(And All My) Work Be Praise

This week's Bible story was that of Naaman the leper, from 2 Kings 5 . Short version: the prophet Elisha tells Naaman to wash in the Jordan River seven times, and after a bit of moaning and groaning, he does and is healed. I modified this craft , which I found through our preschool curriculum .  We didn't have any blue plastic cups, so first we painted styrofoam cups. Owen had no interest in painting, and as he was playing happily by himself, I saw no reason to make him participate. Painting the outside of cups is actually really easy. Just stick your non-dominant hand inside the cup! I googled "man outline" and searched until I found a workable face, then printed it twice. Levi had the rare treat of using a marker to put red dots ("leprosy") all over the face.  Painstakingly drawing leprous sores on Naaman's ear.  Then I taped Naaman's face (one clean side, one spotted side) to a popsicle stick (which I just now realized y...

What I'm Cooking A variety of things for Date Night . Chicken in mole sauce with chocolate linguine . My mom gave me some chocolate pasta as part of a gift a while back. With my big boys at my parents' house for a few days, it seemed like a good time to make something fancy with it. The chocolate pasta isn't sweet -- just cocoa added to regular pasta -- and the other flavors in the mole sauce overwhelmed it completely. And, it so happens that neither my husband nor I like mole sauce all that much. Can't say this meal was a big win. Egg-white crepes with mixed berries and chocolate chips. Not bad, but I prefer my regular crepe recipe . Peanut butter meringues . I've made these once before, and they turned out better last time. For future reference, if you let a meringue cool for too long on a baking stone, it adheres to the stone like glue and you'll end up shattering at least half just trying to pry them off. [Both of the above recipes came about becau...

Our official monthly dates have officially begun! I planned February as a stay-at-home date, to avoid the need for a babysitter or going out on a potentially cold and dreary evening. As it turns out, the big boys spent several days at my parents' house, so we didn't even have to eat our date dinner at 8pm. February's envelope contained a short questionnaire for Isaac to fill out, based on this idea from the Dating Divas . It read something like this: Choose one option from each of the following: hot/cold fast/slow circle/square up/down/in-between He was instructed (and then reminded several times) to return the questionnaire to me one week prior to our scheduled date night (so that I would have time to do the appropriate grocery shopping). He didn't know it at the time, but he was, in effect, planning our dinner-and-activity date! According to his chosen answers, we: --shared an appetizer of roasted red pepper hummus and sliced veggies when he arrived h...

What I'm Cooking Slow Cooker Paprika Pulled Pork with Parmesan Polenta . This is what I made for our Valentine's Day company, and it was quite good. None of us had ever tried polenta before. The recipe seems to call for a dry good, but all I could find at the store was pre-cooked (it's in a tube, like sausage, but it's a sort of cornmeal mush), so I had to improvise on adding the parmesan and milk to make something the consistency of mashed potatoes. It wasn't bad. I probably wouldn't love it on its own, but it was a very nice starch under the pulled pork. Baked Pasta with Sausage and Spinach . You can't really go wrong with Skinny Taste recipes. I don't love cooked spinach, but it's not very noticeable. This was my first experience with uncooked sausage NOT in bulk -- as in, the first time I've ever removed the casing from a sausage link. I did not particularly enjoy the experience. My husband, who accidentally let the casing go down the sin...

Or, the year I failed at showing the Valentine spirit. I thought long and hard about posting our Valentine's Day activities throughout the week as we completed them, in case anyone wanted some ideas. But as long as the boys' naps are only overlapping by about thirty minutes, and Silas fusses as soon as I head towards the computer because he knows I'm going to sit down, I'm not going to be blogging during nap time very often. Such is life. We kicked the week off with toilet-paper-roll-heart painting. This has been floating around pinterest and a variety of blogs for a while now, and it was just as easy as everyone says. Smash a toilet paper roll into a heart shape, dip it in paint, press on paper. Levi loved it so much he filled two sheets of paper. I made a pretty cute little design of my own, if I do say so myself, with great plans to use it as a background for a V-day card for my husband. It's still sitting on the kitchen counter. Such is life. For...

What I'm Reading I Want It Now! : the autobiography of the girl who played Veruca Salt in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory . I picked this up for free for the Kindle a while back, on a whim. I have no idea why. I'm not a die-hard Wonka fan; I haven't seen the new Johnny Depp version, and frankly I think I'm still a little frightened by some of the scenes in the original. The biography was mildly interesting, though not terribly well written. Easy enough reading for middle-of-the-night feedings, which is the only time I read it. What I'm Cooking Korean Beef . We love this one. Brown sugar and ground beef sounds like an odd combination, but it's delightfully salty-sweet and pairs well with brown rice. A whole-family favorite. Beef Barley Soup  with these Clean Eating Biscuits . I was out of bay leaves, so the soup wasn't as flavorful as it could have been, but it was good and hearty. The biscuits weren't bad, but tasted way too much...

Feeling rather worn out these days. This song isn't about motherhood, but for me, this week, it was.  Jesus, draw me ever nearer As I labor through the storm You have called me to this passage And I'll follow, though I'm worn Jesus, guide me through the tempest Keep my spirit staid and sure When the midnight meets the morning Let me love you even more Let the treasures of the trial Form within me as I go And at the end of this long passage Let me leave them at your throne It's a Keith Getty song , but Margaret Becker wrote the lyrics.

What I'm Cooking Carrot, Apple, and Oat Chicken Nuggets . I've been skeptical of making my own chicken nuggets before, but using ground chicken made all the difference. The texture isn't right when you just cut up chicken; that's a chicken bite , not a chicken nugget . These took forever to make -- mostly because I make my own bread crumbs, and I didn't make enough the first time around, but I did dump the food processor in the sink, so then I had to wash it before I could make more crumbs, and in the meantime the older boys were goofing around at dinner and Silas was just-before-bedtime cranky and Isaac was out of town and couldn't help. But they were a huge hit, and I'm super happy about having a big Ziploc bag full in the freezer for future lunches. Tamale soup. A recipe from a mom of some of my former piano students. Super easy: 1/2 pound browned ground turkey, 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 jar salsa, 1 can tomato soup (OR tomato paste), 1/2 tsp garlic salt...

A few months ago, I came across an article online about baby-led weaning. Of course I can't find the exact post now, but it basically entails skipping the pureed-foods stage and offering baby age-appropriate table food to eat themselves. It sounded interesting and logical, and though I'm usually a bit wary of anything labeled "baby-led" or "child-centered," etc., I tucked the information away for future reference. (In my head, not for real, or else I'd be able to find the article.) Well, then Silas hit six months, and he was nursing a TON more than the other boys were at his age, and I was getting awfully tired of getting up every four hours, but he hadn't gained any weight in two months . . . all of that run-on sentence to say, I decided to go ahead and feed him as I had the other two. We tried brown rice cereal. We tried applesauce. We tried mashed banana. Everything met with the same reaction he'd given our few bottle-feeding attempts: c...