Our Little Chef

Linguini had Remy, we have Cael. Cael has been really into helping us in the kitchen lately, which we are definitely encouraging. Last night I was making my Baked Mushroom Chicken, and since it takes a while to make, the boys helped. Cael and Allen coated the chicken in the wheat flour, then egg/milk, then the panko crumbs while I browned them. Cael was also in charge of taking the stems off of the mushrooms so I could chop them up. Food is so much yummier when you help make it! :)

A day at the museum

Today we went to the Hastings Museum for their monthly "Preschool Playday." Today's was entitled "Blast off!" The kids got to make a 'magic' telescope out of a paper towel tube, streamers, and sticky stars. Pretty darn cool, according to the kiddos. They also made an orbit toy that has a 'sun' in the middle on a stick, and a button planet swinging around it on a string. Look out! You could get hit. We also went in to the planetarium for a short show of some stars and some basic things you could see in the sky. Of course, like the mother-of-the-year I am, I forgot my camera. ooops. Cael's really been into rockets, spaceships, and astronauts lately, so we figured this would be a great day for him. His only gripe was that the planetarium part wasn't long enough. We need to take him back to see a full show there, obviously. All in all, it was a pretty good day. We posted a lot of stuff on Craigslist, as we're trying to continue to downsize as much as we can before we list the house. If it doesn't snow too much tomorrow, there will be someone coming to get Cael's dresser tomorrow. If you've helped us move, you know what an absolute bear it is. Solid oak. We want something lighter and easier to move for each one of us. Guess we'll see what happens.

$350 Kitchen makeover before/after

These are taken the day we moved in. New floor, new paint on the walls, cupboards, and trim, new curtain rods and curtains. You can hardly tell we have 5 different styles of cabinets and 3 different styles of countertops.

Project

The kitchen project is underway! I have the walls painted, and now the cupboards and trim need to get done. The walls are "almond toast," the same color as our livingroom. The cupboards and trim will be "cottonseed." Kind of a light cream color. Doing the cupboards are going to be a pain, but hopefully they'll get done soon, since the kitchen is completely torn apart. After the painting, I need to put down new floor tile. Phew! I'll post pictures when it's done. This is the biggest project we have to get the house ready to put on the market in February. We still have trim to put up in the dining room, hallway, bathroom, and our bedroom. As well as finish our closet, and fix some siding on the back side of the house.

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve and Christmas were pretty good for our family this year. We were at church Chistmas Eve for Cael's program. He was a cow, and this is his buddy Ethan, the donkey. Ethan and Cael found one of the kitchen carts and decided to entertain themselves. They would push each other and then spin around. Meemaw Keylon was "taking orders" for supper at the window. We had supper with the Keylons, Gaschos, and Reynolds clans.

It's getting closer...

Allen is back to working out, thank goodness. I'm just glad that he's feeling better. He has the day off tomorrow, so he'll be back out there, running. He bought a balaclava the other day, which I was very happy for, except it was a day late for me, since I did a 12-miler in the snowfall on Saturday. I didn't think my face was frozen, but when I tried to yell at my buddy, Chloe the farmdog, to go home, I realized that I couldn't talk very well. Unfortunately, that was only about halfway through my 12. Allen tried it out on Sunday afternoon, and it worked pretty well. He's got to be ok running in the cold. MO in February is no picnic.

On the mend

Allen's attempts of getting rid of his kidney stone on his own was not successful, so today we had an appointment at Good Sam in Kearney. The doctor decided it was time that Allen was rid of it. 45 minutes later, the doctor brought me a small vial and showed me what was giving Allen so much pain. He's still in pain, but at least we know that this will end eventually. Healing has begun.