Free Range on Fairview

So as I wrote in my last post things have changed a bit for us in the last month. With money tight, unnecessary purchases have really come to an end. (I did take a trip over to see my sister and family this weekend which put us back $40 but was oh so worth it to see my new nephew Luke and to see the rest of my family who I hadn't seen since I got the plague back at Christmas) After reading inspiration about a Pantry Challenge from one of my favorite blogs I figured it was the perfect time for us to try too. Only shopping for items to round out meals we spent around $50 on food this January to feed our growing family. I think that's pretty great. Dylan has been eating like a horse lately, I've been eating a ton too (yes I am in my sixth month so I can) and even Lincoln is sitting through dinner eating the whole time... and not scraping off his plate or throwing food to the dog. My boys are growing but I've been able to "shop our pantry and freezer" plus a humbl...

We had a three day holiday weekend, followed by Dylan feeling under the weather so we kept him home from school, back to school for a day, followed by a snow day so needless to say I've been trying to keep all of my boys busy and not going stir crazy. Here the boys are trying out some dot painting.  Dylan starting on a very orange robot. Not a great picture of Linc but he's really getting into it. So things have become a little wild around here lately but I'm not going to let that keep me down. On the 5th of Jan. Shane got into an accident while at work. Luckily no one else was involved and he wasn't seriously hurt. However even though he wasn't doing his normal job and there was ice on the road, his company cited that he was being reckless and fired him. He is union so he is working with his representative to get a panel review to get his job back. This, however, was scheduled for six weeks out (after already being suspended for a week so that makes seven)...

Dylan is the only one of us at the moment who has to get out of the house at a specific time in the morning (more on that another day) so breakfast for him is a must. I guess I'm lucky that he likes cereal, but he wants cold cereal every day. Every. Single. Day. I try offering him banana bread or yogurt or fruit or eggs. He would just rather have cereal. I know I am the mom and could say well we are having this for breakfast but since we get most of our cereal free through WIC I'm not in a tussle about it and we aren't going in the whole over $4 boxes of cereal. Anyway this last weekend was a 3 day weekend thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so I spent a good chunk of time scanning fun blogs for make ahead meals and snack ideas when I came across this great recipe for sausage pancake muffins . I thought we had pancake mix in the pantry and could use it up but just followed her recipe (although I just used white flour because that's what I buy) and also added extra syru...

Promise this is the only "parts" picture I will ever show. Giant Feet Side profile. I think that might be a fist above his head. So we officially (well as officially as an ultrasound can be) found out that we are on to our third boy and I can't be more thrilled. No I'm not going to keep trying for a girl, we don't have a team and I am not disappointed. I couldn't be happier with the children that God has blessed us with and I am looking forward to seeing what this boys' personality will be like. When I called my grandma to let her know I said "Well I have some bad news," and she said "Is it another boy?" ha ha oh man. Everyone else in the family was really looking forward to having a girl so maybe one day one of my siblings can have one, but it's boys for this momma. During the ultrasound the tech was trying to get a good picture of his heart or something and he kept moving around. We saw him stretch, play with his toes a...

Well we finally got all the kids together for the Christmas since Danielle moved back to her moms. We had all of them together for the whole new years weekend. I took the picture on Danielle's phone so it gets a little blurrier the bigger I make it but any smaller and it would lose all of those sweet smiles. We had a great time hanging out, running errands and even eating a nice dinner out with friends. Tomorrow is the day when we find out if we will have an even two boys and two girls or if the boys are going to totally outnumber the girls. We get our anatomy ultrasound tomorrow afternoon and it's pretty exciting to meet this next little one. The last and only ultrasound we have had so far the baby really didn't look like much of a baby so I am so looking forward to seeing how much he or she has changed. Lincoln recognizes babies on tv and in magazines and if you tell him to kiss the baby he will usually run over and kiss my belly so I think he knows something is going on...