was also a lot of fun.