Recently

It's a Monday, and I'm pretty scatterbrained! This post is mostly my attempt to cover the highlights from the past two weekends.

Our sweet little monkey has the general concept of a stool, and now pushes all kinds of objects next to dressers and counter tops hoping to get all the fun things Mommy and Daddy aren't letting the curious one play with! As the pictures demonstrate below, he's learned some things make better stools than others. It won't be long, before he might figure out he just needs to turn the trash can over.


Besides running after Liam and trying to keep up with work both outside and inside the home, recently we also go to see Michael's sister graduate:
We also saw a glimpse of Liam's "barbaric" side...

...and a glimpse of his cute helpful side as well!


On the budget front, all is going well and the extra planning is helping not only save money but time as well. I have taken to cooking more food on the weekends, and freezing more lunch portions. Yesterday I made a 9 x 13 pan of ziti that just needs to be baked sometime this week (hoping to help out Michael both in making dinner and giving him easy left-overs he'll enjoy!), pad thai that provided 5 meal-sized portions (mostly vegetarian, but one portion with chicken for Michael), and a pot of curried split pea soup that is very tasty and will gave me three lunches!

I had so much fun making the pad thai. I learned what tamarind is (a type of tree native to Sudan with seeds that are eaten in many other cultures), and that it is actually a component in Worcestershire sauce. I also cooked with shallots for the first time. In the process of going to the Asian market to hunt for tamarind, I also made an unexpected discovery. Their produce is good and actually a lot cheaper than most of the bigger grocery stores. For only $11.99, I got the following: 1 head of cauliflower, a package of tofu, enough tamarind to make lots of pad thai (or whatever else I find that uses it), a hand full of bean sprouts (for the pad thai), a big head of green leaf lettuce, a bag peanuts, 5 bulbs of garlic, two bunches of broccoli, one bunch of green onions, and one bunch of cilantro. Cannot beat that!!

Ready to eat!